Focusing on the right leads, managing your leads to determine if there is potential to convert now or in the future, and planning how to manage your sales process can help increase your pipeline and grow your business.

Taking a lead and converting to a sale sounds easy enough, but if your prospects are not defined and nurtured, you can miss potential opportunities. Figuring out what makes a lead strong is a key factor before passing it along to sales. Determine what makes the lead interested in your product or service and use personas to identify leads with high potential.

Managing the sales process by capturing all sales and marketing in a database (such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics) can help identify customer needs and also convert sales quicker, since all of the information is in one place. Once you have determined a lead is not yet ready to be converted to a sale, continue to keep the lead active for future opportunities. Create a strategy for future opportunities such as different pricing/offers that may attract that lead for a future conversion.

Using marketing automation software such as Marketo, Pardot, or Eloqua can also help you make better marketing investment decisions. Starting with an automated process can save time and money later as your business grows.

By creating a strategy for your leads, managing the sales and marketing process more efficiently, and using marketing automation tools once a lead is converted can help grow your business and increase customer engagement.