Ask HN: How do you manage your sales leads?

[chrisacky]

I don't want to make this sound like a scene out of Glengarry, but as a early stage how do you manage your high quality leads?

(I've got about 40,000 leads that I pulled together. There's a good blog post in this story if I get the time).

At the moment, I have a excel document with lots of fields and contact information, and I essentially work my way through it individually emailing each recipient.

Each converted lead is worth upwards of several hundred (to a few thousand $ per year)... so it totally makes sense to research each customer correctly and spend the time to approach them with a highly customised email about why our product is a great fit for them.

The problem I have is keeping track of where I am and who I have already emailed. Once you start getting one hundred names down the list, and then you start having an open discussion with a few dozen customers, it becomes a minefield to remember each conversation chain you are having.

Do you use CRMs for this and handle the emailing through the CRM, or do you use a sales pipeline management tool?

What are your thoughts (and possible experiences with existing CRMs)?

[codva]

40,000 leads is about 38,000 too many. The first thing you need to decide is who are your tier I target customers, and prune the list appropriately. If you product / service is good and solves a real problem for a properly targeted client, it may be quite a while before you bother with the other 38,000. The other 38,000 are marketing leads, not sales leads. They need to do something to identify themselves as tier I sales leads via some set of trigger events that you ID as beacons that could be indicators that the timing is right to contact them. At some point as you succeed you'll grow into a full time marketing staff that spends all day thinking about how to move the suspects over to the sales lead list. But in terms of generating revenue now, you need to prune the hell out of the list so that you are spending your time chasing the highest value prospects.

[forgingahead]

Wish I could upvote this again. codva is absolutely right, you need to be smart about your targets and close potential for each one. Segmenting the list now into "high-priority" and "my-email-marketing-list" will help you be much more productive and will lead to better close rates.

[suhail]

We use Salesforce (combined with ecquire.com) at Mixpanel - it's not a very friendly UI but it has every feature you'll need in the future. You learn to love it. Plus, every sales person you may hire in the future will already know how to use it (or should). Salesforce, like most CRM tools, has a way to bcc your emails to keep track of the conversations you're having.

You need to start hiring another sales rep too if you're handling 100s of leads by yourself.

You should begin building a qualification framework to understand which leads are valuable and worth your time: Do they have budget? Who has the authority to get this deal done? Do they have a serious need? When will they buy if everything about your product was perfect? And any other unique factors related to your business. Then, get this information into Salesforce!

It's probably time to start using marketing automation/drip campaigns to keep your leads warm too.

Depending on how long your phone calls/meetings run - you'll usually only be able to handle 5-6/day assuming you're doing this full-time so you should consider calculating how many things you can juggle at once.

Use CRM to build a forecast so you can measure your effectiveness. A forecast is as simple as taking the amount of money you might make from each customer that month and multiplying it by the probability you'll close that customer. That'll force you to prioritize.

[nairteashop]

I have to second this. The UI does suck, and the product is expensive ($65/user/month! once you cross 5 users, and $125/user/month if you want to use the API / build any custom apps), but it does scale very well as your sales team grows, and you start dealing with territories, quotas, etc.

It's also a de facto standard, at least in the enterprise space, so an additional benefit to us was that most of the sales folks we hired were familiar with it already.

[weaves]

I started to get sick of the lack of Salesforce email sync, and built this to automatically sync all of my relevant emails to Salesforce: https://www.lelandlabs.com

Currently Exchange email only, but Gmail support is nearly done.

[Snail_Commando]

How could the UI be improved?

[buro9]

We're currently using http://www.streak.com/

It's working fine for us right now, but I'm fairly sure that once we build a decent sized sales team we'll be struggling and looking for something else.

The pros are those good pipelines that they have. The cons are that it can be a bit tricky to manage anything other than a basic flat pipeline and if leads start with a contact or phonecall we send ourselves blank emails to build the stub in Streak.

Oh, and it doesn't work on mobile devices (it relies on a Chrome extension today, so you need to use your laptop/desktop)

Edit: Apparently there's an iPhone app, but our company is 100% Linux/Android so we're just using the Chrome plugin.

