Improving Sales & Marketing Performance with Lead Management Systems

Julie Daniel, SVP Marketing & Ecommerce, Brown Jordan Inc

Successful sales and marketing have always been dependent upon effective lead management and this has never been truer than in today’s multi-channel digital world. Also known as prospect management or customer acquisition management, lead management simply refers to the tracking and managing of sales leads. But it is rarely simple and is often quite complex, especially for larger companies with multiple divisions, product lines, customer profiles, salespersons, and marketing programs to manage.

The most innovative and successful firms today, including both B2B and B2C marketers, use lead management systems to manage their sales funnels, reduce expenses, grow revenues, and improve ROI. Companies that excel at lead management and nurturing processes generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower costs than businesses without such processes. Even many smaller businesses, for whom every lead is more critical, find powerful efficiency and business benefits in utilizing lead management systems.

Top lead management software solutions include such names as Salesforce, Pardot, Marketo, Act-On, Keap (Infusionsoft), and Hubspot. While such platforms vary in their features, functionality and strong suits, they all provide a combination of customer relationship management (CRM) capability that tracks interactions with both existing and new customers, along with pipeline management, and marketing automation, including email marketing. This convenient combination of CRM, pipeline management and marketing automation is what distinguishes CRM-only solutions from genuine lead management systems.

At Brown Jordan Inc., a 77-year-old global leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of premium outdoor and indoor furniture for the residential, hospitality, and other commercial markets, we use Hubspot as our primary lead management system. Hubspot enables us to integrate marketing, sales and CRM efficiently and effectively. Due to the nature of our business serving the Trade, Commercial and Residential market segments and managing a significant portfolio of brands and collections, we must be diligent in properly segmenting our marketing and lead funnels, and workflows so that the right customers are receiving the right messages, at the right times, and being directed to the right salespeople for follow-up.

It is important to note that we do not rely on Hubspot exclusively for all of our sales and marketing. We also utilize tools in the Google Marketing Platform like Google Analytics and Search Ads 360 to run our PPC campaigns. SA360 allows us to streamline workflows and manage and track digital campaigns across a single platform, enabling cross-channel buying, reporting and attribution. We also lean on a digital marketing agency to help us improve SEO for our websites, increase organic traffic and enhance overall user experience.

But at some point, most customers, whether a product of inbound or outbound marketing efforts is integrated into our CRM, segmented, scored, and carefully nourished from that point forward to provide them with the optimal personalized journey.