If you are buying internet leads, you have probably experienced a feeling of not knowing which lead to call next. Where, with which lead, is your time best spent? This challenge becomes more and more pronounced the more leads you have assigned to you. You can end up spending a lot of time figuring out whom to sell to instead of actually selling. Maybe you have the top couple opportunities in your mind, and you are strategizing about how to close them. But beyond tending to those few deals, you’re not totally sure where your attention should go next.

There are many benefits of using Lead Management software for prioritizing leads. First, and most obvious, is that lead management software is a suite of tools designed to help you manage you sales pipeline. It equips you with tools to sort your leads and keep them organized in a way that suits you. But there is a whole other strength that some lead management software brings to the table that is sometimes overlooked. Leads360 is an intelligent lead management platform that analyses the data produced by all the leads under management.  Recently Leads360 has done studies that have shown that six call attempts is the optimal number, after which, returns drop off significantly. But these call attempts can’t happen all in the first day of a lead being assigned to an agent. Based on many records of successful qualifications and closes, Leads360 has created a baseline calling strategy that helps agents call leads based on a schedule that has shown results in the past. Leads360 research also shows that contacting a lead within one minute of its inquiry results in a 391% greater close rate.

Leads360 doesn’t just help you manage your leads from the standpoint of helping you schedule appointments and such; it helps you manage your leads by making the tools you use to manage your leads smarter.  One such smart tool that Leads360 has recently made available is Lead Prioritization. Leads360’s best practices research is published for the general edification of clients, but it would fail to deliver on its full value if that’s all that was done with it. Lead Prioritization takes all the information about how leads can most successfully be worked and turns it into a concrete tool. View your leads in Prioritized view and see them stacked in the order of exactly which lead most needs your attention at any given moment.  If a lead is being nurtured, hasn’t been contacted in three days, but needs that fifth contact attempt, it will appear on the list. If a brand new lead is assigned to you, it’s at the top of the list. The algorithm that roots through the leads to find those which need attention is continually being improved to ensure the best possible results. Lead Prioritization is just the latest way that smart companies are using smart tools to take the guesswork out of the sales process and close more deals.

A recent study from EduDirectResponse has shed some light on which people are interested in online education services and what they’re looking for.  With increased focus on marketing practices coming from the Government Accountability Office, enrollment teams need to learn how they can adapt.  In this effort, knowledge is power and understanding how to collect and organize demographic data about your inquiries is essential.  There are few if any better for this than an Enrollment Management System like Leads360.  By keeping better statistics on your enrollment process and then learning how to use them, an Enrollment Management System can help your institution become more metrics drive and see immediate results in your ability to close inquiries.

The EduDirectResponse study looked at 1000 inquiries who responded to a simple, straight forward ad reading “Take Online Classes Now” or “get an online degree,”  with no deception or offers for incentives.  There were some interesting results.  The data is broken down by several categories, asking the respondents about their gender, region, education level, subject they’re interested in studying, what additional information they would want, and how often students would be interested in receiving a news letter.  What’s more, the study also took note of how many inquiries provided invalid information and which information it was.  The results provided some clear results that were notable: over 60% of inquiries were female, 90% of potential students were interested in information about financial aid, 33.5% were interested in entering the field of Health and Human Services, 75% of students were interested in receiving a regular newsletter, and 69% of those people giving invalid information supplied a fake phone number.

The real question is: what does all this mean?  It’s clear that any of this information could be essential to closing in attracting a prospective student to your institution, but how can an enrollment team take data like this and use it to tailor their enrollment process to get the most students to select their service?  For an enrollment manager simply trying to wing it, attempts at changing their enrollment culture can be frustrating and chaotic.  However, with the help of an Enrollment Management System, enrollment teams can not only track data like this from their own, but they can immediately turn around and implement any changes that will help them become more data driven in their enrollment process.  Enrollment Management Systems like Leads360 are designed to help you automate your enrollment process so that demographic data is not only recorded but easily applied to future lead routing so that the appropriate shifts in your enrollment  process can be implemented at the speed of business.

With marketing practices utilized by for-profit education companies coming under scrutiny, the wisest course of action is to find ways to enroll inquiries by working hard and working smart.  In this pursuit, Enrollment Management is an invaluable tool in collecting and interpreting demographic data about your inquiries and then implementing the results of your analysis.

Recently, a case study on Leads360 was featured by Nucleus Research-see below for some interesting excerpts.

“Companies spending money to buy leads should have processes and tools
in place to ensure their money is well spent. Leads360 automates much of
the lead capture and management process and provides tools for
managers to track progress, so companies can maximize returns from
their lead investment.”

“Leads360 has enabled the insurance agent to double the average number of new
insurance applications it receives each month while eliminating approximately
$1400 a month in other marketing costs.”

Click here to download the full study.

Leads360 today announced that it has been named one of the 2010 Best Places to Work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal.  This honor follows after a string of recent awards in the past year, including the recent naming of Leads360 as a Top 100 North American company by Red Herring.

