5 Tips for Your Lead Qualification Process
This article describes the importance of having a lead qualification process. Many of our customers hire us on a project basis to qualify their prospects acquired from inbound marketing, trade shows , and other direct marketing campaigns. Using the phone to qualify leads can differentiate one company from another.
If you don’t have a lead qualification team in place it’s probably a good time to consider one. But that’s the subject of a whole other post. According to the MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, as much as 61% of companies directly pass leads from marketing to sales without lead qualification.
While still under-rated, lead qualification teams deliver tremendous value, acting as a sieve between marketing and sales. They trawl through countless prospects — from various sources such as your website, tradeshows and webinars — and distill out qualified leads.
Companies constantly work to ensure only the right leads are passed onto sales. Here are five tips that can help you get a jumpstart.
1. The human voice can do miraculous things.
Every time a lead touches a threshold lead score, let the lead qualification or teleprospecting team jump in. Let this team largely operate by telephone as this medium renders a human touch. While telemarketing may often be perceived as annoying it does have its role. A prospect who is reeling under the stress of a business problem may be more than happy to talk to a rep who promises a solution.
2. Have a script.
Forms can help capture many details such as geography, vertical, company size and job title, which the lead qualification team can then verify. Additionally, consider the following points as you prepare your script:
- BANT (budget, authority, need and timing)
- Decision maker/s
- Decision making process
- Does he fit your customer profile
- Is he in talks with competitors
- Book an appointment with a sales rep
Tweak the script based on the prospect’s enquiry,download activity and blogs read.
3. Be lenient on BANT.
BANT may have once been the holy grail of lead qualification but times have changed. While every rep would be well advised to check on BANT, don’t chuck the leads that are not fully BANT qualified. An overqualified lead might not be an opportunity at all. In fact, if you find clear cut answers to all four aspects of BANT, you might have just missed the boat. The prospect may very well be in the final stage of buying. Be sure to handover leads even if budget and timing have not been crystalized.
4. Make one call and one call only.
Lead qualification should be over in one phone call. At the end of the call the rep should know what action to take. Each lead can go into 1 of 4 buckets:
- Abandon
- Return to marketing for nurturing
- Handover to sales for immediate action
- Handover to sales for follow up
5. Measure everything.
Measure the entire exercise so you can constantly improve the conversion rate. Measure the following:
- Number of leads discarded
- Number of leads given back to marketing for lead nurturing
- Number of leads handed over to sales
- Number of leads that convert to a sale
- Time to close
http://www.leadformix.com/blog/2013/11/5-tips-for-your-lead-qualification-process/