What is the best way to import into your lead management platform? Part 2

In my last post, I spoke about how email parsing is usually not the best way to go for lead capture simply because of the variables involved in it. This post is an effort to talk about some of the alternatives to importing leads into your lead management system.
There are three main efficient ways to get leads into your system. One is through an direct http post, one is through an xml push, and the other is through an API integration. Each of these has a different place and purpose in data transferring.
If you are using any kind of web form. The easiest way to get it into you system is by posting it directly via an http post. A web form can generate code that posts directly into your system. Using this kind of lead import, is especially useful if for those who do not know very much about xml which is similar but involves more programming knowledge. Http post issues are also easier to troubleshoot in my opinion.
An XML push is just as instantaneous of a system for acquiring leads. It also can be used in web forms and is just about as advantageous as http posting. The only draw back that I see involves the complexity of XML. Other people may agree, but I personally don’t understand anything about XML and know just enough HTTP posting to be useful (at times).
The final option for data import has to do with integrations and it is what makes software integrations possible and it is the most complex. Dialer integrations for Salesforce, for example often use API to grab data and drop it into their systems for dialing. Importing via API is most commonly used for integrating two database systems. An example of this is a company that has a homegrown CRM database and wants to integrate it with a lead response management suite so that lead can be loaded into the LRM for it’s response features. The most sophisticated of these integrations will send data back and forth between the two applications thus maximizing your experience and seamlessness between the systems.
As far as how time saving these can be, if you no longer have to worry about getting leads to and from your system, the time saved can really add up over an extended period. So to make a long story short, the import method that saves you the most time is the one you should use.

What is the best way to import into your lead management platform? Part 1

Lead management systems were created as tools to increase efficiency and save time. If used incorrectly, however, such tools can be just as burdensome and time consuming as the time constraint issues they were designed to resolve. The automation capabilities of lead response management for example are rendered completely useless if you do not use them correctly. One of the features of this technology is the capability of calling leads instantly as soon as the are placed into your system. But this does no good if you are purchasing from a lead vendor in the form of spreadsheets that are emailed to you. By the time you get around to loading the leads into your system, it really does not matter if you have a dialer to cal them instantly or not.
There are several ways to get data into your system. Depending on the nature and source of your leads, one way may be better than the others. As a general rule email parsing is not the preferred method to get leads into your system. This is because most people who use email parsing as a method of lead import are doing it as a way to have access to their leads quickly. The only reason a parser would be ideal is if the lead vendor you work with refuses to send you leads any other way than by email. Even in this case I would look for another lead vendor before I buckled down and accepted parsing as my form of lead import. This is because the email parsers are not the most consistent beasts. If you have a great deal of leads come to you at once, this can slow down the parser and leave you waiting and losing time on precious leads that you have probably paid for.
On top of that, parsers will often require upkeep by your tech guy or the tech guy at your LRM or CRM company just to make sure it is running correctly. This is due to the fact that if the company that you acquire your leads from ever changes the format of the email they send you, the parser will no longer work. On top of that if someone has a particularly long name or address, it might not work anyway!
If you have no hurry in importing the leads into your database to call them, you might as well do an import via CSV files. It’s cleaner and you have a couple more capabilities such as duplicate check. This post have been more of a what not to do post, so my next one will be about so of the recommendations I do have for leads import.

When to delete a lead

Some people may think that there is an easy answer to this question. I have heard it said that you never delete a lead. For a few reasons, I beg to differ. First of all, some leads are clearly better than other. Some leads are not leads at all. It is not uncommon to receive fake information on a lead that simply filled out false information on a web form. I believe that most people would agree that these are not really leads and should be thrown away. But I do think there are times when leads should be deleted. Just like a motor, lead response management systems only work as well as their upkeep. It does no good to keep dead leads in your system that are not interested or that you are not allowed to contact by law.
I do not mean that you need to rub out every trace of the information forever, but maybe you should purge it from your lead management software. Keeping unnecessary data in your system only has negative effects. First of all, too much of it can slow down your system. It can do this in various ways. For one, searching or any other will be slower because the system has to sift through bad data to get to the data you are looking for. Also, your system users may be slowed down because they will have to sift through obsolete data as well. They will not have to run advanced searches all the time just to see standard data just to avoid pulling up bad leads.
Second, excess data on your systems will have the tendency to incur excess storage fees on most lead management or marketing software suites. This is an unnecessary expense that you might be paying simple because you insist on keeping bad data.
If you are absolutely adamant about keeping bad data, than do yourself a favor and at least remove it from your LRM suite. Just request a backup of all your data into csv files or manually export the data into spreadsheets and then purge it from your system. You will notice an improvement in the speed of your system. You will also notice that you, as well as yours systems users, will be more organized and efficient in their lead management and it may become easier. It may be difficult at first to clean your system, but but habits become easier them more often you do them, and it will pay off in the long run.

Call your leads instantly!

I have spoken a great deal about tips that will help bring in revenue and help you stay afloat during a slumping economy. During these times, leads can be harder to come by. Even if you find a good source for interested leads, they may not have funds. For this reason it is important to maximize the leads you do have. This article deals specifically with working web generated leads.
In a slumping economy, it contacting leads becomes a question not only of success, but sometimes, simply survival. In the world of web generated leads, the best way to win you lead usually is to be the first person to contact them. In the web leads scenario, the rule of thumb is “first come, first serve.” If you are not the first person to contact the leads, you are not the company that will leave the first impression. Oftentimes, if you wait just a few minutes longer than your competition to call your leads, then you may have already lost the deal, goodbye lead nurturing!. This is especially true if they filled out your competitor’s website first, in which case they have a head start.
The other reason you need to contact your leads instantly is because you may not have much success contacting them at all if you do not do it within the first 5 minutes of the lead being generated on your website. They may leave their home or the office in the amount of time it takes you to call them. Impress them by calling them while they are still sitting in front of their computer looking at other websites that offer what they are looking for.
Needless to say, the only way that you will ever consistently get your contact times under five minutes is to have some kind of dialer software. The quickest way, by far is with a complete Lead Response Management system. If you do not have one and are stuck in a contract with a CRM solution, then a dialer integration is your next best option for immediate response. Although there will inevitably be a lag as data has to be migrated from a web form to your crm and then, finally, to your integrated dialer, the speeds with which your leads are contacted is still within a matter of minutes.
Regardless of the path you choose, the moral of the story is: If you get a dialer, you will sell more.

Automating your Drip Marketing

In the down economy one of the things we have the least of is time. A bad economy just naturally make us busier. There are several reasons for this. It could be that you had to lay many workers off and are expecting the few employees you have left to do what the larger workforce did originally. It could also be that you Just are not selling as much and need more time to find and sell more leads. Another possibility might even be that you are trying to nurture more leads in an effort to improve your conversion rate which likely will have gone down in the present market. In any case, the solution to all of these problems is automation.
In my opinion, the most important automation you can do besides that which facilitates the calling of more leads faster like a power dialer software is facilitating your drip marketing. And nothing has a greater effect on the success of your lead nurturing than drip marketing. That is why it is so important to automate this process.
There are many tools available, thanks to today’s technology that will allow you to automate lead nurturing processes. It is not enough to send out happy birthday cards and consider your drip marketing and lead nurturing complete. Good drip marketing campaigns are involved and complex. This tends to take a lot of time. Especially if you do not have any kind of automation in your process. Having an email template is just the beginning in terms of automation. A good marketing software will allow you to automate which email templates go out, when they go out, and to whom. A good piece of software is not the solution to drip marketing problems, however. If you do not have a good drip marketing campaign, software is not a solution.
Automating your drip marketing campaign does not improve it, it only makes it faster. So if you have a bad campaign, the only thing are doing with software is making an ineffective process faster. There is a ray of hope for those with a poor drip marketing campaign, however. If you speed up your process, you have more time. If you use this extra time to improve your drip marketing campaign itself, then you find yourself in a win-win situation. If you don’t though, you are just spending more money on something with no added benefit.

The secret to being one of the big contenders

There are many companies in existence in all kinds of industries that sell very well; their sales teams have honed their skills to the point of near perfection, but the company does not seem to make any more money. This kind of a situation can hardly be attributed to the sales reps themselves or to their company’s lead management and lead nurturing strategies. This is especially the case if the company does any kind of support when the leads are converted to customers. Good lead response management can sell a lead, but it does not keep a former lead as a customer, that is what support is for.
In industries where companies provide customer support, lack of sales is usually not the great limiting factor the growth. Usually the greatest limiting factor is attrition (i.e., not being able to hang on to your sales once they are made).
If you want to be in the big leagues this is one of the first problems you have to fix as a company. Many times, customers are lost over trivial matter which could have been resolved in the beginning. In these cases, good support could have solved the problem. As a support team, one of the best things you can do, that is within your control, to keep customers happy is to make proactive calls. Proactive calls let your customers know that they are a priority to you and that you want to keep them on as a customer.
Proactive support teams are much more likely to notice a problem before it even begins. In this situation, the problem is resolved before the customer is even aware that there was a problem. “Tooting your own horn” just a little in these kinds of situations may also be beneficial to your rapport with the customer as it lets them know that you are on their side.
In today’s economical conditions, it is important to be efficient in your selling, but it does not good to be a good seller if you cannot hold on to your customers. Which ultimately are a much larger source of revenue than new leads.
There is no magic bullet to solve attrition. People stop being customers for too many reasons to make a blanket statement or to develop a blanket solution for all attrition. But good support is an excellent way to prevent, what I consider to be, one of the largest and most frequent reasons for attrition.

Get out of your premise based CRM

As far as contact management software goes, there is a seemingly endless supply of options. These range anywhere from something simple that that provided by free email systems like Gmail all the way to sophisticated systems such as InsideSales.com or Salesforce. Obviously, not all contact management or marketing software was created equal. In fact this article is specifically about avoiding some of the particularly undesirable kinds of contact management software.
Everyone has their preference of the Lead Response Management or CRM solution that they use. Either it is one that they have found works best for them or they just do not want to leave the one that they originally got used to. Regardless of the solution you use, it is my counsel that you avoid premise based solution. A premise based solution is one that is physically installed on your computer, in other works it is the exact opposite of a hosted solution. The reason for this is that hosted solutions have inherent advantages over their aged counterparts.
Premise based solutions are old technology, for this reason they are very limiting. A beautiful example of this is the incredible agony that it can be to export data from a system such as ACT!. I have experienced many a failed attempt at exporting data from ACT! and, honestly, have given up hope at ever finding a way to export data completely. This however may not be true of all premise based systems, but it is also not the only reason to avoid them. Integration with a premise base system is significantly more difficult, and usually more expensive than integration with hosted solutions which, for the most part have adopted standards for integration.
The other side of the coin regards the inherent benefits of using a hosted system over a premise based system. With a hosted system, you can access your database from any computer with internet and do lead management remotely and at leisure. It is not necessary to establish a VPN into your office just so you can access your database from home. Secondly, hosted solutions have logistical advantages. For one, not installation is necessary on a hosted solution. So if you buy a new computer, you do not need to install you database all over again. On the same line, if your computer crashes, you will never lose your data and all you have to do is get on another computer and you can keep working. Third, most hosted solutions offer free updates to their product so installing of updates or paying, which is so common to premise based systems becomes obsolete. So move forward with life and move beyond your premise based CRM!

Dialer and CRM Layouts

Visibility of data is very important to your company work flow. Whether it is for security reasons or for work flow, what different people can and cannot see has a significant impact on your business. This article focuses on tips for creating successful layouts and tailoring your system to its users.
Not everyone in your company needs to see all of the information available on a lead or an account. Extraneous data can hinder speed as well as be a security liability for both you and your leads.
All CRMs and Lead Response Management systems have the ability of limiting permissions and abilities. Admins have most if not all abilities within the system, while managers have less, and basic users have even less. This is done in an effort to safe guard the system. Similarly, sensitive lead information should not be left in the hands of those who do not need to see it. If your sales reps do not need to see a person’s social security number, for example, do not allow them to see it. This can be done by customizing your lead management system so that different account types see different kinds of data. Customize your dialer layout so that they are different from your contact manager layouts. This way, sensitive information can be protected. As an admin or manager, you will be able to see this information, but sales reps do not need to see it. I have even seen systems customized to the point where a field where sensitive information is input by a sales rep through the dialer, but then when he or she refers to that leads again in their contact manager, they can no longer see the information.
Customizing you dialer layout differently from your contact manager layout also has added benefits. Reducing the number of editable fields available to a sales rep while they are on the dialer reduces the amount of user error on your system. Sales representatives on your dialer will not be able to accidentally make changes in fields that they do not even use in the dialer to begin with. Second of all, simplifying a dialer layout makes it easier to use as well as it speeds up productivity. It is easier to train new users on a simple system than one that is complex. This can be especially useful if your business model or industry is of the “one call close” type. In this scenario Sales reps often never work outside the dialer and simplification is ideal.

