Your sales team plays a vital role in determining how much revenue is in the pipeline. Unfortunately, many companies still suffer huge losses due to inconsistencies in their sales process along with their customer base's revenue amounts.

Losses can also occur even when the sales team is highly equipped with resources to manage their process if not implemented properly. Generating, qualifying, and managing business sales leads is one of the most important aspects of growing a business. Your leads and customers are the business lifeline, and it's essential to have strategic processes in place. That is where a solid qualification and opportunity path comes into play.

Generating Leads

Lead generation is the first step in your marketing campaign’s success. Lead generation happens in a variety of ways. From PPC to SEO to email to events, there are many ways to build your top of the funnel.

Lead generation tactics:

PPC (Pay-per-click)
SEO (search engine optimization)
Email marketing
Webinars
In-person events
Social media
Retargeting
Content

Marketing assets for successful lead generation:

Landing pages
Signup forms
Website
Personalized emails
Customer journeys
Text messages
Promo codes
CTAs (calls-to-action)
Workflows for follow up

Best practices to boost your lead generation process:

Use good landing pages & sign up forms to drive traffic to your site and boost site conversions.
A multichannel approach will enable you to generate leads through PPC advertising, social media, content, outbound, and more.
Implement a CRM to add leads to your database automatically, trigger follow-up workflows, automate lead nurturing campaigns, and assign leads to salespeople.

Filling the top of your funnel with the right leads is important. Of course, not every lead is going to be a good fit, and that is where lead qualification comes in.

Qualifying Leads

Lead qualification is essential for any business looking to turn business opportunities into real sales leads. Lead qualification is the next step after you have generated the lead. A qualified lead is a person who is the right fit for your service or product. A qualified lead is not always ready to buy right away, but they have the potential to become a paying client at some point - whether in the near or far future.

Lead qualification doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can qualify leads automatically through the use of signup forms or surveys. You can also qualify leads simply based on link clicks in emails or web pages visited. How you qualify a lead depends on your product/service as well as your definition of a qualified lead.

Developing a lead qualification process helps you gather the information you require about your leads to tailor the customer journey to suit their needs. An improper qualification may lead to a lack of knowledge of who your leads are and result in low conversion rates.

Lead qualification tools and tactics:

Lead scoring
Customer journey mapping
Signup forms
Surveys
Emails
Meetings/phone calls

Lead scoring: Lead scoring is the process of assigning a numeric value to a contact based on specific criteria, such as engagement or demographic data. For example, if a lead clicks on a link in an email or if they have a specific title, you can assign a number to them that lets you know if they are a good prospect for your sales team.

Customer journey mapping: Customer journey mapping is a great tool to map out your entire process, but it can be especially useful in qualifying new leads. Send your leads down tailored paths based on specific criteria. This allows you to send them personalized content, gauge engagement and interest, as well as collect valuable insights into who they are and where they are in the sales process.

Signup forms: Beyond lead generation, signup forms can be used to collect information about your leads that can help you determine the right path for them when it comes to your products and services. For example, you can have them fill out a form that asks them qualifying questions. Your sales and marketing teams can use that information to personalize outreach and increase the chances of conversion. You can incorporate lead scoring into signup forms as well by assigning a value to certain data fields.

Surveys: Surveys work similarly to signup forms. You can use the surveys to gather important information, score responses, and trigger customer journeys or workflows based on those responses.

Emails: You can use email marketing to qualify leads as a way of measuring engagement and interest. If a lead reads an email or clicks on a link, you can assign a value to those actions, trigger workflows, send them surveys, and more. Emails are a great way to engage the lead and determine where they are in the sales cycle.

Meetings/Phone calls: Meetings and phone calls are the original lead qualifying tactics. Speaking directly with a lead gives you the unique opportunity to connect on a personal level to determine whether they are a good fit for your business. Of course, this strategy requires more resources and may hold more value once you have used one of the methods above to qualify your leads first. The best way to include meetings or phone calls in your process is to add them as an activity in a workflow. This way your salespeople are notified, and you can track this engagement. This is another opportunity to assign a value to this touchpoint. If you have a meeting/phone call, they are typically further down the sales funnel than someone who is not interested in meeting.

Create your lead qualification process seamlessly using the following tips:

Using lead scoring to assign a numeric value to leads most likely to convert based on demographic (title, income, industry, etc.) and behavioral data (email opens, demo requests, phone calls, attended events, etc.).
Use marketing automation to send leads down personalized customer journeys, delivering relevant information to the lead based on data collected in the lead generation process. You can also tailor the messaging based on the emails they read, links they click, whether they have had a demo, started a trial, etc.

Managing Sales Leads

Every business needs to review its lead management programs to boost revenue. Lead generation is important, but if you are generating a ton of unqualified leads, you will not generate much revenue. To maximize the effectiveness of your lead generation strategy, you have to qualify these leads to increase conversions.

Some ways to manage your leads effectively include:

Using a complete CRM with the following features:

Opportunity management > Lead scoring > CRM records w/ workflows, CRM tasks, etc. > Sales reports & tracking > Marketing integration

Setting up sales lead workflows to assign leads to salespeople and assigning follow-up tasks to ensure no leads slip through the cracks.
Customer journey mapping to send each lead down personalized lead nurturing campaigns depending on where they are in your sales lifecycle
Conversion tracking to track each stage of your sales pipeline. For example, when a lead starts a trial or converts to a paid account, you want to track their movement through your pipeline and determine where leads are falling out.

Get Started Today

Controlling what happens to your leads along the buyer's journey is vital to boosting sales. You can get started by creating strategies with your sales team, including marketing in your process, and looking for ways to help in driving leads through the sales funnel. It may include personalized content, surveys, and case studies.

GreenRope is an all-in-one CRM enabling businesses to accelerate growth by increasing awareness, generating leads, and driving conversions. Talk to us today to get started.

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