Best Lead Management & Tracking Software | 2021 Guide

Your marketing and sales teams share the same basic objective — to sell your service or product. Marketers generate interest, while sales teams guide prospective buyers to the cash register.

But it isn’t always clear what goes on between those two steps. That’s where lead management comes in.

In this guide, we’ll answer the most pressing questions about lead management software, and how it can help your business convert leads into sales.

• What is lead management software?
• What are the benefits of lead tracking software?
• What are the features of a lead management system?
• What are the current lead management software trends?
• Top 10 lead management software solutions
• A summary of the best sales lead management software
• How to choose the best lead management software?
• FAQs on lead management systems
• Try lead tracking software for free

During the process of converting leads, there is a very important moment when leads are handed off from marketing to sales. If you’ve ever watched a relay race, you’ll know that the moment of hand-off is the most tense. It’s the moment where mistakes are most likely to happen.

Lead management software — sometimes known as lead software or lead tracking — makes that moment of hand-off much less risky.

How does lead management software work?

Lead management is the process of ensuring that customer leads aren’t dropped as they’re passed from marketing to sales. Depending on which lead management software you use, the process may run differently. But the basic procedure usually looks something like this:

• Lead generation software draws interested people to your website, either through paid advertisements, search engine results, referrals, or social media. And here are some outside-the-box ways to generate leads, too.
• Lead capture feeds lead information into your CRM lead software. Usually by offering users some kind of perk in exchange for filling out a webform or entering their email.
• Sales lead qualification determines a lead’s sales readiness by reviewing their problems and looking at how suited your product or service is to solving it.
• Lead segmentation divides your population of leads based on different factors such as location, demographics, and problems. This allows teams and reps to target specific groups with personalized campaign efforts.
• Sales lead scoring prioritizes leads based on whatever criteria is most important to your business. It places the most sales-ready buyers at the top. Your sales team will know who’s most likely to buy and who will require more effort.
• Lead distribution automatically assigns leads to the appropriate sales people. Matching them to the reps who are in the best position to convert that lead into a sale.
• A lead nurturing process educates leads about your product or service, establishing credibility, trust, and value.

It should be said that the process doesn’t work by itself. You need to understand who your ideal customer is; you need to construct webforms that capture the right kind of information about their problems. It’s no good collecting data that doesn’t help you determine how qualified a lead is.

Understand your ideal customer and maintain strong communication between marketing and sales teams. These are the keys to unlocking the potential of your lead management software.

Installing and learning new software can be time consuming. You want to be sure that the lead management system you commit to will provide a good ROI. Here are some of the biggest benefits of devoting the time and money to using sales lead tracking software.

Lead management saves time

Lead and sales tracker software saves time by automating much of the work that your team members would otherwise have to do manually. From automatically entering leads into your database to alerting sales reps of new qualified leads, lead software eliminates hours of tedious work.

Second, lead management software is an excellent way of organizing your leads according to their sales readiness. This allows your team to direct their time and energy where it’s most likely to pay off.

You’ll convert more leads to sales

Sales lead software helps you generate more sales by prioritizing leads. In this way, your sales reps can pursue the most likely buyers and close more sales. Think of it like a range of archery targets. Lead tracking software illuminates only the targets that are in your range and line of sight. You’re not wasting arrows and energy trying to hit targets you can’t reach.

You’ll see improved communication between teams

Sometimes it’s difficult for different departments to see the big picture. But lead management software gives you a direct link between marketing and sales. This provides better insight into just how one team’s efforts affect the other.

Clear communication between departments is key to optimizing the sales process. That’s why many businesses use a lead management system that’s already integrated into a CRM, or customer relationship management system.

The best CRMs can handle all the tasks of lead management software, while also providing additional tools to maximize team communication.

You’ll gain better customer insight

Using sales lead management software gives you a better understanding of consumer behavior and preferences. This lets you build more personalized marketing campaigns and messaging.

Lead tracking software gives you a clearer picture of who’s traveling through the sales funnel and what kind of value they can produce. With that kind of data, you can refine your marketing and sales tactics to draw in even more customers.

Using a lead management system allows you to respond the moment a prospect shows interest in your product or service. And for each action you can take, there’s a lead software management tool making the job easier, faster, and more efficient.

Here are some of the standard features you can expect to be included in lead management software.

A customizable CRM dashboard

A CRM dashboard gives you a 360-degree look at where your leads stand. You can view their activity from the moment they enter the funnel to the moment they make a purchase. Navigating from the sales dashboard, your team can monitor performance metrics. They can also judge the effectiveness of a recent campaign and view the entire customer lifecycle at a glance.

Lead capture

Lead capture collects prospective client data, including contact details, behavior, and preferred channels of communication, and stores it in a secure database. When your sales reps arrive at the lead nurturing stage later on, they’ll have a treasure trove of information to get the ball rolling.

Activity tracking

An activity tracking tool tracks your lead’s activities with your business. From face-to-face meetings to email conversations, this type of tool tracks your lead’s engagement as they move through your sales funnel.

Such data gives you further insight into their preferred methods of communication. And lets you see where they may be getting stuck in your pipeline.

Analytics and reporting

Analytics and sales reporting lets you see the exact numbers and patterns behind every success and failure. It becomes clear what kind of messaging works with which segments, and where people are slipping out of the funnel.

Using analytics and reporting, your managers can implement data-driven solutions, and see in real-time if they’re working.

Communication Tools

As stated earlier, one of the biggest benefits of using lead management tools is improved communication. The best sales lead tracking software will provide features for optimizing communication on the platform, making data sharing easy and eliminating chances for miscommunication.

Integration

Integrations let you connect your lead tracking software to other business apps. Many lead software apps are simply included as a function of customer relationship management, or a CRM software platform.

CRM lead software comes with many other profit-boosting features and benefits, such as contact management software, pipeline automation, and a power dialer.

Software development is an ever-evolving segment of the tech industry. It changes as the market adjusts to new buyer demands and tougher competition. As you search for the right lead management tool for your business, don’t overlook these important sales lead management software trends.

Buyer intent data

When someone visits your website, it means they’re interested. But if that first visit doesn’t result in a sale, it doesn’t mean their visit was pointless. Track what a customer looks at on your site, whether it’s a blog or pricing page.

It gives you valuable insight about what they’re looking for. With the ability to track that kind of buyer intent data, you’re better able to personalize your outreach to them in the future.

Customer-centric marketing

Marketers are working harder than ever to get their ads noticed. Rather than simply being louder than the competition, businesses are focusing on customer needs. Customer-centric marketing means creating campaigns that resonate with your ideal customer, rather than trying to throw yourself in front of everyone’s gaze.

Video content

Videos add personality and convenience to your brand. Increasingly, businesses are adding videos to landing pages and web forms. With more engaging content available, leads are more inspired to provide further information about themselves.

Automated chatbots

AI sales chatbots are an easy hands-off approach to answering visitor questions and gathering information. Let's say a visitor to your site has a question about your product. Chatbots can automatically guide them to the answer they need without taking time out of your sales reps’ schedules.

Any sales lead software worth its salt will come with basic features like lead capture, lead segmentation, lead distribution, and lead nurturing. With additional functions like contact management and CRM, lead software can pack a lot of punch on just one platform.

Here’s our list of the top lead management tools on the market today. And some of the features they offer to help you boost sales and sales productivity.

1. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a powerful and user-friendly CRM lead software solution that includes all the features of lead management. Its pre-built Pipeline Conversion Report lets users spot bottlenecks in the sales cycle. While funnel tracking gives you a full view of how well your marketing campaigns are translating into revenue.

Zendesk Sell offers lots of useful features that make lead management easier for your team. They’ll have access to time-saving (and industry-leading) sales and marketing tools.

That way your reps can spend their time perfecting their sales emails, cold email templates, and sales follow up emails. Check out our resources around sales email examples and writing effective sales email subject lines for more info.

Users can also quickly search for prospects in your customizable Lead Smart List, so they’ll always have fast access to the best prospects. And to make sure nothing gets lost in the sales prospecting shuffle, Zendesk automatically logs calls and emails. Zendesk Sell’s pricing models offer scalable plans, and start at just $19 per month per user.

Features

• CRM for small business or enterprise-sized organizations
• Marketing automation
• Mobile access
• Collaboration tools
• Internal chat integration
• Self-service portal
• Social media integration
• Performance metrics
• Content delivery

2. Keap

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Keap is a CRM lead management tool built with long-term growth in mind. Its lowest pricing tier begins at $79 for 500 contacts for one user. All of Keap’s pricing plans offer unlimited emails, data migration support, and include a one-time fee of $499 for its expert coaching.

