Their goals and pain points.
What attracts them.
The problem your product or service can solve for them.
The budget they can spend on personal expenses.
How all of the above fits into your brand’s goals and aspirations.
After answering those questions, you are ready to proceed with lead qualification.
Lead scoring is the process of grouping leads based on how and why they are qualified and their stage in the sales funnel, their journey, and ultimately whether or not they can provide you with a good conversion rate and increase your ROI.
So what are the different categories of leads?
Lead type based on qualification
Product Qualified Leads (PQL)
Think about customers who are using the free version of your product, usa phone number data perhaps those who have gone through the free trial and seem interested in completing the purchase. PQLs often interact with customer support teams, requesting features and giving feedback on why they are not yet paying customers.
However, PQLs can be a bit tricky to identify and master. A person interested in buying from your brand is nothing new.
Let's say you have an e-commerce store that sells high-end fashion and luxury products. There may be people who come in every day looking for free samples and asking when you'll put the products on sale. This doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy.
So, you may need to consider some demographic and psychographic data and see which traits of your PQLs match those of your customers.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
An MQL is a person who has shown interest in your marketing efforts. However, they are not yet ready for your sales pitch.
Let’s say a person interacts with your marketing content, such as an eBook you use as a lead hook, a PPC ad, or a quiz you created. Depending on their preferences, clicks, and interactions with social media posts, the marketing team will determine whether they are qualified or not. And after that, the sales team will take over.
The goal here is to nurture an MQL enough for it to become an active customer. However, this is determined by the marketing team and then passed on to the sales team. And after that comes…
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
…a sales-qualified lead who is actively looking to make a purchase. Qualification can occur during a call or live chat with a member of your company’s sales team.
During this process, sales reps can discover and decide which customers are worth pursuing and which ones are just passing through.
SQLs can boost your bottom line and save your sales team a lot of time and energy, especially when you're first building your brand and spreading your budget frugally across your teams.
Lead type based on qualification
Interest-based lead type
Cold leads vs. warm leads
Now, we've all been cold leads at some point, especially when receiving sales calls. The company calling you has no idea if you're interested in buying, sometimes they don't even know if you're qualified to buy, and they rarely have a lucrative offer to offer you.
But what are warm leads ?
A warm lead is a lead that has shown some interest in interacting with your brand. They've probably signed up for sales or marketing calls, or interacted with you on social media. Maybe they've referred you or sent you a message on a platform.
Either way, the main difference between cold leads and warm leads is their intent and whether they are interested, not their level of interest itself.
Of course, lead qualification is just one thing, and sales lead management can be a competitive sport. So how are you going to master it?
Keep reading!
How to improve the sales lead management process?
The first thing you will need to do is create a lead management workflow that will consist of the following:
Lead capture methods
Lead tracking
Lead qualification and distribution
Lead nurturing and closing the sale
Let's dig deeper.
Lead capture
There are many tactics you can use to capture leads, especially given the abundance of marketing tools today:
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads. First of all, many organizations are trying to protect their phone systems from robocalls, only accepting calls from those who have previously contacted them. The only chance to get in touch with someone you need is via email, and most Internet users choose to receive all kinds of commercial information via email.
It is one of the most profitable and easy-to-track lead generation channels, and is also considered one of the most valuable:
Email marketing
( Fountain )
Generally speaking, it's much more cost-effective to build an email list and ask your subscribers if they'd like to move forward with some marketing action.
And you can find many tools that help automate this process and free you from tedious work. For example, Snov.io automates the entire lead generation process and allows you to make the most of your email list in the fastest and most efficient way.
Here you can get leads from any website or social media with Email Tracker and create a highly targeted lead list. Then, you can monitor the quality of your email list with Email Checker and launch personalized email campaigns on the same platform.
As a result, you can pay more attention to creating amazing content and analyzing data instead of wasting time on the email sending process.
Meanwhile, the tool will take care of highly targeted segmentation and A/B testing of your subject lines to capture your leads’ attention. In the age of data, customers are wary of seeing the personalized “Hi, John!” header unless they know that opening that email will offer them a unique value proposition.
email finder
Landing Page
Another way to capture a user’s attention and convert them into a lead is a landing page. It can complement any other marketing activity and is a standalone page with one goal: to convert.
So whether you use email marketing, social media marketing, or other marketing channels, you can always tie your call to action to your landing page , fill it with personalized content that speaks directly to your prospects, and watch them convert into leads.
Referral Marketing
Next up is probably the oldest sales technique: referral marketing. Creating a referral program can generate more traffic and leads by exposing your content and brand to more people. Make sure to offer an incentive to existing customers who refer a friend.
Plus, the numbers don't lie:
Referral marketing
(Fountain)
Not to mention how this generation of consumers relies more on recommendations compared to previous generations.
SEO, blog posts and webinars
Another way to generate and then qualify leads is by increasing traffic to your website, using the following techniques: SEO, blog posts and webinars.
SEO will bring you organic traffic by boosting your online presence. Research keywords that your prospects like and those your competitors frequently use, create your blog posts around them, and keep a consistent schedule.
