Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

1. What is Lead Management Software?

2. The benefits of Lead Management Software

3. Typical features of Lead Management Software

4. The cost of Lead Management Software

5. Considerations when purchasing Lead Management Software

6. Relevant Lead Management Software trends

1. What is Lead Management Software?

Lead management software helps businesses capture and track sales leads throughout the sales lifecycle. It automatically adds leads to the sales funnel and lets you monitor and track them until they are successfully converted or dropped. This type of software offers a centralized platform to manage lead details, score and segment leads, analyze and report performance, and record communication between sales personnel and leads.

2. The benefits of Lead Management Software

• Filtering of high-quality leads: These solutions automate the lead segmentation and scoring process to filter for quality leads. This allows sales reps to prioritize and target leads that have a higher probability of converting into a sale.
• Tracking of performance statistics: Lead management software can be used to evaluate existing lead campaigns by analyzing and tracking key performance statistics, such as lead quality score, current conversion rate, and success rate, in real time. These indicators help companies identify and report on the performance of their lead campaigns and track which sources deliver the best leads. Manually tracking and reporting these statistics is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to being less accurate. Lead management software automates this process.
• Strategization of marketing efforts: This type of software not only captures leads from multiple channels, such as email, web, forms, social networks, and offline surveys, but also analyzes which channels are generating the highest number of quality leads. Such critical information helps marketing teams focus on high-performing sources and strategize marketing investments accordingly.

3. Typical features of Lead Management Software

• Lead capture: Identify and add leads to a sales funnel that nurtures and tracks them from origin to conversion.
• Lead distribution: Automatically distribute leads among sales personnel based on predetermined assignment rules.
• Lead nurturing: Build relationships with prospective buyers and guide them through each stage of the sales funnel.
• Lead scoring: Rank leads against a scale that represents the perceived value or their likelihood of conversion based on certain parameters.
• Lead segmentation: Categorize and create subsegments of leads on the basis of similar attributes and preferences.

4. The cost of Lead Management Software

Most products in this market are priced on a per user, per month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $11 - $15
• $15 - $45
• $45+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on September 10, 2019. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of the pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features, such as lead scoring, mass emailing, and advanced reports.

5. Considerations when purchasing Lead Management Software

• Integration with existing software applications: If you’re looking to purchase stand-alone lead management software, ensure that it’s ready to integrate with your existing sales applications, such as CRM and sales automation software. A solution that supports integration will help you seamlessly transfer client and sales data across applications, eliminate data duplication, and save you from repeated data entry.
• Read what other users have to say: There are many lead management solutions available; some are offered as stand-alone software while others are integrated with applications such as CRM and sales automation. Before choosing a solution, take your time to evaluate all suitable options. The best approach is to read product reviews by existing users.

6. Relevant Lead Management Software trends

• Social media integrations to play a bigger role: There are over 3.5 billion active social media users across the globe, and on average, every user spends over two hours per day on social media. Social media platforms have now become the largest source of leads for all sorts of businesses and an important part of the lead gathering process. Lead management software with integrated social media capabilities will help businesses reach out to a larger audience and allow sales reps to engage and build relationships with prospective buyers through social media platforms. 
• Moving toward intelligent leads: Artificial intelligence (AI) is now impacting sales and marketing processes. AI built into lead generation software will help businesses collect and analyze existing leads and sales data, develop intelligent marketing strategies, record customer engagement, provide valuable insights, and successfully convert more leads. In the near future, software vendors are expected to start adding AI and machine learning capabilities to their lead management solutions to make them more reliable and resourceful.