Features

• Analytics/ROI tracking
• Contact management
• Landing pages/web forms
• Marketing automation
• Sales pipeline management

3. Odoo

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Odoo is a cloud-based lead management system that offers other business apps including CRM, contact management, and marketing automation. Pricing models begin at $20.00 per month per user.

Features

• Reporting/analytics
• 360 degree feedback
• Cost-to-completion tracking
• Portfolio management
• Campaign management

4. Accelo

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Accelo’s lead management software comes with CRM capabilities and features. It includes all the basic sales lead management tools, as well as other features like document management, time tracking, and a Kanban Board. Accelo pricing starts at $39 per user per month, with a minimum of 3 users.

Features

• Collaboration tools
• Calendar/reminder system
• Marketing automation
• Dashboard
• Sales pipeline management

5. LeadSquared

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LeadSquared is a CRM and lead management system used in industries such as travel, real estate, education, marketing agencies, e-commerce, and more. It offers mobile access on Android and iOS devices, and starts its pricing models at $25.00 per feature per month.

Features

• Calendar/reminder system
• Marketing automation
• Performance metrics
• Pipeline management
• Social media integration

6. Lead Docket

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Lead Docket is a lead management platform best used for individuals, mid-sized businesses, or enterprise firms. Lead Docket offers integrations with business apps like Docusign, Mailchimp, and CallRail. Pricing details are available upon request.

Features

• Campaign management
• Online forms
• Data extraction
• Sales pipeline management
• Prospecting tools

7. ClickPoint

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ClickPoint serves a range of industries, including education, mortgage, B2B, travel, franchise based customers, insurance, and call centers. Pricing models begin at $65.00 per month per user.

Features

• Calendar/reminder system
• Call logging
• Auto-dialer
• Marketing automation
• Field sales management

8. Pipedrive

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Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM system. It includes all the features of lead management, as well as other functions. Like call recording, client tracking, and online forms. Pricing models start at $12.50 per month per user.

Features

• Churn management
• Calendar/reminder system
• Collaboration tools
• Landing pages/web forms
• Dashboard

Learn more about Pipedrive integration for Zendesk

9. Leadfeeder

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Best for B2B businesses with at least one sales person, Leadfeeder is a lead management platform that starts at $63.00 per month per feature. It includes all the basic features of lead tracking software like lead qualification, segmentation, and nurturing. It also includes CRM features and user interaction tracking.

Features

• Dashboard
• Goal setting/tracking
• Campaign management
• Reporting/analytics
• Pipeline management

10. Lead Capsule

Lead Capsule is a lead management solution that’s best for lead brokers, lead aggregators, and call centers. It specializes in capturing and selling leads to other businesses, and its lowest pricing model begins at $499 per month per feature.

Features

• Source tracking
• Pipeline management
• Prospecting tools
• Lead capture
• Campaign management

Here’s how our top 10 picks stack up against one another at a glance:

A quick search on the internet will give you hundreds of sales lead tracking software options. Choosing the right one is all about knowing your business top to bottom, and being honest about your budget and needs.

Before signing on the dotted line, here are some steps you should take to help you make the best choice for your company.

Know what lead tracking features you need

Talk to your marketing and sales teams to gain a full understanding of how they’re currently handling leads. This isn’t about pointing fingers at people dropping the ball — it’s about knowing where the ball is being dropped.

Clarify that communication will improve with the right lead tracking software, and make sure to pinpoint any problems that are currently slowing sales.

Make sure it’s worth your money

Any investment you make needs to have a solid return. Using sales lead software will boost sales, which will cover the expense of continuing to use the platform. As you shop around, compare the pricing for certain features to make sure you don’t pay for more than you need.

Make sure it’s easy to use

The whole point of sales lead software is to make the sales process easier. All software can come with a learning curve, sure. But if your IT team is overwhelmed with headaches from trying to navigate a clunky system, all you’ve done is transfer problems from one department to another.

Look for sales lead management software with friendly user interfaces and good customer support. Your IT team will thank you for it.

Make sure it can grow with you

In a perfect world, your business will always be on the path of growth. Whatever lead management tool you decide to use, make sure you won’t outgrow its capabilities anytime soon. One of the best ways to do this is to get your sales lead software through a powerful, and scalable, CRM system.

Still have questions? Here are the simple answers to some common queries we see people asking about lead tracking software.