How To Tell If Leads Are Bad
You’ve just launched a new marketing campaign. Leads are pouring in, your sales team is buzzing, and everything seems to be going perfectly. But then, reality hits. The phone numbers are duds, the email addresses bounce back, and the few people you do reach have no idea who you are or why you’re calling.
Sound familiar?
While a high volume of leads might look good on paper, it’s the quality that truly drives business growth. Low-quality leads, or “bad leads,” can drain your resources, demoralise your sales team, and ultimately hurt your bottom line.
So, how can you tell if your leads are bad?
It’s not always obvious, but there are clear signs that can help you distinguish genuine prospects from dead ends. This guide will walk you through what bad leads are, how to identify them, and what you can do to improve the quality of leads coming into your sales pipeline.
What Is a Bad Lead?
A bad lead is essentially an enquiry from someone who is highly unlikely to become a paying customer. This could be for several reasons. They might not fit your ideal customer profile, have no real interest in your product or service, or lack the authority or budget to make a purchase. In some cases, the information provided is completely fake, generated by bots or fraudulent activities.
For example, imagine your company sells high-end accounting software for large enterprises. A student who fills out your demo request form to use the software for a university project is a bad lead. While their interest is genuine, they have no purchasing power and don’t fit your target audience. Chasing this lead would be a waste of your sales team’s valuable time.
How to Tell if Your Leads Are Bad
Identifying bad leads early is crucial for maintaining an efficient sales process. If you’re experiencing a sudden influx of low-quality leads, it’s time to investigate.
Here are six common signs that can help you tell if your leads are bad.
1. High Bounce Rates on Your Landing Pages
A high bounce rate means visitors are leaving your site after viewing only one page. If a marketing campaign is driving significant traffic to a landing page but the bounce rate is unusually high, it could indicate that the leads are not qualified. They might have clicked on your ad by mistake or realised your offering isn’t what they were looking for.
2. Inconsistent or Fake Information
One of the most obvious signs of a bad lead is incorrect or nonsensical contact information.
Look out for:
- Disposable or generic email addresses (e.g., “test@test.com” or “no@email.com”).
- Fake names (e.g., “John Doe” or gibberish).
- Incorrect phone numbers that are either disconnected or belong to someone else.
When your sales team consistently encounters this type of information, it’s a clear red flag that your lead generation efforts are attracting the wrong crowd, or even worse, bots.
3. Low Engagement and Unresponsiveness
Are your follow-up emails going unopened? Are your calls going straight to voicemail?
A complete lack of engagement is a strong indicator of a bad lead. Genuine prospects who are interested in your product will typically show some level of interaction, whether it’s opening an email, clicking a link, or answering a call. If your leads are consistently unresponsive, they were likely never interested in the first place.
4. Mismatch with Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Your ICP defines the perfect customer for your business. It includes details like industry, company size, job title, and pain points. If the leads you’re generating don’t align with this profile, they are likely of low quality.
For example, if you sell B2B software and receive leads from individual consumers, they are not a good fit.
5. No Budget or Decision-Making Power
A lead might seem perfect on the surface. They’re engaged, they love your product, and they fit your ICP.
But if they don’t have the budget or the authority to make a purchase, they can’t convert. During initial conversations, your sales team should qualify leads by asking about their role in the decision-making process and their available budget. If they are just browsing or conducting research for a manager, they are not a priority lead.
6. They Come from Unreliable Sources
Leads purchased from a cheap, non-reputable third-party list are often outdated or filled with uninterested contacts. Similarly, running ads on low-quality websites can attract bots and fraudulent clicks. It’s essential to track where your leads are coming from to identify which channels deliver quality prospects and which ones bring in junk.
How Do You Get Bad Leads?
Bad leads don’t just appear out of nowhere. They are often the result of specific issues in your marketing and lead generation strategy.
Here are some common causes:
- Broad or Poorly Targeted Advertising: Campaigns that are too general can attract a wide range of people, most of whom won’t be interested in your product.
- Misleading Marketing Messages: If your ads or content promise something you can’t deliver, you’ll attract people who will quickly become disqualified.
- Unqualified Lead Magnets: Offering a very general giveaway, like a gift card, can attract people who only want the prize, not your product.
- Purchased Lead Lists: Buying leads is often a recipe for disaster, as these lists are notoriously low-quality.
- Ad Fraud: Bots and click farms can generate a large volume of fake leads, wasting your ad budget and skewing your data.
What to Do About Bad Leads
Dealing with low-quality leads can be frustrating, but there are effective steps you can take to clean up your pipeline and improve lead quality for the future.
- Refine Your Targeting: Take a closer look at your ad campaigns and content distribution. Ensure you are targeting a specific audience that matches your ICP.
- Implement Lead Scoring: Set up a lead scoring system to automatically rank leads based on their characteristics and behaviours. This helps your team prioritise the most promising prospects.
- Use Stronger Qualification Questions: Update your contact forms to include questions that help you qualify leads from the start. Ask about their company, role, and specific needs.
- Regularly Clean Your Email List: Periodically remove unresponsive or invalid contacts from your database to maintain a healthy and engaged list.
- Invest in a Lead Management System: A dedicated system can help you track, manage, and nurture your leads far more effectively than a simple spreadsheet.
Optimise Your Pipeline with Leadtrekker
Tired of sifting through bad leads and struggling to keep track of genuine prospects? A robust lead management system can transform your sales process.
Leadtrekker is an all-in-one platform designed to help you automate, personalise, and track your sales efforts.
With its powerful features, you can manage your leads from a central dashboard, automate follow-ups via email and SMS, and gain in-depth analytics to measure what’s working. Leadtrekker allows you to instantly assign leads to sales reps and monitor activity, ensuring no quality lead ever slips through the cracks.
The platform integrates seamlessly with popular tools like WordPress, Facebook, and Mailchimp, making it easy to fit into your existing workflow.
With pricing starting at just R249 per license per month and a 30-day free trial, it’s an accessible solution for businesses of all sizes.
Stop letting bad leads clog your pipeline.
