How important are your leads to you? Are you treating them as well as you should be? Do you have a systematic plan for following up with prospects so you’re the first person that comes to mind when they require assistance with a real estate purchase, a mortgage, a new insurance policy or whatever service you provide?

If you’ve been in your profession for more years than the Internet has been around, you may or may not have been able to keep up with the trends and the advances in technology. It’s easy to become comfortable with your tried-and-true methods because they have worked for you for years. However, things change and if you are not changing with them, you will fall behind.

So what’s hot and what’s not in lead management? Let’s take a look to see where you stand:

Chances are, you are guilty of at least one or two items in the “Not” column, if not more. If so, it’s time to change your ways. There is a hot new product on the market that both simplifies and streamlines the lead management process. This product is appropriately named “LeadtoClose” because it manages the entire sales process from the initial contact with each new lead, helping you to implement a comprehensive sales action plan with each person in your database, which brings you to the close of the sale. LeadtoClose captures all of your leads whether they are coming via phone, email or the web. It features a built-in CRM that stores all of your contacts’ data, and because it’s web-based, it enables you to access this information at any time from any computer that’s connected to the Internet, or from your PDA.