The Value of Organization
Hi! My name is André Buck and I am the Technical Support Manager at ClickPoint Software. I handle all of the technical operations for the LeadExec software. I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and also talk a bit about the importance of data organization. I have nearly 7 years experience in technical customer support. A universal trait in every industry that I’ve ever worked with is organization. The better your system is organized, the more efficiently it can perform. This rings true in every industry and it’s no different for Lead Management.
Whether it’s building out customer profiles or designing a new lead type to bring on new business, organization equates to preparedness. As a provider of technical support, personally it is much easier to provide support to those that have already organized their requests and changes and are prepared to communicate to me exactly what they want. It makes the communication between the two of us that much more fluent. Below are several suggestions for organizing several aspects of your Lead Distribution system that may help you as you move on in the Lead Distribution industry.
1.) Organize Early – Before you begin brining leads into your system, it’s imperative that you think about the industry that you will be providing leads for. You need to analyze this carefully because the more you can predict where that industry will go, the better you can equip your lead capturing methods to make your leads maintain their value. By analyzing what the industry may need down the line, you are able to add that into your lead type as a field sooner and provide that data to your customers. I have seen both sides of this and the company that researches and prepares before creating their lead type have to make fewer changes to their system further down the line. Whereas those that simply dive in to it without researching the industry that they will be providing leads for are back several times needing changes to their system in order to capture all of the required data they need to have successful leads. Below is an example of a well organized lead type in Excel format.
2.) Monitor the reports from your system often. Print or save them and review them monthly. You can often identify trends in your own system that can prepare you for lows or highs in your business. The better you prepared, the easier these times will be. From my experience, I see that those that use the reports effectively often are less stressed and affected by changes to their industry. With LeadExec this is made easy for you as a large number of reports are available from the Dashboard.
3.) Prioritize and organize changes before implementing them into your live system. The smallest changes to your Lead Distribution system can affect every other aspect of the system. It’s imperative that before making any changes that you map out all of the other parts of the system that will be affected by this change. This can be one of the most important lessons that you will learn. I have seen changes rushed without consideration for the different parts of the system that will be affected and it’s been catastrophic. Often times this can even lead to down time, and in the Lead Distribution industry, that is never good. By simply mapping out what will be affected by the changes you’re requesting, you can head off any damage that could be caused and ultimately make the transition smooth sailing.
