What is sales lead management? Lead management is the distributing, tracking, and measuring of all the sales leads that are generated in your company. Sales managers will normally manage leads in a way that will generate the highest return on investment (ROI) possible.

Sales lead management is the art of getting the most out of sales leads. Take, for example, a business owner or sales manager that manages a team of sales reps. He will want to know certain metrics about the leads that he distributes to his team. For example, he may want to know which of his reps is able to make the most intial appointments from the leads, which of his reps are able to close more sales from the leads, which of his reps are able to cross-sell more products from the leads. Sales lead management is about collecting these types of statistics and data to be able to make informed decisions about what to do with sales leads, how to distribute them, and how to get the highest ROI.

There is software that helps automate the process of sales lead management, most notably customer relationship management (CRM) software. Lead management software should have features that help you streamline the process of converting prospects into customers. It should provide the ability to track all important data, from a prospects contact info, to sales notes from the reps, to management notes, to the date and time each prospect was contacted, to cross-selling attempts, to follow-up records, to referrals, and to testimonials.

CRM software normally cannot generate new sales leads as it is a lead management tool. But a good software package should automatically be able to spot sales opportunities from its existing client database. That would include opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell.