Lead Life Cycle Management

What is life cycle management? For lead management systems it is tracking a lead, only. One lead management solution maker states on their website, "When lead is qualified put into your CRM." And this "lead is qualified" means what?drud Leads are sent to sales people and partners. Most sales lead systems do not communicate with partners or remote sales people easily. The OEM or lead provider to salesmen, marketing or sales,  trys to peer over the wall to see what is happening with the lead, but the wall is too high.

Lead status is Qualified or Rejected. Qualifed moves lead to business opportunity, In our lead solution the Lead sales stage is moved to a oppty stage, simple. The lead is converted to opportunity, and now forecasted. Confidence percentages are assigned to each stage. Rejected status reports the lead is no good: bad number, no interest. 

BANT process qualifies the lead. The salesman works the lead to find Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe. IBM created BANT. The salesmen finds the money, finds the guy who can sign the purchas order, finds the need, and finds the time frame. If BANT can not be qualified the lead is not good. 

If the sales person wanders into the lead late. After 14 competitors have wined and dined and sold to the prospect, the lead is lost. This data must be recorded because it is logical to assume, the first sales team or sales person to score points with the lead prospect has a higher win rate.