[alooPotato]

Founder of Streak here. Happy to answer questions about the product from the OP or anyone else - reach me directly at aleem at streak.

"The cons are that it can be a bit tricky to manage anything other than a basic flat pipeline"

We just launched the ability to link boxes together to allow for more complicated relationships. See: http://blog.streak.com/2014/01/linked-boxes.html

"...and if leads start with a contact or phonecall we send ourselves blank emails to build the stub in Streak."

We have some ideas about how we can do a way better job here. It basically boils down to letting you log meetings or phone calls really easily, but under the hood, its still an email (and all the benefits that come with it).

We also have an iOS app as well as an android app in beta. If you'd like to join the beta, shoot me an email.

[alooPotato]

I'm a co-founder at Streak.com, and I think the problem you're describing is especially well suited for Streak (if you're using gmail). Obviously I'm biased but here's why:

1) We show you the context of your lead right next to the email you're reading in your inbox

2) Our primary interface to your leads is very spreadsheet like. You can search, sort, filter, group, etc to slide and dice your deals in different ways.

3) We extract useful information about your leads automatically (like the date you last emailed them). Combine this with (2) and you can filter and sort your leads so that you know exactly who you need to get back to next.

4) Our saved views feature might be especially useful to you - effectively you can put the leads that need attention right now at the top of your inbox, see here: http://blog.streak.com/2013/07/using-saved-views-to-organize...

[dan_sim]

A CRM is the memory of a business. You will never remember what you forget and it's amazing the number of opportunities we forget.

Import your contact list, put _each_ conversation and email in your CRM. Before calling a client, take a look at what happened recently. Your clients will be amazed of how much things you remember.

If someone is talking about a future project/dream, add it to your CRM with a low priority (I use % of probability of winning). Add a task (in the CRM) to call about the project in a couple of months.

When a conversation ends with the client saying "I'll get back to you", ask when you should follow up on the project and add a task at this date. When it is time, follow up! Clients don't call back and it's ok because it means they are busy with their business.

A CRM is not a task manager but it's essential to add tasks related to contacting your clients in there.

I use CapsuleCRM. Not because it's the best but because it was the easiest to use at that time. I tried the old version of ZohoCRM and it wasn't that good, but they changed it recently so you should take a look. Try them all, you'll find the one that fits you best.

[joeroot]

Streak (http://www.streak.com/) has been a good start for us. Upsides are that it's flexible enough to match most pipeline progressions, exports to CSV, supports mail merge, and allows you to easily track emails.

Our main issue has been that in person meetings and calls are difficult to log and keep track of, and as we've progressed towards those its become less and less useful.

If most of your interactions happen via email however, Streak is a great flexible (and currently free) tool.

[alooPotato]

"Our main issue has been that in person meetings and calls are difficult to log and keep track of, and as we've progressed towards those its become less and less useful."

We're working on handling this better - the main idea will be to let you log meetings or phone calls really easily, but under the hood, its still an email (and all the benefits that come with it).

[notastartup]

This is what I found when I tried to install it, do you think a non-consumer would change to a google chrome? I like how they didn't even bother with creating an IE toolbar, god knows how awful that is.

"Streak currently supports Google Chrome and Safari.

Streak is currently unavailable for your browser.

Sign up to get notified when it is:"

[trey_swann]

+1 Streak (http://www.streak.com)

Streak is great! We were looking for a lightweight CRM that our team would actually use. Streak does everything we need it to and it does not require our team to dramatically change their work flow.

Everything is right inside Gmail and so for us, at this stage, Streak is perfect. Plus, tracking feature is cool. Easy way to see if an email has been read.

Rapportive (https://rapportive.com) is really what makes our direct sales possible. And, Streak plays nice with Rapportive.

[kareemm]

I extensively researched CRMs a few months back. We were looking for simplicity, cost, and a few key features. Pipedrive was the best we found and it's been really effective for us. If we had a larger sales team (just one person now) we'd consider moving to Salesforce - every sales person you'd hire should know how to use it.

[dbuxton]

We like Pipedrive's overall structure (in particular for the way it looks a bit like a Trello board) a lot for the types of sales we do (multi $k/month deals).

