Beyond Lead Assignments: Managing the Salesforce Customer Lifecycle Process

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Beyond Lead Assignments Managing the Salesforce
Customer Lifecycle Process
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• One of U2s more popular songs talks about a
  search that leads to climbing the highest
  mountains, running through the fields, and
  scaling city walls only to come to the
  realization But I still havent found what Im
  looking for. Thats not a path you want to
  follow in Salesforce when assigning or
  reassigning Leads.

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• One of U2s more popular songs talks about a
  search that leads to climbing the highest
  mountains, running through the fields, and
  scaling city walls only to come to the
  realization But I still havent found what Im
  looking for. Thats not a path you want to
  follow in Salesforce when assigning or
  reassigning Leads.

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Part 1 Initial Contact with Prospect

• Customer lifecycle management starts with a
  prospect taking action to make that first contact
  with the company. Salesforce Lead assignment
  rules create a Lead record and then assigns it.
  The assignment likely depends on the source of
  the Lead and company sales coverage policies.

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• Here are some possible Lead sources
• Inbound Lead from the company website, inbound
  call, or email
• Lead referred by partner
• List of Leads uploaded in batch after an event
• Purchased list of Leads

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• Here are some possible Lead sources
• Inbound Lead from the company website, inbound
  call, or email
• Lead referred by partner
• List of Leads uploaded in batch after an event
• Purchased list of Leads

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• Once a Lead comes in, it could go to a sales
  rep, account manager, a partner, or through a
  qualification process. In some cases, the Lead
  assignment process may assign Leads to a
  secondary user such as a product or alliance
  manager, in addition to the primary owner.

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Part 2 Send Follow-up Marketing Campaigns

• When someone responds to a marketing campaign,
  assignment rules in Salesforce create a Campaign
  Member record tied to an existing Lead for
  prospects or a Contact for existing or former
  customers. Campaign Member records dont have an
  Owner field in Salesforce, so it is not always
  obvious who should follow up.

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• Here are a couple of scenarios that illustrate
  not so obvious ways of following up with Leads
  responding to Campaigns
• A prospect who has been dormant for months is
  parked in a nurture queue without an Owner. One
  day, out of the blue, the prospect responds to a
  Campaign. When this happens, the Lead should be
  reassigned to a sales rep, possibly using Round
  Robin or Load Balancing, and the Lead status
  updated.

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• A product manager wants to assign members of his
  team to track selected high-value Campaign
  responses. Rather than arbitrarily assigning
  these responses, the product manager may want to
  assign each team member a set number of open
  Campaign responses to track.

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• Customers have unique needs and preferences.
  Campaign Member assignments show how these varied
  needs can add complexity that is difficult to
  implement and manage in Salesforce.

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Part 3 Convert the Lead

• When a Lead converts, Salesforce creates an
  Opportunity record as well as Account and Contact
  records, if they did not exist previously. The
  Opportunity may need to be assigned to multiple
  people such as a sales rep, sales engineer, and,
  for Account Based Selling assignments (ABS
  assignments), an overall account manager.

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• At this stage, a prospect tends to require
  expertise and support from someone in addition to
  a sales rep.

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Part 4 Close the Opportunity

• Depending on the companys needs, when an
  Opportunity is closed, the now new customer may
  need to be reassigned to a customer success
  manager or renewals rep. A relationship with a
  customer doesnt end after a purchase. The
  company stays in touch to ensure that a customer
  succeeds and for upselling opportunities.

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• For example, a branch manager may want her team
  to contact existing customers who showed interest
  in new products. She may want the existing
  Accounts relationship managers not sales reps
  to do the follow-up assignments. Without tools
  that complement Salesforce, these types of
  assignments will need to be done manually or with
  complex coding.

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• Using a tool like Decisions on Demand the branch
  manager can easily assign follow-up to the
  relationship managers in charge of existing
  accounts.
• Retaining customers is cheaper than finding new
  ones. Assigning new customers to appropriate
  marketing Campaigns can increase retention rates
  and create upsell and cross-sell Opportunities.

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• Just like in Part 2, customers may need new
  assignments post-sales to match the right
  Campaign for each customers profile and history.

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Part 5 Reorganization and Growth

• As a Lead moves through the buyers journey,
  Salesforce converts it to an Opportunity,
  Account, and Contact. An assignment must occur
  with each. And this can become a problem when
  larger or high growth companies reorganize
  coverage or add new sales reps and territories.

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• When a reorganization occurs, it requires
  massive Lead, Opportunity, Account and Contact
  re-assignments. out-of-the-box features for Lead
  assignment in Salesforce, this is a mostly
  manual, error-prone, time-consuming process.

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• For example, a company reorganizing sales
  coverage from geo-based territories to
  Account-Based Selling territories may no longer
  be able to rely on a Leads State field.
  Instead, it needs to match between a Lead
  Company field and an Account Account Name
  field. Yet, the name of the company on the Lead
  will not always match the name of the company in
  the Account.

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• Do you want to re-assign Leads based on a
  customers profile and history? Do you want to be
  able to create your own custom objects and
  assignment activities and ownership based on that
  custom object? Do you want Leads, Opportunities,
  Accounts, and Contacts assigned based on
  Account-Based Marketing and Sales territory
  coverage?

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• Find what youre looking for with Decisions on
  Demand, an AppExchange App. It boosts
  Salesforces Lead assignment features by
  simplifying them into easy to understand decision
  tables, so a non-technical user can manage them,
  and by extending assignments beyond Leads to
  Campaign membership, Opportunities, Accounts,
  Contacts and custom Salesforce Objects.

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• Learn more about automating and creating
  flexible lead assignment rules or schedule a
  personalized demo at a time that works for you.
• https//decisionsondemand.com