Lead management creates an orderly architecture for managing large volumes of customer inquiries, or leads. The architecture must be able to organize numerous leads, at various stages of a sales process, across a distributed sales force. In order to understand this process it is helpful to examine a simplified linear lead flow process, such as the following:
- Advertising
- Customer inquiry
- Inquiry captured
- Inquiry filtered
- Lead graded
- Lead distribution
- Sales contact
- Lead nurturing or retention
- Sales result
The lead flow process can become enormously complex as customers and sales professionals begin to interact. These various interactions and subsequent actions can create a variety of scenarios, both productive and counter-productive. This exponential number of scenarios can provide for numerous opportunities to mishandle leads in such a way as to reduce their value. Managing these scenarios is the function of lead management.
