Website Leads
The 'Contact Us' form on the St John Website is integrated with Salesforce. When users fill out the form, there is an option to select that they are making a marketing enquiry. Any marketing enquiry completed on the website will integrate to Salesforce as a Lead record.
Leads allow you to keep track of these types of enquiries and, when a promising one pops up, convert it into and Account, Contact and (if required) an Opportunity.
1. Assigning Leads
Marketing Leads are automatically routed to the 'Marketing' queue.
The Marketing queue can be treated like an inbox for new web-based Leads. You can access the queue by completing the following -
- Navigate to the 'Leads' tab from the Salesforce navigation bar
- Select 'Marketing' from the list selection
After accessing the list, you can review the incoming Leads and assign ownership. To do this -
- Select a Lead
- Select the 'Details' tab
- Select the little person icon to the right of the 'Lead Owner' field
- Search for who you would like to assign the Lead to
- Select 'Change Owner'
If you would like the new owner to receive a notification, be sure to select the 'Send notification email' box'.
It is entirely possible that you may receive some incoming Leads that are more Sales than Marketing. If this happens, all you need to do is either reassign ownership to a sales team member or reassign ownership to the Sales queue (which works in exactly the same way as the marketing queue). To do this, when using the reassign ownership dialogue, you will need to select the little drop down arrow next to the person icon and select 'Queue' before searching for it.
It is really easy to access a list of the Leads you own. Just navigate to the 'Leads' tab from the Salesforce navigation bar and select 'My Open Sales Leads' from the list selector. This will display a list of Leads that you own that are still open (the status has not been changed to either 'Converted or 'Closed - Not Qualified').
You will notice that Leads originating from the web have some very useful information on them! Select the 'Details' tab and scroll down the page to the 'Web Information' section and review the 'Description' field. This should provide you with lots of information to go on before contacting your Lead.
2. Follow Up
Salesforce provides you with a host of great tools to follow up your Lead and keep track of your activities. Under the 'Activities' tab you will find options to log a call, create a task, create an event or even send an email to your Lead directly from Salesforce. These tools are very easy to use and all your activities are logged against the Lead in the 'Past Activity' and 'Next Steps' areas. You can quickly and easily build up a detailed timeline of your interaction with the Lead.
As you follow up your Lead, don't forget to update the 'Lead Status'. This will help you keep track of where each Lead is at in its lifecycle. You can update by selecting the status from the bar at the top of the screen and selecting 'Mark as Current Status'.
Salesforce provides you with a little guide on how to progress your Lead - including some reminders of what you need to update as you move through its lifecycle. You can find this in the 'Guidance for Success' section at the top of the page.
3. Close or Convert
As your Lead progresses you will reach the stage where it is either qualified or not qualified.
Unqualified
An unqualified Lead may be one where the customer has stopped communicating or their request is not something St John is interested in. In this circumstance, you can close your Lead out -
- Select Closed - Not Qualified from the status bar at the top of the screen
- Select 'Mark as Current Status'
Leads marked as not qualified still remain in the system and can be easily included in future marketing campaigns. Indeed, if you check the right had side of your Lead page you will notice that upon completing the contact form on the website (and specifying) the Lead will have been automatically added to a subscriber list in campaign monitor, ready to be used in outbound EDM communications.
Qualified
A qualified Lead may be one that has progressed to the point that the customer would like a quote or their enquiry is of interest and warrants an ongoing relationship. At this point you can convert your Lead into a brand new Account, Contact and Opportunity. Salesforce makes this nice and easy, just a few clicks of a few buttons -
- Select 'Convert' from the buttons in the top right of your screen
- Account Name - here you have the option to either merge the Lead with an existing Account (the Opportunity record will be created against this Account) or to create a new Account. To merge with an existing, simply search for the Account using the lookup field. Salesforce will automatically suggest options matching your search. If you are having difficulty finding your Account use select the magnifying glass to perform a more comprehensive search. If you need to create a new Account, select '+ New Account' from the bottom of the search list. You will then be presented with a dialogue to create a new Account. Please refer to this user guide for more details on creating a new Salesforce Account - Creating a New Account.
- Opportunity Name - this will be the name of your new Opportunity when it is created as part of the merge process. The Opportunity will be automatically linked to the new/existing Account you selected in step 2
- When you are done, select 'Convert'
Opportunities are very much in the Sales realm and will often not be consistent with the kind of marketing enquiries you receive. In this instance, you may want to create an Account and Contact but not a Sales Opportunity. This is really easy - simply refrain from entering an Opportunity Name before selecting the 'Convert' button
Once you have converted your Lead, its 'Lead Status' will automatically be updated to 'Converted'. Converted Leads are no longer accessible on the Leads tab. You have a brand new Account, Contact and Opportunity to manage the customer from!
After conversion, you will be presented with the following pop up, providing links to your new record(s).
If you have created a Sales Opportunity you may want to review the following guide - Creating a Corporate Sale Opportunity.
