New findings from a survey, by CallPro CRM, reveals that many small and medium sized enterprises (SME) are missing out on opportunities to generate and track leads through on-line platforms.

The survey - conducted with more than 1800 SMEs - reveals that around a third of all respondents (36%) are not using LinkedIn as part of their Sales and Marketing activities. However, with research (Oktopost) from 2014 showing that 80% of leads generated via social media for B2B marketers originate on LinkedIn - this could represent a significant missed opportunity in building a pipeline of new business prospects.

The survey also reveals shortcomings in SMEs maximising leads from their own website. When it comes to getting insights into what visitors are interested in, more than a quarter of respondents (29%) report that their organisation is not tracking visitor's activity. When asked about the speed of response to incoming enquiries to their website, more than half of respondents (53%) do not know how long it takes to respond. Just a small minority, 7% of respondents report that they are able to respond within an hour of the enquiry. It seems a massive 93% could be losing sales unnecessarily as, according to research from the Harvard Business review, firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving an enquiry were nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead.

In terms of internal marketing systems, the majority of organisations surveyed (74%) report that they do not have a CRM system. Of all respondents, 83% have not integrated CRM with email marketing. This highlights a further opportunity for improving collaboration between sales and marketing functions and arming teams with all the intelligence they need on individual contacts.

Peter Connell, MD of CallPro CRM said: "Marketing is evolving at a rapid pace, but it's perhaps surprising that a considerable number of organisations aren't taking advantage of one of the most important business focussed social media platforms as a way to build and nurture leads.

Perhaps part of today's challenge is that there are so many ways that marketers can engage with prospects and follow up leads - from social media, to the web and email. And with so many different channels to manage, it's even more important to make sure that sales and marketing efforts are 'joined up' so that no lead is missed and that incoming enquiries can be dealt with in a timely way, to get the best results.

"The good news is that there are ways to structure processes with automated processes in CRM so that - no matter where the lead comes from - teams can respond, progress it in the most appropriate way or even schedule in a call back at an appropriate time."

 

By Claire West, Fresh Business Thinking. 

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