The interface is kind of slow and laggy which for something that our sales team spends all day in, is very annoying... For our purposes we can probably live with it but if we were really sweating call volume then I think we'd get something snappier.

We looked at a lot of alternatives and I was blown away by how un-blown-away I was by anything we looked at.

[adthrelfall]

We also opted for Pipedrive for our small sales team of three people. It's fairly intuitive for non-techie sales people and quick to get set up. With a bit of tweaking you can also get it to report on many metrics that are important to startups.

[sandGorgon]

did you look at Base ? I'm also evaluating sales tools for my startup couple of months down - does something like this allow me to migrate to Salesforce a year down the line (easy migration of data).

[oddr]

Definitely +1 for Pipedrive. Works great for us (2 salespersons).

[kateho]

+1 for Pipedrive.

[collin128]

Congrats on the 40k leads, that's an impressive number given your estimated ACV. Maybe you could share a few secrets with us as to how you've managed to generate so many.

Depending on the source and your definition of warm lead you have lots of options. I caution you, as a salesperson myself, not to just throw them all into a CRM willy nilly. Doing so will be information overload and can potentially make things harder on yourself. Excel is the fastest/lightest (non-techincal) UI for viewing and manipulating that size of data.

Your best bet is to come up with some qualification criteria and, as someone already suggested above, try to filter it down to 2k of the best (highest value) leads. From here, I'd work out an approach strategy (read the book: Predictable Revenue) and get working.

Using conservative numbers, 2k leads per month will keep very busy and your pipeline full.

Happy selling.

[kposehn]

Close.io

The platform is great - with built in voip - and does everything I need in one interface. I highly recommend it.

[archemike_]

I've heard of close.io and the event based features make it look really promising..

[grep]

And you just signed up to write that.

[jseliger]

What are your thoughts (and possible experiences with existing CRMs)?

You might be too big for it, but Seliger + Associates [1] uses Highrise: https://highrisehq.com/ . It's intuitive and easy to use but surprisingly fully featured.

It may or may not be appropriate for your use pattern, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet.

[1] See www.seliger.com if you're curious; we're grant writing consultants who work primarily for nonprofit and public agencies.

[rasengan]

Definitely just use whatever CRM with which you feel the most comfortable. I've been comfortable with a variety from the traditional ACT/Sage and Goldmine to the robust SugarCRM.

You can also setup a powerful set of google docs/forms to achieve the exact same thing of course.

That said, always bare in mind how, where, and with who you are storing your data. All it takes is 1 unscrupulous or 1 completely insecure/socially engineer-able individual to make life bad.

[amowat]

I see a lot of options listed below but there really is no substitute for Salesforce.com. The basic editions are quite reasonably priced and Salesforce has more integrations than any other platform. Here is a great simple guide on Salesforce basics

http://blog.prialto.com/essential-crm-management-toolkit/

[archemike_]

I find regardless of CRM or chickenscratch everyday you're going to have to go through at least 5 minutes of masterminding and maintaining the list. For outgoing I use sendy with SES and you can use variables in the template so your .csv of names can auto load to quickly personalize an email to each lead. If you'd like to mastermind more I'd love to! [email protected]

[hopeless]

Since the title asks, I manage my sales leads with http://www.onepagecrm.com/ because it's simple, I can CC email conversations, make notes etc and it basically does the job a small business needs done (in my case, consultancy)

Having said that, it really isn't the place where I'd put 40,000 leads and custom fields.

[enegdo]

Try Nimble CRM. We use them at my consulting shop. The product definitely has it's warts, but can help in pulling together (social media) information about leads in your pipeline. You can log calls emails etc but it's a bit more of a pain.

[tsycho]

My wife's company uses Marketo, though that might be more of an enterprise product. not sure if it's cost effective for a single founder. My wife thinks it is a great product and it integrates well with Salesforce.

[mindcrime]

We use SugarCRM, complemented with our own custom sales-intelligence tooling (which we are probably going to turn into a SaaS offering in it's own right soon. Keep a look out).

[iamjbean]

Try Base (http://getbase.com) You'll be able to connect your inbox and automatically track and sort your conversations. Creating a customized sales pipeline is also important so your CRM matches your actual sales process. Strong iOS and Android apps as well.