Just one thing: may you give me some objective parameters to define a lead as qualified? Felix had earlier asked me some questions about cost per lead, which I won’t share here, since the information is private to his company. However, I thought it would be helpful to publicly answer his follow-up question, about lead qualification, on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. Lead qualification is …. Defining a lead as qualified basically means they are qualified to talk to a sales representative. The best place to start is with a universal lead definition. MORE >>

fully realize this is a silly scenario, but it’s really not unlike what sales professionals do when they call prospects every few months to “touch base” and ask “whether they’re ready to buy yet.”. This is what lead nurturing is all about. Here’s the lead-nurturing litmus test : Can prospects benefit from the information you provide regardless of whether they buy from you? What sort of information informs your buying decisions? Want to learn more about lead nurturing? Lead Nurturing in Five Simple Steps. What’s the best lead generation tactic? MORE >>

When I first started teleprospecting with MECLABS (publisher of the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog), I was unsuccessful, to say the least. After about 900 calls, my results were disappointing — I only had one lead! After receiving both informal and formal training, as well as making the choice to dive into the task at hand, my results grew to six leads after only 575 calls. learned the translation must start with the individual who is making the call, because teleprospecting leads starts with a one-on-one phone conversation. That was an 839% improvement. Be knowledgeable. MORE >>

Tweet Marketers use lead scoring to slice all the potential deals in their pipelines and serve the sales team what it’s hungry for — leads that are ready to buy. Values are assigned to each prospect based on attributes like authority, title, vertical and timing to buy, as well as behavior. Each attribute and action adds to a lead’s total score. When the score hits a pre-determined threshold, the lead is served to Sales. It’s a process that works very well, according to the soon-to-be-released MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Lead Benchmark Report. MORE >>

Tweet A couple of weeks ago, I presented an American Marketing Association webcast , “ The One-Two Punch of Effective Lead Engagement: Accurate Lists and Powerful Content” (a replay of the webcast is posted below). These questions hit on key challenges in lead nurturing today. hope the answers will help you solve specific challenges in defining qualified leads, nurturing them, and aligning your sales and marketing teams. How to define a lead. Q: What if salespeople have differing opinions about what a lead is? Q: What defines a stale lead? MORE >>