Leads are awesome, but without an effective way of managing them, things can get messy. Resulting in good fit leads slipping through the cracks and time being wasted finding them.
It also gets difficult to trigger the right automations and notifications that will assist you in turning leads into sales.
To help keep on top of things, we created Lead Management.
The purpose is to put a structure (process + features) in place. Making it possible to move leads from first being identified, through an automated and / or manual qualification process, distributing them to reps or CRM's and enabling valuable notification configuration.
If you're like us, you probably want a top down view of what we are trying to achieve with Lead Management. So we split it up into 2 parts that mirror a typical sales process.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Through the process we are going to create groups (stages / segments) of leads. By doing so it's possible to configure different actions, automations and notifications by stage that will enable your team to effectively work leads.
Here's the groups or stages we like to use.
1️⃣ Pre-qualified leads that still need to be manually qualified (or moved to the next stage).
2️⃣ Manually qualified leads not yet assigned.
3️⃣ All assigned leads.
4️⃣ Individual team members leads.
What do you need to get started?
1. Configure Lead Scoring.
2. Tag a lead with the following tags.
Tags are the mechanism the platform uses to automatically push leads to the next stage or assign them. You can see how to create them here.
Pre-qualified leads group (Segment)
With Lead Scoring in place, you now have a segment collecting all the leads that match your target company requirements such as industry and size. You can of course add behavior to the mix.
It's also possible to do this using Smart Segments, just keep in mind that Scoring is the simpler, more powerful way of working and will enable far more flexibility and use cases going forward.
What we want to achieve at this stage, is the ability to assess each of the pre-qualified leads to determine if they should be passed on to the Qualified stage. Where they will be ready to assign or monitor for improvements in behavior scores.
To route leads out of this stage and into the next, simply add Qualified, Unqualified or Customer tags to leads. By doing so, this stage will hold only new leads that the team hasn't yet started working (wasn't aware of).
💡 To get the most from Snitcher (aka your leads), try to keep this Segment (stage) empty by regularly qualify new leads. This will ensure new leads are worked while they are still hot and you get your moneys worth from the identifications.
We like to send leads from this stage through to a ''to qualify'' channel in Slack (you can also use emails or get creative with Zapier). Team members can then have a quick look and take the appropriate actions. Check out the article to learn more about using Snitcher and Slack together.
P.S. you can assign leads at this stage if you know they're a great fit by adding the tags assigned + the relevant reps name.
All Qualified but not assigned leads group (Segment)
We have two versions of this stage, allowing us to easily assign importance to leads.
The basic version, holds all of the leads that have been qualified but not yet assigned. This is fed into a ''to assign'' slack channel.
The more advanced version ''hot leads to be assigned now" combines the stage with high intent behavior. These leads are fed to a different slack channel that team members prioritise.
At both of these stages, you may consider sending the leads through to your CRM, especially if you use a round robin method of assigning team members to leads.
As always, it's also possible to trigger email notifications.
To route leads through to the next stage and assign them, simply add the tags ''assigned' and the responsible team members name e.g. "Mark".
💡 If you are running retargeting on LinkedIn, this is a great stage to export with our LinkedIn ready campaign format and double up on your chances of converting leads into opportunities. Take it a step further and mix the stage with different behavior actions to build hyper relevant campaigns.
All assigned leads and individual contributor groups (Segments)
First up, all assigned leads.
Next up, individual contributor (rep) groups.
Once again, we like to use two versions based on the type and importance of notifications we would like to trigger. Options range from a new lead entering a team members group or return visits from existing leads that take specific actions.
The basic version.
The behavior based version.
Team members can customize their own groups depending on what they would like to see. This can be done using the Lead Scoring system with tags or regular filters such as time on site, page URL etc.
They can set up reports on all of the leads assigned to them (within their segments) using Segment Reports or receive real-time notifications. We prefer to use Automations for both options (hello again Slack).
💡If you would like to send leads to specific owners within your CRM, this is the stage to set this up on.
Let’s dive into routing leads now that tags are in place.
With the above process in place, you’re probably wondering how to route leads to other platforms. There are a couple of options.
You can export specific segments (tag groups) of leads in CSV, Excel, or LinkedIn campaign-ready formats. Learn how here.
Or dive into out integrations.
If you would like to take this a step further, we have a feature to enrich (write data back into) Google Analytics with company information. Making it possible to build ad audiences for retargeting or dig deep into your analytics from a quality perspective.
For a management level of reporting - we recommend setting up a weekly automated segment report to keep an eye on the total number of newly qualified or assigned companies visiting your website. It’s also a great catalyst to align sales and marketing on your weekly catch up.
What about Automations?
You guessed it, having your leads well structured in stages makes it simple to set up Automations on new leads or return visits as we've touched on through the guide.
Check out the Automations set up guide.
As always we would love to hear any thoughts, suggestions, crazy ideas or just pop in to say hello. Team Snitcher signing off 👋