Are you generating huge numbers of leads? But how many of them are the ‘quality’ ones? In the earlier blog episode, we checked the method to measure the quality lead, right?! utilize it and check whether generated leads are worth for your business?
Because mostly what happens, many B2B marketers end up gathering leads which are just for the number’s sake and out of them very few moves down the sales funnel and have an intent to buy your product or services.
Many super smart B2B marketers know the ground zero of market. They know that, market actually demands for quality leads. So, B2B marketer (Sales team too) knows very well, if they generate lots of weak leads they are into real trouble.
So, you must have got an idea that to survive in the B2B market, you need to produce numbers and quality.
Have you watched a movie Glengarry Glen Ross, a 1992 American drama film? The whole thing is about quality ‘leads’.
Image Source: SalesDirector
To improve the quality of your leads here are the super 5 approaches that will show the drastic improvement in the sales.
1. Marketing And Sales – Agree Them For ‘Sales Qualified Leads’
Marketing and sales need to concur on the attribute of a sales ready lead. Never slip any lead to the sales team unless that lead qualify ‘your definition of Qualified’.
According to a study by Marketing Sherpa, sadly, less than 50% of businesses have accepted a company-wide definition of a ‘sales-ready lead’.
So, tip one is ‘You’ need to decide the definition of ‘Qualified’ and work upon ‘Sales qualified lead’.
2. Execute The Lead Scoring Method
Lead scoring is the method of classifying the leads. This way you can map the interest level and rank the lead accordingly. Many companies can assign the ranks as Hot, Cold and Warm leads or simply A, B, C, D. and this way they will boil up or conclude to the ‘Fit’ or ‘Interested’ categories.
- ‘Fit’ with less ‘Interest’ – Marketing skills need to be implemented to nurture the lead.
- ‘Fit’ with high ‘Interest’ – Sales must follow up with the lead quickly.
The lead scoring should be done perfectly by analyzing the Explicit and Implicit data.
Explicit Data –The information prospect provides such as title, industry, company etc.
Implicit Data –The online behavior of the prospect, such as time spent of social media, pages visited, recency etc.
According to the Eloqua research, the lead scoring system increases the deal close rate by 30%, company revenue surges by 18% and the revenue per deal goes up by 17%.
3. Lead Nurturing
Image Source: HelloBar
Lead nurturing is defined as building relationship with your leads and nurturing them thoroughly throughout the buying process. As per the study, half of the leads are not always ready to buy the product or services. You need to nurture them so that they finally develop interest and buy the product or services.
According to the Forrester research, companies that proved excellent in the lead nurturing were able to generate 50% more sales ready leads that too at lower cost, compared to other companies.
Some leads are warm and are not or have lesser interest in buying the services or product. This is when lead nurturing comes into picture. Lead nurturing helps in taking the lead to the last level of buying process.
Must Read: Lead Generation Best Practices and Examples
4. Marketing Sales Feedback
A communication between marketing and sales team is must. When a marketing team throws leads to sales, it is must for the sales team to follow up. If this is not happening, something is broken and you might fail in the quality lead generation process. We know, aligning and establishing a coordination between the sales and marketing department is not an easy task, but it is a very important to get the desired results.
B2B marketers cannot wait so long for the sales to complete the whole qualification process, because until then many data might get obsolete. So it is always better to go for real time lead generation program.
Hence, it is advised to create a feedback loop between sales and marketing team, this way marketing team can send bunches of information to sales and sales will be able to send feedbacks and sales report to marketing team.
The monthly lead ranks should be reviewed and updated by both the teams; this completes the quality lead feedback cycle.
Must Read: How the lead generation strategies in USA market differ from the rest of the world
5. Use Technology
Work smarter not harder. Implement marketing automation tools to improve the quality of the leads. Automation will help you to understand the details of each lead very precisely, which is impossible manually. When you want to grow your sales, it is must to handle the data very efficiently.
Marketing automation tools provides the valuable analytics and measurements which are necessary to improve the lead quality. It tracks the lead behaviors in the sales funnel, gives you insight about your marketing plan, analyzing it properly you can answer the question of, Are you on right track of sales, lead generation and most importantly is it affecting your revenues.
Try implementing and integrating your CRM system with marketing automation tools to get the excellent results.
Final Words:
Many B2B researches revealed that market is having the quench for ‘quality leads’ around 70% of the companies demand for quality leads over quantity. But when it comes to compression of the term ‘Quality lead generation’ many businesses fail to do so. We know you are among the smart group of B2B marketers who are already focusing upon quality but might be finding ways to improve the quality of the leads.
We hope this blog paved a way towards improving the quality of the leads. Try integrating technology with your super talented brain and you will witness the wonders in the business revenue.
Must Read: Quality Vs Quantity Lead Generation: Who Wins The Race?
Vikas Bhatt is the Co-Founder of ONLY B2B, a premium B2B lead generation company that specializes in helping businesses achieve their growth objectives through targeted marketing & sales campaigns. With 10+ years of experience in the industry, Vikas has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses today and has developed a unique approach to lead generation that has helped clients across a range of industries around the globe. As a thought leader in the B2B marketing community, ONLY B2B specializes in demand generation, content syndication, database services and more.
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