What is lead management software?

Lead management is the process of tracking and managing prospective customers, called leads. It combines a set of methods and practices for gathering, qualifying, and pursuing leads who come through outbound and inbound channels.

According to a recent Intelligistart study, companies with mature lead generation and management practices achieved better sales productivity and higher revenue growth. Mature companies achieved 133% greater revenue versus their plan than average companies, and 174% more than the least mature company. 

Lead management software is critical for sales success because it supports increased complexity as a company scales; managing 200 leads is a lot different than managing 2,000 or 20,000 leads, let alone even more. Once some of those sales leads turn into customers, businesses must continue to nurture those relationships to ensure lasting customer success. That’s why lead management software and customer relationship management are so closely intertwined.

Effective lead management is considered the backbone of a successful sales operation and a critical first step in the sales cycle. As such, our experts curated a list of the top lead management software in 2024:

  • LeadSquared: Best for automating sales and marketing workflows
  • Leadfeeder: Best for converting website visitors into leads
  • LeanData: Best for lead routing in complex sales processes
  • Salesforce: Best for comprehensive CRM and lead management
  • HubSpot: Best for integrated lead nurturing 
  • Zoho CRM: Best for affordable CRM and lead scoring
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Our picks for the best standalone lead management software

LeadSquared logo.

LeadSquared: Best for automating sales and marketing workflows

Overall Reviewer Score

3.95/5

Pricing

3.33/5

General Features & Interface

3.75/5

Core Features

4.58/5

Advanced Features

4.25/5

Integration & Compatibility

4.38/5

User Experience

4.00/5

Pros

  • Comprehensive lead management
  • Highly customizable
  • Easy integration

Cons

  • Limited built-in CRM functionality
  • Limited native integrations
  • Advanced analytics limitations

Why I picked LeadSquared

LeadSquared’s lead scoring system is second to none, assigning scores to leads based on their engagement and attributes, enabling sales teams to prioritize leads and focus on those with the highest potential for conversion. 

LeadSquared tracks lead interactions across various channels and records their activities, providing valuable insights into lead behavior and preferences. The platform also offers customizable workflows and automation rules, enabling businesses to create tailored lead-nurturing processes that suit their specific needs and objectives.

In evaluating LeadSquared as a choice for automating sales and marketing workflows, we find a platform that aligns well with enterprise-level needs at a cost accessible to smaller teams. Comparatively, LeadSquared offers a broader range of features and capabilities than its counterparts, like Leadfeeder and LeanData. While Leadfeeder specializes in lead generation through web traffic, and LeanData excels in lead routing and management, LeadSquared’s forte lies in its seamless integration across various applications, aiding in marketing operations and lead conversion.

A standout aspect of LeadSquared is its ability to streamline the sales process. It accelerates sales through lead quality and engagement scoring, automatically assigning leads based on pre-defined criteria. This ensures that sales personnel are promptly notified about lead activities, allowing for timely action. The LeadSquared mobile app further enhances this experience, offering on-the-go access to crucial sales information.

LeadSquared’s capability in automating the lead capture process from multiple sources, including online ads and blogs, is notable. It also automates marketing operations such as SMS, email campaigns, and drip marketing, ensuring comprehensive engagement across all touchpoints.

LeadSquared is a marketing automation and lead management software that helps businesses capture, track, and nurture leads from various channels such as web forms, chatbots, emails, and social media.

The software is designed to cater to the diverse needs of various business sizes and industries, making it a well-rounded choice for organizations looking to optimize their sales and marketing strategies.

A key feature of LeadSquared is its exceptional lead management capability, which allows businesses to effectively track, nurture, and convert leads. It also offers powerful marketing automation tools for executing targeted campaigns and tracking their performance. Sales acceleration is another focal point, with features like automated lead scoring and advanced sales analytics aimed at hastening the sales cycle.

Customization and integration are also prominent aspects of LeadSquared, offering seamless compatibility with various third-party applications. This adaptability is complemented by a user-friendly mobile app, ensuring accessibility and convenience for users on the move.

Lead journey tracking: Track a lead’s journey from creation through marketing and sales activities to conversion​​.