Proper Construction of Dialer Campaigns

One of the key components of inside sales teams and lead response management is a dialer solution. To be really effective at using a dialer, however, your dialer campaigns need to be organized.
First of all, if you are calling nationwide leads, it is important to avoid calling them in a random order throughout the day. If you lead lists are sorted properly, you can maximize you call times and thus make the most out of each day. If your dialer list is static (single list that does not refresh), sort your leads so that you start calling leads in earlier time zones first and end with later time zones. If your dialer list is dynamic (refreshes after a set period of time), specify which time zones you would like to be called during each calling block of the day. This will allow you to call EST leads in the morning and then later or add CST, etc. until you get to a time range where you call all time zones. At the end of the day, taper down if you work later than any time zones ahead of you. This will allow your inside sales team to make the most out of each calling day and makes more sales.
Another important think to decide while using a dialer is whether or not you want to divide your calling campaigns into separate lists. Dividing your leads into list based on lead status, for example, can be a very powerful tool for increasing productivity. Divide your lists into New leads, leads with which you need to followup, and dead leads. there are a few reasons why this particular set up might be useful. First of all, by doing this, your sales team can focus their skills on the task at hand. When talking with new leads, they can focus on qualification of the lead. When following up with qualified leads they can focus on closing the deal. This is especially relevant if your business model involves set scripts that the sales reps have to follow. Second, the dead lead list will allow you to have a tool with which to train new sales reps before they start working on real leads. In this way they, have some practice and experience under their belts before they start working which leads that you have worked hard and paid good money for.
This is just an example, however. Organize your lists in a way that works for you. The real point I am getting at here is organization; it’s what makes the difference.

What is a CSV file and why does every CRM and LRM use them?

In an effort to expand understanding about databases and lead management software, I decided to write a little bit about a more technical issue. Not all of this information is useful to everyone, but I hope that every part of it is useful to someone. In my experience as a corporate trainer, I have noticed some confusion over what a CSV file is, how it is used, and why it is used.
CSV stands for comma separated value. CSV files were developed as a standardized way to transfer data between various programs. This is why they are so so standard as far as being a mode of data import and data transferring, they are accepted by many different programs. They work in spreadsheet programs such as Excel, database programs such as lead response management software, and even Notepad (Window’s most basic text editor). There are a couple of different formats in which CSV file can store data, but it is usually a variation of commas, quotation marks and spaces to divide data up. Spreadsheet and database programs are able top read the formatting, eliminate the commas, spaces, and quotation marks and replace the with text boxes, rows and columns for data.
When loading a a CSV file into a CRM or LRM suite CSV files typically have to be “mapped”. Mapping is a process by which a user tells a database system which columns and which rows in a spreadsheet correspond to which fields in their system. For example, a CSV file can contain a first name column a last name column, etc. The database does not now which column is which. For this reason the user on the system will “map” the CSV file by matching field of the database to columns on the spreadsheet. This is usually done through a series of drop down boxes.
As a matter of good practice, make sure that your CSV spreadsheet is complete with as many columns as you have information. When inserting information into a lead response management system it is specially important that your data is clean and well organized so that you can maintain you system clean and working efficiently. Once the data is imported it is difficult and time consuming to manipulate, so make sure it is clean on the import. If not, you may not be able to import correctly and if you do it may give you grief on the dialer or in your lead nurturing campaigns.
I hope this helps.