Lead management with an inbox where nothing slips through

A visitor fills in the contact form on your site on Tuesday evening. The mail lands in a shared inbox. On Wednesday one colleague thinks another one has it. On Thursday someone forwards it to a rep with "is this one for you?". On Friday the rep calls, and by then the prospect has spoken to a competitor. Nobody did anything wrong. There was just no place where the lead lived, with an owner and a status.

That is how most B2B teams lose leads. Not because too few come in, but because they come in at five places. The form mails info@. The chat sits in a separate tool. Trade show leads are in a spreadsheet on someone's laptop. A referral is a text message. So nobody knows how many leads came in this month, let alone which source brings the best customers.

A second problem is that leads and deals get mixed up. Every enquiry becomes a deal straight away, and the pipeline fills up with things that never had a chance. Or leads are not recorded at all, and a rep only puts something in the CRM once it gets serious. Either way your pipeline is wrong and you do not know what marketing produces.

Lumo keeps leads and deals apart. A lead is an opportunity that still needs assessing. It sits in the Inbox with an owner, a status and a source. Forms and chat put their leads there by themselves, with the person attached. You work the lead until it is qualified, or you disqualify it with a reason. Only then does it become a deal, exactly once. That keeps the pipeline clean and lets you see per source how many leads came in and how many became deals. How to follow up leads fast and consistently is in the guide lead follow-up.

An example, not a customer story. Say a consultancy has four consultants and one marketer. Leads come from three sources: the "Request a call" form on the site, the chat on the pricing page and referrals from existing clients.

On Monday at 9.14 pm a finance director fills in the form. Lumo finds no person with that email, creates one and puts a lead with status New in the Inbox, source Form, source detail "request a call" and utm_source linkedin from the hidden field. An automation on "lead created" assigns it to a fixed consultant and creates a task "call within 4 hours".

On Tuesday at 8.45 am the lead is on that consultant's Today screen. She sets it to Working and calls. The conversation goes well, but the budget only opens after the summer. She chooses Nurturing and plans a call in eight weeks.

On Wednesday a visitor leaves an email address in the chat with a question about an audit. They become a person, a lead and an activity. After a short call the consultant chooses Qualify and then Convert to deal, in the Engagements pipeline, stage Proposal, with a value of 6,000 euro.

At the end of the quarter the marketer opens Leads by source. She sees how many leads each source brought and how many became deals. Under Disqualified she sees which reasons come up most. Based on that she rewrites the form copy so fewer enquiries come in that do not fit.

A converted lead becomes a deal on the deal board, with the person and organization from contact management. Activities you plan on the lead also show in your activities list and on Today. With automations you assign leads and create follow-up tasks without anyone having to remember.