Leads are the beginning of the Sales Journey. Is is therefore very important that leads must be understood in all its perspective by a good salesperson. After all, more leads will lead to more sales and therefore more profits!
- Prospecting on Suspect data (contactable data) gives us leads in the sales funnel.
2. Lead Magnets are created to specifically attract sales lead to the sales funnel.
3. MQL Leads are leads which have the “Willingness to buy” only. Such leads do not translate into business immediately.
4. SQL Leads are those MQL leads which apart from the willingness to buy are backed with “Capability to buy” and “Urgency to buy”. All MQL’s , if engaged well will ultimately become SQL.
5. SQL Leads when backed with a “Budget to Buy” becomes a BANT lead. (B = Budget, A= Authority to buy, N= Need, T= Timeframe to buy)
7. Lead Generator engine for “Applicators” should be created and monitored separately.
8. Lead Generator engine for “Customer” category starts with defining the market segments and then building a tree downwards so that the infinite market of customers is pruned down to a finite market. Once this customer tree is prepared , market attach should start bottom upwards.
9. Leads, once generated, must be nurtured well or else they leak from the sales funnel.
10. Multiple sources of lead generation is a must. Do not settle for one source only.
11. B2B Leads are slightly different and hence must be generated accordingly.
12. Lead generation is an everyday activity irrespective of the treasure of leads that you may have in your sales funnel. Today’s leads will become sales tomorrow.
13. Recognising a lead as MQL, SQL or BANT is one thing. It is very important that you have a strategy in place to translate MQL to SQL and SQL to BANT. How do you do this in your business? You need a qualification process in place.
14. The salesperson must differentiate between a virgin lead and “Lead from a Lead” (LFL). In this category you have leads which come from Referrals and Cross selling.
15. The Lead MIS (Management Information Systems) should clearly identify the no of leads received from each silo of lead generation. This is important so that each silo can be rated for their performance in lead generation. The typical silos are walk in leads, leads against a BTL activity, Leads against an ATL initiative, Leads from SEO, Leads from SMM etc etc
16. No lead is insignificant or useless. It is very important to believe this in sales because we have a tendency to ignore leads which do not look very attractive from an immediate sales point of view. Every lead must be recorded, nurtured and engaged in the sales funnel on a regular basis at predefined periodicity.
17. The silo which generates leads by churning customers from competition requires some specific competency of churn management.
If the reasons given above for a customer to leave his existing vendor is to be followed, a lead generation program by churning unhappy customers from competition can be prepared. Do you have your churn management program ready>
18. The age analysis of leads must be studied by salespersons once in a month. This analysis will give the age of leads which are more than 120 days in your sales funnel, 90 – 120 days , 30 – 90 days, less than 30 days. This gives the salesperson an idea that which leads to be attacked on priority for sales closure.
19. Lead generation normally does not earn any incentive for you but the salesperson must understand that all winning sales teams have a very robust lead generation channel.
20. If the salesperson has to choose between missing a sales lead and losing a sales order, I will advise that lose the second one. This is how important sales leads are.
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