Tag: lead management

Two new ways of capturing leads in Saleswah CRM

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What is a lead and what to do with it?

Understanding leads

A lead is a preliminary information about a possible interest in your product or service. To make any sense, a lead needs to have at a bare minimum, a name and contact number/ email for us to follow up.

For more on leads.

How to add, upload, assign and convert leads 1

Where do leads come from? How to add them

Leads can come from multiple sources: your website, someone calling in, a chance meeting at a public space, a marketing campaign- roadshow or tradeshow etc.

You could so far add a lead to Saleswah CRM

  • one by one
  • by uploading a list

In both these cases, the menu options are available under Sales to the left. While you can add as much information as you have, a name and contact information (email or phone) are mandatory.

2 New ways to add leads to Saleswah CRM

The new way is: directly from your email.

And, this works – whether your email provider is Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365. No, it does not work with personal email domains like gmail.com or hotmail.com or with other mail providers.

Google Workspace Users

If your email provider is Google Workspace, then ask your Google workspace admin to activate Action Saleswah CRM from the Google workspace marketplace (formerly the G-Suite marketpplace). Once your admin activates it for your domain, you will see this in the space for addins. Like this.

Two new ways of capturing leads in Saleswah CRM 1
Notice the Saleswah CRM Logo

Add a lead

After you login to the Addin, all you need to do is open any email in your inbox and you will get a prompt, like this:

Two new ways of capturing leads in Saleswah CRM 2

The lead goes to the CRM immediately.

Office 365 users

Office 365 users will be able to likewise activate Actions Saleswah CRM addin from the Appsource.

The rest of the workflow remains the same.

Assigning leads

By default leads are assigned to the user who is adding it to the CRM.

Only users in a Sales or Marketing role can add a lead or be assigned a lead.

Leads can be assigned to anyone below you in the hierarchy.; i.e. a manager to his reportee.

Cancelling leads

Leads can be cancelled by anyone who is at present assigned the lead. Saleswah keeps a record of the person who cancelled the lead and the date and time of cancellation.

While cancelling a lead, select a reason from the drop-down menu. And, yes, the reasons can be customized by your account administrator.

Are you using Excel to track sales leads? 7 reasons why you should not

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7 reasons why using Excel to track sales leads is bad

Please don’t. Using Excel to track sales leads, that is. It’s a terrible idea.

Don’t get us wrong. I am one of those who have been quoted as saying, “In God we trust, rest must be backed up by Excel”. Among all the MS software that we use and we do use quite a few, this software from Microsoft is simply unparalleled in use, power and familiarity.

So, why aren’t we using Excel to track sales leads through the funnel?

Excel is free with your office 365 subscription, Saleswah is not. But, as we will see later, even that is not much of a factor. Here are a few things that Excel or Excel based lead trackers (see this, and this) just do not do.

1. Does not organize data in one place; or even link to data in multiple places.

You have a lead; that has a potential value, timeframe and associated contacts. You either will have an impossibly large and messed up spreadsheet or you will have to constantly refer to your email, PDA etc for information that proved difficult to capture in one place. If you know a excel based lead tracking software that does this well, let me know.

2. No time-stamped data capture

When you are monitoring sales activities, we need to understand things like how long an activity is overdue, when have we committed to do something, when is the next event and things like that. Getting Excel to capture that data is prone to error and requires massive efforts. And, as we will see later, prone to errors, data duplication and almost impossible to report on.

3. Welcome to data duplication.

Most of the stuff you will enter into your spreadsheet will be from information that exists elsewhere. So, you will send a quote elsewhere and copy down the value on your spreadsheet. You will have email addresses on your Outlook, mobile numbers on your phonebook/ cellphone and everytime you need to follow up on a deal, you leave your excel based lead tracker and jump into another software.

That is not how you do it in a CRM, obviously. You send a quote and it keeps the records, so even re-quoting is just a few clicks away. Your contact details are all in one place and you can keep them synced with G-Suite or Office 365. You can sync your calendar as well- and ensure no appointment is missed or no task is unattended.

4. No reporting capability:

Everytime you want a report, be prepared to spend time pivoting and massaging data. And, this is with basic “how much we will close this month?” kind of reports for single product, single market kind of companies. Excel templates for lead tracking just die when it comes to anything even a shade more complex.

5. No link, to anyone else or anything else

You have a team? Okay, then. Good luck with pulling all the data together and forecasting. Ever noticed how everyone has a different way of formatting data, inputting data or even abbreviations? And, even before we get to that, no sharing or collaboration on opportunities. No one knows what the other person in the team is doing. When a team member leaves, the data leaves too!

