Changing Lead Status

For those of you who manage multiple leads, managing them within Relationals can be challenging particularly if you want to be able to run reports and manage your prospects in a more sophisticated way.

Change your lead status is an excellent way to do this. As you can see in the picture to the left, the easiest way to do this is to change the lead status as you are logging your call. The lead always defaults to Lead Status Open, but by changing to Contacted, Qualified or Unqualified, you create more information that you can use down the line to help you create lists of your prospects who fit these categories. It also helps you manage your "open" leads by keeping this view only people you still need to contact.

In addition to changing lead status on the Log Call screen, you also can do this when you create a new lead by changing the Lead Status in the post.

Now you can create a custom view that allows you to sort your leads by your lead status.

Your Homework: Go to your leads tab. Notice that it defaults to Open leads. Spend some time today editing your leads and changing to contacted, qualified and unqualified. Come back tomorrow to learn more about how you can create a view of these leads.

Using Lead Status to Manage Prospects

If you work frequently with leads, you may find it challenging to organize your lead lists. In particular, you may wonder why your lists are organized the way they are and how you can change this. Relationals allows you to change the way that your leads are "sorted," or organized. The screen to the right shows you the Sort By area of Relationals (which can be accessed by clicking Edit or Add View linsk from your Leads screen.)

Your default Leads view is Open Leads, which are leads that you have entered and not changed the status on or have been loaded and assigned to you. This view defaults to sort your leads by Last Activity Decending (or, showing those leads you have contacted most recently at the bottom of the list so that you see those you need to contact at the top). This can cause some confusion if your Open Lead list is all of your leads, including those you have logged activity on. You're probably wondering why they aren't sorted alphabetically, right? There are times and places in your CRM to sort alphabetically, such as contacts or accounts. But leads? You really should be concerned about activity.

Last Activity is a nice, default way to organize leads. However, if you are logging calls and follow-up tasks, you're going to see these leads later show up in your calendar, right? So, there are some other strategies you can use to sort information. And, Relationals allows you to use up to two different levels of sorting.

For recruitment salespeople, you may find it helpful to sort by, say, Number of Employees - ascending (most employees first) and they by Corzen Lead Score - ascending (highest probability to advertise at the top). For retail salespeople, you may want to use a Dunn & Bradstreet revenue figure to put those with the highest revenue first. Keep in mind - you can only sort on the data that is available for the lead. In many cases, particularly if the lead is from outside of the organization, that means this type of data won't be there. So, smile and take your leads sorted by LAst Activity or maybe by Company Name -ascending (i.e., alphabetically).

Homework
Today, review your leads and how they are sorted. See if you can change a view of your leads by sorting by a different criteria, such as by Company Name.