Lead management and CRM are two terms that seem to be used regularly. But do you know how they are related? Let’s first look at the definition of each.

CRM is a system that is used to manage a business’ interactions with its current and prospective customers. It uses various tools and techniques to automate, organize and synchronize business sales, marketing, customer service, etc. The goal of CRM is to better understand the behaviour of customers, eventually increasing revenues through the tools and techniques listed above. In other words, CRM aims to make businesses more profitable by making them better at what they do.

Lead management is often linked to CRM and plays an active role in many CRM software. In simple terms, lead management aims at generating more leads through various systems and practices (think marketing campaigns). Lead management could also be described as the process of tracking and managing leads. From the initial approach to the actual follow-up, it helps businesses target customers and nurture leads.

As we already said before, lead management is part of CRM, but CRM is not part of lead management. Since CRM is all about the way businesses interact with customers, it makes sense that it would include lead management.

As such, we don’t recommend purchasing a CRM that does not offer lead management features. ClickHook (http://clickhook.io) is a good example of a simple but powerful CRM integrated with lead management. While still relatively new on the CRM market, ClickHook is constantly surprising people with its ability to make small businesses more profitable. We highly recommend this software if lead management plays an important role in your business’ development (which it should).

If you are interested, we encourage you to watch this video that describes ClickHook’s features in more details: