A director of business development handles all leads generated by the Internet at Colony Marine (Ranked 25 in 2006). This full-time employee fields and assigns all leads to a dedicated sales person, and they are responded to on an hourly basis. This person also tracks the lead process for each salesperson and issues a monthly report card that grades them on response time, quality of response, continued follow-up, appointment generation and, ultimately, sales. Sales people who lag in this process are given additional training to help improve the process.
This best practice can also be found under the Lead Management and Sales Department categories.