How to Manage Inbound Leads: 5 Tips for Success

An inbound lead is someone who interacts with your marketing. This potential customer may have clicked on your ad, signed up for your newsletter, or initiated a myriad of other interactions. 

Great! But what happens next?

If you run a contractor, home improvement, or service-based business, your marketing efforts must go beyond basic lead generation. In this article, we’ll discuss how to manage inbound leads and provide tips to help convert your leads to sales.

5 Tips for Managing Inbound Leads

Obtaining leads is the easy part. Knowing how to manage inbound leads to increase conversion rates and boost sales can be tricky. But it’s completely possible so long as you act quickly and strategically.

1. Qualify Your Leads

Qualifying a lead helps you identify potential. Some leads are ready to buy. Others may need more time or be a poor match.

Disqualifying factors include:

• They might be uninterested in your product or service
• They can’t afford your offer
• They’re not the decision maker
• They’re simply researching

The key is to filter out warm prospects from cold ones. Then take additional steps to qualify them even further after the inbound lead has been handed off.

2. Score Your Leads (Lead Scoring)

Lead scoring helps you assign value to your leads and determine your next actions. For example, someone who fills in a detailed lead generation form with their contact information would score higher than someone who simply clicks on an ad. 

Once you’ve assigned each lead a score, you can prioritize your prospects and determine the next steps. This will make your nurturing and sales tactics much more effective.

3. Delegate Lead Management

Some organizations collect leads, then leave them up for grabs on a dashboard. In some cases, this results in lost or mismanaged inbound leads. But if everyone is responsible for managing leads, then no one is.

A team member should be responsible for receiving inbound leads and determining if they’re viable. From there, they can assign them to a salesperson for follow-up.

4. Take Time to Nurture Leads

Not every lead is ready to buy right away. More people take time to do their research before making a purchasing decision. As a result, you’ll need to take time and nurture them before they’re ready to commit.

Many leads get lost because little effort is made after the first contact. For many businesses, it takes an average of eight touches to convert a customer after the first contact. To that end, you’ll need to create a follow-up schedule and commit to at least 6-8 additional touches.

5. Contact Leads Quickly

Knowing how to manage inbound leads after receiving them is one thing, but you’ll also need to pay attention to timing. How quickly should you contact inbound leads?

Research shows that replying to a lead within five minutes is 100 times more effective than contacting them in 30 minutes. You can automate that process with help from messaging software. That way, you can instantly reply to your leads and continue following up after the first attempt.

Schedule a Demo with Hatch Today

Your first interaction with a lead is the most crucial one. As such, you need a solution to capture hot leads and nurture them right away.

Hatch is the automated messaging platform made especially for contractors, real estate, and home service businesses. With help from Hatch, you can increase your inbound lead sales and create satisfied customers. Schedule a demo with us and discover how to boost your lead ROI by 300%.