The term lead is used to indicate a contact who has the potential to become a customer of a business. This could be a visitor to your website, a follower on social media or a reader of your blog, for example. In other words, this is a person who shows interest in what you offer.
We identify this interest when a person leaves their contact details on a form or other means of communication. Demonstrating curiosity about some content or solution that your company offers.
Lead qualification consists of separating, among the contacts focus and agility saved in your database. Those that have the greatest chance of closing a sale , through a product or your business.
The main objective of qualification is to have a more efficient sales process. Since the sales team can focus on approaching only the most prepared leads.
Continue reading this article to learn how to qualify your leads and understand the importance of this strategy for your business.
Focus and agility for your sales team
In an increasingly fast-paced world, where our attention is divided between several tasks, one of the worst things that exists is wasting time.
And this applies to our routine tasks as well as to our work and that of other people. Therefore, to avoid wasting your time, the time of your team and your leads. The ideal is to identify before making any closer contact whether it is worth having a conversation with a particular prospect.
And this is done by qualifying leads! It is one of the most effective ways to deal with the overload of the sales team and avoid wasting time on leads that have low purchasing potential.
Lead qualification in practice
In most companies, lead generation is essential to achieving the marketing team’s goals . After all, this is the process that creates business opportunities, and the more opportunities, the greater the chances of conversion into sales.
When a lead fills out a form, the company can’t just start offering its product or service, right? This person needs to go through a filter to identify whether they fit focus and agility within the ideal customer profile for your business.
Not every lead comes to the company with the intention of buying. Even those that do, may not progress through the sales funnel stage. So how do you identify which prospects europe cell phone number list deserve the attention of your sales team?
In the lead qualification process, we have some concepts that help us understand how to clearly and practically optimize the conversion of leads into customers .
Next, we will talk about classifying leads using the concepts of MQL and SQL.
What are MQLs?
In English, the acronym MQL refers to the term Marketing Qualified Leads , that is, Leads Qualified for Marketing.
Even though they are in the initial stages of the sales funnel. MQLs have already reached a more advanced stage in the purchasing journey: they know they have a pain/problem and are looking for a solution to solve it.
These leads are qualified after consuming specific content and converting on materials that talk about your business and your solution, understanding what the company has to offer.
At this stage, it is up to the marketing team to nurture these leads with relevant content that meets the lead’s profile. Current situation and challenges. By establishing a relationship how to create questions to qualify leads using focus and agility of trust. As their interaction with the content progresses, they become closer to becoming a real business opportunity.
When identified, these leads are passed on to the sales team and advance to the next level, becoming an SQL.
What are SQLs?
Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) or Sales Qualified Leads are the leads that are closest to converting into customers, as they already understand that they have a problem and know how to solve it.
These leads understand that your company is an option to solve their pain, due to the content consumed and the solutions presented.
That is, these are leads that have already been worked on by marketing and qualified as potential customers .
At this stage, pre-salespeople can make the first contact. Taking a proactive approach, with qualifying questions to find out if the lead has the ideal aleart news characteristics to advance in the sales process.
In short, an MQL knows they have a problem focus and agility that needs solving. But they haven’t yet reached the stage of looking for a solution in a specific product or service. That’s why they need nurturing and preparation.
SQL, on the other hand, has moved beyond this phase. It understands your problem and knows which solution you want to use to solve it.
Therefore, developing a method to accurately classify each of them and address them at the right time is very important.
Have a well-aligned SLA between marketing and sales
The term SLA stands for Service Level Agreement, which can be translated as Service Level Agreement. Which is an agreement between two or more areas usually marketing and sales that come together with the aim of achieving the best results for the business.
To ensure the ideal qualification of each lead. Marketing and sales teams need to have a well-formatted SLA to predict which rules will be applied in this classification.
This agreement determines the role of each team and sets clear goals for everyone, defining when a lead should be transitioned from marketing to sales, for example.
In short, the SLA is the document responsible for keeping teams aligned to follow the same objective.
Importance of lead qualification
When we qualify leads, communication with potential customers becomes clearer and more direct and the results are more satisfactory for everyone involved.
This is a strategic way to have a real chance of making a sale, and not only that: it is possible to generate more opportunities to close future deals .
When we target the right communication, we find the ideal focus and agility audience and get to know our customers better. This brings more commercial intelligence and generates the knowledge needed to move the prospect forward in the negotiation stages and close the sale.
The result of this? An audience that really wants to buy from your company and that can become an advocate for your brand!
And most importantly: with lead nurturing, more opportunities arise and the sales team stops wasting time with leads that are not ready to purchase.
Define your ideal customer profile
We cannot qualify leads without defining the ideal customer profile , the famous ICP . It is the basis for defining the qualification criteria in the sales process.
Having a well-established ICP is the first thing we must do to begin qualifying contacts. With this information, it is possible to pre-filter the list of leads based on the company’s ICP.
>> Read also: How to define ICP to improve the productivity of marketing and sales teams
This way, it is possible to identify who is most focus and agility aligned with the pain that your product/service solves.
Leads with the best fit are now classified as opportunities. With this information in hand, cross-referencing data between leads and ICP makes qualification much faster and more assertive.
>> Need help defining your ICP? Download our FREE spreadsheet!
Tip: A good way to define which criteria are most relevant to your business when creating the ICP is to analyze your company’s history. Who your best customers were and what characteristics they have in common.
How to qualify leads?
If you already have all the lead information and it matches your ICP. Then the next step is to contact the people and ask specific questions to qualify them.
Qualifying questions follow certain criteria, such as:
Awareness about your product or service
The first step is to find out whether the focus and agility lead knows your product/service, is familiar with the market and understands how hiring your solution works.
This is important because if the person has no idea what you do. You may encounter objections and they may not want to invest in your product or service. Since they don’t even know what you offer and they don’t even realize how much it solves their pain.
