Lead Management: Marketing vs. Sales
December 21, 2020 — Managing leads is a multistage process. While the concept of managing leads has been around for a while, there is still some disagreement about what lead management is. For example, you could read one article about lead management that is written entirely from a marketing perspective. From the marketing perspective, lead management looks a lot more like demand generation and marketing automation. Marketers who are interested in lead management will look for different features than a Sales Manger would look for.
So it is useful to draw a distinction between marketing lead management and sales lead management. Lead management from a marketing perspective may very well involve generating the leads. Or it may involve buying them. In any case, Marketing has its own area of responsibility around leads that has very little in common with how Sales is responsible for leads.
A Google search for “Lead Management” may return Marketing Automation and Demand Generation solutions that have features for Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Scoring, more. These solutions are designed to help marketing teams generate and score leads. But also returned by a “Lead Management” Google search will be Sales Lead Management solutions. These solutions will have features like Lead Dialers, Lead Distribution, Lead Prioritization, and more. These features help sales teams contact, qualify, and close more leads.
When looking for business software, it is important to be crystal clear on which part of the process you seek to improve. Not every solution that calls itself Lead Management solves the same problem. If the problem you are trying to solve is that you do not have enough leads, and your marketing efforts are not panning out, then a marketing automation and demand generation solution may be right for you. But if your issue is not a lack of leads, but too few of them are being converted by your sales team, than a sales lead management solution like Leads360 is the solution for you.
