Taking the lead: some thoughts on the successful handling and processing of sales leads and the benefits of lead-tracking software.

• Author: Dver, Alyssa
• Position: Feature

Managing leads often has been compared to herding stray cats. Leads come into your institution from many different sources--walk-ins, call-ins, purchased lists, customer conversations with banking staff, direct mail and so forth. Once in, leads then can get routed to any number of people or departments for follow-up and possible further routing. Ideally, you want to make sure leads are being followed up in a timely and effective manner and, most importantly, that nothing falls through the cracks.

Sales-focused institutions will also want to know:

* Where the best leads are coming from.

* Who is being effective (or not) in closing the leads--that is, turning the leads into sales.

* Where the process itself can be improved.

Good lead management practices can help. By getting the right leads and managing them properly, you can dramatically improve your institution's selling, prospect acquisition and customer service.

The first thing to understand when thinking about lead management is the process of how you want your institution to handle different types of leads. You should identify where leads can come from and, based on that, what should happen to them. For example, with customers who walk into a branch asking for mortgage information, do you want to have someone in the branch handle these requests? Or do you want to collect the customer's name and route it to a mortgage specialist for follow-up? If you purchase a list of prospect names, to whom does this list go? And what are they expected to do with it? Some good old flowcharting can help to determine where leads come from and what happens to them when they come in.

Once you have a good understanding of your process, you should think about the volume of leads you expect in each channel. This will help you ensure that the processes won't break down from overload. This will also help you see how many leads you may need to achieve your business goals. For example, say you have a goal to acquire 20 new HELOG customers this month. To get these customers, you could select an appropriate segment out of your existing base and run a direct mail program or a telemarketing campaign. If you have had any experience in doing such programs, you may have a reasonable lead-to-dose rate--that is, how many calls or mailings you need to make to close one deal. If you don't have experience to judge the ratio, use your best educated guess. Then do the math to establish how many leads you need to generate to...