Lead management in business-to-business sales

Abstract

Methods and systems record and analyze visitors' interactions with a website aimed at turning the visitors into qualified sales leads. Lead scoring may be used, wherein a lead score is based on interactions with content, navigation through a website, and the providing of information from the visitor. Events (e.g., above-threshold lead scores) may prompt a request for information from the visitor. Providing information may increase a profile level and allow access to previously gated website content. Visitor information and / or associated business information may be stored in a user profile. Additionally, interests of the visitor and / or an associated business area may be ascertained. The interests, lead score, and progressive profiles may be used to tailor content and organization of the website, to suggest content and business solutions to the visitor, and to determine if / when a visitor is qualified as a lead, and thus ready for contact from a sales team.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 13 / 297,161, filed Nov. 15, 2011 and entitled, “WEBSITE DATA CONTENT ACCESS PROGRESSION”, which is a nonprovisional of, and claims benefit to Provisional Application No. 61 / 559,610, filed Nov. 14, 2011, and entitled “LEAD MANAGEMENT IN BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS SALES.” Each of these references is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.[0002]This application also is related to PCT Application No. PCT / US2011 / 042039, filed Jun. 27, 2011, entitled “STAGNANT VISITOR MANAGEMENT FOR ENGAGEMENT PROGRESSION ON WEB SITES” which is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]This disclosure relates in general to customer engagement tools and, but not by way of limitation, to website engagement tools.[0004]Websites are often a part of an integral plan in advertizing business solutions and engaging visitors as customers or potential customers. Nurturing tho...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0011]In yet another embodiment, a computer-readable medium for managing interactions between a visitor associated with a first business, and a website associated with a second business, to generate a qualified business lead, having sets of instructions stored thereon is described. When executed by a computer, the instruction may cause the computer to associate a lead score with the visitor, and associate a user profile with the visitor, where the user profile includes a profile level that is determined by an amount of information provided by the visitor to the website. The instructions may further cause the computer to define a plurality of interests related to the second business, associate each interest with one or more categories of website content, and associate an interest from the plurality of interests with the user profile, where the association is based on activity of the visitor on the website. Additionally, the instructions may cause the computer to tailor the content and organization of the website based on the interest associated with the visitor, change the lead score in response to an action taken by the visitor on the website, request first information from the visitor when the lead score exceeds a first profile threshold value, and elevate the profile level of the user profile when the visitor provides first information. Also, the instructions may cause the computer to determine that the visitor is a qualified lead when the lead score exceeds a threshold value.

Problems solved by technology

Nurturing those visitors to the website has traditionally taken human expertise, skill, and effort that has been impractical in converting a large number of visitors into customers.

While an experienced sales person may be able to quickly evaluate a contact and determine whether or not he / she is a prospective customer, the sheer volume of visitors to a website and the impersonal nature of web interactions make large-scale human involvement infeasible and impractical.

Business-to-business websites traditionally have not reached their marketing potential in yielding qualified leads.

However, real personalization of the website visitor's experience has not been possible due to the fact that the marketing tools could not instruct a static website what particular content to present to any given visitor.

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