3 Tips for Better Lead Qualification

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Read about 3 crucial lead qualification tips that will enable you to work on the right leads and accelerate your closing ratios.

It’s time to work smarter and not harder when it comes to lead qualification. As it with every passing day, it gets tougher to reach prospective buyers in an active buying cycle.

The ideal way for your sales team to work smarter is to utilize their limited selling time with qualified leads. You can start by trying to understand who your best customers are. Are you already doing a great job with mid-size companies? Do you feel you can find more opportunities in that area? Another thing to keep in mind is to know your buyers. Who pulls the trigger when it is time to buy? Who influences the buying decision? Asking such questions can steer you in the right direction.

How do you prioritize your sales efforts? The answer is lies in lead qualification. Lead qualification is the process of narrowing down a group of prospective buyers to a smaller group who is more likely to buy your products/solutions and become profitable consumers.

Let us look at three crucial lead qualification tips that will enable you to work on the right leads and accelerate your closing ratios.

  1. Begin with a target list

    You know the customers/companies that you want to work with. Start by trying to create a customer profile. This should include demographic characteristics, industry groupings, company size and geographical locations. By understanding the kind of customers that you work with, you will be able to create a target list that only includes companies/customers that meet the list in your customer profile. Whether you wish to buy a list, develop it in-house or use LinkedIn, make sure to only target your list of ideal customers. This is the first step towards the qualification process. Once this is achieved, be disciplined in your sales process and do not go after leads that do not match your customer profile. Doing so, will result in more time waste with meager returns.

  2. Qualify inbound leads with marketing automation

    With a target list, you can ensure that you only prospect outbound leads that match your profile. But how can you qualify inbound leads? Here is how. Inbound leads are those leads that have opted into your sales process by attending one of your webinars, downloading an eBook etc.

    Though you will not be able to control who gets access to your content, you can use marketing automation software to qualify inbound leads. Start by qualifying your leads based on demographics. Try to ask questions that define who the lead is. Find out about type of industry, company size and other such criteria that will help you evaluate your leads with the ideal customer profile that you have created.

    Make it easy for customers to give you this information by structuring the questions so that they can be quickly answered through a drop-down selection. Marketing automation software can also be used to measure a lead’s interaction with your marketing process. If one of your leads in the ideal customer profile has opened 5 emails, downloaded 3 eBooks and checked out your pricing page 3 times, there is a good chance that the lead could become your customer.

    By incorporating lead scoring in your marketing automation software, you can easily assign point value for demographic matches and interaction that takes places in the marketing process. With a good lead scoring system, you can not only get your prospects qualified, but also alert your sales representatives when they have reached a sales-ready state.

  3. Lend a human touch

    Once a lead gets qualified based on a match to your ideal customer profile or on a membership to your target list, you have to do some research to decide if you should go ahead and qualify the lead. By reaching on social media, you will not only be able to qualify your leads, but you will also be able to get a good idea of what is important for your customers. Since there are several buying influences in today’s sales environment, you should not overlook any of the potential influencers. Work together with your team to cover all the buying influences. This will make your business successful.

Instead of trying to sell to a wide audience, identify your area of expertise and work towards it. Identifying your ideal customer profile and working towards it can make you successful. We hope the tips we have shared on lead qualification can aid you in spending your selling time on where it will give you the highest returns. At Outsource2india, we offer expert lead qualification services. With our flexible pricing options, 100% security, cutting-edge infrastructure, high quality services, multi-lingual support, round-the-clock support, scalable services and experienced team members, we are your best bet when it comes to lead qualification services. Find out how our lead qualification services can take your business to the next level.

Did you like reading this post? Do you want more information on lead qualification? Let us know your queries in the comments box below and we will be happy to answer you. We, at Outsource2india love to hear from you!

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