Lead management: the six steps from first contact to customer, and what you record
Tips
The short answer
Lead management is the process a lead follows from first contact to customer or rejection: capture, qualify, assign, follow up, keep warm and close, with an owner per step and a rule for what happens next. The system behind it is usually a CRM; the process matters more than the system. A B2B team of five salespeople without agreed lead management loses leads in three places: requests nobody picks up, leads left after one attempt, and companies that said "later" and never get called again. This page describes the six steps, what you record per lead, which definitions marketing and sales must share, and when you need a system.
The six steps of lead management
Step | What happens | Owner | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
1. Capture | Every lead enters one system, with source and date | Marketing or sales ops | No lead outside the CRM, not even in an inbox |
2. Qualify | Does the company fit, is there a problem, who decides | SDR or salesperson | An outcome within one working day: through, nurturing or out |
3. Assign | The lead gets an owner | Sales manager or routing | By region, sector or size; never "whoever grabs it first" |
4. Follow up | Contact attempts until conversation or rejection | Owner | Inbound question: within an hour; at least five attempts over two channels |
5. Keep warm | Leads that said "not now" stay in view | Marketing, with sales for signals | Back to sales on a trigger or reply; out after twelve months of silence |
6. Close and learn | Won, lost or disqualified, with a reason | Owner | Mandatory reason on every loss; monthly review |
1. Capture: one place, with source
The first mistake in lead management is that leads live in four places: the contact form, a mailbox, a trade-fair spreadsheet and the CRM. Anything not in one system no longer exists after a month. Record per lead where it came from (form, fair, cold list, referral, website visit) and when. Without a source you cannot see later which channel produces customers, and that is the question the whole process turns on; our page on winning customers per channel shows how far the cost per customer diverges.
2. Qualify: three questions, one working day
Does the company fit your target group? Is there a problem you solve? Are you talking to someone who can decide or knows the decision-maker? Lead qualification is not a scoring formula but an outcome within a working day: through to a salesperson, into nurturing, or out. The first part of those questions you can answer before speaking to anyone: sector, size, legal form, annual accounts and whether the company is hiring are in the company register and the filed accounts, and in a tool like Bizzy without having to look them up.
3. Assign: one owner per lead
A lead without an owner gets called by nobody. Assign on a rule everyone knows (region, sector, company size, or simply round robin), and never let the rule be "whoever sees it first"; that rewards the fastest clicker, not the best match. For an inbound request the assignment counts in minutes, because the follow-up clock in step 4 starts from that moment.
4. Follow up: fast on questions, persistent on the rest
Two rules. A lead that asked for something (demo, quote, callback) gets a human within an hour in office time; a study in Harvard Business Review of companies with online leads found that those responding within an hour qualified the lead far more often than those waiting a day (The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, HBR, 2011). A lead that asked for nothing (fair, list, signal) gets at least five attempts spread over phone and email or LinkedIn, with a trigger in every message. After the fifth attempt without a reply the lead goes to step 5, not to the bin. Our call script and the rules per country are on the outreach hub page.
5. Keep warm: nurturing with an exit
"Not now" is one of the most common outcomes in B2B and usually the worst managed. Leads in this step stay in view through touchpoints that have a reason (a vacancy, a new director, a visit to your site, filed annual accounts) and go back to the owner as soon as such a reason occurs or the lead replies. How to set that up is on the page about lead nurturing. The exit matters as much as the entry: after twelve months without a reply a lead goes out.
6. Close and learn: a reason on every loss
Won, lost or disqualified, and for the last two a reason from a short fixed list (no budget, chose a competitor, no problem, wrong person, no reply). Without that reason the monthly review is a feeling. With it you see after a quarter which source produces leads that fail on "no problem", and you switch that channel off.
What you record per lead
Company: name, KVK or enterprise number, legal form, sector, number of employees, country. This is the part a data source can fill; do not retype it.
Contact: name, role, channel (email, phone, LinkedIn) and the basis on which you may use that channel.
Source and date of the lead, and the trigger if there is one.
Status and owner: which of the six steps the lead is in and who has it.
Next action with a date: every open lead has exactly one. A lead without a next action is a lost lead that is not yet called that.
Outcome and reason on closing.
More fields are not better lead management. A CRM with forty mandatory fields does not get filled in; one with these six does.
The definitions marketing and sales must share
Most discussions about "bad leads" are discussions about definitions. Agree three and write them down:
Lead: a company or person in the target group with a recorded contact moment or signal.
MQL (marketing qualified lead): a lead that meets the target-group criteria and has done something that shows interest (a request, several visits, a reply). Marketing hands these over.
SQL (sales qualified lead): a lead for which a salesperson has answered the three qualification questions with yes and agreed a next step. Sales decides these.
The percentage of MQLs that become SQLs is the most honest number about the collaboration. Below 20%, the MQL definition is too loose or the follow-up too slow; above 60%, the definition is probably so strict that marketing only passes on what would have bought anyway.
When you need a lead management system
Under a hundred open leads and one or two salespeople, a spreadsheet with the six fields above works, provided someone maintains it. Above that, or as soon as marketing and sales both work in the same leads, a CRM is the normal choice: the cheap sales CRMs start around 14 euros per user per month, and the comparison of eight CRMs for SMEs sets them side by side. A separate "lead management system" next to the CRM is rarely needed; what is needed is a source that fills the company fields and delivers the signals that make step 5 work. Bizzy does that for Dutch and Belgian companies and pushes them into HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Teamleader and Odoo.
Frequently asked questions
What is lead management? The process a lead follows from first contact to customer or rejection: capture, qualify, assign, follow up, keep warm and close, with an owner and a rule per step. The CRM is the system; the process is the agreement.
What is the difference between lead management and lead nurturing? Lead management is the whole process; lead nurturing is step 5 of it, keeping warm the leads that do not want a conversation now. Nurturing without the other five steps is a list that only grows.
What is the difference between MQL and SQL? An MQL meets the target-group criteria and has shown interest; marketing hands it over. An SQL has been qualified by a salesperson on company, problem and decision-maker, with an agreed next step. The share of MQLs that become SQLs tells you whether the definitions are right.
How fast should you follow up a lead? A lead that asked for something within an hour in office time; a lead that asked for nothing with at least five attempts over two channels, each with a trigger. Then into nurturing, not away.
Read next: lead qualification, lead scoring and the B2B sales funnel.
Photo: office buildings on the Rue de la Loi, Brussels, Choinowski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons