Definitions
What is a track?
A “lead” (or prospect) is a term commonly used in marketing and sales to refer to any individual (natural or legal) who has expressed interest in a company’s products or services. In other words, a lead is a person who could potentially become a customer.
Leads can be classified into different categories, depending on their level of interest in your product/service and how close they are to making a purchasing decision:
- Cold Lead : The prospect has shown initial interest, but has not yet interacted much with the company.
- Hot lead : The prospect has shown significant interest and is more likely to become a customer than a cold lead.
- Qualified Lead : The prospect has been assessed and deemed ready for a direct sales approach.
What is lead qualification?
Lead qualification is the process of determining which contacts are most likely to convert into customers . This is a crucial step that allows your sales and marketing teams to focus their efforts on the most promising prospects for your business.
This will allow you to optimize your resources and increase your conversion rate .
With a certain budget, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and marketing automation solutions often play a key role in the prospect qualification process, automating data collection, scoring and nurturing actions. They ensure more efficient and systematic management of people to convert.
Why do I need to qualify my prospects?
According to Hubspot’s “State of Marketing Report 2024″*, 61% of marketers believe lead generation is their biggest challenge.
Qualifying leads will allow you and your team to determine which group of contacts is the most promising and will lead directly to the sale. It will also allow you to implement more precise and effective communication, based on their expectations and needs.
Most importantly, qualifying prospects allows you to properly manage the use of your resources , both in terms of time and money. You will be able to eliminate uninterested leads more quickly, which means that the most mature contacts will be passed to your sales force , so you can focus more on the most promising opportunities. In short, you will gain in performance and increase sales .
Pre-qualification strategies
Preliminary work: defining the buyer persona
Before you begin qualifying or generating leads, you need to define buyer personas. A buyer persona is a profile of the ideal buyer for your solution, product, or service.
Have you ever asked yourself the question: “Who is my ideal customer?”, “What does he/she want from my/our product/service?”? Then you have already done the work. The buyer persona is the person who will buy your products or services. It is your target.
Define two or three target personas. Their characteristics and behavior will determine their expectations towards your products/services. This will allow you to qualify and cultivate your leads effectively, turning them into ambassadors.
This work is essential, because it forms the basis of your marketing strategy. Once you know exactly who you are addressing, it is time to generate the first contacts.
Lead generation before qualification
Leads can be generated through various means, such as landing pages and online forms. When someone fills out a form on your website to download a white paper, for example, or signs up for your newsletter, or asks for more information about a particular product or service, you are collecting data (and effective CTAs will be your best ally). Events, such as participation in trade shows, webinars or other events where participants sms services leave their contact details, can complete the data collection. As well as online advertising, which consists of generating clicks on paid ads through search engines (Google Ads) or social networks where you can sponsor certain content (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter).
Or natural referencing: visits to the website from natural search results (SEO).
Of course, the only limit is your imagination. Be creative!
Lead Qualification: The Theory
The concept of a qualified lead was theorized in the 1960s by a B-to-B sales technique known as the BANT method. This lead qualification technique is used to assess lead potential and priority.
BANT is an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline . The prospect is evaluated based on these 4 aspects to determine if a purchase decision can be made.
Budget : Does the prospect a game changer for mobile marketing? have the financial resources to purchase your product or service? How much is he willing to invest? Is his budget in line with your price?
Authority : Does the person (leader) you are negotiating with have decision-making power? Or do other people in the company need to be involved in the negotiation?
Need : Does your product or service address a specific need of the prospect? Does it solve a problem that is important enough for the prospect to justify the purchase?
Timeline : What is the time horizon of the purchasing decision? Knowing when the prospect intends to make a decision will help you plan the sales process more effectively and prioritize your efforts.
If the interlocutor meets cellp data these 4 criteria, he qualifies as a real potential customer. With the BANT method, sellers can direct their efforts more effectively, save time and maximize the chances of closing sales.
