Lead management in multi-tiered sales organizations

• US 20070239514A1
• Filed: 12/17/2003
• Published: 10/11/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Siebel Systems Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Kraemer, Kevin, Stein, Aaron, Lissy, Gregory
• Granted Patent: US 7,664,668 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0202 Market predictions or forecasting for commercial activities

Abstract

Techniques are described that provide automated sales-related assistance to sales organizations, such as for multi-tiered sales organizations that are clients of a multi-tenanted network-accessible server hosting a sales lead management service. The automated assistance may include assisting first-tier sales development representatives to qualify leads as sufficiently developed to allow a second-tier sales representatives to efficiently develop sales from them, and by further assisting the second-tier sales representatives to provide meaningful feedback that addresses problems in the lead qualifying process, such as by notifying a sales development representative of the reasons that one of their qualified sales lead was rejected by a sales representative and prompting resolution by that sales development representative. This abstract is provided to comply with rules requiring an abstract, and it is submitted with the intention that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.

Claims

1. A method for managing sales leads, comprising:

under control of a computing system, qualifying a sales lead based on input received from a first user and associating that qualified sales lead with a second user distinct from the first user for further processing; and

after the second user indicates to reject that associated qualified sales lead, rejecting that sales lead in such a manner as to provide feedback to one or more users other than the second user.

2. A method for a server computer of a two-tiered sales organization to manage processing of sales leads, the two-tiered sales organization including a first group of sales development representatives (“

SDRs”

) and a second distinct group of sales representatives (“

SRs”

) such that the SDRs attempt to identify promising sales leads for the SRs and the SRs attempt to convert those sales leads into sales opportunities likely to result in sales, the method comprising;

for each of multiple SDRs,

providing indications to the SDR of multiple preliminary sales leads assigned to that SDR that each represent an individual and/or organization with an expressed interest in purchasing one or more items from the sales organization;

associating information with each of the assigned sales leads that is gathered by the SDR to assess a likely value to the sales organization of a sales opportunity that could result from that sales lead, each sales opportunity representing a potential sale of specified items to a specified purchaser; and

when a determination is made based on predefined criteria that the assessed likely values of the assigned sales leads are sufficiently high, qualifying those sales leads in an automated manner so as to alter those sales leads into qualified sales leads and to assign each of those qualified sales leads to one of the SRs distinct from the SDR for attempted conversion to a sales opportunity;

for each of multiple SRs,

providing indications to the SR of the qualified sales leads that are newly assigned to that SR; and

for each of the newly assigned qualified sales leads, when the SR makes a determination that the qualifying of the sales lead was incorrect,

receiving a reason from the SR for the determination; and

rejecting the qualified sales lead in an automated manner by altering that qualified sales lead so that it no longer is qualified and by providing feedback to one or more other users within the sales organization of the rejection of that newly assigned sales lead and of the reason; and

adjusting the qualifying of sales leads based on one or more of the rejections of qualified sales leads,

so that the qualification of sales leads by SDRs is performed based at least in part on predefined criteria and so that SRs can reject newly assigned qualified sales leads to provide feedback that causes the qualifying of sales leads to be adjusted.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the altering of a rejected qualified sales lead includes reverting the qualified sales lead back into the preliminary sales lead from which the rejected qualified sales lead was altered, wherein the providing of feedback to users of the rejection of the sales lead includes assigning the reverted preliminary sales lead to the SDR who originally qualified that preliminary sales lead, and including, under the control of that SDR:

associating additional information with that preliminary sales lead that was gathered by the SDR based on the reason for the rejection; and

when the SDR determines that the gathered additional information addresses a problem that caused the prior qualifying of the sales lead to be incorrect, re-qualifying that preliminary sales lead for further processing by an SR to whom the re-qualified sales lead is assigned.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the adjusting of the qualifying of sales leads based on one or more of the rejections of qualified sales leads includes, when multiple of the rejections are of sales leads qualified by a single SDR, automatically adjusting the predefined criteria used for that SDR for future determinations of whether the assessed likely values of sales leads for that SDR are sufficiently high.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the assessing of the likely values of preliminary sales leads is performed manually by the SDRs to whom those sales leads are assigned, wherein the providing of feedback for one or more of the rejected qualified sales leads includes notifying one of the SDRs to alter their future manual assessing of likely values for their assigned sales leads, and wherein the adjusting of the qualifying of sales leads includes the altering of that future manual assessing by the SDR.

6. The method of claim 2 including, under the control of each of the SRs and for each of at least some of the newly assigned qualified sales leads for that SR for which the qualifying of that sales lead is not determined to be incorrect, performing additional processing of that qualified sales lead to identify a sales opportunity that includes a potential sale of specified items by the sales organization to a specified purchaser.

7. The method of claim 6 including automatically performing multiple sales forecasts for the sales organization over a period of time that are each based on information currently available about the sales opportunities that are currently identified, each sales forecast including an indication of likely sales revenue for the sales organization for a specified period of time that is based on the potential sales of the specified items for those sales opportunities but that is not based on information about sales leads for which corresponding sales opportunities have not been identified.

8. The method of claim 6 including, for each of at least some of the preliminary sales leads assigned to SDRs, the preliminary sales lead representing an individual and/or organization, identifying the preliminary sales lead based on one of multiple sales prospects produced from a sales campaign such that the one sales prospect corresponds to the represented individual and/or organization.

9. The method of claim 2 wherein the reason for each of at least some of the rejections of the qualified sales leads is that the qualifying of that sales lead was incorrect because an actual likely value of the qualified sales lead is less than the likely value assessed by the SDR who performed the qualifying.

10. The method of claim 2 wherein the reason for each of at least some of the rejections of the qualified sales leads is that the qualifying of that sales lead was incorrect because the SDR who performed the qualifying did not gather sufficient information corresponding to the sales lead before the qualifying.

11. The method of claim 2 wherein the server computer further provides graphical user interfaces to each of the SDRs and the SRs such that the providing of the indications of assigned preliminary sales leads to SDRs is performed by displaying those indications to those SDRs as part of the graphical user interfaces for those SDRs, wherein the providing of indications of assigned qualified sales leads to SRs is performed by displaying those indications to those SRs as part of the graphical user interfaces for those SRs, wherein the qualifying of sales leads is based on determinations by SDRs that are indicated by selection by those SDRs of displayed qualifying controls that are part of the graphical user interfaces for those SDRs, and wherein the rejecting of sales leads is based on determinations by SRs that are indicated by selection by those SRs of displayed rejections controls that are part of the graphical user interfaces for those SRs.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein information displayed to users via the graphical user interfaces and capabilities provided to users via accessible controls of the graphical user interfaces vary based on roles of those users.

13. The method of claim 2 wherein the server computer provides sales lead management processing to each of multiple unrelated two-tiered sales organizations via computing systems of those sales organizations that are remote clients of the server computer, the server computer providing a multi-tenanted hosted environment by storing information specific to each of the client sales organizations and performing processing specific to each of the client sales organizations.

14. A method for a computing device to manage processing of sales leads for a two-tiered sales organization, the method comprising:

for each of multiple unqualified sales leads,

determining to qualify the unqualified sales lead based at least in part on input received from a first user who is associated with the unqualified sales lead, the first user having a role that is part of a first of the two tiers of the sales organization and the received input based on an assessed likely value of the sales lead by the first user, the qualifying including altering the unqualified sales lead into a distinct qualified sales lead;

identifying a second user to associate with that qualified sales lead for further developing of the qualified sales lead, the second user distinct from the first user and having a distinct role that is part of a second of the two tiers of the sales organization; and

when the second user indicates to reject the association of that qualified sales lead, rejecting that qualified sales lead by removing the association of that qualified sales lead with the second user and automatically providing feedback to one or more other users of the sales organization of the rejection, so that future determining to qualify unqualified sales leads can be adjusted based on the provided feedback.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the rejecting of at least some of the qualified sales leads by users is based on assessments by those users that those qualified sales leads have actual likely values that are less than the assessed likely value by the other users that performed the qualifying for those sales leads.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the rejecting of at least some of the qualified sales leads by users is based on determinations by those users that the other users that performed the qualifying for those sales leads did not gather sufficient information for those qualified sales leads before the qualifying.

17. The method of claim 14 wherein the assessed likely value of each of the sales leads represents a likely value to the sales organization from one or more sales opportunities that may result from that sales lead.

18. The method of claim 14 wherein the assessed likely value of each of the sales leads is based at least in part on potential sales to the sales organization corresponding to that sales lead.

19. The method of claim 14 wherein each of the rejections of a qualified sales lead by a user includes receiving one or more reasons from the user for that rejection, and wherein the providing of the feedback to other users of a rejection includes the reasons for that rejection.

