A good lead management strategy enables your revenue operations team to fill prospects on the spot while providing them with the tools and resources they need to convert them into purchases. However, the buying and selling landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. As buyer journeys have become increasingly self-directed, marketing and sales teams have moved from guide roles to concierge-like roles. To manage prospects in this new role, teams need to be able to anticipate buyer needs and curate personalized interactions. The right technology solution can help you:

Get better qualified with lead scoring

Timing is an important part of lead management. To be effective, the right message must be delivered at the right time. But in today’s non-linear buying journey, both timing and messaging are moving targets as potential buyers move back and forth from research to engagement. Tools like lead scoring take the guesswork out of qualifying leads.

Lead scoring software allows you to assign point values ​​to buyer actions in your revenue operations. Higher-funnel activity has the lowest value and lower-funnel activity has the highest value. The higher the lead score, the further along the journey to purchase. Scores are categorized at different stages of the buying journey and can be associated with specific outreach activities. Today’s non-linear buyer journeys require the use of lead scoring programs that not only add points, but subtract points to ensure accuracy.

In addition to tracking lead positions in your sales pipeline, implementing lead scoring also improves collaboration between your marketing and sales teams. Both departments should discuss the sales funnel in detail to agree on terms and clearly define the actions and stages of the buyer journey. These discussions lead to a better understanding of the other person’s point of view.

Related: Tips and tools to better manage lead flow and increase sales

Stay engaged and avoid lost opportunities with automation

As most buyers have extended their time to purchase since the pandemic, companies are extending their fostering campaigns in response. Marketing and sales automation software is perfect for keeping prospects engaged while reducing lost opportunities and optimizing your marketing workload.

The software allows employees to set up customized campaigns that automatically trigger actions when specified conditions are met. Marketers can create complex sequences containing various triggers such as event attendance and form submission, and assign corresponding actions such as email, text her message, and direct outreach notifications. I can. You can also incorporate personalization efforts into your sequences with decision nodes that take different actions when a lead meets certain criteria.

Automation is a very useful tool for recycling leads that are not ready for sale. For example, a sales rep may have a lead interested in purchasing, but they won’t be able to buy until the end of the year. Instead of a sales rep flagging a lead for follow-up later and not hearing from them for months, set up an automated sequence to keep the flagged lead out until the sales rep gets in touch. You can put it back into the nurturing cycle. All the while, prospects receive relevant content and information, keeping your brand in mind until they are ready to make a purchase.

RELATED: Why Implementing Automation Is Key to Driving Sales Today

Enrich your data to personalize your marketing efforts

McKinsey’s recent “Next to Personalization” report shows how important personalization is to consumers and how much businesses can benefit from it. However, there are limits to what you can do with your name, company, and email address. If you need more details, you can get it with data enrichment.

The data enrichment service takes customer data, runs it through a collection of third-party sources, and populates it with customer data by providing details such as job title, company size, and so on. Depending on the data service, you can also specify the type of data you are interested in. With enriched data, you can further define your customer segments and target your marketing and sales efforts. For example, you can create a landing page tailored to a company of a particular size, or design an email campaign that addresses the top concerns of a particular job title. Additionally, sales and marketing teams can use the enriched data to improve personalization efforts in one-to-one interactions.

Related: 5 Actionable Steps to Increase Sales with Personalization

Gain a complete picture of your data to improve collaboration and customer experience

In the digital age, the purchasing process has become more and more complicated. With more touchpoints and channels to manage, there are now multiple handoffs between marketing and sales. But it also means organizations have access to more customer data than ever before.

Imagine you have two puzzle pieces. This is data siloing. Traditionally, companies have kept customer data separate by department, a practice that lacks a holistic view of the buyer journey. This segmented view increases the chances of sending and losing irrelevant or repetitive information to potential customers.

Businesses should invest in technology that can centralize data in a single, accessible location. In doing so, organizations can enhance revenue operations like never before with a comprehensive list of customer interactions including email his campaigns, sales calls, form submissions, and more. Knowing more about your prospects helps your team better predict what they need next and improve conversion results.

Buying and selling is so entrenched in the digital realm that it is subject to digital expectations. In a world of search engines, advanced forecasting algorithms, and 24/7 availability, it’s a tough order to fulfill. Fortunately, businesses can also take advantage of the digital world by equipping sales and marketing teams with the technology to effectively manage leads to purchase.