Lead management software makes it easier for the marketing and sales team to attract, track, and win new customers. Although all lead management software is designed to help businesses guide potential customers to become paying customers, these platforms still have their differences.

Podium, for example, brings all customer and lead contact information and messages from different sources into a centralized location. It stops the team from wasting time switching platforms to view and respond to each inquiry and greatly reduces the risk of reps missing leads. It’s the best lead management solution available for small businesses.

To help you find the best lead management software for your business, this article lists some of your best options today. It will also cover everything about these lead management systems, including the benefits and how to choose one.

What is lead management software?

Lead management is a set of practices businesses use to get more customers. Leads are consumers who show interest in your products and services. But these leads aren’t guaranteed to buy the product or subscribe to your service. So, to find leads that are most likely to become customers and convince them to take action, marketing teams and sales reps track lead activities and keep leads engaged by sending them content relevant to their needs.

Lead generation, qualification, segmentation, and other processes involved in managing leads can be tedious and time-consuming if done manually or with the use of separate tools. Lead management software allows marketing and sales teams to do all these activities on one platform to save time and effort.

A lead management platform is packed with various functionalities, such as:

Automated data collection. This feature enables companies to easily gather vital lead information from various channels, like websites, surveys, and social media platforms.
Data management. The marketing and sales team has to process tons of would-be customer data from different sources. With lead management solutions, you can store and manage crucial customer data at a centralized location so your employees can easily access it when needed.
Automated responses. The response time to consumer’s queries can affect whether the lead opts to continue a transaction with your business. Some lead management solutions can send pre-approved messages automatically, ensuring your leads get a response within a few seconds.

When you search for lead management software, you are likely to come across a customer relationship management (CRM) solution as well. These are two different tools. CRM software is used to manage existing customers, while lead management software is for managing potential customers.

Benefits of Lead Management Software

1. Centralized Lead Storage and Organization

Most lead management software offers a centralized location to store all your lead information, including their contact details, status, and communication history. It can stop your team from wasting time switching between multiple databases to get the information they need. A centralized database can also improve collaboration between your marketing and sales departments. This makes processes like inbound lead generation more efficient.

2. Automated Lead Nurturing and Engagement

Lead nurturing and engagement are crucial in converting leads to paying customers. These processes involve creating targeted and personalized text or email campaigns, sending follow-up messages, and providing different types of content relevant to the lead’s needs. It’s building relationships with and getting the trust of leads. The goal is to convince them to take action. Most lead management solutions automate some of these processes, like alerting salespeople of sales leads, eliminating hours of tedious work.

3. Enhanced Lead Scoring and Prioritization

Not all leads will become customers. Lead scoring and prioritization are processes for identifying leads that are most likely to convert and make you money, so your team can avoid wasting valuable resources pursuing leads that won’t convert. Lead scoring involves assigning a score to each lead based on chosen criteria, like online behavior and demographic information. A high score indicates the lead is ready to close a sale.

Using lead management tools for lead scoring and prioritization can result in higher-quality leads. Gut feelings are taken off the table. These tools provide your team with all the data they need to achieve an unparalleled level of scoring accuracy. Your team can easily determine who is ready to buy, reducing the sales cycle length and boosting your conversion rate.

4. Seamless Integration with Other Tools and Systems

Your business likely uses many different applications. Having to constantly switch between these solutions can be time-consuming and inefficient.

Most lead management software can be integrated with communication channels and third-party applications, allowing data to seamlessly flow between platforms. As a result, it streamlines the sales process from start to finish.

Top 10 Lead Management Solutions

1. Podium

Podium offers a suite of solutions designed to help growing businesses get more leads and make more money. Lead Drive consolidates leads from different channels into a single, organized inbox. It funnels all inquiries into one platform to provide a unified view of all your leads from all channels including email, text, and social media.

Podium can also help streamline email marketing and customer support workflows to serve as a comprehensive business tool.

Features:

Consolidated inbox
Capture leads from multiple sources
Automated response
Email scanning
Unified leads view
Third-party app integrations

Pros:

Lead Drive can take leads from multiple channels and consolidate them into one inbox for a more unified view.
You can set up the software to automatically send a pre-approved text message to lead inquiries, ensuring fast response every time.
Podium integrates with 200+ third-party applications (Freshsales, Calendly, BigCommerce, etc.), which means it likely works with the tools you already use.

Cons:

There’s no free plan available.

2. ClickUp

ClickUp is a versatile platform that can act as a CRM lead management system. It helps businesses visualize pipelines, create sales pipeline templates, monitor and manage accounts, and streamline customer workflows. It also features data analysis and a customer database that provides comprehensive insight. ClickUp can automatically delegate tasks at every stage of the pipeline as well.

Features:

Sales pipeline management
Unified customer data
Extensive integration support
Customer workflow automation
Custom forms
Simplified account management

Pros:

ClickUp allows you to monitor leads and visualize pipelines.
Team members can collaborate on closing deals through fast-tracked communication.
The software lets you create a system for storing and analyzing customers, deals, and contacts most suited to your business.

Cons:

Businesses that are only looking for a lead management solution might not be able to make the most of ClickUp’s comprehensive features.

3. Creatio

Creatio is not specifically a lead management software. But it offers tools to help teams manage leads, such as their Sales Creatio system. This tool can handle everything from lead capturing to processing, tracking, and handing off to sales. You can add leads from multiple sources and funnel them into a single database for more organized management.

Features:

Lead generation
Automated data verification
Lead qualification
Communications history
Lead distribution
Lead analytics

Pros:

Sales Creatio can automatically verify data and create new contacts from different sources.
The system helps you work only with sales-ready leads by letting you link leads to relevant accounts, merge duplicate leads, and augment lead data.
You can optimize lead distribution by assigning them to the right teams based on various factors, like current workload, profile, and prospect’s needs.

Cons:

Leads management tools are bundled together with other features in the Sales Creatio module with no adjustable pricing, so you can’t choose to pay for leads management capabilities only.

4. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM and pipeline management solution packed with lead management capabilities. Its visual and user-friendly UI, combined with customizability, enables easy pipeline management regardless of your unique sales process.

Features:

Bulk import of leads
Lead labeling
Leads inbox
Chatbot and live chat
Web forms
Smart contact data

Pros:

Your teams can add color-coded labels to leads and deals for more organized handling.
Pipedrive’s leads inbox keeps your CRM clutter-free and helps you store and organize leads.
Pipedrive offers web forms and chat tools (chatbot and live chat) as additional lead sources for your business.

Cons:

The mobile app is not as intuitive as the cloud-based, Windows-compatible version
Its features may be insufficient for larger businesses.

5. Salesforce

Salesforce is an end-to-end CRM system with AI-driven lead management capabilities. It lets you connect with leads and monitor them throughout all your channels. The system also uses artificial intelligence to help you prioritize the most promising leads based on customer profiles.

Features:

AI-driven lead management tools
Omnichannel lead management
Buyer assistant
Instant or scheduled rep connection
AI-powered deal insights

Pros:

Armed with AI-driven lead insights, you can prioritize leads based on their potential, relevant sales activities, and opportunity health. This effectively eliminates the need for guesswork.
Salesforce can connect and monitor leads in every channel.
Qualified leads can instantly connect with an available representative. You can also set a scheduled meeting.

Cons:

The initial configuration can be daunting and time-consuming.

6. Keap

Keap is a comprehensive sales and marketing automation software that offers lead management and tracking tools tailored for small businesses. It helps collect and capture new leads, organize prospect records, and automatically triggers the next appropriate actions for the sales process.

Features:

Lead magnet blueprints
Internal forms
Dedicated sales funnels
Up-to-date reporting
Score leads
Automated sales pipeline

Pros:

Keap helps you regularly capture qualified leads through features like lead magnet blueprints, dedicated sales funnels, internal forms, and landing pages.
The software keeps records up-to-date to ensure everything aligns with the latest lead information.
To help identify the promising leads and take appropriate action, Keap lets you score leads and apply tags to them.

Cons:

This platform is more expensive compared to other lead management solutions that target small and growing businesses.

7. Leadsquared

Leadsquared is an extensive lead management system that aims to eliminate lead leakage by providing tools to capture opportunities from all avenues – website forms, social media, ads, phone calls, voicemails, and third-party sites.

Features:

Automated lead capturing
Leads auto-qualification
Easy leads distribution
Built-in dialer
Multi-channel sourcing
Automated sales processes

Pros:

Leadsquared can capture leads from all sources, like websites, lead aggregators, imported lists, and social media.
Through pre-configured rules, users can automatically qualify leads. They can also assign a relevant score to each one based on factors like link clicks, email opens, inquiries, and more.
With Leadsquared, there’s no need to juggle between leads management software and a communication platform because of the available built-in dialer.

Cons:

There are a few notable complaints about server issues.

8. HubSpot

HubSpot is a business customer platform that offers robust lead management tools. It allows businesses to prioritize, organize, and engage leads in one central solution. The software ensures that tools and information are interconnected to prevent issues caused by data and process silos.