Landing page optimization: Utilize optimized landing page templates to capture and convert leads​​.

Lead importing: Import leads from other platforms via CSV files​​.

API lead capture: Programmatically capture leads through APIs​​.

Customizable lead fields: Set up lead fields to collect information, helping identify and classify leads​​.

Lead stage management: Understand a lead’s position in the sales funnel based on engagement levels.

Starting from $25/user/month

Leadfeeder: Best for converting website visitors into leads

Overall Reviewer Score

3.93/5

Pricing

3.75/5

General Features & Interface

3.39/5

Core Features

3.96/5

Advanced Features

3.50/5

Integrations & Compatibility

4.06/5

User Experience

4.50/5

Pros

  • Friendly and competent customer service
  • Offers insights into leads visiting your website
  • Detailed visitor information
  • Reliable database quality

Cons

  • Can be more aggressive in data collection due to the EU privacy regulations
  • Limited information on smaller companies

Why I picked Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder’s ability to identify anonymous website visitors and transform that data into quality leads is unparalleled. 

The CRM integration helps sales teams to be equipped with fresh leads, while real-time email alerts keep them proactive. The platform’s collaboration tools foster team synergy, ensuring leads are always in the right hands. 

The powerful analytics provide insights into which marketing strategies are most effective. In a field filled with generic tools, Leadfeeder’s specialized focus on leveraging website traffic for lead generation makes it a top choice.

This capability sets it apart from competitors like LeadSquared and Zoho CRM, which offer broader CRM functionalities. Leadfeeder, with its specialized approach, excels in identifying and tracking anonymous website visitors, turning them into actionable sales leads. This is a game-changer for businesses that rely heavily on website traffic for lead generation.

Leadfeeder’s strengths lie in its user-friendly interface, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise. The platform scores well in ease of use, customer support, and data integration capabilities, ensuring a smooth experience for its users. While it offers good scalability and decent customizability, it may not match the extensive customization and complex CRM functionalities of Zoho CRM or the advanced lead management features of LeadSquared.

Ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, particularly those in B2B sectors, Leadfeeder is a solid tool for marketing teams looking to enhance their lead generation strategies. It integrates well with other business tools, although its API and pre-built integrations might not be as extensive as those offered by its competitors.

Leadfeeder is a digital lead generation tool designed to enhance B2B lead generation and sales processes by tracking and identifying anonymous website visitors. Distinguished from traditional CRM platforms, its core strength lies in converting website traffic into actionable sales leads. Leadfeeder excels in revealing which companies visit your site and what their interests are, even if they don’t fill out a contact form. This functionality allows businesses to proactively engage with potential leads that would otherwise remain unnoticed.

The software integrates seamlessly with popular CRM systems and email marketing tools, enabling a more cohesive sales and marketing approach. This integration facilitates the efficient transfer of lead information, ensuring that sales teams can follow up effectively. Leadfeeder’s user-friendly interface and straightforward setup process make it accessible to users of varying technical expertise.

Ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, especially in the B2B sector, Leadfeeder is particularly beneficial for marketing and sales teams looking to harness their website’s potential as a lead generation tool. While it doesn’t provide the extensive CRM functionalities of platforms like Zoho CRM or the advanced lead management features of LeadSquared, its specialized focus on website visitor tracking offers unique value.

Leadfeeder’s approach represents a shift towards more proactive, data-driven sales strategies, leveraging web analytics to uncover potential business opportunities hidden in website traffic.

Lead generation: Identify companies visiting your website to garner quality leads.

Sales prospecting: Find the right prospects with filters and integrations.

CRM integration: Automatically send leads to your CRM.

Email alerts: Get real-time notifications about companies of interest.

Collaboration tools: Share leads with your team, comment on leads, and assign the right leads to the right salespeople.

Powerful analytics: Understand which marketing efforts drive the best leads.

