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Sage SalesLogix
NEWSLETTER
March 2009 . Volume 7 . Issue 1 |
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Sage announced the winners
of its inaugural Customer
Award Program. Thirteen
companies were recognized
in seven categories: Best Innovation,
Rookie of the Year,
Best End-to-End Deployment,
Best Use of Customization,
Community Stewardship,
Best Use of Multiple Sage
Software Products/Services,
and Lifetime Achievement.
Nominations for the 2009
awards will open in summer
2009. |
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| Better Lead Management With Sage
SalesLogix Version 7.5 |
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| Powerful lead management apabilities enable you
to qualify each lead and convert the lead quickly
into an account and an opportunity. |
When economic times are tough,
it's understandable that many of
us focus our attention on securing
quick sales. However, even companies
with a typically short sales cycle should also
pay attention to those prospects who are not
yet ready to buy and nurture them until they
are. In this article, we discuss the importance
of nurturing your leads and show you how
Sage SalesLogix Version 7.5 simplifies the
entire lead management process.
Nurture Your Leads
Marketing research indicates that most
companies leave 50 to 80 percent of potential
sales on the table by ignoring prospects that
are not yet ready to buy. Sales teams generally
focus on the leads that show a high probability
of closing quickly. However, to keep your
sales pipeline full, your marketing team needs
to focus on the leads that for whatever reason
have longer buying horizons.
Consider the likely scenario that perhaps
only 25 percent of your leads will be ready
to make a purchase within six months. Your
sales team logically focuses on this group of
leads, since their job performance is measured
on short-term wins. What happens to the
remaining 75 percent of those leads, some of
which may be ready to buy within one year,
others within 18 months or longer? If your
marketing department is not paying attention
to these longer-term prospects, those sales are
likely going to your competition.
Sage SalesLogix Can Help
The powerful Lead database feature within
Sage SalesLogix enables your company to
manage your leads effectively and efficiently.
From the moment you enter or import the
lead to the day it is converted to an opportunity
or classified as dead, Sage SalesLogix
gives you the tools to communicate, record,
measure, and optimize your marketing activities
to ensure that no lead is overlooked.
Let’s learn more about the Lead
Management features in Sage SalesLogix, specifically
the new features added in Version
7.5. Some of these features, already present in
the Windows Client, expand the functionality
to the Web Client in Version 7.5.
Lead Import Wizard
The new Lead Import wizard will streamline
your lead management process and make
it easier than ever to populate Sage SalesLogix
with your leads and get those leads into the
right hands quickly.
This step-by-step wizard simplifies lead
importation and processing, and it distributes
leads automatically to the individuals or
teams you designate. You can assign a default
Lead Source to the incoming leads, add the
imported leads to an ad-hoc group you name,
and save the import setup as a template for
future use. Note: This feature is available for
Web client only in Version7.5.
Lead De-duplication
Sophisticated Lead De-duplication is new
for the Web Client. Your imported leads
can be automatically checked against existing
Leads and Contacts to identify potential
duplicates. Through a series of options, you
can finely control what the software will consider
a duplicate. Here are examples of some
of the options:
• The Stemming option searches for other
grammatical forms of a word, such as
cardiovascular and cardiology;
• The Phonic option finds words that sound
similar, such as Shawn and Sean;
• A Synonym option uses the thesaurus to
find synonyms, such as gym and fitness
center;
• And the Fuzzy option finds words that
are misspelled by up to 10 letters, such as
Robert and Robret.
Based on your inputs, Sage SalesLogix
will automatically resolve duplicates for you,
eliminating the complex task of manual deduplication,
and ensuring that only clean data
enters your CRM database.
Automatic Lead Routing
You likely have taken advantage of the
powerful workflow features elsewhere in
Sage SalesLogix, and Version 7.5 adds more
of this functionality to lead handling. You
can now customize lead routing rules so that
leads are directed automatically to individuals
based on criteria you define. For example,
you can automatically route all leads from
California to a specific sales representative.
This enhances your marketing efficiencies,
eliminates manual processes, and increases
your sales opportunities.
Assign Activities To Leads
The Assign Activities To Leads feature is
new to both the Web and Windows Clients in
Version 7.5. Now, before a Lead is converted
to a Contact, you can assign various activities
to the lead that will follow it through the
conversion. For example, you can schedule a
meeting, phone call, or to-do task before the
lead is converted to a contact. This is a powerful
feature that fits well into the workflow of
many organizations, ensuring that the proper
action is taken as a Lead is converted into a
Contact and/or an Opportunity.
Create A Response
Lead management processes vary from one
company to the next. Sage SalesLogix Version
7.5 provides you with the flexibility to manage
leads according to your business processes.
When importing and managing leads,
you can flag a lead as a Response, to remind
the sales representatives that a contact has
expressed interest in a product or service.
Before Version 7.5, Responses were tied to
a campaign, now they can be associated with
a lead as well. Think of a Response as a preopportunity,
a way to track how your lead has
responded or the specific information they
have requested. A Response can contain a
note indicating the specific information the
lead has requested and the manner in which
the lead responded, such as returning a business
reply card.
Use Responses to track leads that are not
ready to be converted into an Opportunity or
for leads that are not associated with a particular
campaign, ensuring no leads fall through
the cracks. Note: This feature is available for
Web client only in Version7.5.
Assign Actions As A Group
In Version 7.5, you can assign actions to
your leads as you import them, saving time
and effort and ensuring your leads are immediately
in circulation. You can apply one or
more actions such as adding a note, associating
the leads with a particular campaign, or
scheduling a to-do or a phone call to all leads
in the import at once.
We would love to help you better manage
your leads within Sage SalesLogix, please give
us a call with your questions.
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