Top 5 features to look for in a Lead Tracking solution
Several web based Sales Lead Tracking solutions are available in the market. Spending a little bit of time in researching the various features and options in multiple services will help you choose the right product.
All businesses, even in the same industry vertical or segment, do not follow the similar processes and are not same in every respect. What is a best practice for a business may not be the best practice for another business. Hence selecting a right product which addresses most of your requirements will help you maximum benefits and converts more prospects to customers.
Here are the key features to look for while comparing sales lead management solutions and making a subscription decision:
- Subscription based service: Though it is very obvious that an on-demand service is the preferred one, still some small businesses go in for server or PC based software products.
- Fully integrated with Lead Generation systems and websites: The selected system should support all lead integration methods for capturing leads from all sources and modes, including websites, 3rd party systems, manual inputs, import, etc. Even if you are using one or two methods, the requirements may quickly outgrow the system and you will forced to learn and deploy other systems.
- Drip Email Marketing for Lead Nurturing: The sales lead tracking system should include a comprehensive drip email messaging system. While you may start with basis features initially, your business requirements will demand more detailed drip system soon. Never use two different system for lead tracking management and drip messaging. Keeping the databases in sync will be a pain and may result wrong messages to wrong prospect segments.
- Integrated Sales Territory Management with Real Time Alerts: Whether you have couple of sales persons and dozens, the lead tracking system should support full sales organization and territory maintenance feature. The leads should be distributed in real time using the sales territory data and real time email / SMS alerts to field sales as well as inside sales teams.
- Comprehensive Follow-up Tracking: The lead system should be feature rich with respect to the lead follow-up process. The team should be able to log each sales stage and follow-up activity and get an unified view of the prospect.
While there are several other features that you would be looking for, these five features should be considered as keys. Depending on your specific business needs, other features can be evaluated and considered for decision making.