Free trial available

Free plan available

Paid plan starting at $139/month

leandata logo

LeanData: Best for lead routing in complex sales processes

Overall Reviewer Score

3.72/5

Pricing

2.71/5

General Features & Interface

3.04/5

Core Features

3.96/5

Advanced Features

4.0/5

Integrations & Compatibility

4.38/5

User Experience

3.50/5

Pros

  • Automated lead routing
  • Lead matching
  • Campaign attribution
  • Data cleansing and enrichment
  • Integration with Salesforce

Cons

  • Limited analytics
  • Dependence on Salesforce
  • Cost

Why I picked LeanData

LeanData is an ideal solution for businesses with intricate sales processes.

The platform is specifically designed to address the challenges of high-volume and multifaceted B2B sales environments. Its automated lead routing directs leads to the most appropriate sales representatives based on predefined criteria. This not only streamlines the sales process but also maximizes the chances of conversion.

LeanData also offers a visual representation of the lead’s journey, providing sales teams with a clear understanding of the lead’s interactions and touchpoints. This visualization aids in identifying bottlenecks and optimizing the sales funnel. Integration with Salesforce enhances its functionality and ensures a unified sales ecosystem.

Our choice is underpinned by LeanData’s recent upgrades, enhancing its capabilities in streamlined integration with revenue tech stacks and automated, no-code workflow construction. These updates have empowered LeanData to adeptly handle the nuanced demands of B2B selling, turning intricate buyer signals into actionable go-to-market strategies with precision and ease​​.

LeanData’s prowess in complex sales environments is further evidenced when contrasted with competitors like Leadfeeder and LeadSquared. While Leadfeeder excels in tracking and identifying website visitors as potential leads, and LeadSquared is notable for its robust lead nurturing and scoring system, LeanData’s Salesforce-native architecture offers a more holistic approach to lead management. It seamlessly connects data, tools, and people across all stages of the buyer journey, ensuring no lead or opportunity is overlooked​​​​.

The software’s recent updates have particularly bolstered its ability to simplify and accelerate complex selling processes, regardless of scale. This is crucial in modern, multi-layered sales environments where the ability to rapidly adapt to strategy shifts and territory changes is vital. LeanData’s intuitive, drag-and-drop automation and in-depth analytics further enhance its appeal, providing clear visibility into sales operations and buyer interactions.

LeanData is a lead routing and management software that helps users manage leads across different channels and campaigns. It automates the lead routing process and ensures leads are assigned to the right salesperson. It also provides real-time insights into lead activity and engagement.

A Salesforce-native platform, it has established itself as a vital tool in the B2B sales and marketing landscape. It’s designed to streamline and optimize the complex processes involved in sales, marketing, and revenue generation. The platform excels in integrating various aspects of the sales and marketing funnel, from lead generation and management to aligning sales strategies and operations​​​​.

The software offers a range of features that assist in lead organization, such as duplicate removal, automatic lead assignment, and efficient conversion tracking. These features are particularly beneficial for sales and marketing teams in managing leads and improving the efficiency of their sales processes. One of LeanData’s key strengths is its ability to automate workflows, a feature that has been praised for its ease of use and effectiveness in managing sales territories and customer relationships​​.

LeanData’s integration capabilities are extensive, connecting seamlessly with popular CRM platforms and marketing automation tools. This integration is designed to facilitate better communication between systems and streamline various operations, ultimately aiming to boost sales and revenue growth.

Lead routing: LeanData provides advanced lead routing capabilities that allow businesses to match the right leads to the right sales representatives.

Matching and conversion: The platform offers a matching and conversion feature that helps in aligning leads to accounts. This can be particularly useful for businesses that operate with an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy.

Reporting and analytics: LeanData provides comprehensive reporting and analytics tools.

Integration with CRM: LeanData integrates with CRM platforms, especially Salesforce. 

Flexibility and customization: Users have repeatedly singled out LeanData for its flexibility and customization options. 

Support and community: Many users have highlighted the support provided by the LeanData team. Additionally, there’s a strong community around the product where users can share best practices and learn from each other.

Standard: $39/user/month

Advanced: $49/user/month

Premium: $59/user/month

LeanData is a lead routing and management software that helps users manage leads across different channels and campaigns. It automates the lead routing process and ensures leads are assigned to the right salesperson. It also provides real-time insights into lead activity and engagement.

A Salesforce-native platform, it has established itself as a vital tool in the B2B sales and marketing landscape. It’s designed to streamline and optimize the complex processes involved in sales, marketing, and revenue generation. The platform excels in integrating various aspects of the sales and marketing funnel, from lead generation and management to aligning sales strategies and operations​​​​.

The software offers a range of features that assist in lead organization, such as duplicate removal, automatic lead assignment, and efficient conversion tracking. These features are particularly beneficial for sales and marketing teams in managing leads and improving the efficiency of their sales processes. One of LeanData’s key strengths is its ability to automate workflows, a feature that has been praised for its ease of use and effectiveness in managing sales territories and customer relationships​​.

LeanData’s integration capabilities are extensive, connecting seamlessly with popular CRM platforms and marketing automation tools. This integration is designed to facilitate better communication between systems and streamline various operations, ultimately aiming to boost sales and revenue growth.

Top CRM software for lead management

Salesforce logo.

Salesforce: Best for comprehensive CRM and lead management

Overall Reviewer Score

3.98/5

Pricing

2.71/5

General Features & Interface

4.50/5

Core Features

4.46/5

Advanced Features

4.17/5

Integrations & Compatibility

3.75/5

User Experience

4.00/5

Pros

  • Comprehensive toolset
  • Customizable lead capture forms
  • Lead scoring and nurturing
  • Lead routing

Cons

  • Complexity
  • Cost

Why I picked Salesforce

Salesforce provides real-time insights into lead activity and engagement, allowing you to track their progress through the sales funnel and adjust your strategy accordingly. The platform integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and platforms, such as marketing automation and sales engagement software, allowing you to extend its functionality and streamline your lead management process.

Key to Salesforce’s effectiveness in lead management is its user-friendly interface. The platform allows businesses to create custom fields, track vital information about leads, and tailor page layouts to match sales stages. This customization ensures that sales teams can effortlessly track essential information about every lead​​​​. High-quality data is critical for informed decision-making; Salesforce aids this with validation rules and duplicate management tools, ensuring accuracy and consistency in lead data​​.

Unlike Zoho CRM, which is renowned for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness, Salesforce offers a more expansive set of tools and integrations, catering to a broader range of business needs and complexities.

While HubSpot CRM is lauded for its intuitive interface and excellent inbound marketing tools, Salesforce edges out with its superior data analytics and reporting features. These tools provide deeper insights into sales processes and customer behaviors, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions. Salesforce’s advanced customization options, which go beyond those offered by Zoho CRM and HubSpot, allow for a tailored lead management experience, aligning closely with specific business workflows and requirements.

One of the key features of Salesforce is lead capture, which allows businesses to capture leads from multiple sources, such as web forms, social media, and email campaigns.

Salesforce also offers lead scoring and nurturing capabilities, allowing you to prioritize leads based on their engagement and automate lead nurturing campaigns to move them through the sales funnel. Additionally, Salesforce allows you to route leads to the right sales reps based on predefined rules and criteria, ensuring that they are handled by the appropriate team members.

Activity management: Salesforce allows users to manage and automatically sync their emails and engagement activities on a single platform. 

Lead management: Salesforce offers the ability to track deals across any channel and manage daily tasks with an actionable to-do list.

Account and opportunity management: Salesforce provides tools to tailor and guide sellers through specific business processes. It ensures that complete data is gathered, relationships are seamlessly managed, and actionable steps are taken to move leads through the sales funnel.

Forecast management: Real-time management of forecasts allows businesses to tailor KPIs to match their specific needs, uncover pipeline trends, and make on-the-fly adjustments.

Pipeline management: Salesforce offers a comprehensive view of the sales pipeline, helping businesses address gaps with embedded charts, prioritize deals with AI, and empower better coaching for sales teams.

Reports and dashboards: Businesses can track lead volume, conversion rates, and every part of their pipeline via customizable reports and dashboards.

Free trial available

Starter: $25/user/month/billed annually

Service Professional: $75/user/month/billed annually

Enterprise: $150/user/month/billed annually

Unlimited: $300/user/month/billed annually

HubSpot icon logo in orange.

HubSpot: Best for integrated lead nurturing

Overall Reviewer Score

4.49/5

Pricing

3.96/5

General Features & Interface

4.43/5

Core Features

4.46/5

Advanced Features

4.64/5

Integrations & Compatibility

4.79/5

User Experience

4.75/5

Pros

  • Customizable lead capture forms
  • Lead scoring and nurturing
  • Sales pipeline management
  • Integration with other HubSpot tools

Cons

  • Limited customization
  • Limited analytics
  • Dependence on third-party integrations

Why I picked HubSpot

HubSpot CRM provides lead capture forms that can be customized to match a business’s branding and capture the information they need to qualify and follow up with leads effectively. Equally as crucial, the platform offers lead scoring and nurturing capabilities, allowing businesses to prioritize leads based on their engagement and automate lead nurturing campaigns to move them through the sales funnel.

Unlike Salesforce, which caters to larger enterprises with more complex sales processes, HubSpot offers a more streamlined, intuitive user experience that is particularly beneficial for companies with less complex sales cycles or those new to using CRM systems.

Compared to Zoho CRM, known for its affordability and flexibility, HubSpot CRM excels in providing a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that integrates CRM, marketing, sales, and service tools. This integrated approach simplifies the management of customer relationships and streamlines various business processes. HubSpot’s free CRM offering, which includes essential features without the upfront costs, is another significant advantage, especially for businesses mindful of software expenditures.

HubSpot CRM is a comprehensive lead management solution that offers a range of features to help businesses manage their leads effectively. One of the key features of HubSpot CRM is contact and lead management, which allows businesses to manage their contacts and leads in one centralized location, providing a complete view of all interactions and activities associated with each lead.

Sales pipeline management is another important feature of HubSpot CRM, providing a visual sales pipeline that allows businesses to track their leads through each stage of the sales process, providing real-time insights into their progress and enabling them to identify potential bottlenecks and opportunities. Like the other CRMs listed here, HubSpot CRM integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and platforms.

Free CRM software: HubSpot CRM is completely free and includes features that allow teams to get started quickly and grow their revenue with ease.

Contact management: HubSpot CRM provides a centralized system to track and manage interactions with your contacts. It offers a detailed view of each contact, including a timeline of their interactions with your company.

Contact and company insights: The CRM automatically pulls in valuable information about your contacts and companies from across the web, giving you a detailed context about each individual and organization.

Gmail and Outlook integration: HubSpot CRM seamlessly integrates with Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to log emails sent from these platforms directly into the CRM.

Deals: The CRM provides a visual dashboard that gives a clear view of your sales funnel. You can easily drag and drop deals between stages, track performance against quotas, and more.

Tasks: HubSpot CRM allows you to assign and track tasks, ensuring that you stay on top of all activities related to your contacts and deals.

Free plan available

Starter 

$30/month for all products when billed annually 

$50/month for all products when billed monthly. Includes 2 paid users in Sales and Service Hub  

Professional 

$1600/month for all products when billed annually ; 

$1781/month for all products when billed monthly. Includes 5 paid users in Sales and Service Hub  

Enterprise 

$5000/month for all products. Billed annually only. Includes 10 paid users in Sales and Service Hub

Zoho CRM logo.

Zoho CRM: Best for affordable CRM and lead scoring

Overall Reviewer Score

4.46/5

Pricing

4.17/5

General Features & Interface

4.25/5

Core Features

4.82/5

Advanced Features

4.38/5

Integrations & Compatibility

5.00/5

User Experience

4.25/5

Pros

  • Customizable lead capture forms
  • Lead scoring and nurturing
  • Sales pipeline management
  • Integration with third-party tools
  • Affordable pricing

Cons

  • Limited customization
  • Complexity
  • Limited marketing automation

Why I picked Zoho CRM

An important feature of Zoho CRM is sales pipeline management, providing a visual sales pipeline that allows businesses to track their leads through each stage of the sales process, providing real-time insights into their progress and enabling them to identify potential bottlenecks and opportunities.

Its strong in its ability to facilite multi-channel communication, which consolidates interactions from emails, phone calls, and social media into a single platform. Additionally, the integration with Zoho Analytics offers advanced analytics, providing deep insights into sales trends and performance.