6. Complete absence of hierarchy in your data

You have a team, a hierarchy- reporting relationships. How do you share data on a need to know basis, strictly by hierarchy with your team members? How do they collaborate, escalate or even re-assign anything?

Such questions do not bother you when you are running your sales operations on Saleswah CRM. All customer data access is by hierarchy and bulletproof security guards it. Can you say the same about Excel?

7. Does Excel send you email or mobile triggers?

It does not; but Saleswah does. Everytime you create a sales lead or assign a task to your executive, he gets an alert on his browser, mobile app and also on email (what is task assignment, Excel will ask 😀 )

Enough said. Say goodbye to excel based lead management systems; get something much more professional and surprisingly, way more easy to use. Get your team on Saleswah.

Oh, and by the way, Excel is used for all spreadsheets- so basically, do not ever try to use any spreadsheet program to track your sales lead.

Bridging the gap between marketing and sales

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Who is Saleswah CRM for?

Saleswah CRM works for sales teams, small and large, who depend on getting sales leads from new customers to achieve their target.

If your organization has an ongoing marketing program for lead generation: you advertize on websites and newspapers, you participate in roadshows (in malls and in group housing societies, etc.), you participate in trade-fairs, then you should get Saleswah CRM for everyone in your sales team.

If you are relying on marketing to generate the buzz, excitement, and leads, Saleswah CRM puts the focus on bridging the gap between marketing and sales. Capturing leads and managing them thru the sales cycle is what Saleswah CRM does best.

What is the cost of missing a lead?

Let’s do the math: a classified ad in TOI Delhi for property costs about Rs 5000/-and those in online portals cost anything between Rs 1200/-and Rs 2500/-. A property dealer in hot markets like Delhi NCR, Pune, Bangalore, etc. would easily spend Rs 50,000/-a month advertising. And these are dealers that have 2-3 sales guys and perhaps do 1-4 “sales” transactions and 2-5 “lease” transactions. In order to do this level of work, he has to make sure he gets at least 400 “leads”—folks who call him up and inquire about the properties he has a mandate for and has advertised.

The trouble with advertising is not that 50% of it is useless spending; we know that. The trouble is, we do not know which 50%!

How do you get the leads, anyway?

Do your customers call you, email you, or text you? How many walk in thru your front door? And, surely, no one, no one these days ever writes in? Do they leave their details on your website?

What is your process for capturing a lead?

Once you get an sms, or a phone call, or an email, or a query forwarded from the website or newspaper where you may have placed a classified, the faster you can note it down and send it to your sales team to follow up, the better your chances of closing business.

What in reality happens is that you note down the call details or the number sent in an email and send it to the sales guy in your team. “Most of the time”. And, your sales guys will follow thru and make the connection “most of the time.” And you will remember the leads you passed on to them in the morning by the time evening comes and you can review the day with your team-“some of the time”.

Do you want to guess what happens to the leads that get missed out on? They go to competitions “all the time”!

  • Do you know what proportion of your leads got addressed, which ones were followed up on and which ones you closed?
  • Do you know where you get most of your enquiries from?
  • Do you know which sources of enquiries are normally more productive?

How do you bridge the gap between marketing and sales?

Log and assign all leads as they come: Saleswah helps you quickly and efficiently log all incoming calls. Note down your name, contact details (phone, mobile, email)-as much or as little as is available or useful-and click a button to send the details to your sales guy on his mobile app. Incoming call logging can be done by anyone with access to the system; your receptionist, your secretary, you, your marketing team member, or the salesman himself.

Update lead status and track thru stages online: The fact that you have done this is remembered by the software, and when your team updates the status of the follow up, you get to see it too, online! The status of the lead as it goes thru the stages can be seen by the salesman and his superiors.

Assign and schedule tasks and activities: You can use Saleswah CRM for scheduling meetings and assigning work to your team-go pick up the cheque, schedule a site visit, draw up the agreement, whatever. And, track the status of the tasks as well.

Bridging the gap between marketing and sales

If you have products and or services to sell to other companies, big or small, Saleswah CRM will work for you.

Free to try, for fifteen days!

Sales lead tracker: Never let go a sales for want of follow up

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We all want leads, but it is important to track them through the sales process

Saleswah keeps the focus relentlessly on sales; the process including keeping track of the sales cycle and progress of the opportunity through it is important. As important as the activities that the sales team performs- send literature, meet and present, demo, collect cheque.

As you grow, it is no longer possible or practical to track all individual leads manually. You need the sales lead tracker capability of Saleswah.

For small businesses, spending money getting noticed by customers and generating “enquiries/ leads”, it is important to ensure that

1. All enquiries immediately land up with the right sales person.

2. The sales person is able to log the stage and size of the opportunity, his chances of converting it into a purchase order and the customer influencers.

3. Furthermore, he should be able to log what the next action should be and schedule a task for himself in the calendar.

His boss knows it too!

Saleswah’s team management ensures that the salesperson’s manager always stays updated about

– the state of the sales funnel and the monthly forecast.

– the individual opportunities: their stage, status and chances and the actions- taken and pending.

How does the sales lead tracker work?

Saleswah is a hosted total sales lifecycle management tool. It allows you and your team to track a sales opportunity from start to finish, through all stages of qualification to close. Leads go through a process of assign, nurture and close after being captured.

Leads are first qualified and the best ones are “converted” to Deals whereas the less promising ones are rejected. The progress of each lead is tracked and any conversion or rejection has a reason and follow up comments.

sales lead tracker helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks

Who would use the sales lead tracker of Saleswah?

Saleswah is useful for all businesses, big or small – with one salesman or one hundred- who want to track the sales leads that they receive and take appropriate action to close them. This can be property dealers, insurance agents, office equipment vendors, trade-show exhibitors, companies running seminars, those who primarily get their leads from vertical portals etc.

Want to know more? Call us.

What makes a sales lead valuable?

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A case for valuable sales leads

Sales folks are rarely enthusiastic about sales leads- which is surprising, or not- depending on how you look at it. There is obviously pressure to get to an opportunity before your competition. But, the worst thing for a sales guy is to have to chase dud leads. What are valuable sales leads?

Leads come in all shapes and from all sorts of sources. Most of them have little information other than a name and a number. Some have an email. And most of them result in nothing. Reasons are too numerous to go into, here.

Lead generation to qualification

Leads to deals to winMarketing generates the most leads for sales. And those are the leads that sales people are the most sceptical about. So, over time, most marketing leads tend to go through at least a level of “qualification”- typically a telecaller who would call the lead and gauge the seriousness or interest in purchase.

The filtering tends to be quite severe. I have seen as much as 80% leads fall by the wayside and only the 20% or less make their way to sales people to follow up. These bunch have a much better chance of closure.

The goals of the telecaller and the sales guys are – even if slightly, misaligned. The Telecaller is the “man in the middle”- he filters the marketing leads. They differ in their understanding of what valuable sales leads are.

Valuable sales leads

The telecaller – typically- is looking to get the lead to commit to a meeting or follow up call – from the sales person. He counts his success as a number of leads who have managed to say yes. This, needless to say is what the marketing guy wants too. More marketing leads result into a follow up call, better his metrics look.

Now, if poor quality leads make into the sales funnel, the sales metrics of conversion will look bad. Which is why I say, the goals of telesales and sales are often misaligned.

On balance, I still prefer the marketing to fund the tele-qualification function. There is of course scope in sales and marketing teams sitting down together and drawing up pre-agreed crieteria for deals qualification.

Okay, so what are valuable sales leads?

Having talked with hundreds of customers in scores of industries – my only answer is that it depends. It varies from industry to industry and even within the same industry, it varies from company to company. And, I am talking of companies who have actually invested the time to define the threshold of information and interest and how they measure both before passing it on to a sales guy.

Interest in the next step

Interest shown by the lead in being contacted it seems is a big factor. Also, the nature of interest matters too. Some would simply want more information to be mailed, while the others might want a visit from a sales person. I know at least one company where professed interest in meeting a sales person is ruthlessly scrutinized because the sales people are so senior and their time, expensive.

Where telecallers inevitably falter

Almost all companies have a script for the their telecallers. But I have seen most falter in sifting through the tyre-kickers and the door-keepers. Sales does not like information gatherers- though in some B2B enterprise sales processes, information sharing is mandatory as part of a long sales process. Sales also wants to talk to decision makers- and most leads tend to be from folks who are merely gathering data for their bosses. You do not want to be at the mercy of people who are not able to represent your case in from of decision makers- though sometimes you may not have a choice.

Action, level and logical fit

Sales love leads where there is clear action plan and it is obviously set up at an appropriate decision making level at the customer place. If the lead is from a customer or industry segment which is a logical fit- that obviously helps. If it is not, the telecaller should try and establish the need or the pain-point of the lead.

To summarize, valuable sales leads are where meeting is set up at a decision making level where a logical product fit can be established.

Lastly, when you work on a common platform for lead capture, qualification, conversion to deal and deal nurture and close, it definitely makes it easier for all. The lead qualification is a learning process- over a period of time and by capturing data of hundreds of leads qualified – your own criteria for evaluating leads will get better.