More than half of your leads (56%) aren’t ready to buy yet. So, there’s no point in pushing them to convert for now.
What do you do instead? Do your lead tracking, and you’ll know exactly what your next step is.
Tracking leads is a crucial process in determining:
- which leads are ready to convert,
- which are the most likely to convert,
- when they are ready to convert,
- which are of high value,
- what information do they need to come closer to conversion,
- when is the right time to push them down the sales funnel.
Lead tracking is key to getting high ROI (return on investment) from your lead pipeline.
In this article, you will learn what lead tracking is and why understanding and identifying your potential customers’ activity is key to making profits.
You will also learn everything you need to know about lead tracking and how to get the most out of it.
What is lead tracking?
Lead tracking is the process of monitoring and managing potential customers from their initial contact to conversion.
Lead tracking captures data on customer behavior, engagement, and progress through the sales funnel.
It informs you about the best action to make in order to move the lead to the next sales stage towards closing the sale.
Lead tracking involves keeping organized records of every lead activity for analysis and marketing optimization.
Thanks to well-done lead tracking, you know exactly at what stage of the sales funnel every lead is, which you can use to tailor your marketing and improve your sales strategy.
Importantly, lead tracking prevents you from losing leads and maximizing customer success. It also prevents missed handoffs between marketing and sales teams.
Why lead tracking is important?
Lead tracking offers valuable data that gives you a way better and deeper understanding of the sales funnel.
Essentially, tracking leads enables the most accurate pipeline forecasting. This information allows for the optimization of marketing efforts by discarding ineffective strategies.
As a result, your prospects progress through the funnel much more smoothly, and you don’t lose any sales opportunities.
Moreover, lead tracking is important because it provides sales teams with precise guidance on things like:
- potential customers to engage,
- exact timing for when to engage,
- what to focus on,
- how to tailor your offer, and so on.
As a result, lead tracking hugely increases the likelihood of successful sales because you actually know what and when to do with each lead.
For example, thanks to the info you gain from the lead tracking process, you know when to reach out to each lead and what to say to them. You can fully tailor and personalize your message to your leads because you know what they need and what they want to learn from you to convert.
In fact, businesses that respond to leads within an hour are almost seven times more likely to have meaningful conversations. (ServiceBell)
Similarly, companies that prioritize fast lead response times can increase conversion rates by up to 50%.
Now, imagine how much more impact you have on your sales conversions when you not only utilize fast response times but also the way and when you reach out to particular leads.
Effective lead tracking: the main benefits
The biggest advantage of lead tracking is increased sales.
That’s why any profitable company tracks its leads from the beginning to conversion.
Here are the biggest benefits you get from lead tracking:
- Improved conversion rates: Lead tracking enables timely and personalized follow-ups, increasing the likelihood of turning prospects into customers.
- Customer retention: Lead tracking allows you to better understand your leads and their pain points. As soon as they turn into paying customers, you can better assist them with their pain points and cater to their needs. That results in less churn and more satisfied customers.
- Less guessing means less spending: Insights from lead tracking help refine your marketing efforts based on actual lead behavior and data. You can easily ensure your outreach campaigns target the right audience at the right time by minimizing spending the budget on ineffective sales and marketing strategies.
How to track leads?
To track leads effectively, follow these steps:
- Identify where your leads are coming from.
Start by pinpointing all potential sources of leads. Your leads may originate from multichannel campaigns, social media, website inquiries, webinars, and referrals.
For example, using Google Analytics, you can easily track and monitor all the sources and channels generating the most leads. This way, you’ll know which sources are the most effective in bringing new leads. - Choose your lead tracking software.
Once you know your lead sources, select a suitable lead-tracking tool or lead-focused CRM software.
For example, if your business requires a robust solution, you might choose a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system like Salesforce or HubSpot.
If your business needs a sales engagement platform that does more than lead tracking but also lead capture, lead generation, lead engagement, and prospecting, then try lemlist.
Evaluate these tools based on features like ease of use, integration capabilities, and reporting functionalities to ensure they align with your business requirements.
Learn more about the best sales CRM software to find out which one to choose for optimal lead tracking. - Integrate this system into your organization.
Implement the chosen lead tracking system by training your team to use it effectively.
Create training materials and run workshops to familiarize your sales and marketing teams with the CRM’s features. Ensure that all team members understand how to input data, track lead interactions, and utilize the system’s reporting tools to make informed decisions.
With lead tracking, marketers and sales teams can identify which keywords, ads, landing pages, and more are bringing in leads.
Now that you have implemented the tool to track your leads, you must know how to use it. Below, we listed the best practices to stick to for effective lead tracking.
9 best practices for lead tracking to implement right now
- Manage the lead tracking process in your CRM.
For example, use Salesforce to track all lead interactions and updates, ensuring data consistency and easy access for your team. If you want to take a step further in lead tracking and get more advanced with a lead generation solution, use a sales engagement platform like lemlist. - Set up the key metrics to measure.
Establish metrics like lead conversion rate and average lead response time. Make an analysis based on these metrics and improve your sales strategy accordingly.
Some of the most common lead tracking metrics are:
1. New leads and their source: the amount of leads generated and where they came from,
2. Conversion rate by pipeline stage: The percentage of leads that moved from the presentation stage to the negotiation stage,
3. Average deal size: The average revenue of a sales deal per lead,
4. Sales cycle length: How much time, on average, does it take for a prospect to go from a newly acquired lead to a paying customer? - Optimize the lead capture according to the data.
For example, if web form data shows high abandonment rates, simplify the form to capture only essential information. - Track lead sources.
Use tools like Google Analytics to identify if a lead came from an email campaign or a social media ad.
You might capture leads from 3 channels:
1. Social media retargeting ads,
2. Content upgrades,
3. Google Ads.
Understanding how each channel contributes to lead generation and the difference between the leads is key to successful lead tracking. It will allow you to enhance the value of your marketing spend. - Score leads.
Implement a lead scoring system in CRM like HubSpot that assigns higher scores to leads who engage frequently with your content.
Assign a numerical value to potential customers based on their behavior, engagement, and demographics, helping you prioritize those most likely to convert. In this way, you maximize the value of your sales and marketing efforts. - Determine the point at which you hand off leads (from marketing to sales.)
Set a rule like – leads with a score above 70 are ready to be transferred to the sales team for direct engagement. - Establish your lead qualification framework.
Use the BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) to qualify leads and ensure they meet your business’s readiness for purchase. - Review your sales pipeline constantly.
Conduct weekly pipeline reviews to identify bottlenecks and forecast future sales opportunities. - Keep your sales funnel clean.
Regularly purge inactive leads from your CRM to maintain an accurate and efficient sales process.
How does modern lead tracking work?
Luckily, you don’t have to do lead tracking manually. Long gone are the days of disorganized spreadsheets with scattered customer info everywhere. Typically, multiple software and tools are integrated and used at once to track leads. They include:
- All-in-one sales engagement platform like lemlist
- Marketing automation tools like HubSpot
- Customer relationship management system like Salesforce CRM
- Lead management software like Pipedrive
- Call tracking software like CallRail
- AI tools for predictive lead scoring
These tools track multiple lead touchpoints across channels, both online and offline.
What lead should you track?
Typically, you track these 7 most important lead types:
- Cold leads (CLs): leads who haven’t shown any interest in your service but they fit your ICP perfectly. Typically, cold leads are generated through lead generation software (or your manual lead gen efforts).
- Warm leads (WLs): leads who already know your business or who may have heard its name. These leads are much easier to turn into customers than cold leads.
- Hot leads (HLs): leads who have already expressed their interest in your service. Hot leads are usually decision-makers in the company; they come from a company that fits your ICP, or they found your service to be a solution to their pain point.
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): leads who have shown interest in your company’s products or services, but may not be ready for direct sales contact. MQLs are typically generated through marketing efforts like website visits, email campaigns, or webinars.
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs): leads who have been identified by the marketing team as having a high potential to convert into paying customers. SQLs typically have a much stronger buying intent compared to MQLs. They might have scheduled a demo or expressed a specific need for your service.
- Product Qualified Leads (PQLs): leads who are already the users of your free service or trial who exhibit behaviors indicating they’re likely to convert to paying customers. PQLs are particularly valuable leads for companies with freemium and trial models. PQLs typically exhibit these behaviors: surpassing usage limits in the free plan, using particular features more than others, showing an interest in paid features, and running into the limits of the freemium plan.
- Service Qualified Leads (ServQLs): leads who require ongoing customer services like maintenance, support packages, or consulting. ServQLs typically express interest in your service offers. They need further qualifications from your customer service team.
As a rule of thumb, you should track all types of leads to monitor their behavior and need changes over time.
When reaching out to the leads you’ve been tracking, you should focus on the ones most likely to close a deal. You should prioritize hot leads over warm ones, while SQL leads need more follow-ups than MQL.
Tracking leads will give you an in-depth understanding of where your leads are in the sales process and how far or close they are to closing a deal. It means you won’t waste your time on dead leads or hand off your leads to the sales team when it’s too early.
Key terms in lead tracking you should know
These are the most important concepts to know about lead tracking:
- Inbound Leads: An inbound lead is a potential customer who initiates contact with a business through channels like website forms, content downloads, or social media interactions.
- Outbound Leads: An outbound lead is a prospect reached through proactive efforts by a company, such as cold calling, email outreach, or direct mail campaigns.
- Lead Sources: Lead sources are the channels through which potential customers discover and engage with a business, such as search engines, social media, webinars and, newsletters, or events.
- Lead Attribution: Lead attribution is assigning an exact marketing touchpoint where the lead is converted.
- Lead Scoring: Lead scoring is assigning a number (score) to leads based on their behavior and profile to prioritize them for follow-up by the sales team.
Lead vs. Prospect
These two are not the same, although many people still confuse them.
A prospect is a qualified lead.
To qualify a lead, you have to determine if they’re a good fit for your product or service. That’s why you need to do lead tracking!
Lead vs. Sales Opportunity
A sales opportunity is a prospect (a lead that’s qualified) with the highest likelihood of becoming a paying customer.
When the lead is assessed, qualified, and deemed ready for direct sales engagement, you get a sales opportunity.
Where is lead vs. prospect vs. sales opportunity in your sales funnel?
In the sales funnel, a lead is at the top, where initial contact and interest are generated through marketing efforts.
A prospect is further down the funnel after being qualified based on specific criteria, indicating a higher likelihood of moving toward a purchasing decision.
A sales opportunity is at the lower part of the funnel and ready to convert.
At the very bottom of your sales funnel are closed deals (or converted customers.)
Key takeaways
Lead tracking is essential for understanding and managing potential customers as they progress through your sales funnel.
It helps you determine when leads are ready to convert, which strategies to use, and when to get them closer to purchasing.
By monitoring lead behavior and engagement, the lead tracking process allows you to:
- improve conversion rates,
- focus on high-value leads first,
- score and prioritize your leads,
- monitor your sales pipeline,
- make data-driven decisions,
- optimize your marketing efforts,
- maximize your sales strategy,
- know when exactly to follow up,
- prevent missed sales opportunities,
- know precise timing in sales engagement,
- lead to higher ROI and more sales,
- lead to more satisfied customers,
- lead to less spending on ineffective sales and marketing efforts,
- lead to less churn.
With tools like CRM systems and marketing automation, lead tracking gathers all important data to feed your sales pipeline.
Thanks to tracking your leads, you can tailor and personalize your approach to each lead and avoid missed opportunities. If lead tracking is done right, you can expect your sales to soar.
