All leads are not created equal.
While all prospective leads have the potential to become customers one day, some will get there more quickly than others. Focusing on the leads that are most likely to specify something from your company, have a shorter purchase cycle and a larger budget will most quickly yield positive results.
How do you sort through all your prospects to find those who are most likely to convert? With some upfront work, this process will become second nature.
First, your sales and marketing teams need to agree on what makes a prospect a qualified lead. To achieve this level of understanding, both teams should analyze data from deals that have closed and ones that haven’t to understand which actions a prospect takes to indicate intent to specify. For example, you may notice that when a prospect orders a color swatch they are much more likely to convert than those who ordered just your color options brochure.
After your sales and marketing teams define which prospects are most valuable, your marketing team should develop a system to qualify these leads before they are passed to sales.
This system should be able to:
- Allow for a scoring system to be implemented based upon each prospect’s actions.
- Absorb new prospects and score them based upon their answers to questions like position, company name, budget and purchase horizon.
- Segment and nurture your prospects based upon their answers to the aforementioned questions.
- Automatically track all of your prospects’ digital interactions with your company.
- Support the ability for manual notes to be added and adjustments to be made.
Investing time up front to establish a prospect qualification system will not only lead to a more satisfied, more productive sales force but also help them close more high-quality deals.
At Pipitone, we’ve been working with building product manufacturers to identify, nurture and qualify their top prospects for more than 30 years. Let us help you efficiently solve your most complicated prospect qualification issues, so you can pass on only the best to your sales team.
