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Integrating Web Leads into Your Sales Process Part 2

January 5th, 2009, Craig Klein, Founder and CEO of SalesNexus.com in a continuation of his two part series on successfully selling to leads that come through your website, continues the discussion on how valuable a web lead can be to you’re business.

“Someone that searches for a phrase related to your business to find your site has told you that they have a need before you ever pick up the phone!”, said Craig Klein, Founder and CEO of http://www.SalesNexus.com, a hosted online contact management service provider. Craig’s blog, http://sellsellsell.salesnexus.com! has become a valued blog and resource for business owners and sales executives.

 “The trouble is you may find that you get many web leads that really need and want your products and services but, they’re more of a potential user or beneficiary than the person the company has given the authority to decide and spend the money”, said Klein.

This means you need to be aggressive about qualifying these leads early in the process. “I’ve seen lots of businesses spend money on their web sites and search campaigns just to overload their sales reps with leads that can never spend a dime”, said Klein.  The good news is that it’s easy to do. Many times, just adding an additional input box to your web form can filter out the “tire kickers”… like Title.

You’ll also find that the lead’s “buying cycle” can vary greatly. Some are looking for something NOW. Others are investigating options that they can add into their budget for next year.

Bottom line, you need to have methods to be sure that your reps are qualifying the leads properly up front and allocating their time toward the most qualified leads with the potential to buy in the short term.

Good news! It can be extremely easy and time efficient to set up. More importantly, setting up a system to manage the qualification and follow up for incoming web leads can be like pouring rocket fuel in your sales engine.

Here’s a step by step guide:
1. Get a contact management system in which ALL new leads from ALL sources can be added.
2. If there will be more than 5 or 10 a day, be sure that when a web form is completed on your site, the lead is added to the contact management system automatically. Many vendors offer this capability at affordable prices.
4. Track the search that was performed. Again, many vendors offer this capability. As above, if your sales rep knows the specific search phrase that was used, they are empowered to quickly and easily qualify and assist the lead.
5. Add fields to your system that allow the sales rep to enter the answers to the top few qualifying questions directly into the database. Use standardized drop downs, etc. in order to keep data consistent and data entry fast.
6. Create lead nurturing systems for the leads that don’t qualify. This is key! If your sales rep has an easy way to be sure non-qualified leads are “touched” on the appropriate schedule, they’re much more likely to “let go” and avoid spending too much time repeatedly chasing the same old leads.

With a system like this in place, you can be assured that you’ll be able to measure the return on your investment in your web leads. You’ll be able to track the results by search words and phrases and their level of qualification. This information is crucial in optimizing things in the campaign itself. You’ll also be able to ensure that your reps are pursuing only those “worthy” of their time. You may want them to continue to prospect by cold calling, asking for referrals and other methods. You need to know that your reps won’t be overwhelmed with non-qualified web leads so that they can continue these productive activities. Of course, a system like this can help you measure and optimize these other prospecting efforts too.
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Read Part 1 of this article here.

online contact management, mobile contact software, web based contact management, contact management