If you want to grow your pipeline and close more deals, you have to start at the beginning: generating leads. The number one priority when bringing in new leads is making sure that accurate information is saved in the right place in Salesforce. Reps need accurate, accessible information or they won’t be able to get in touch with leads and get them moving towards converting into opportunities, meaning that lead generation activity is wasted and potential deals are lost.
Today we’ll shed light on the Salesforce lead capturing, and provide some recommendations on how to improve the process in your own organization.
Meaning of the term lead capture in Salesforce
In Salesforce terminology, lead capture describes the process of saving lead information in order to attempt to convert that lead into a paying customer. Leads are prospects who’ve expressed interest in your product, but haven’t yet been qualified to buy. In Salesforce, your goal with leads is to drive conversion, the moment when a prospect becomes qualified to buy. Converting a lead creates a contact, along with an account and opportunity.
How to create an email lead record in Salesforce?
The rule of thumb for a sales rep is to enter any new name coming from emails, calls, or website as a Lead in Salesforce. A standard Salesforce lead record consists of fields that store information about each person that expressed interest in doing business with your company. This record can include up to 25 different fields, but the most important of them are:
- Lead Owner;
- Lead Status;
- Lead Source.
1. Lead Owner is a particular person that works with a lead. A sales rep can either assign a lead owner for each lead or place a number of leads in a queue and let a sales team decide on the lead ownership.
2. Lead Status indicates lead tracking stages that allow sales reps to track the sales process and prioritize future activities.
By default, Salesforce offers the following lead tracking stages:
- New;
- Working;
- Nurturing;
- Unqualified;
- Qualified.
If you have a more complex lead tracking process, Salesforce allows you to customize this standard list.
3. Lead Source shows where your leads come from. Though this field is optional, we advise companies to make it mandatory for sales reps to fill in the Lead Source so that you can optimize your lead generation activities.
By default, Salesforce offers the following lead source list:
- Advertisement;
- Customer event;
- Employee referral;
- Purchased list;
- Trade show;
- Webinar;
- Website;
- Other.
This list can also be customized according to your requirements.
The ultimate goal of a sales rep in the lead management process is to move a new lead to ‘qualified’ and then convert it. When that happens, the lead becomes a contact (person), account (company), and an opportunity (potential sale) in the Salesforce system. The more leads you have, the more opportunities and potential deals you have. With Salesforce, you have various options to increase your lead database.
How can you capture leads to Salesforce?
To start working with Salesforce lead capture, first head to Setup:
- Click Customize | Leads
- Click Fields to create custom lead fields that track information specific to your company. Also, map your custom lead fields to account, contact, and opportunity fields so that the data gets transferred when users convert leads. Edit the Lead Status picklist to choose the default status for new and converted leads.
- Click Settings to specify your default lead settings.
- Click Assignment Rules to set up lead assignment rules that automatically assign leads.
- Click Web-to-Lead to automatically capture leads from your website.
With Salesforce, you have various options to increase your lead database:
1. Automatic lead capturing using either Salesforce in-built functionality or Salesforce AppExchange apps. In particular, you can enable Salesforce’s web-to-lead feature that automatically captures visitor information from the website.
2. Lead import using the Salesforce Data Import Wizard. With this tool, you can ensure mass import of your leads from Excel spreadsheets or email apps, such as Outlook or Gmail.
3. Manual lead input for individual leads.
One problem that you might experience with Salesforce’s lead capture functionality is the accuracy and reliability of data. If important data is missing for leads or duplicates are created in the process of lead capture, using the functionality could cost more time than it’s worth. Not to mention, leads can be lost in the process of discovering and troubleshooting the problem. That’s when you need a more robust and customizable solution like Salesforce and Email & Calendar integration from Revenue Grid.
How do you capture more leads to Salesforce?
There are several tips that will help you improve lead capture in Salesforce:
- Install lead capture software that will automatically capture all the data from your email, calls, and meetings, and use it to update existing records or auto-create new Salesforce standards or custom objects when no matching records are found.
- Auto-sync between Outlook & Gmail and Salesforce Calendars to avoid any manual work from the sales reps’ side. This will guarantee that all business-related events are auto-saved to the proper Salesforce lead records. Any event attendees that aren’t already in Salesforce will be automatically created.
- Capture and save all email attachments to Salesforce with the help of Revenue Grid Salesforce Email & Calendar integration.
Remember that getting up-to-date data is the key to effective lead capturing. When the most recent or valid data is not available, your reps miss important leads. That’s why it’s important to guarantee the accuracy and reliability of Salesforce data with lead-capturing software like Revenue Grid.
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