OK - so you've "planted" new, qualified visitors who are visiting your web site, finding meaningful, usable content and taking action. In other words, your getting online inquires from new prospects. Terrific! Now what?

A defined Sales Inquiry Management process is also essential to "harvesting" tangible business opportunities from your online leads. This inquiry management program should address the following needs:

• Effective processes for pre-qualifying online inquiries
• Contact Management or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools for tracking and documenting sales opportunities
• Effective processes for sales lead follow-up and feedback

Defining the Process:
Perhaps you have such a program or perhaps not. Many companies are making a noble attempt at inquiry management, but feel that they are not getting the job done well. Obviously, this issue goes well beyond web marketing and your success here depends on managing sales disciplines within your internal organization. If however, you don't have defined processes for managing online inquiries, you need to develop a process to make sure that these hard-earned opportunities aren't falling through the cracks.

If you consider the cost of generating a single lead, and its potential worth, you really can't afford to mismanage these precious online inquiries - or any inquiries for that matter!