How to Manage Prospects in Intellect

[pageltd]

Besides the obvious tasks and notes and appointments, can anyone give me ideas on how to manage prospects in the system? I receive sales leads from a few different sources, for which there are categories in Intellect. What I really want to get a handl eon is how long to keep the prospects, especially if there i no response. When I received a lead for a homeowners insurance quote, I add the contact, add categories, send an email with the quote, add a task, and follow up a few times....it's a manual process and I don't have templates set up for automatic emails.

Some prospects are price shoppers, some are interested in a more through review of their insurance.

The question is, how long should I keep prospects in the system as a prospect? If I kepe them in the system, when do I code them as inactive? Do I enter a task to run a report and delete the old prospects every month, every six months, every year.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[bwlpf]

Good question, that. And I'll be eager to see what kinds of suggestions are offered.

BW

[David]

George, I think your question centers more around a sales philosophy. I will give my thoughts on both.

1. I would use the activity series function for tasks and for emails. The tasks side would require your intervention, the emails would go out automatically.

2. Here are the statistics....a prospect on average should be "touched" 7 times before they buy. Of course there are variations to all of this depending upon product, the level of the lead, etc. The other alarming statistic is that most sales processes stop after the second attempt and I believe that this is a true stat. I recommend using the activity series function within Chaos to automate this process as much as possible to touch those prospects at least 7 times. Once you have performed your diligence and you have not received any opportunities then move on and term these prospects as "inactive". How do you do this? Well you could make a category for inactive. However, this will cause your database to grow over the years to have a bunch of contacts that you do not use. I suggest creating a database called inactive and send those contacts there. This way you can revisit your inactive database in 6 months to a year and see if things have changed or there may be opportunities that exist at that time.

David

[pageltd]

David

Thanks for your excellent response! I agree with your ideas and know that we have discussed some of them before. I also agree that the sales approach needs to be continued even after a sale is not won, especially with insurance which is cyclical in nature. I just need to define the mechanics and timing of contact with the prospect....things like email templates/series, activity series, etc. I like the idea of a separate database for inactive prospects and/or coding them as inactive.

Since there are different types of leads, different sources, different needs I think I just need to qualify the types, set them up on auto pilot as needed, test and refine.

Thanks again for your insight!

George

[sjaves]

David's reply is about as good as you'll get. He is correct in removing / sending those inactive records to a different DB and remove them from the main I/C file.

Two other suggestions:
1. I have a group called "prospect" that I add potentials to. Periodically I clean that up.
2. Keep the ones who seem to have potential for the future and send them periodic notes like "Hi! I'm here! Need a quote?"

Steve

[pageltd]

I agree with the periodic follow-up, and would want that to be part of an email activity series....maybe a short email checking in every month.

[jakelake]

We use pretty much all activities described by David in our business. We are business brokerage firm and are helping business owners to sell their businesses. However we don't separate inactive contacts into another database, just put them in Inactive group. In our line of business contacts that were dormant for several years suddenly may respond to our email broadcast and we don't want to waste such leads.
Jake

[pageltd]

What service do you use for email broadcasts, and how often do you send?

[jakelake]

We use iContact for broadcasts, however there are several similar services that offer pretty much the same list of services for similar price.
Regarding frequency of broadcasts, we don't do them on periodic basis. As soon as we get new business for sale, e.g. restaurant, we run Contact Report selecting all contacts who have categories selected Buyer and Restaurant, and export them to CSV file. This file then uploaded to the broadcasting service and new restaurant for sale email is composed. Then it goes out. That's it.
Jake