Lead follow-up checklist for UAE teams

Lead management is the work between a lead arriving and a decision being recorded. Most of the cost of lead generation is wasted there, because the money has been spent before the follow-up begins. Use the questions below as a checklist for your own business. It sits alongside how UAE businesses get leads, what a lead costs and how leads are followed up.

An owner for every lead

• Who is told when a lead arrives, and by what route? Test it with a lead of your own.
• Who covers when that person is away or off shift?
• Where do leads from each source land, and does any of them depend on someone logging in to look?

Google, for example, keeps lead form leads for 60 days and advises downloading them regularly^[1]. If your process depends on a manual download, name the person and the day.

What to record

• The source, and the campaign or referrer where you know it.
• The date and time the lead arrived and the date and time of the first reply.
• Whether the lead is qualified, with a reason when it is not.
• The status: new, contacted, meeting booked, proposal sent, won, lost.
• The value and the reason when a lead is won or lost.
• Whether the lead agreed to receive messages, and how and when they agreed.

A spreadsheet can hold all of this. A CRM does it with less effort once volume rises. What matters is that the same fields are filled for every lead.

The first reply and the steps after it

Write the first reply in advance for each source, so it matches what the lead asked for. Decide how many attempts you will make, over how many days, by which channel, and when a lead is closed as unreachable. I do not give a target response time here. I have no source for one that fits every UAE business, so set your own from your sales cycle and measure whether you meet it.

Consent and quiet hours for texts

Text messages are a common follow-up channel, so the UAE rules deserve a close read. TDRA’s policy on unsolicited electronic communications applies to text messages with a UAE link and defines spam as marketing sent to a recipient without their consent^[2]. Within it:

• Consent can take any form, provided it can be stored and shown when TDRA asks, and the way consent is obtained must be clear and transparent^[2].
• The record of consent includes the date, time and the words or content by which the customer consented^[2].
• Every marketing text must give a way to opt out, free of charge^[2].
• Marketing texts may not be sent between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.^[2]

The policy places its duties on telecom licensees and requires them to put these terms in their contracts with customers that send messages^[2]. So the rules reach a business through its message provider. TDRA also says it takes strict action against senders who message without prior consent^[3]. The policy names SMS and MMS as examples of text messages. I do not read it as telling you how it treats WhatsApp or email, so ask an adviser. Check the current text on TDRA’s website, and take professional advice before you automate any messaging.

Review the leads that went nowhere

Once a month, read ten leads that were lost or never answered, from different sources. You will usually find a process fault rather than a marketing fault. Then enter the period’s numbers in the cost per lead calculator to see what those faults cost per customer. If you want the replies and reminders automated, my CRM set-up service is described on my own site, and the publisher disclosure applies.