Marketing & lead generation

How CRM Improves Lead Generation: Streamline Your Lead-to-Deal Flow

6 min read

85% of B2B marketers rank lead generation as their top goal, followed by sales at 84% and lead nurturing at 78%.

In short, lead generation is serious business — it’s what fills your sales pipeline, after all. And more sales means more business growth.

Businesses are turning to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to drive their lead generation efforts and streamline the path to conversion.

The result? CRM shows to increase lead conversions by 300%.

Let’s delve deeper into how CRM powers the entire lead generation process for more successful outcomes.

What is CRM lead generation?

Lead generation can exist as a standalone feature in software. But a standalone lead generator

software has limitations.

If your lead data lacks crucial context from interactions to identify good from bad leads, inform your sales and marketing strategies, and forecast sales, it’s useless.

That’s where a CRM platform comes in.

CRM lead generation encompasses the entire process of identifying, attracting, capturing, qualifying, and nurturing prospects toward conversion, providing tools to manage and optimise your efforts at each step.

The platform funnels multi-channel lead and customer data into one central place, gathering all interaction history with critical insights and context to inform your efforts.

How does CRM software help with lead generation?

So, CRM plays a key role in tracking information about potential customers, ensuring you know who to target, what to say to them, when to say it, and which leads you should prioritise (i.e., making your marketing and sales strategies more effective).

Here, we outline some of the top CRM tools to generate leads and guide your efforts toward conversion:

Tracking behaviour and analytics

Vasts amounts of data are collected throughout the sales pipeline — from every point of interaction.

It would be hard to interpret this huge chunk of data without the data-processing capability of a dedicated CRM platform.

Using CRM software for lead generation involves collecting and analysing these data points, empowering you to become even more proactive in your lead management and maximise the conversion potential of every lead.

Thanks to embedded AI and ML (machine learning) enhancements, CRMs can generate analytics of a wide variety based on leads’ behaviour, activity, and trends within the sales pipeline. This real-time snapshot into lead engagement will help you identify which prospects are most likely to convert.

The data-driven decision-making that 24/7 updates on available data also means you can regularly improve your strategies as you progress.

The insights, trend forecasts, and strategic direction these will bring to your internal process will undoubtedly bump up your lead gen (and conversion) outcomes, as your sales and marketing teams will now be acting on real-time reports to make these smart decisions.

Data-driven marketing campaigns

CRM helps you identify and understand your target audience’s preferences and behaviours to reach them better.

Marketers can leverage CRM data to create personalised, timely lead generation and nurturing campaigns that actually resonate with their audience.

From emails to social media and retargeting ads, CRM insights help target their campaigns to the right people — at the right time — and craft messaging that empathises with their pain points, needs, and preferences — ultimately filling the pipeline with more sales-ready leads.

Moreover, the software helps them understand which leads to prioritise, measure campaign effectiveness, and optimise strategies, ensuring more effective outreach.

Automation

Today, maintaining a balance between automated processes and human connection is key.

Deploying CRM software for lead generation allows you to not only seamlessly automate how we relay information, but also gives sales, marketing, and customer success teams the freedom to engage personally when it truly matters.

Further, by recognising common customer journeys, you can implement email marketing automation to deliver timely and relevant information, relieving your teams of repetitive tasks that free up time for individual customer needs and lead nurturing.

Sales teams can leverage automation to provide calendar scheduling, reminders, and note-taking capabilities, arming them with comprehensive information prior to meetings to foster better relationships and elevate the customer experience.

Aligning marketing & sales

In digital marketing today, a marketing campaign has many layers and channels. From newsletters to blogs, influencer-led marketing, social media ads, and so on, there’re many channels dedicated to lead generation you can use to your advantage.

When it comes to blasting through information silos to align teams (i.e., marketing & sales teams) with unhindered access to information on leads, modern CRMs take the cake.

Thanks to CRM, marketing & sales teams can take a peek at lead scores to know how to prioritise or attribute sales efforts.

Keeping the team accountable is central to improvement. As such, data on team performance is tracked and collated in a CRM to help improve customer experience. More satisfied leads equals more sales.

CRM’s role in lead management

Beyond generating leads, think of your CRM as a trusty GPS that pilots your potential leads through the twists and turns of the entire sales funnel.

Let’s look at how CRM drives all five major stages of lead management:

Lead capturing

CRM enables you to capture leads from various sources, such as customised web forms on your landing pages/website, social media, email campaigns, or even events.

It also allows for automated lead capture, so you don't have to enter leads into the system manually. This saves time and ensures all leads are captured and stored centrally.

Lead tracking

Once leads are captured, you can track them throughout the sales funnel with the help of a CRM. That way, you know which leads have been contacted and can assign sales reps to contact those needing a follow-up.

You’ll also know which ones are ready to be converted into customers. This insight helps prioritise sales efforts and prevents leads from falling through the cracks.

Lead qualification

Looking to ditch poor leads and warm up to quality leads? Look no further than your CRM.

By assigning lead scores across different criteria like demographics, behaviour, and engagement, CRM directs your focus on your most promising leads, which improves sales outcomes.

Lead distribution

You can distribute leads to your sales team based on geography, expertise, or other factors.

This ensures that each lead is assigned to the best-suited salesperson, increasing the chances of conversion.

Lead nurturing

CRM helps you nurture leads by sending targeted messages, tracking their behaviour, and automating follow-up tasks.

This keeps leads engaged and interested in the product or service, increasing the likelihood of converting them into customers.

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Turn more leads into sales with the best CRM for lead generation

Staying ahead of the curve requires a smart and efficient approach to lead generation.

CRM provides the necessary tools to identify, attract, and nurture more leads with precision, making it rank above for businesses as the best lead generation platform.

Better still, if you struggle with internal collaboration, need quicker access to your lists, require better sales tracking, or have problems tracking interactions with your prospects across channels, then it’s time you switched.

efficy CRM offers an easy-to-use interface with a balanced blend of fundamental and advanced CRM functionalities that do the heavy lifting for your lead gen strategy, whichever industry you’re in.

Want to see how? Book a demo today at no cost to you, and discover how efficy CRM helps you capture + convert high-quality leads seamlessly and at scale.

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