‘reporting feature’

Ask any business owner and/or manager about the wheeling and dealing of their trade and you will soon learn that money really is the driving force for all. The ultimate goal that most businesses strive towards is to use fewer resources and time, all the while keeping that bankroll flowing. Within the online industry, such as ours, leads are one of the most important factors to capitalize on, but in order to do so it will require that you have a proper lead management software in place to ensure those leads soon convert into deals for your business.

After much research our team eventually decided upon Leads360 to provide us with a lead management system that is on par with our services. According to their client data based analysis the lead conversion rates that we could prepare for are 57% quality leads and 43% sales process – which is exactly what we needed. The 5 factors that most concerned us were to:

• Capture new leads;
• Then distribute those leads;
• Whilst keeping track and managing all aspects;
• As well as convert or nurture leads; and
• Finally to analyse the results.

Above and beyond the aforementioned factors, Leads360 also has more than 15 million leads in their database – giving us the leads up! But before we got ahead of ourselves, let’s quickly have a look at the 4 ways you can choose to receive your leads:

• Real-Time XML/HTTPS Post: instant leads generator from a number of lead providers, your website, and/or anywhere else from the web.
• Import of CSV/Excel File: Leads360’s import engine transfer leads from both text and data files.
• Manual Input:  by means of Leads360’s interface you can manually key-in your leads.
• Web Service: allows you to connect to Leads360’s web service in order to add leads and/or edit your existing leads.

Processing your leads

More often than not the problem lies in managing leads. People tend to take their time getting back to their leads, ultimately affecting their number in sales. For this very reason it is imperative that the right leads get to the right person immediately. According to a study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), leads convert 22 times more into sales when the salesperson contacts the client within 5 minutes of their request. Once you begin doing the maths it becomes hard to fathom exactly how much potential business you’ve lost due bad distribution of leads and time management by the salesperson.

Once the salesperson contacted the lead, the real work begins. Prioritising the leads can be the biggest challenge however – even for the most advanced salesperson – as you need to identify which lead/inquiry needs to be followed-up next. Remember, it is key that the inquiry gets response from the salesperson as soon as possible, but if random leads are followed-up, you’ve probably missed out on most of your lucrative opportunities. Furthermore, with the large number of leads you receive on a daily basis, a structured system is what you’ll require. This was one of the other reasons we decided upon Leads360. We found that their Lead Prioritization Engine was by far the most intelligent, robust, and configurable on the market, allowing our salespeople to get to more high quality leads than before.

What about leads that didn’t make the sale immediately?

Just because the sale wasn’t made upon your first contact with the lead, doesn’t mean the buck stops there. It was discovered that approximately 40% of leads that was initially “not ready” to buy, eventually came round to signing that deal. The problem we face though is the time constraint our salespeople have to follow-up on these leads on a daily basis. Enter Leads360’s automated mechanisms. No more do you have to constantly go back to email, send reminders or make postings as the software can automatically do all this on your behalf in a timely manner that will remind the potential customer, without alienating them.

Lastly, tracking and analysing performances of your salespeople and their marketing efforts is an absolute must. In fact, all your efforts will be somewhat pointless, not to mention the reality that it will affect your ROI. This was the last little detail that eventually made us say “Yes! We’ll take it!”. The reporting is made simple with Leads360’s innovative lead analytics and sales lead tracking software as it provides key metrics and quickly and accurately calculate your ROI.

At the end of the day all our worries and woes are stripped away with the help of Leads360, because not only did they afford us with a lead management software that meets the demands of all our needs, but they have been, thus far, extremely helpful when it came to supporting us. Now all we have to do is look forward to see how our number of clients grows in future.

Leads360. Lead management made simple, easy and effective.

One of the key concerns which have caused major debates on the subject of Facebook is the matter of privacy. The fact of the matter is that this social media website has completely revolutionised the way we interact with people online. Without a second wasted people share their every thought, feeling, comments, photos, videos and shared links, and considering that 350million people are registered, Facebook is the undisputed king of social networking.

While many people revel at the mere thought of sharing all kinds of details about themselves, there has been the global concern about privacy and how sharing private information could affect us as individuals. The user did have the choice though as to how much information they are willing to share by merely going to the privacy setting and choosing what they want to share with whom. This changed dramatically though in December, 2009, when Facebook’s privacy settings changed in a fundamental way in that Facebook users couldn’t restrict access to their profile the way they used to.  Of course the reaction was one of outcry as this raged the debate of privacy, public information and Facebook even further.

The latest in the “Facebook privacy” saga came about on the 18^th of August, 2010, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced their newest venture – Facebook Places – a Smartphone-based service. This foray into the world of location-based services’ main aim is to bring about 3 things:

• To help users share their exact location for social purposes;
• To help you as a user see who of your friends are nearby; and
• So that you may discover nearby places as well as new places by means of your Facebook friends’ profiles.

In light of the privacy debate focus was placed on Places’ security features wherein it was pointed out that the “check-ins” that users would select when pinpointing their location would be, by default, only visible to their friends. Of course the user will be able to customise the setting should they want to share this information with a broader group or restrict it to only a few selected friends. Moreover, people will only be able to tag those on their friends list in when checking in on Places. To ensure that mischievous behaviour is limited the service will only allow you to check in a friend if the user checks themselves in too, thereby avoiding users to check their friends in at embarrassing places. In case a user was tagged but prefer not to be, they will have the option to remove the tag or opt out from being tagged at all. There will also be a reporting feature on Places where users can report any locations listings that are either offensive, erroneous or outdated.

The day after the announcement Facebook launched the read API which allows people to read check-ins as well as providing them with information about a place. The write- and search API is currently in beta testing phase and said to be soon rolled out by the developers.

The question still remains though whether or not this is sharing too much of one’s private details. Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox shared his enthusiasm about the future and how this device will be able to tell us all kinds of facts about a place and which of our friends are there or have been there before, what pictures they shared when visiting the place and whether or not they had a good time. You need to ask yourself this though – do you really feel the need to share so much of yourself as individual? On the other hand, this could only mean great things for business owners and their online marketing strategy.