Recent upgrades further enhance its appeal. Notably, the addition of a voice recording field in the Calls module allows for easy access and analysis of call recordings, a boon for detailed customer engagement. The Mail Merge feature has been enhanced with support for inventory modules, PDF import, and image field support in templates, streamlining document personalization. Zoho’s AI, Zia, now offers more sophisticated features like lead scoring and recommendations for existing records, aiding sales teams in prioritizing outreach and follow-ups.

Workflow automation for notes and the Strategy Influencer feature offer additional layers of efficiency. The former automates actions based on notes added to records, while the latter provides comprehensive business trend analytics.

Zoho CRM provides lead scoring and nurturing capabilities, allowing businesses to prioritize leads based on their engagement and automate lead nurturing campaigns to move them through the sales funnel. Additionally, Zoho CRM offers real-time insights into lead activity and engagement, allowing businesses to track their progress through the sales funnel and adjust their strategy accordingly.

Lead management: Zoho CRM offers a centralized database to manage customer information and interactions.

Lead scoring: One of Zoho CRM’s standout features is its lead scoring capability. It allows businesses to assign scores to leads based on their behavior and interaction with the company. This helps sales teams identify hot leads that are more likely to convert, ensuring that they spend their time and resources efficiently.

Sales automation: The platform provides automation tools for sales processes and tasks.

Multichannel communication: Zoho CRM supports multichannel communication, allowing businesses to interact with leads and customers via email, phone, live chat, and social media. This ensures that businesses can reach out to their audience on their preferred communication channel.

Analytics and reporting: Zoho CRM provides in-depth analytics and reporting tools that give businesses insights into their sales performance, lead sources, conversion rates, and more.

Integration capabilities: Zoho CRM can be integrated with a wide range of third-party applications, including email marketing tools, accounting software, and e-commerce platforms.

Customization: Whether it’s custom fields, modules, or layouts, businesses can modify Zoho CRM to fit their unique sales processes.

Affordability: Zoho CRM offers a range of pricing plans to cater to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.

Mobile access: The mobile app allows sales reps to access their CRM data on the go.

Security: Zoho CRM prioritizes data security and offers features like encryption, two-factor authentication, and IP restrictions.

Free trial available

Free plan available for up to 3 users

Standard: $14/user/month when billed annually. $20/user/month when billed monthly

Professional: $23/user/month when billed annually. $35/user/month when billed monthly

Enterprise: $40/user/month when billed annually. $50/user/month when billed monthly

Ultimate: $52/user/month when billed annually. $65/user/month when billed monthly

Zoho CRM provides lead scoring and nurturing capabilities, allowing businesses to prioritize leads based on their engagement and automate lead nurturing campaigns to move them through the sales funnel. Additionally, Zoho CRM offers real-time insights into lead activity and engagement, allowing businesses to track their progress through the sales funnel and adjust their strategy accordingly.

Find your new Lead Management Software

What is the lead management process?

While there are several different models of the lead management process out there, most people agree that it can be broken down into five steps:

1. Lead generation or lead capture

Lead generation refers to gaining new leads through both inbound and outbound marketing techniques and collecting their contact info. Tactics can include blog posts, advertisements, white papers, social media, events, webinars, public relations (PR) campaigns, and more marketing strategies.

2. Lead tracking

Lead tracking refers to using tools to track how prospects are engaging with sales and marketing tools. For lead tracking, sales teams may look at who is clicking on web pages, opening emails, signing up for giveaways, and so on.

3. Lead qualification or lead scoring

Lead scoring involves deciding which prospects are most likely to make a purchase and rating them accordingly. Businesses use many different criteria for lead scoring, including whether or not they have the budget to buy the product or service and whether or not they have the authority to make a purchase.

4. Lead distribution

Lead distribution involves matching leads to the sales representative who is most likely to convert them. This is helpful for businesses with large sales and marketing teams who have leads across many different products, services, and/or industries with vastly different needs.

5. Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing involves building relationships with leads with the intention of eventually converting them into buyers. Lead nurturing can take many different forms, including follow-up phone calls, drip marketing campaigns, product demos, and more.

