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What is a CRM software - Part 3 - Lead Followup Workflow

Getting in Leads into the system is only half the story. Now, for the better half - following up with leads. The key to following up with Leads is to maximize conversion, as we know. It’s an ongoing challenge. Market situation may change. Competition landscape will undergo its own changes. So it’s not just enough to have a lead workflow, but it is crucial to measure its ongoing success rate as you keep using the workflow. Let’s talk about this in more detail.




Things to Remember

Bucket-Based Followup

So now we have categorized Leads into buckets, based on strategies we discussed in the previous post. It might be useful to come up with a different workflow for different buckets. Someone might have a 90% chance to convert to a customer, whereas someone else may have only a 20% chance. You may want to treat these leads differently when following them up, so that you allocate your salesperson to do more followups with those leads who have higher probability of conversion. 



Modes of Followup

First, it might be useful to think through what are the modes of followup you want to resort to. Depends on your business type, and also, sometimes, the market condition. The modes (like email followup, phone call followup, text message followup and so on) can also be tuned to the bucket the lead fits in. Given that you are also a small business owner trying to keep your bottom line in control, you have to optimize what your Sales Reps spend time on. So it is crucial to put some thought into these tactical decisions. For example, if it’s a more important lead, you may want to do your first followup using the phone call mode, and then maybe, follow it up with a face-to-face demo/meeting. But for the less important lead, you might want to send an email first. 



Frequency of Followup

Again, this is something you have to think of : how often and how long do you want to followup with a lead? What if the lead doesn’t respond after several followups? What if the lead has responded well initially, but later, has stopped responding? Ask yourself such questions and jot them down.



Lead Followup Workflow Template - Basic Version

Here’s a really basic version of the lead Followup workflow here. Feel free to write to me if you have questions on it. 



Here is a full-blown original version of the above image. Also here is the XML file you can download to your computer and then open using https://www.draw.io/ to make your own notes/changes to it.

We will be developing this into a more advanced Lead Followup Workflow template in the coming blogposts. So keep watching!

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