You never quite know where your next sales lead might come from. It could be through the usual channels—email, a call, someone who walks into your office—or it could happen while you’re sitting on a beach somewhere sipping mai tais.
Fortunately, WORKetc sales lead management software allows users to capture sales leads in a variety of ways. Here are four of them.
Manual Lead Entry
Entering sales leads into WORKetc manually is the most basic way, but it also offers the most control over what information you capture. You can create new leads from whichever WORKetc page you might be on, using either the Create New dropdown menu or the Sales tab on the top menu bar.
Perhaps even more importantly, you can create a new lead, a new company contact, and a new person contact all at the same time without having to navigate to another WORKetc page. Simply open the Create Lead dialog box and click on the “Client” tab and you’ll see options for creating new company- or person-type contacts.
Click for full view.For example, if John Henry from Holliday Dental Services calls and inquires about your company’s SEO services, you can create the lead, a new contact page for John Henry, and a company contact page for Holliday Dental Services using just one dialog box—all while you’re on the phone with him.
iOS and Android Mobile Apps
Simply opening up the Create Lead dialog on the WORKetc web app is the most efficient solution when you’re in the office, but what if you come across a potential lead while you’re out in the field? That’s where WORKetc’s native mobile apps for iOS and Android devices come into play.
Imagine the same scenario with John Henry from Holliday Dental Services above—only this time you’re talking to him while you’re in a Starbucks getting your morning coffee or while you’re on a trade show floor and your laptop is in your hotel room. As long as you have an internet connection, you can just take out your phone, create the relevant contacts, and create the new lead right there and then.
Click for full view.You can access and edit any and all of the relevant fields that you can see in the Details tab on the web app’s Create Lead dialog box. Another notable thing about the mobile apps is that they give you full access to all of the custom fields you’ve created for your leads. There’s also a Quick Create button on the app’s slide-out menu that lets you create new leads even faster.
Turn Emails into Leads
Speed is an important factor in capturing leads. The faster you get new leads in, the quicker you can respond and start converting them into actual sales.
WORKetc’s Gmail and Outlook add-ins let you turn any email into a sales lead, contact, project update, task, or support case. It eliminates the need for switching between your Gmail or Outlook client and WORKetc whenever you get a new email asking about your services. These add-ins let you do your work without leaving your email inbox.
Click for full view.So in this scenario, instead of calling to inquire, John Henry from the examples above sends your design firm an email asking about your logo design services. Once that email hits your email inbox, you can immediately create a new sales lead and contact with the initial inquiry email attached to both items, making it easier for the sales team to stay on top of all correspondence between your company and your prospective clients via your leads’ activity history.
As one of WORKetc’s longtime clients, Bill Mullane of TechHelp Idaho, puts it: “The Gmail gadget is amazing and we haven’t even really tapped the power of it yet. I can attach anything to anything in WORK[etc], right from my Gmail inbox. I get an email from a new client and then attach it—boom! Put it in the system. Get an email from a client I’m already engaged with, click and attach it back to the lead, attach it to the project, attach it to billing. We’re seeing more business, more leads, more sales.”
Customizable Webforms
Even if your business model is based completely offline, you still need an online presence to at least get your name out there. Now, your website isn’t just (usually) the first point of contact any prospective customers have with your business. You can also turn it into a lead-capturing tool by way of WORKetc’s customizable webforms.
Webforms are a convenient way for you to capture data via your website and have that data automatically turned into a new lead, contact, or support case within WORKetc. All of the data collected via your webforms can also be accessed through Reports > Webform Results.
The intuitive drag-and-drop webform creation interface in WORKetc means it is easy to set up and customize webforms to your particular needs, and once you’re done it’s just a matter of pasting the generated form code into one of your website’s landing pages.
Click for full view.Let’s say you have a “This Month in Design” newsletter signup form on your design firm’s website. If that form was created using WORKetc, you can make it so that anybody who fills out the form automatically gets turned into a new sales lead within the system. You can even have tags automatically applied to these new leads, making it easier to determine where they came from and decide on the best approach to closing that possible sale.
Also, keep in mind that the span of time between receiving a new lead and calling the prospective customer is very important. As a study by InsideSales.com shows, you’re 21 times more likely to qualify a lead if you call within the first five minutes than if you wait half an hour before calling. Since it’s all automatic, you could be on the phone with whoever signed up on one of your webforms two minutes after they complete it.
COMMENTS
It’s great that there is a simple way to do this along with the complex full-info way. The last thing you want is doing something in a technologically-advanced away (i.e. cloud based tool) to be MORE difficult than what you were doing before. I’ll pass this info on to the appropriate team members in my office to make sure we’re doing everything as efficiently as possible.
Start from the beginning with your contacts and add your existing leads, try and associate them with a tag or coded name to make them easier to identify when reporting.
We use all of the methods mentioned but have become big fans of web forms. The web form accomplishes several goals for us.
– Gives the client an immediate way to establish contact with us.
– Collects information that our team uses to determine follow up steps.
– Creates a contact & lead in our system.
– Creates a bit of a “hurdle” that screens for serious clients.
I use worketc primarily to keep track of discussions with my colleagues. We use the discussions to start inquiries and investigations into questions regarding the status of account. We also use it to tag accounts to customers and businesses. That way we can track the in house communication between departments. We also use it for bookkeeping.