Best Practices in Lead Qualification: The Basics

If you are lucky enough to have a large flow of inbound leads, chances are that not all of them are a perfect fit to your ideal customer profile. While the sales team may be excited to receive so many new leads, identifying the quality leads that will lead to sales can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

One thing that marketers don’t always remember about their sales counterparts is that sales is a fast-paced game and their success typically depends on closing leads this quarter. If they reach out to a new prospect several times and they aren’t able to get in touch with the person, they will move on to the next name on the list. Unless you have a system in place to return leads to a nurturing campaign, they likely get tossed into the abyss and never looked at again. One statistic that really shows the impact of throwing away those leads is this: 70% of your mishandled leads will buy from a competitor within 24 months. Just because the person wasn’t ready to buy today doesn’t mean they should be disregarded. Six months down the line when they are a bit more educated, they may be ready to speak with a sales person.

So how do you as a marketer ensure that you’re only passing along the leads that sales can focus on closing? You won’t be right 100% of the time, but the best way to pick out sales-qualified leads is by using a method that combines implicit and explicit evaluation factors. Implicit factors are what a prospect does on your website. This means deciding a person is qualified based on the fact that they filled out a contact form or did a search for pricing. You can track these activities at the individual level using a marketing automation system. Explicit factors are who the prospect is; For example, is the prospect a part of your target industry or do they possess decision making power? You can start to collect these facts using forms on your website or by connecting with tools like LinkedIn and Jigsaw. The reason it is important to look at both of these factors is it prevents your sales reps from wasting time on a prospect who may be highly active on your site but turns out to be a recent college graduate looking for a job.

While explicit factors are fairly straightforward, determining the best implicit factors to look for is a bit more subjective. In a future post, we’ll discuss best practices for looking at these more tricky factors of lead qualification.