What is lead management and how do you do it right?

Lead management is a critical process for businesses to attract and convert potential customers into paying customers. It involves seven stages: lead generation, qualification and segmentation, nurturing, scoring, distribution, conversion, and tracking. Effective lead management enhances the customer experience, saves time and resources, and increases profit. Businesses should categorize leads by temperature (cold, warm, hot), qualification (informational, marketing-qualified, product-qualified, sales-qualified), acquisition point (organic, inbound, outbound, referral), and stage (lead generation to conversion). Lead management software can automate various processes such as lead scoring, distribution, and nurturing. When choosing a lead management system, consider industry fit, scalability, user-friendliness, and cost. Automation tools like Zapier can help streamline lead management tasks, capture leads, track leads, send personalized welcome messages, conduct nurture campaigns, and manage outreach.