I've read many articles about how to do this or that to get more out of your marketing or sales efforts. There are a host of sources available if you want to pay someone to learn how to do either of those. In my searches I've found that services offered in this realm are fairly segmented. In other words, there is no one place I've found that will outline the entire lead lifecycle, and how to get more value out of each step.

All leads start with some sort of impression. These days impressions are all over. By the time you get to work in the morning you may not have realized you have already been exposed to hundreds of impressions. Billboards, logos on shirts, clothing brands, computer brands, drink labels, and so on. The point is a person is exposed to thousands upon thousands of impressions per day. In the business world, how does one stand out and take advantage? The best place to start, depending on your industry, is to do some sort of web marketing. SEO, PPC, etc... Google is a good place to look for driving both SEO and PPC tools.

In terms of web marketing an impression, hopefully, becomes a click. Clicks aren't free. Everyone listed on the first search page in Google has paid some price to be there. All of the time or money spent to get there is simply in an effort to drive traffic to their web site. As a business owner I would want as much traffic as possible. I would seek ways to drive my site listing to the top of search listings as fast as I can.

Once people are visiting my website, I will somehow want to get information from that visitor. When a website visitor fills our a form on my website to get more information, it's called a conversion. Driving conversions is one of the most misunderstood sciences in web marketing. Just like other areas of web marketing, there are rules to the game. Probably the biggest mistake by most web marketers is not properly aligning offers with requiring visitors to fill out their information, or convert. This is a transaction of value. The website visitor wants something of value, and you want your information to try and sell to them. These two aspects must be properly aligned. Companies like Omniture can help drive more conversions.

Once you have converted leads is when the sales process really begins. It is the role of the sales team to then qualify and close the lead. Again, there are many sources of information on how to do this better. InsideSales.com provides tools for automating this process and making sales people more efficient.

With all the information on the web about marketing and selling I've found this outline to be the simplist way to understand the true life of a lead. Hopefully it helps you.

In the business of helping people get through their leads faster we commonly run into this question. We've created a gatlin gun for calling through leads. Most companies are used to using a musket, with manual reloading and all. Handing someone these tools, especiall to someone who is unprepared to grow, can be shocking.

What typically happens is companies turn on the high powered gatlin gun to go through their leads and soon find thier lead database is running low. They are used to getting through their leads rather slowly. I inevtibly hear the question "how do I get more leads?"

I offer three simple ways:
1. Go to current customers for refferals. This is your always warm list.
2. Charge up your Web PPC & SEO efforts. There are hosts of outsource companies and sites devoted to helping companies get more from both PPC & SEO.
3. Create lists. The best list is one nobody else has. Don't always settle for buying lists. That's what everyone else is doing. Get creative and find your group of buyers and market directly to them. Who has a need for your product. Don't stop until you get that list of leads. It's more work, but will always pay off. That's the exact reason nobody else has that list, it's work. If you're having trouble creating custom lists lookup a company called Incoho. They specalize in custom list building.