After managing existing customers, managing leads is probably the next thing people think of when they think of CRM. "Leads" means different things to different people; when I use "leads" I am referring to "suspects" as we refer to them in Duct Tape Marketing (DTM). From page 53 of the Duct Tape Marketing Book, here are the client stages we use in DTM:
Suspects -> Prospects -> Customers -> Repeat Customers -> Champions
Most of the software that I have tested lump suspects and prospects together as leads. I find thinking of suspects and prospects separately helps clarify goals and CRM implementation details.
Suspects are our list of people with characteristics that match those outlined in our Ideal Customer Profile. Our goal is to identify Suspects and try to convert them into Prospects.
We need to define a process for converting suspects into prospects. Some of the questions you need to answer when defining your process are:
- How will you contact them?
- How often will you contact them?
- What action do you want them to take? How will you know when they are a prospect?
- When will remove them (if ever) from your suspect list?
I am going to say that I don't want suspects to stay on my list forever. I want to do my best either 1) qualify and convert them to a prospect or 2) remove them from my suspect list. In order to do this, I am going to contact my suspects 3 times via direct mail after which I will contact them via telephone.
By defining my process, I've already started defining the requirements for my software tools:
- I need to gather my list of suspects
- I need to create my direct mail pieces, merge contact information, and mail
- I need to track what I have sent
- I need to track responses and respond appropriately
- I need to be able to remove people from my list of suspects.
I'll cover ways to implement these details in future posts.