Features:

Personalized prospecting workspace
Automated lead assignments
Automated lead scoring and prioritization
Easy access to lead information
Lead segmentation
Automated lead follow-ups

Pros:

A custom prospecting workspace provides the reps with access to pertinent tools and information for qualifying leads.
HubSpot’s lead management solution connects all touchpoints across different departments for faster action.
Businesses can use user- or HubSpot-curated criteria to automatically assign lead scores.

Cons:

Somewhat limited analytics and reporting options

9. Lead Docket

Lead Docket is a lead management platform that helps legal professionals attract, convert, and retain more clients. It consolidates all the tools and data you need in one place for more efficient leads management. It’s a cloud-based, mobile-ready solution (supports both Android and iOS) that lets you work anywhere and on any device.

Features:

AI-enhanced tools
Lead tracking
Marketing optimization
Custom intake forms
Workflow automation
Referral tracking

Pros:

Lead Docket not only captures every lead and keeps track of them up to conversion, but it also ensures that you and your prospect are informed about the process at all times.
Personalized intake forms help streamline lead contact information gathering and case field qualification. Answering services and web chats can also be integrated.
Lead Docket lets you monitor revenue per source, referral fees, lead volume over time, and other metrics that you can use to make smarter business decisions.

Cons:

Lead Docket is specifically tailored for legal professionals so businesses in any other industry will need to find another solution.

10. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a B2B lead generation platform that converts page views into pipelines. It helps identify which companies are interested in your website and turn them into leads. Leadfeeder also supports two-way integration with other leading solutions like Salesforce and Pipedrive.

Features:

Website visitors identification
Leadfeeder custom segmentation
Automated lead quality filter
Leadfeeder Contacts
Integration with major CRM and marketing solutions
Advanced reports

Pros:

Unlike most lead-capturing tools where users need to fill up a form, Leadfeeder can identify the companies that visit your website.
Leadfeeder offers all the basic features of lead tracking software, including segmentation and qualification.
Leadfeeder can automatically suggest the best personnel to contact from the company of the captured leads.

Cons:

Integration is not as easy or extensive as other lead management solutions.

How to Choose a Lead Management Software

Although all lead management solutions share the same purpose, they are not made the same. They differ in terms of functionalities, pricing, target users, etc. There are various factors you have to consider when choosing an application for your growing business, but the features are the most important thing to take into account. Make sure your LMS has the following:

Lead Capture and Data Management

Part of lead management is collecting customer data, which is used to create targeted marketing campaigns. The data can come from various channels, including websites, social media platforms, and email. Choose a solution that seamlessly integrates with your website and other channels where your leads typically come from. The more effortless your software captures and manages data, the smoother your lead management process will be.

Lead Nurturing and Automation

A robust lead management system should offer lead nurturing and automation capabilities. Look for features like marketing automation, lead scoring, and drip campaigns. These tools allow you to cultivate relationships with your leads, guiding them through the sales funnel systematically.

Automation is the linchpin here. The software should automate routine tasks, allowing your team to focus on strategic initiatives. Whether it’s sending personalized follow-up texts or assigning leads based on predefined criteria, automation ensures that no potential opportunity falls through the cracks.

Lead Tracking, Analytics, and Reporting

To optimize your lead management strategy, you need insights. Choose lead management software offering comprehensive tracking, analytics, and reporting features. Real-time analytics can help you understand how leads interact with your content, allowing you to tailor your approach for maximum impact. Detailed reporting is equally crucial, as it can help you measure the success of your lead management efforts.

Integration and Scalability

Integration is non-negotiable in a world where various tools power different aspects of your business. Your lead management software should offer API and seamlessly integrate with your CRM, marketing automation tools, and any other software in your tech stack. This integration ensures a cohesive workflow and eliminates data silos.

Scalability is another vital consideration. As your business grows, so should your lead management software. Ensure that the software can accommodate an increasing volume of leads and adapt to the evolving needs of your organization. A scalable solution future-proofs your investment and ensures long-term viability.

Lead Management Software FAQs

Q: What is the best software to manage leads sales?

A: The best solution will depend on your business needs and your unique situation. For growing businesses looking for a cost-effective and feature-rich lead management solution, Podium can be the best option.

Q: Why do we need lead management software?

A: Lead management involves various processes, like data collection and lead scoring. These processes take a lot of time and energy if done manually. There’s also the risk of getting inaccurate data and leads falling through the cracks. Lead management software can automate, streamline, and improve all processes involved in managing leads that come through your pipeline.

Q: What is the use of a lead management system?

A: In a nutshell, businesses use the lead management system to understand their leads, optimize their marketing strategies, and make more money by turning more interested consumers into customers.

10 Best Lead Management Software in 2023

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