It is not a secret that the process of lead management usually requires a lot of time, efforts and money. That is why it is so unpleasant when deals fall through. In such a case, it is important not to make a common mistake of stopping work with a lost lead.
We have 3 reasons why losing a lead doesn’t mean the end:
- 50% of qualified leads simply are not ready to buy NOW (Gleanster Research);
- the cost of attraction of a new customer is 5 times more expensive than retention of an existing one (Gartner);
- increasing the level of customers’ retention just by 5% can rise a profit from 25% to 95% (Bain & Company).
Today we are going to tell you how to organize the process of lead management in the CRM system in the most effective way. Using the example of SugarCRM customization we will show how to start a lead requalification process to reduce the rate of lost deals and increase productivity of Sales Department.
Why do we need SugarCRM customization?
The standard lead management in SugarCRM does not allow to start a lead requalification process: in case of losing the deal the lead in process is closed and instead of it a new lead is created which does not contain the history of previous interactions. As the result, your employees lose time on creating new leads, tracking the history in old ones, and the essential thing is that there is no control over this process and there is always a risk that the lost deal will be forgotten and the opportunity as well as a potential profit will be lost.
Luckily, this omission in the lead management process can be made up with the help of small but effective SugarCRM customization. The implementation enables to:
- determine exactly the moment when the opportunity is lost and automatically send such a customer for requalification while saving the full history of relationships with the lead;
- assign automatically a responsible manager while sending the lead for requalification.
We experienced first-hand the impact of the lead management enhancement on the work of Sales Department and we are keen to share the results of SugarCRM customization with you.
What are the benefits of SugarCRM customization?
Sales managers are constantly in search of new ways to increase productivity of their department, and the lead requalification represents one of the effective methods of solving this type of tasks. The following article on usage of gamification to increase sales reps’ motivation should come in handy if you are interested in innovative and effective techniques in sales management.
Let’s get back to the topic of the lead management: so, INTEGROS has developed and implemented lead requalification solution in the company Ciklum that has been successfully operating on the IT-market for many years. This SugarCRM customization has enabled the company to:
- increase the sales managers’ performance due to reducing volume of manual work;
- mitigate risks of prospects’ loss that were not brought to a successful sale during the initial qualification;
- improve the relationships with potential customers/prospects due to saving the history of communication and assigning of an already known manager.
Conclusion
Let’s sum up: if your deal falls through, it is not a reason to give up on a customer. It is more likely that the customer simply is not ready to make a purchase at the present moment. So, it means that you should try to get back to the communication later. Make sure that your CRM system possesses all necessary tools for automatic return of the lead to the process of lead management. Keep in mind that if you need an advice on what and how you can customize in SugarCRM to make the process of sales more effective in your company, you can always count on us.