Richard, a sales manager in a top reputed company realized his organization is generating great number of leads but the conversion ratio is very low. What could be the reason?
Leads that you acquire determine how much revenue you can generate for your business. And, if you find out your conversion rates are not up to the mark, it may indicate that:
- There are no quality leads in your sales pipeline.
- You find it difficult to close all the leads.
- You are not tracking the engagement of your leads and taking appropriate measures to win deals that are ready to close.
So, what is the best remedy to fix this problem? An effective lead management strategy is important to all businesses to meet their sales targets. It aids you in resolving your conversion challenges if you follow it step-by-step. Let us see how.
Lead management
Lead management is the process of managing all the leads in your sales cycle, addressing different customer touchpoints, and turning them into loyal customers with superior engagement. Only some of the leads that you generate can be closed. The whole point is to understand which leads are most likely to become customers and take action.
Now, you can leverage AI to automate your lead management strategy to make it more seamless and convenient.
So, what are the core steps involved in lead management?
- Lead Generation
- Lead Tracking
- Lead Scoring
- Lead Routing
Let us understand how AI-enabled tools or software can be used to fulfill these steps.
How to boost lead management process with AI
As we have discussed in our Artificial Intelligence (AI) series blog previously, the benefits of AI have been tremendous in automating and streamlining business activities. It aids businesses in generating competent teams by making them efficient and productive.
Also Read: AI for
- Providing better customer experience
- Boosting customer service
- Understanding sales forecast accuracy
- Generating marketing content
- Building dashboards
So, how can lead generation, tracking, qualification, and routing be done using AI? Let us understand deeply:
Lead generation and tracking with AI
The traditional method of lead generation seems difficult. Cold calling, attending exhibitions, hosting conferences, etc., takes up a lot of time for the sales and marketing team to build a list of contacts. However, the use of AI in lead generation makes it super-easy.
AI has the capability to capture leads in great chunks from multiple sources like websites, emails, social media, etc., in less time. Once the leads reach the reps, it can also guide them in contacting their respective leads at the right time. Also, it tracks customer sentiment by monitoring conversations and provides insights on call quality.
AI not only helps you in generating leads but also gives valuable insights from the collected data. And one can use these data in predicting future sales or making data-driven decisions that can impact your business positively.
Lead scoring with AI
The quality of the leads can be assessed using the lead scoring method. You can give scores or points to your leads based on how the customer interacts with the brand. Only a few people who visit your website will have the intent to make a purchase. Some may have come to inquire about the product or some may have visited accidentally. Therefore, it is essential to spot hot leads by assigning them scores based on some criteria using AI.
So, AI detects
- Customer behavior like the number of click-throughs, open rates, downloading of a link or an eBook, website visits, etc.
- Demographic details such as age, location, industry, etc.
All this information will help the sales rep segregate potential leads and aim for closing them without a delay.
Lead routing with AI
With businesses producing large amounts of leads daily, assigning leads manually becomes a herculean task. But, AI’s intervention is here as well which helps you divide leads equally with the help of automation. Lead distribution with AI happens by
- Assigning rotationally, i.e., alloting leads one by one to every team member. The same process will start again once that sequence is completed.
- Assigning based on the availability or workload of the sales rep.
- Assigning based on a location or a territory. For example, a rep from Mexico will be able to handle customers from Mexico by speaking in their language, understanding their emotions, etc. This can have a good impact on lead conversion.
Chatbots serve as an effective tool for lead generation. An AI chatbot automates customer support for high-quality assistance to visitors. Powered by the Calculus AI add-on, the Vtiger Chatbot has a wide range of built-in features that understand customer needs in depth. Since it can handle large amounts of customer data and routine tasks via automation, the operational costs are reduced, and productivity is maximized. Learn more about Vtiger Chatbot from its blog.
Now, if you are looking to implement an effective lead management strategy with AI for your business, Vtiger CRM has everything figured out for you.
Before signing up for a test drive, read
- Vtiger Webforms to generate leads
- Vtiger Profile Scoring to check the quality of leads
- Vtiger Assignment Rules to assign leads.