Also read: 10 Best Customer Database Software Solutions

Lead management vs. CRM software

Lead management and customer relationship management (CRM) are two separate processes, but they are closely related. Lead management focuses on the pre-conversion part of the sales and marketing process, whereas CRM considers the entire customer life cycle. Similarly, lead management tools are mostly used by sales teams, whereas CRM platforms are used by both sales and marketing departments.

Lead generation and customer relations strategies must be aligned for sales and marketing success. Not only is it six to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an old one, but a simple 5% increase in customer retention can also increase company revenue by 25–95%. If a sales strategy is focused on pursuing leads while completely neglecting post-conversion customer relationships, a lot of hard work and potential profits will be wasted.

For this reason, lead management is often included as a subset of features in a CRM software solution. For instance, Salesforce’s lead management tools are bundled into its comprehensive Sales Cloud, and HubSpot CRM includes lead management features as well. Stand-alone lead management options exist, but an integrated system will most likely be more streamlined and affordable.

Also read: Best CRM for Startups

​​Lead management software features

The best lead management tools are a marriage of CRM and marketing automation systems. They are built to handle leads from inquiry to sale, dripping leads down each level of the sales funnel with nurturing content or interactions until they close.

The best lead management software systems can have a myriad of functions, but they’ll usually also include all or some of the following features:

  • Contact management
  • Integrated email marketing
  • Quote and bid management
  • Real-time tracking dashboards
  • Billing and invoicing
  • Pipeline management
  • Social media integration
  • Landing page management
  • Task management
  • Mobile app
  • Calendar integration and/or built-in scheduling

What is the importance of lead management software?

If you’ve even tried to track all of your qualified leads in a spreadsheet, then you know how frustrating and inaccurate manual lead management is. A manual lead management system can be incredibly cumbersome and, in some cases, impossible to maintain, especially for large businesses that have an overwhelming volume of incoming leads.

Manual lead management also greatly increases the chances of human error when it comes to data input. A salesperson may incorrectly capture customer contact info, assign the wrong qualifications to the wrong leads, and/or make another error that negatively impacts the lead management process.

Lead management software allows many of these processes to be automated, which not only saves time but also provides data-backed insight into areas for improvement.

Improved efficiency

For starters, lead scoring leads prevents sales reps from wasting time with unqualified leads who have a very low likelihood of ever converting into customers. Instead, they can identify the most promising leads and balance their time between converting hot leads and nurturing warm or cold ones. Lead management systems also prevent calls, demos, and meetings from falling through the cracks.

Process optimization

In addition, lead management software helps businesses understand which tactics are bringing in the best leads, so they can optimize their overall sales strategy to be more effective and efficient. Since lead management software documents a lead’s full history of interactions and experiences with a company, sales teams can analyze exactly how a person was converted from a prospect to a lead to a customer and use that knowledge to better inform future sales practices.

Easier collaboration

When properly implemented, lead management software helps sales teams operate more efficiently and boosts the bottom line. It also ensures the entire sales team has visibility into one another’s work by centralizing everything in one platform, which makes team collaboration easier as well.

Increased revenue

All of these practices help create more sales opportunities and therefore contribute to the business’s bottom line. According to Marketo, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost, which means better leads for less money and greater overall profits.


Aron Vaughan Avatar

About the author

At TechnologyAdvice, we assess a wide range of factors before selecting our top choices for a given category. To make our selections, we rely on our extensive research, product information, vendor websites, competitor research and first-hand experience. We then consider what makes a solution best for customer-specific needs. By defining business needs, we can determine the essential features organizations in various sectors require, and select platforms that will cover all bases. Reputable providers known for their ease of use and customer satisfaction are added to our compilation list for further analysis. We then evaluate each solution on the list based on the features they offer, considering the platform’s usability, integration capabilities, customization options, mobile access, and any other relevant functionalities. Price plans, hidden fees, customer reviews, and customer support are also assessed in the selection process. Technology Advice writers will often take advantage of free trials and demos to get a first-hand user experience of available software. Finally, we curate a comprehensive list based on the previously stated factors, ensuring readers have the necessary tools to make an informed decision.