I was filling out a subscription form the other day that asked for my birthday. I accidentally entered December 2011 instead of the year of my birth and a prompt came up – “Are you really from the future?” I had to laugh, but at the same time, I thought to myself, if I knew what December 2011 had in store, what a powerful place to be.

To know what was going to happen with consumer spending this holiday season, mortgage rates, other trends that might impact the consumer sales market would give me insight and a competitive advantage. So that got me thinking, while we may not be able to see the future, why not use all the information at hand to make the best possible predictions?

In consumer sales the volume of leads and the time to close is so short that time is money, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to dump leads on sales reps and let them sort it out. More sophisticated consumer sales organizations use lead scoring based on predictive modeling, using a combination of information the consumer supplied, plus supplemental data provided by 3rd party services. That predictive score, along with data about sales rep performance, helps the system decide which leads get top priority and even which rep gets assigned. All designed to improve the close rate, of course.

So if you’re shopping around for a lead management solution, keep in mind there is more to the Lead360 solution than just distribution, and that difference might be just want you need to predict the future and edge out the competition.

Tags: Lead Management