How Leads Are Qualified
Lead generation companies often have to juggle two competing priorities: our clients want more sales leads, but they also want to convert a higher percentage of the sales leads that they already have.
Many sales leaders have the misconception that lead generation and sales conversion are two separate goals – the sales people constantly cry for “more sales leads” while their managers insist that the sales people need to get better conversion rates from their existing sales leads.
Fortunately, these two goals do not have to conflict with each other. Along with a robust lead generation program to keep more new sales leads coming in, it’s also important for sales organizations to create a solid pipeline of sales opportunities by managing their sales leads for the long term. With the right sales lead follow-up and sales lead nurturing techniques, sales teams can keep maximizing the value from every new sales lead that comes along.
Here are three steps to get more value from your existing sales leads, while also uncovering new opportunities along the way:
Rank and qualify your sales leads
Not all sales leads are created equal, and not all sales leads are worth giving the same amount of attention. One of the first principles of lead management is that sales leads need to be constantly evaluated, sorted and ranked in order of priority. For example, you could list your sales leads in order of “perceived pain” (how urgently they are looking to make a purchase) based on your sales team’s conversations.
Learn how to ask the right questions to draw out the prospect’s deeper concerns. Qualifying B2B sales leads is not just about robotically reading from a script, it’s about building rapport and beginning to develop a relationship where you can talk to this person multiple times over a longer-term period – and sometimes your lead qualification questions might uncover some other opportunities for sales.
Most sales people are eager to jump on the “highest priority” sales leads which have indicated a willingness to buy. But your company will be well served if you can also teach your sales team to value the “lower priority” sales leads – because these sales leads will enter the pipeline to become future sales opportunities, if the team knows how to nurture them and guide them through the sales process. Today’s “low priority” sales lead could become a lucrative sale six or nine months from now.
Use content marketing to follow up with sales leads
“Sales lead follow-up” doesn’t mean peppering your prospects with phone calls asking, “Are you ready to buy yet?”
Instead, lead nurturing is often well complemented by the smart use of content marketing materials, which present information and build credibility with prospects in a helpful, educational way.
For example, your sales team, as part of the longer-term process of building relationships and addressing the prospect’s pain issues, can offer to send free web demonstrations, white papers, case studies, “success stories,” and blog articles that are relevant to the prospect’s needs.
Even if the material shared is not relevant to the immediate sales conversation, it’s often beneficial to share great content with prospects just to show them that you care about helping their business – for example, you could send articles on industry trends or business intelligence that might benefit the prospect.
Make it consistent
Sales lead follow up needs to be a constant, ongoing process. In addition to phone calls, fortunately there are a variety of solutions on the market that makes it possible to automate much of the sales lead follow-up activity, such as e-mail newsletters (your sales team can ask prospects to opt in to your e-mail newsletter, even if they aren’t ready to buy), Webinars (to continue to educate the prospect and offer helpful information along the way), and product demonstrations.
Just like a magazine or website publishes an “editorial calendar” to schedule content creation around certain topics and times of the year, your sales organization should create a regular “sales follow-up calendar” that works as a cohesive, repeatable, consistent process to keep making contact with prospects, and to keep maximizing every sales lead on your list.
In the long run, there are very few truly “good sales leads” or “bad sales leads” – almost any sales lead can turn into a sale given enough time, nurturing, and appropriate follow-up. By ranking and qualifying your sales leads, following up with helpful content marketing and information that benefits the prospect, and by ensuring a consistent system for nurturing leads, your sales organization will start to maximize the potential in every name and number on your sales lead database.