We talk about lead management systems in our post each month. This month we are going to go into greater detail and explain why you need a lead management system.

The bottom line is a company with a lead management system is going to close sales leads at a higher rate than a company without a lead management system. No matter how good you are at managing your leads manually your sales team needs to have an organized system to receive, track and respond to leads.

Here are the top 5 reasons you need a good lead management system:

1. A good lead management system is going to allow you to send leads in real time to your sales team and this is done automatically. You can spend time doing other things like finding ways to increase revenues.

2. You are able to see how fast and how well your costly sales leads are being worked by your sales team. No more “I am working the leads they are just no good”.

3. You are able to hold your lead providers accountable for low closing ratios and of course praise the ones that are doing good.

4.  Increase in contact and closing ratio. The faster you get your leads to your sales team the higher your contact ratio will be, this results in more closings.

5.  Reporting - Reporting - Reporting. Stop guessing at how good your leads are performing and know the facts.

We invite providers of lead managements systems to comment on this post and provide other feedback that can help anyone looking into a lead management system. The choices over the years have grown and it takes a lot of research.

Put your comments here and we will approve them immediately.

Your online reputation is key to closing more sales leads. It does not matter what industry you are in or if the leads you are working were not even generated via the Internet. When the prospect you are working on gets off the phone with you they are going to “Google” you.

What your prospect finds online is going to drastically affect your closing ratios. Companies with a bad online reputation may have negative blog post, a Rip off Report or a negative local news report. These items need to be dealt with and your online reputation needs to be very clean.

Many companies make the mistake of assuming since they are not generating leads online then their online image is not an issue. Bottom line is most consumers use the Internet to research a company before making a purchase. Consumers are very weary of the finance industry and most take their time to look online for potential scams or fraud.

A cool tool that Google provides to monitor your reputation is Google Alerts. You can type in any search term and get an alert sent to your email anytime that search term is posted online. You can use Google Alerts to track your company or personal name online. Anytime something new is posted online you will be notified.

Creating a good online reputation starts with content. Content can be online profiles, social websites, blogs, websites, articles and press releases. Keep this content fresh and optimize it for search engines so it outranks any negative results online.

Look out for our next post regarding Reputation Management and Building an Online Reputation.