Is lead duplication killing your sales? It’s more prevalent and serious than you might think. There are so many organizations that have salespeople bickering over who took hold of a particular lead first because the same person signed up with two different email IDs.
Having duplicate leads in your system doesn’t just give you more data to sift through. It can also skew your perception of how your sales and marketing teams are performing and affect your entire decision-making process.
What Is Lead Duplication?
As the name implies, lead duplication is when a lead is logged in your system more than once.
This can happen for a number of reasons, such as prospects entering their information twice, coming into your sales funnel in more than one way (e.g. responding to two separate offers), or having slight variations of data for the same person (such as a prospect entering a home and work address in two different scenarios).
If you think lead duplication doesn’t exist in your system, think again. It’s a common problem that affects over 92% of businesses to some degree, and yours may be one of them.
The Five Dire Consequences of Lead Duplication
How or why it happens is important to discover, but it’s even more crucial to figure out how to eliminate lead duplication and prevent it from occurring. Here’s why:
#1 – Confusing or Missing Data
When you have duplicate data, how can you tell which record is the right one?
There are times when you simply can’t.
This means that as sales or marketing teams are working with leads, they may be using data from the wrong record, which can set up a domino chain of events that affect your sales.
This is especially dangerous if your duplicate leads are in different stages of the buyer journey. You may not be sending them the right messages at the right time. Or, you may be sending them the wrong content altogether!
#2 – Wasted Time & Money
Lead duplication is synonymous with wasted time and money, for you and your customers. Can you imagine how unproductive and costly it could be for five of your sales team members to reach out to the same lead? Not only is that time not being used in the best possible way, but it also makes your company look disorganized and uninformed.
To plug the time and money leaks created by lead duplication, companies must be able to identify how duplicate data enters the system and where it goes. With a little deep diving, you can place stop-gap measures that prevent the effects of duplication from taking over your processes.
#3 – Missed Opportunities
When duplicate data exists, the pieces of your client profile remains scattered. Details exist in different records and formats, so you never have a single view of the customer journey.
This causes you to miss valuable opportunities that can increase revenue or strengthen your customer relationships. You don’t have all the information you need to make informed selling decisions, such as recommending products or creating custom offers.
In addition, it’s all the more difficult to gauge your sales and marketing effectiveness. You can’t pinpoint which efforts were successful and at what stage in your sales funnel.
#4 – Inaccurate Reporting
Duplicate data can make your sales and marketing reports look better or worse than they really are.
For example, if you’re trying to predict sales revenue based on your current sales funnel and you have duplicate leads, your projected revenue might look like more than what you could actually achieve. If you’re using these figures to make major business decisions, you’ll be sorely disappointed with the outcome.
The stronger your data integrity, the more reliable your reports. If you’re using reporting to guide critical decisions and take an accurate snapshot of your business, eliminating lead duplication is non-negotiable.
#5 – Lack of Customer Service
Perhaps most important of all, having inaccurate or duplicate data does a disservice to your customers. When they reach out to you, they don’t want to be just another lead. They want a personalized experience, and it’s your job to show you know their name, their business, and their needs.
But when you have duplicate leads, it makes it harder for you to deliver on this level of customer service. Instead, you may end up looking unprofessional or otherwise unable to support them as a customer.
When this happens, the only thanks you’ll get will be from your competitors.
How to Avoid Lead Duplication to Improve Sales Success
Is lead duplication harming your sales? Conducting a full audit of your data can help you determine for certain, but the time investment makes this idea unfeasible for many companies.
LeadSquared helps you avoid lead duplication and the resulting damage it can do to your business. Our advanced data capture technology helps keep records together to provide a single view of the customer experience.
Try LeadSquared for yourself with a free 15-day trial and start improving the way you sell.