20. The method of claim 14 wherein each of the rejections of a qualified sales lead by a user includes receiving one or more suggested corrective actions from the user, and wherein the providing of the feedback to other users of a rejection includes at least some of the suggested corrective actions for that rejection.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein each of the suggested corrective actions from a user related to the rejection of a qualified sales lead is an action corresponding to that qualified sales lead.

22. The method of claim 14 including, after the providing of the feedback to other users based on rejections of qualified sales leads, performing one or more actions based on indications from one or more of those other users in order to respond to the feedback.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the providing of the feedback to one or more other users for the rejection of each of the qualified sales leads includes returning that sales lead to the user who performed the qualifying of that sales lead for additional processing by that user, and wherein the performed actions are performed for each of those rejected sales leads by the users to whom those sales leads are returned.

24. The method of claim 14 wherein the determining to qualify each of the unqualified sales leads based on input received from users is further performed in accordance with predefined criteria for the sales organization.

25. The method of claim 24 wherein the determining to qualify one of the unqualified sales leads based on input received from a user includes, after receiving an instruction from that user to qualify that sales lead, determining not to qualify that sales lead based on the predefined criteria.

26. The method of claim 14 wherein the rejecting of each of the qualified sales leads after a user indicates to reject an association of that qualified sales lead with that user includes determining whether to performing the rejecting based on predefined criteria for the sales organization.

27. The method of claim 26 wherein the determining whether to perform the rejecting of one of the qualified sales leads based on the predefined criteria after a user indicates to perform that rejecting includes determining not to reject that sales lead for that user based on the predefined criteria.

28. The method of claim 14 wherein the computing device further provides graphical user interfaces to each of the first users to display indications to those first users of unqualified sales leads that are associated with those first users, wherein the computing device further provides graphical user interfaces to each of the second users to display indications to those second users of qualified sales leads that are associated with those second users, and wherein the input received from the first users and the indications received from the second users to reject associations of qualified sales leads are based on selections by those users of controls displayed to those users as part of those graphical user interfaces.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein information displayed to users via the graphical user interfaces and capabilities provided to users via accessible controls of the graphical user interfaces vary based on the roles of those users.

30. The method of claim 14 wherein the computing device is a server device that further provides sales lead management processing to each of multiple unrelated two-tiered sales organizations via computing systems of those sales organizations that are remote clients of the server, the server providing a multi-tenanted hosted environment by storing information specific to each of the client sales organizations.

31. A computer-readable medium whose contents cause a computing device to manage sales leads processing, by performing a method comprising:

for each of multiple preliminary sales leads,

qualifying the unqualified sales lead so as to produce a qualified sales lead based at least in part on input received from a first user;

associating that qualified sales lead with a second user distinct from the first user for further processing; and

when the second user indicates to reject that associated qualified sales lead, providing feedback to one or more users of the sales organization other than the second user.

32. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 wherein the computer-readable medium is a memory of a computing device.

33. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 wherein the computer-readable medium is a data transmission medium transmitting a generated data signal containing the contents.

34. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 wherein the contents are instructions that when executed cause the computing device to perform the method.

35. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 wherein the contents include one or more data structures for use in sales lead processing, the data structures comprising a multiplicity of entries that correspond to multiple unqualified sales leads and to multiple qualified sales leads.

36. A server computing system configured to manage processing of sales leads for each of one or more two-tiered sales organizations, comprising:

a lead qualifier component configured to, for each of multiple unqualified sales leads, qualify the unqualified sales lead based at least in part on input received from a first user who is associated with the unqualified sales lead, the received input based on an assessed likely value of the sales lead by the first user; and

a qualified lead converter component configured to, for each of the qualified sales leads and if a distinct second user associated with that qualified sales lead indicates to reject that qualified sales lead, reject that qualified sales lead by removing the association of that qualified sales lead with the second user and providing feedback other users.

37. The computing device of claim 36 wherein the lead qualifier component and the qualified lead converter component are executing in memory of the computing device.

38. The computing device of claim 36 wherein the lead qualifier component consists of a means for qualifying each of the unqualified sales leads based at least in part on the input received from the associated first user for the unqualified sales lead, and wherein the qualified lead converter component consists of a means for rejecting each of the qualified sales lead which the associated distinct second user for that qualified sales lead indicates to reject.

39. The computing device of claim 36 wherein the computing device includes a storage device configured to store information associated with each of the unqualified sales leads and to store information associated with each of the qualified sales leads, and a memory configured to perform the qualifying of the unqualified sales leads and the rejecting of the qualified sales leads.