Getting a lead to the right salesperson does not appear, at first glance, is simple. Scrape the lead info into an email and get to your salesperson, direct sales or indirect sales. Now, we look closer and we see this technique is flawed.
The first flaw is double and triple entry of the sales lead data. First the lead recipient, maybe a supplier with a web lead which just arrived, enters the data into a spreadsheet or sales tool of some type. A spreadsheet is better than a online CRM tool like salesforce.com because the sales data can be entered in a few seconds into the spreadsheet and if entered into salesforce it will be time to go home when the single lead is finally entered. Enough of our bias against big hard to use CRM. The lead is now in the tool and is copy and pasted into an email tool to send to the salesperson. If this lead is going to a direct sales person perhaps he can be assigned this lead in the CRM. If the salesperson is indirect, a distributor carrying many lines, the lead is sent with the email tool.
Email is great. Killer app that is fast and dependable. But it is not a sales lead tool. The sales person now copies the data from the email into his/her sales tool again maybe a spreadsheet or even maybe a scrap of paper. Something to keep a leash on the lead. That is two entries.
The salesperson goes about the day, he makes an unanswered call to the lead prospect, he makes nother. He drops the lead and moves on to more cooperative prospects. The update to this lead, the actual effectiveness of the selling process and the quality of the lead source is the loose end which requires reporting to the lead supplier. This is the key thread, the lead sales progression, that goes undone and unreported.
