Lead Management with Channel Partners

June 2010

www.leadmaster.com

Take a Free 30-Day
Test Drive
Contact us today and start reaping the rewards tomorrow. Your test-drive logon will have sample data already there so you can quickly see how easy it is to make LeadMaster work for you. Click on the FREE TRIAL button above and join the thousands of customers who easily manage their leads and convert more of them into sales.

Social Media Links
facebook Twitter
linkedin LindedIn

Facebook

Welcome to the June edition of the LeadMaster newsletter. The topic for this month is tracking sales through channel partners.

For those of us who do business through channel partners, finding out exactly what happened to leads that were sent to the channel can be a challenge. In this month's newsletter I examine ways to improve the lead management process with channel sales.

Before I get into this month's newsletter, though, I'd like to ask you a quesiton. Are you making the most of what LeadMaster has to offer?

Lead Nurturing
Workflow Automation
Outlook Integration
Customization
Data Integration with Web Forms

These are just a few of the topics I cover in a weekly webinar every Tuesday at 2pm EST. To join just click on this link - http://connectpro39299121.acrobat.com/webinar/
There's nothing to install and registration isn't required. You won't have to tie up your phone because the sound is broadcast over the network to your computer. Join me for an overview of the LeadMaster Lead Management System.

Now for this month's newsletter...

Do you know what happened to the sales leads that were sent to your channel partners?

How many leads did your partners follow up?

Lead Tracking

When did the partners follow up?

Lead Aging

How many turned into sales? What was sold?

Lead Analytics

What’s the ROI for each program that generated those leads?
- ROI Analysis

If you have a channel sales rep helping your partners follow up and close the leads that you send to the channel, you’re probably doing a better than most companies at closing those leads.

But having a channel rep is expensive and many leads still fall through the cracks.
Why? Because sales is a numbers game and the prospects/leads that aren’t ready to buy now are on the losing team. Your partner rep may work with dozens of channel partners and each channel partner may work with a dozen manufacturers/suppliers – each of whom may work hundreds of leads.

When a rep has a hot lead and is working to close a deal, he’s not focused on the long-term leads.

So to solve the problem, many people purchase a CRM to help them improve their sales. But rather than report be a tool to help sales reps manage their leads, most CRM systems are hard to use and perform 'Big Brother' functions for management. Reps frequently enter whatever it takes to satisfy management that they've worked those long-term leads – things like ‘Called 3 times and couldn’t reach them,’ or ‘No opportunity,’ thus prematurely marking them dead. According to a recent survey 73% of CRM users use less than 50% of its features.

Management has a hard time understanding why reps resist using the CRM tool to go after luke-warm leads, but from the reps’ perspective, it makes perfect sense: they only have so much time, and working on questionable long-term leads takes precious time away from working on a near-term sale, which will definitely result in higher sales revenue and more commissions.

So what’s the answer? From my experience, it's the combination of what I call a ‘Lead Driver’ with a quality lead management system can increase the number of A-level leads passed to sales reps, thus increasing the number of deals closed.

First, let’s focus on the lead driver's role with the leads. The primary role of a lead driver is to manage report the leads as they flow through the channel. My preference is to outsource this role so they don't get highjacked into doing other work. Following and managing the leads through the channel has to be the individual’s sole responsibility so that they have time to update the disposition of the leads as time goes on. For enterprise level sales they may be tracking leads for a year or more.

Next, let’s examine how the Lead Driver works with partners. If a partner hasn’t followed up on a lead within a specified period of time, the lead driver reassigns it to another partner. When partner reps realize that the lead will be tracked and reassigned if not truly followed up they'll be more likely to actually call the customer. Lead drivers will occassionally call the end customers to verify that the followup has been completed and that the followup information provided by the partner rep is accurate. Thus, the lead driver follows the lead until it is either closed, lost to the competition or has been determined to never truly have been a lead.

Examining the leads that weren’t really leads can help improve the lead scoring methodology. Moreover, as sales reps focus only on leads that are truly sales ready while the rest are sent to lead nurturing or inside sales, the lead driver helps drive not only leads but also revenue and sales efficiency.

Now let’s examine the second part of the equation – the process. For the Lead Driver process to go chart smoothly, all sales leads must be passed through a single quality lead management system like LeadMaster. This provides management with the real-time status of any and all leads; it helps marketing know the effectiveness and the ROI of their lead generation programs; it minimizes outdated information in your database; and the channel manager can finally track which partners are following up on leads and which aren’t.

This way, the problem of tracking ROI and channel efficiency is solved with a dedicated “lead driver” and a single lead management system that you and your whole channel shares.

Of course, this is not the only benefit of maintaining one lead management system throughout the channel. This approach can also benefit your partner sales reps. Here’s an example. When a partner rep leaves the company and a new rep is hired, the lead driver gives the new rep a call, tells them about the leads they’ll be working and walks them through the lead management system. By having up-to-date information about their leads in a system that is easy-to-use, the new rep can come up to speed quickly and become effecive much more quickly.

So, consider the possibility of implementing something like this for your own channel. Find someone who is dedicated to work leads through the system, and deliver quality leads to your sales reps. With a small initial investment, you’ll be sure to increase sales and thus, increase revenue in the immediate future and for the long haul.