“When we founded Leads360, our goal was to not only provide companies with the industry’s best online tool for lead management, but also to foster a vibrant, constructive and creatively-friendly environment in which to work,” said Jeff Solomon, one of the founders of Leads360 and senior vice president of product and marketing.  “Our employees believe in what they’re doing, which is to make a positive impact on our clients through the use of our software and superb customer service.  We couldn’t be more pleased to be honored as one of the best places to work in Los Angeles.”

Congrats Leads360!

Earlier this week, Leads360 released a study to shed even more light on the best methods for working leads in the most efficient way possible.  Our previous studies have pointed to two primary drivers in increasing the ROI on your leads.  The first of these is speed to contact, with calling in the first five minutes proving to be essential to closing any lead.  The second was making six total follow up calls for each lead, the optimal number of call attempts to ensure that you have the best chance to make contact without overtaxing your sales staff.  This most recent study, now demonstrates that the timing of each follow up call is also important to converting your leads at the best possible rate.

By further analyzing over 20 million customer inquiries, we determined that not only was it important to get in all six call attempts, but also making each call attempt at the right time is also crucially important.  The first three attempts should all come on the first day, striking while the iron is hot and the lead is fresh.  The first call should take place within five minutes of receiving the lead as this makes it 22 times more likely that you’ll close that lead.  The second attempt should then follow at between 30 minutes to two hours later while the third attempt should come at two to four hours after receiving the lead.  The fourth attempt should fall on at some point on day three, the fifth attempt on day four, and the sixth attempt should be made on either day 11 or day 12.  Drawing from the data in the study, making your calls inside the prescribed windows can improve your conversion rates by anywhere from 94% to 500% for each call verses calls attempted outside of the prescribed times.

Check out this study and all of our previous research by going here and here.

Leads360 is attending the eduWEB conference in Chicago this week. The conference has been a great opportunity to learn about some of the challenges facing schools in terms of making the most out of their enrollment opportunities.

We’ve been able to share information about how Leads360 Lead Management Software is helping all kinds of schools improve their enrollment. As people stop by the table we’re getting the opportunity to address the challenges facing admissions managers form both proprietary and traditional schools. These challenges include:

• “We have no way of tracking lead and admission counselor performance”
• “We use many systems for following up on prospective student inquiries. i.e., Different departments use different programs”
• “We use a legacy system that has been cobbled together over time with no plan”
• “We don’t know which lead providers sell the best leads”

It’s great to see people perk up when we tell them we offer our solution for these concerns.

Jeff Solomon, Founder and Senior VP, hosted a Topic Table called “E-Recruiting in Good Times and Bad: Strategies to Avoid Costly Pitfalls and Yield Measurable Results in Uncertain Times”. It was a good opportunity to speak to some of these and other common issues facing schools who struggle to manage their admission process with a failing set of tools.

Another common concern among schools is that they may start to struggle keeping their enrollment numbers up as the economy begins to improve. Leads360 provides admissions counselors with a best practice enforceable workflow to make sure that no lead falls through the cracks. At the same time it provides managers with analytics that display in real time the performance of enrollment counselors and lead sources. Leads360 has been helping companies maximize ROI through all kinds of economic conditions.

The other day I was perusing the Internets looking for an insurance quote when half way through the form I was distracted and wasn’t able to finish entering all my information. I really wanted the quote, but had something more pressing I had to take care of. I figured that I would come back to the page when I was done with my errand and finish the quote.  It’s now two days later, and I still haven’t finished getting that insurance quote. The browser has long been closed, and to tell you the truth, I don’t even remember which insurance company I was interested in. Today, I am still without the insurance I want, and a company is out of a sale. How did this potential opportunity for both parties become a missed opportunity?

It seems today that many companies are failing to see the big picture when it comes to properly preparing and responding to internet inquires. Looking over various “major player” websites I have noticed a particularly troubling commonality. Most of these websites seem unwilling or incapable of follow-up with qualified, interested, consumer leads. On nearly every insurance website I visited, a phone number and or email was not required for a quote. Worse yet, I had trouble easily finding a way to submit my contact information at all. I was literally trying to give them a qualified lead and they had no way of dealing with it. Now don’t get me wrong- I am not really a fan of pay walls, contact walls, or any other type of “wall” that makes you input information to find what you are looking for, but to not even make the opportunity available for a consumer when they may want to, is downright unintelligent. Without collecting this information, any justified follow-up is impossible. I went to the website for something specific that I want to purchase that sooner or later will require me disclosing my contact information anyway, so why not sooner?

Today there is an overwhelming generalization made by corporations when it comes to consumers and how they utilize the necessary tools of communication to inquire about a product or service. The Internet is the least understood of these tools. Most companies seem to generalize consumers into two categories, those who want to be walked hand in hand through the sales process (telephone inquiry) and those who want to do everything by themselves. (The Internet) These are the type of people who will research, fill out their information, and purchase a policy—all without ever speaking to a human being. The truth is, there is a third category of consumers that need a separate kind of attention. These consumers (like me) are people who may research on my own, but then want and sometimes require follow-up. I am a busy person who sometimes fails in the multitasking department. A subtle nudge by an actual person or by even an automated email, can make me turn from a lead into a conversion. If that insurance company had given me the opportunity to enter my contact information quickly and easily for a follow-up I would have, and they would have had a sale.

There is a real difference between spammy contact attempts whether made via phone or email, and a genuine contact attempt made by a company. Consumers want and respond well to genuine contact attempts and very poorly to the spam.  I think companies either think that consumers are completely turned off by any contact whatsoever or they simply don’t have the capabilities to respond and follow-up properly. Regardless they are losing out on a major segment of the consumer pie.  Understanding the differences between the two and acquiring the infrastructure to respond and follow-up are the first steps to addressing this.

Here is a blog article that touches on some of the difficulties a small business owner faces when buying software. The man’s business is making conference tables. So admittedly, his business may not have much in common with the type of business that has the need for lead management software. But there is one area where his small business faces questions that are faced by any small business. That area is dealing with IT questions.

He points out that as a furniture maker, he bought tools 25 years ago that are still working, like his hammer. He anticipates that the hammer will work perfectly until the end of time. He has a hard time dealing with how quickly computers and software become obsolete. Moreover, he’s not quite sure what he needs to buy in terms of technology. This puts him in a position of possibly having to hire an IT consultant. But, rightly, he worries that the consultant may work on commissions and could introduce solutions that are not the perfect fit for his business, but cost a lot of money, and make him a lot of commission.

The solution to this problem is what Software as a Service is all about. I’ve posted recently about how the total cost of ownership of SaaS is lower than the cost of packaged software. And the situation that the above described small business owner finds himself in is a perfect example of why.

For example, Leads360 Software as a Service is software that runs in on any computer with an internet connection. There is never a need to upgrade the software, as it is continually being improved. You’ll never spend a dollar or another minute wondering, “Should I buy the new version of Leads360 or just make this outdated version work?” You’ll never need to buy servers to host software, because it’s hosted remotely. Leads360 software helps thousands of businesses manage upwards of 25 million leads. As such, it is an example of how Software as a Service companies are able to constantly upgrade their product in response to customer needs. Buying Leads360 Software as a Service is buying a solution that, like a hammer, will never be obsolete.

And perhaps best of all, you’ll never have to pay an IT consultant, take his recommendations and wonder if you were taken for a ride. All that is worth the price of admission, but Leads360 Software as a Service even goes one step further. The built in templates have pre-configured best practice workflows that are proven strategies for contacting more leads quickly and staying in contact to ultimately close more deals. These templates are the customizable, but having them as a starting place is equivalent to a hiring a business consultant with a proven track record to help set up your workflow.

Software as a Service delivers a much bigger package than packaged software.

Leads360 founder Jeff Solomon was recently “twitterviewed” by Shelley Wetzel, the Conference Director of eduWEB for their conference website. Leads360 is currently preparing for the eduWeb conference in Chicago and we are excited to showcase our education enrollment solution!

To read the full interview, click here.

For more information about eduWEB, check out their site here. See in you in Chicago, July 26th-28th!

The interesting thing about this article in the New York Times called, “What Economists Can Teach World Cup Coaches” is the following sentence: “…evolutionary finance regards financial markets as a competition not so much among individuals as among strategies.” It goes on to describe how distinct soccer strategies enjoy periods of dominance during which they appear to be unbeatable. It reminds us however that in soccer, as in financial markets, winning strategies cannot remain winning for long. It is the nature of the competitive landscape that the castle of victory is elusive, and one cannot hope to walk the same path to its doors more than a few times.
In soccer, as in business, strategies that are foolproof, and cannot be defeated do not exist. Everyone who competes is vulnerable to loss. In a certain respect the reigning winner is most vulnerable to loss. It is their strategy that is the most imitated, improved upon, scrutinized, and analyzed for weakness.

Whatever your business is, a winning strategy is likely to include getting more customers and cultivating relationships with customers before your competitors do. There are a few basics that any winning strategy is likely to include. To name a few:

• Finding qualified customers
• Successfully initiating a relationship with customers before your competitors do
• Maintaining contact with customers who are slow to close
• Rewarding agents who produce

So this raises the question, how does a business strategy get created and refined? The unfortunate reality is that too often, business strategies are created un-strategically. It is not uncommon for companies to create their strategies based on:

• Hunches
• Egos
• The ability of a given decision maker to state his case persuasively
• Indecision and randomness

On the other hand there are companies using Lead Management Software. One example of Lead Management Software, Leads360, ships with built-in best practices templates that are effectively out-of-the-box winning workflows. These strategic workflows are developed by industry experts based on the analysis of over 20 million leads. And every component of the out-of-the-box business strategy is customizable.

Lead Management Software provides companies with simple, powerful tools to collect and analyze data generated by their work. Not only does LMS help agents work leads; improving speed to contact, qualification rates, and close rates, LMS equips decision makers with tools to course correct and make quick changes any part of their business strategy that is underperforming. From lead sources, to internal lead routing, to team and individual agent performance; LMS gives business owners and managers all the hard data they need to refine their strategy and workflow.

Lead Management Software is a strategy in a box that can be continually refined based on real data. World Cup coaches would be lucky to have such a resource.