For all small businesses, success depends on your ability to attract prospects, nurture leads, and close sales. You have to keep your sales funnel full and effectively move leads through your funnel to conversion.
But keeping your pipeline full and creating an effective sales lead management system can be complicated, expensive, and a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started.
There’s a lot that goes into it and you might be tempted to purchase complex enterprise software and pay a high-priced consultant to set it all up. Don’t.
Even if you’re short on time, money, or expertise. There’s no need.
The lead capturing & tracking tools you need to manager your sales funnel are now amazingly simple (and cheap).
And they encompasses all activities that drive sales including:
- Optimizing your website for lead capture
- Improving your lead nurturing processes
- Increasing conversion rates
And the lead capture software that makes it all happen is simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-set-up.
So, if you’re having trouble capturing new leads or moving leads effectively through your sales pipeline, here are five affordable tools to try:
1. Zoho CRM
🤑 Starts at $14/Month
What is it?
Zoho CRM offers simple but powerful tools for managing your relationships with customers. Zoho places the focus on multichannel support, with email, phone, and social channels built directly into the platform.
Why is it awesome?
One reason we love Zoho CRM at UniTel Voice is that the system is designed to automatically (or manually) assign a sales rep to each new lead that answers the system.
Then, your sales reps receive a host of data and sales performance tools that help them to engage, measure, and manage their relationships with each customer.
Zoho CRM lets you decide how autonomous you’d like your sales pipeline to be. You plug in the blueprint and workflows required for each new lead, and the system helps your team to execute your strategy.
At the $14/mo price point, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more seamless solution than Zoho CRM.
2. Mailmunch
🤑 Starts at $0/Month
What is it?
MailMunch is a tool that is designed to help you capture leads through a variety of custom forms and lead magnets. The platform allows you to use several different types of pop-ups and CTA styles including lightboxes, embedded forms, top bar, and slide boxes.
Why is it awesome?
When someone visits your site, you can offer them an ebook to download in exchange for their email address. Then, you can use Mailmunch to deliver a personalized email drip sequence to deliver the ebook and nurture the relationship.
Also, you can’t beat free! Mailmunch lets you test drive their software, and only requires an account upgrade to gain access to premium features like analytics, notifications, premium themes, and split testing tools.
3. Zoho SalesIQ
🤑 Starts at $0/Month
What is it?
Zoho SalesIQ is a live chat tool you can install on your website to capture traffic and improve conversions. Having it on your site removes the barriers between your visitors and your sales team, making it easy for your customers to learn about your products and services.
Why is it awesome?
At $0 per month, the cost vs. value trade-off with Zoho SalesIQ obviously can’t be beaten. It’s incredibly simple to use and requires minimal training for your team.
But SalesIQ doesn’t sacrifice depth for simplicity. The platform includes features like behavior-based triggers, pre-chat forms, visitor logs, file sharing, and support feedback once the conversation has ended.
4. UniTel Voice
🤑 Starts at $9.99/Month
What is it?
UniTel Voice is a virtual phone system that allows your sales team to sound professional and stay connected no matter where they are located or what device they are using.
Why is it awesome?
Trust plays a huge role in your ability to convert visitors to subscribers. Do you know what the biggest barrier to gaining that trust is? A lack of transparency.
What does having a professional business phone system have to do with that?
Consider — what is the first thing that runs through your mind when a company that you are interested in working with doesn’t have a phone number, email address, or other contact information listed?
It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Even exclusively online businesses need a phone number to ease these fears.
UniTel Voice provides your own local, vanity, or toll free number and then allows you to take calls and route them to your team no matter where they are or what device they are on (desk phone, softphone, mobile app, etc.).
5. AdRoll
🤑 Starts at $0/Month
What is it?
AdRoll is a retargeted advertising platform designed to optimize your sales pipeline by making the most out of every visitor that reaches your site.
With pricing based on your website traffic, you can pay as you grow. So if you’re just getting started, you won’t break the bank.
Why is it awesome?
Retargeted advertisements allow you to display ads to visitors that leave your website, even if they don’t contact you through live chat or download your eBook.
This is key because it allows you to build familiarity with them over time and keep your company top-of-mind until they are ready to subscribe to your email list or buy your product.
In Conclusion
As a small business, pipeline management may be the single most important task you do — after all, sales is your lifeblood.
The traffic you drive to your site is hard-earned. Every visitor is a precious sales opportunity.
Unfortunately, most businesses let a large portion of their visitors fall through the cracks because they’re not using the right tools to optimize lead capturing and nurturing.
Without a lead tracking and sales management system in place, you’re leaving money on the table.
The right tools make pipeline management simple and inexpensive.
The good news is that there are plenty of low-cost tools out there that can make your sales pipeline easier to manage and (for the most part) fully automated.
And as you can see, these tools aren’t complicated or expensive and they provide a ton of value to businesses (of all sizes) looking to build an effective lead capturing system.
Editor’s Note: The article is part of the blog series Grow Your Business, brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.
