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| QUALIFY LEADS | |
A mistake that companies make is that after going through the hard work of getting leads, they don't actively follow up. If someone has raised their hand that they're interested in your product or services, follow up immediately to verify if it's a valid lead or not.
Lead Status When following up, one of the things you want to do in Salesforce.com is to designate a lead's status. The default will usually be something like "unqualified," indicating that it has not yet been processed.
Usually you will want several categories for "rejected." Such categories might be:
Rejected - No longer with company
(these are candidates for removal, unless they have a history that may be pertinent) Rejected - Not interested at this time Rejected - Referred to another person
The reason you want to flag Leads as rejected is because you'll want to filter these people out of your emails. Except for those who have left the company, DO NOT delete the other "rejected" status from your database. Why? Because if you get this same lead from another source, when you load into Salesforce.com, you can match by email address, and then you'll have the history of why the person was rejected and won't have to go through the qualification process again.
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You may also want to put an indication of how the lead is being processed, for example,
Calling, not reached yet
With these designations, you can quickly run a report in Salesforce.com and determine if things are moving in the pipeline.
Qualification Criteria You'll also want to make sure that you have clear qualification criteria, and you will need to revisit this periodically with Sales, as it is always a moving target. So, for example, criteria may be:
Whatever criteria you choose, you should build these into Salesforce.com, so that as information is gathered on a lead, these criteria can be filled in.
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