When working in sales, it is important to understand your ideal client and approach those who are most likely to purchase your product. This will result in larger quantities of sales as well as improve the client quality over time.
In this article, we will discuss the practice of qualifying leads in sales and also why this is an important process to complete.
What is a Qualified Lead?
A qualified lead is a lead that ticks all the boxes when it comes to how likely they are to purchase your products or services. For example, a woman walking into a dress store that is specifically looking for a formal dress to wear to a wedding in a week, is very likely to purchase a garment.
How to Find Qualified Leads
Leads can be gathered through typical marketing efforts such as Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). However, once you have the leads, you must be able to score the leads in order to figure out which leads are most qualified and likely to purchase your product, so that you can focus on those leads first, before moving on to those less likely to purchase. There are a few methods and data points one can utilise to score your leads from most to least likely to purchase.
- Click-Through Rate: It is important to check the click-through rate of emails that have been sent to the lead as this will indicate the level of interest in the company. The more they click-through, the more likely they are to purchase a product or service from your brand, as they clearly already connect to the brand on some level.
- Website Visits: If the lead in question consistently and frequently visits your website, chances are they are interested in and are trying to make a decision about purchasing a product or service, and only require a slight push of encouragement to take that last step.
- Recent Engagement: It is important to understand when the lead has engaged with the company last. Has a salesperson recently spoken to them and did they turn the offer down? This type of information can be invaluable when pitching to a potential client.
- Purchasing Power: It is essential to know whether or not a lead actually has the financial means required to purchase your product or service. If they do not have this financial capacity, it is wasted time that a sales representative could have spent selling to another potential client.
- A Decision Maker: When working with corporations, it is important to communicate and deal with someone who actually has the power to make a decision and purchase your product. Therefore, it is important to determine whether your lead is the receptionist or the business owner.
- Need or Want: It is important to understand whether your product is a need or want to a lead. If they need your product it is an easier sell than if the company or person doesn’t really need it but it would be a nice to have.
Making Use of a CRM
Some CRMs are able to assist in lead scoring and make the process easy and fast. To find out more about how lead scoring can benefit you and your company, and how a CRM plays a part in this process, contact Leadtrekker.
