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A reliable pipeline of sales leads is critical to your business. You can acquire leads from a number of sources: an advertisement in a magazine with a toll-free number, networking, a fishbowl for business cards at a trade show, direct mail, telemarketing, you name it. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you use leads to keep track of prospective business that you haven't yet qualified through your sales process.
A lead can be someone you've never done business with or potential business with an existing client. In CRM, you track unqualified business prospects by creating and managing leads.
You can add leads from a list in Excel, or you can create a new lead.
Don't worry about making sure every lead is unique right now. CRM can help you clean up duplicates later, when you have time.
If you're the manager of a sales team, you can use CRM to distribute those leads to your sales staff.
You or your sales team interact with leads in the same ways you do with accounts and contacts. You can include leads in an e-mail blast, follow up with a phone call, or schedule appointments to discuss a deals in person. CRM stores every one of those interactions for you, so you and your sales team can refer back to the details at any time.
When you know how likely a lead is to become new business, you can qualify or disqualify the lead in CRM.
By qualifying a lead, you can choose to convert the lead into a new contact, a new account, an opportunity linked to either the new account or contact, or even an opportunity linked to an existing account or contact.
To measure your progress and see how your team is doing, run the Lead Source Effectiveness report. It'll show you the impact each method of lead generation is having on your bottom line. And, if you're worried about leads you may have lost touch with lately, you can always run a Neglected Leads report. It will identify those neglected leads and the salespeople who own them.
By using leads in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you and your team can manage all your leads efficiently and effectively, no matter where they come from, ensuring you always focus your efforts on the best leads and seize every opportunity to make a sale.
