Lead Management Best Practices and Resources

By special guest Carlos Hidalgo of The Annuitas Group

Carlos Hidalgo is CEO of The Annuitas Group the leader in the development of lead management process. In addition to his work at The Annuitas Group, Hidalgo is also one of the co-founders and Executive Director of The Marketing Automation Institute.

Introduction to Lead Management

Organizations that are looking to get more value from their marketing investment, drive more revenue from their marketing campaigns and fully utilize their marketing automation solution, need a defined lead management process.

Over the last few years there have been many uses of the term “lead management”. Many have referred to lead management as software – “lead management automation.” Others have reduced lead management simply to lead nurturing and lead scoring. In both of these instances, the definition of lead management is wrong.

To be clear, lead management is a set of 7 separate yet integrated processes including data, lead planning, lead qualification, lead routing, lead nurturing, content mapping and metrics. Lead management allows you to manage and measure every step of the buying process or sales funnel. Lead management goes beyond focusing on the top of the funnel i.e., lead generation and addresses the entire buying cycle from response all the way through to close and through the life of the customer.

The pitfall that many marketing organizations encounter is buying into automation with no defined process. As organizations are looking for ways to increase their ROI and impact revenue, they must understand that technology alone will not deliver the expected value. An investment into the development of lead management process is one of the best investments they can make.

A 2010 study by Sirius Decisions examined the pipeline economics of organizations that had developed processes with marketing automation, those who had weak process with marketing automation and those who had no automation.
The companies who had adopted marketing along with well-defined process experienced the following: