Managing a CRM can sometimes be tedious and time consuming. Do I need to add all the contacts in my CRM? Am I sure that it is organized and especially up to date?
We present you our CRM management method to boost your productivity and stay organized.
Contact qualification
First of all, it is essential to identify the type of contact you are talking to. We explain the different types that you can find in your CRM, from lead, to becoming a customer!
What is a lead?
Being a lead is the first step in the sales process. For example, you can gain leads via a subscription to your newsletter, an account creation, or by downloading an online resource like a white paper. It is considered that the lead may eventually be interested in your product or service, but you do not yet know their intentions and needs.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
The MQL is slightly more motivated than the basic lead because he has made new interactions since his first visit. They may have opened one of your emails/newsletters or downloaded a new document from your site. He has therefore a renewed interest in your product.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A SQL is a lead that has shown a concrete interest in your product, for example via a request for information with your chatbot or a pricing/quotation request. This one is even closer to buying, you just have to convince him to buy your product.
What is a prospect?
More motivated and involved than the lead, the prospect has a real potential to buy as long as he has interacted several times with your company. For example, a conversation initiated by email in which the lead expresses their needs and budget. To transform your lead into a prospect, we recommend using lead nurturing and taking care of your communication to make your lead react and start concrete interactions with them such as a phone call or an email conversation.
What is a client ?
Customer status is the very last step in the sales process. This status is obtained after at least one purchase from your company (product or service). In a second step, you will have the possibility to turn a customer into a "promoter" or an "ambassador", for example if he makes regular purchases and supports your company.
The creation of sponsorship programs or VIP ambassadors is a good lever for acquiring and retaining customers who are more invested in your company.
Hot Lead VS Cold Lead
A lead is considered "hot" from the moment he shows a notable interest in your company and your product or service. The next step being to activate all the levers at your disposal to convert him into a ✨client✨
To do this, you need to take into account several factors:
- The interest that the prospect has in your product/service. A prospect showing little interest in your product will be more difficult to convert, this is the time to accentuate your communication with him and identify his needs. On the other hand, be careful not to relax your communication with prospects who are very interested, because they are not (yet) part of your customers!
- Their needs: how much do they need? How many users in the case of a service? Does he prefer a premium or standard product? Is it a professional or a private customer?
- Their budget: what budget can they allocate to buy your product?
- The time frame: does he need this product immediately? Or in the near future?
A cold lead has never had any interaction with your company. They therefore know nothing about your products and services (for the moment 😉 ). Their profile is potentially interested in your product, but they have never expressed any interest in your product yet. So it will be a matter of detecting the momentum to contact them, i.e. the moment when they will need your product.
Why integrate all contacts in your CRM
Should you integrate all the contacts you have in your CRM? Or integrate only the "hot" ones? That's the question 🤔
To find out, we present you the reasons why you shouldn't neglect any lead, and incorporate ALL of them! 💻
So you don't miss any opportunities
By sorting and selecting your leads, you might miss some opportunities. Indeed, a lead that is cold in 2021 might become hot in 2022, it might just be the wrong momentum. It is important to nurture your leads until they show interest in your product.
Keep track of your contact records
It is essential to keep track of all the leads you have (whether you have met them or not). They may well convert one day. In addition, most CRM / Cold-Email tools allow you to have a follow-up on the activity of the contact, and therefore to qualify it, then to plan follow-up actions according to its interest.
Avoid recontacting a lead already contacted
Not adding all the leads in your database could generate duplicates in your Emailing/Cold Call campaigns and in your contacts with prospects. By choosing not to add all the leads in your CRM, you risk missing past contacts within your team .... And therefore contact them a second time 🥶
Imagination of the cold lead
As previously stated, talking about a cold lead means that the lead's interest in your product is still low or even non-existent. This idea may repel some Sales Teams who prefer to focus on hot leads, which they believe have a better chance of converting.
Not to lose any investment
When generating leads, whether hot or cold, you invest a lot of money in targeting, scraping and communication campaigns. On the other hand, a lot of this data is sometimes not used because the contacts are judged as not being "mature" enough or reluctant to buy.
Have a better organization
By classifying your leads (non-qualified, MQL, SQL, etc.) you will have a global vision of your data, more coherent data and a rigorous follow-up of the relationship with your prospects. In addition, having a CRM allows you to have visibility on the origin of your leads, so you will be able to determine if the leads come from your campaigns, or from another means such as a subscription to your newsletter / filling out a form.
Do not lose any information
Any information on your prospects not filled in your CRM will potentially be lost! Or at least if it is not lost, it means that you have several databases...To have one and only one database: as mentioned in the previous point, every information you don't fill in your CRM is potentially lost, unless you have several databases... But accumulating databases will not be of any use to you, except to make you waste time, and money... 💸
But then why am I sometimes advised to integrate only hot leads?
At Dropcontact we have decided to integrate all leads in our CRM. But some Sales/Market teams decide to integrate only the hot leads! Why?
- To have a more succinct CRM: that gives more visibility on #LessIsMore leads
- To optimize your time by focusing only on hot leads: hiding cold leads allows you to focus only on the hottest leads, considered as more likely to convert
- To reduce your costs: some CRM like HubSpot work with a price based on the number of HubSpot contacts included in your package. Some will prefer to limit their costs by adding only hot leads.
- Sorting: as opposed to Team Sales that add massive numbers of contacts (hundreds or thousands) via scraping methods, or other.
How to get a new lead?
Scraping tools
There are many tools that allow you to scrape contacts from social networks like LinkedIn. Phantombuster, Walaaxy or Evaboot are some of them that allow to automatically extract data such as first name, email, job, company information etc. directly from LinkedIn.
Other tools such as lemlist (Cold-Email) have decided to directly integrate the scraping functionality in addition to their main activity. Scraping tools are presented for example as browser extensions such as Surfe which allows you to add contacts via an "Add contact in your CRM" button on LinkedIn. The data is then extracted and transmitted to your CRM and/or any other database.
To sum up, scraping tools are often a good way to get leads easily, and at low cost. To learn more, check out our TOP 10 LinkedIn scraping tools 🚀
Lead-Magnets 🧲
In concrete terms, a Lead Magnet, also known as "Gated Content" or "Premium Content" is web content that you can offer to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. The objective is to transform an anonymous visitor into an identified lead. For example, it is easy to offer an article as a PDF download on your website in exchange for an email address. In addition, this lead has all the more chances to be qualified because he visited your website once 😉
Subscribe to your online content
Another interesting way to get leads is to give them the possibility to subscribe to your content, for example via a "subscribe to newsletter" button. To do this, the lead provides you with their email and agrees to receive your communications. Finally, you can obtain the contact information of your leads by having them fill out online forms to register for your events, webinars, lives, etc. The possibilities are endless, as long as they add value to your prospect 💡To learn more about building your online database, we present our method to generate leads easily 🚀
How to contact a cold prospect?
- Find out about their activity (consult their website, identify the context)
- Identify the decision-makers: you are not going to contact a graphic designer to sell your product, prefer the CMO/CEO!
- Customize your interactions as much as possible: tools such as lemlist offer advanced customization features (e.g. liquid language allows you to match your emails in gender and number; insert personalized images according to each of your contacts, etc.).
- Offer them added value (free trial plan, sample of your product, white paper, etc.)
And to find out which prospecting method suits you best, we present our Cold Call vs Cold Email comparison
Keep your CRM clean and organized with Dropcontact
Native integration into your CRM
Dropcontact natively integrates with HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce to update, enrich, verify and validate contact data present in your CRM. Also say goodbye to your duplicates with automated duplicate detection and merge
In addition, Dropcontact detects if your contact changes companies and directly updates their record with their new company and company legal information 💡
All this directly in your CRM!
Automated data enrichment
With Dropcontact's native integration, the enrichment of your data is done in real time, continuously, and for each added contact ✨
In addition, Dropcontact analyzes and extracts the data present in the email signatures of your correspondents, and your collaborators' mailboxes (phone numbers, company postal address, company information, etc. ) 🖊
And if you don't have a CRM, you can always proceed to the verification of your contact data thanks to Dropcontact's Drag&Drop of your files in excel and csv formats 💻
