For Microsoft Dynamics CRM Newcomers, a Brave New World of Lead Generation

It's a brave new world out there when it comes to marketing-leads are generated in brand new ways and that means you need to understand that there are many possible approaches.

"People come to our websites, to our trade shows, to our businesses in new, different ways than ever before," said Jeff Marcoux, customer success manager at CoreMotives, whose focus is around marketing automation inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Marcoux was speaking at a recent online meeting of the Dynamics CRM User Group's Professional Services Special Interest Group about some best practices for tracking leads in Dynamics CRM.

Managing leads is the beginning of the sales process and it's one of core reasons why you'd be using the CRM application, he said. And tracking leads is no longer just making a phone call or sending an email, or a direct mailer.

"Rather it's everything; it's social [media], it's emails, it's your trade shows, it's business cards," Marcoux said. "Leads are generated from all over the web, through white papers and search. There's so much we need to be thinking about and ultimately when it comes to leveraging our CRM systems, we need to know where our leads are coming from, where are we getting the best ROI for the money we're spending and how do we follow up with those leads?"

There are two main reasons why it makes sense to separate your leads inside of Dynamics CRM. For one thing, it's not really a good idea to "dump" a huge list of people as contacts inside of Dynamics CRM because you want your contacts to be good business prospects or qualified leads versus cluttering your CRM system with ...