Sales lead management is a business activity that tends to be cast aside when the going gets good. When the current revenue stream is flowing great, sales lead management is the farthest thing from people's mind. Unfortunately, when marketing activities are put on hold the likelihood that they need to be used increases.

One of the most dangerous things that happens to professional service businesses when they start generating lots of revenue, is that sales lead management suffers. Typically what happens is the owner starts to work more and more hours. This results in lots of billable hours. But, an increase in billable hours often comes with a decrease in marketing hours.

Poor Sales Lead Management Is Poor Business Practice

Sales lead management is neglected when there is less time available. Attending networking events and doing follow-ups and sales calls almost disappear. Phone calls from leads remain unreturned for days, even weeks at a time. Slowly, concern for the business diminishes and is replaced with concern about writing invoices.

This lack of sales lead management is a sure sign of future death. You need to be constantly adding new opportunities to your funnel. Going to more networking events, getting new people in your database, and getting more proposals out there.

Not all sales lead management activities, though, need to be this time intensive. Direct mail is an excellent sales lead management technique that can run on autopilot. It is also financially affordable.

Regardless of what type of sales lead management you use, you need to be spending much of your time on getting people into your funnel. Qualifying leads as prospects. Getting the prospects and getting them signed up for work. You never know when you will need to turn those leads into paying customers. It is much easier to do so when they are already part of your marketing efforts.

The Bottom Line on Sales Lead Management

The type of sales lead management technique you use is not the most important issue. The important factor is that you use sales lead management consistently, regardless of where your business is at in terms of sales and revenue volume. When you have hardly any customers, to when you have more customers than you think you can handle, your sales lead management will make a difference in your long term success.