Even the best leads will not produce the results you want if they are not managed and nurtured well. A study by Marketo found that only 25 percent of new leads are actually sales-ready. The rest will require a long-term management strategy to bring in results.
An unofficial survey of several lead management companies produced the following best practices.
1. Nurture leads before sending them to sales. ( Unless you have purchased real-time leads from a lead supplier. Sales should contact these leads immediately, and any that do not close should be given to marketing for further nurturing.)
2. Become a recognized authority in your industry. Offer your expertise to help prospects make an informed decision. If you provide guidance without pressure, you will come to be viewed as a trusted source.
3. Work with sales to define a sales-ready lead. Take into account demographics such as company size, yearly revenue, and purchase time-frame. If you have purchased leads from a lead generation company, that work has already been done, and these pre-qualified leads can be sent directly to sales.
4. Keep your sales team informed about which marketing activities each prospect has responded to, so they can tell you which strategies are yielding results.
5. Compile qualifying questions, call scripts, and email templates to help with the initial contact. Using these tools, a rep can refer to specific interests the prospect has demonstrated, such as downloading a white paper on a particular topic. Ask questions that will help you gain new information, rather than what you already know about your prospect.
6. Don’t waste leads. Make sure sales follows up on each one. Reassign leads that aren’t contacted the first time around. Every lead should be valued and cultivated through the often very long B2B sales cycle.
7. Track the results of individual marketing activities to gain a deeper insight than you would by simply tracking the lead source.
If you are working with a lead generation company to supplement your in-house marketing strategies, many of the best practices listed above, such as lead scoring and qualifying to determine which leads are sales-ready, will have already been done by the lead supplier. Using pre-qualified leads can take some of the pressure off your marketing team while keeping the pipeline filled.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, 65% of business-to-business marketing is focused on lead generation. In the quest to maintain a constant stream of leads, many companies choose to purchase leads from a lead supplier. This can be an excellent way to boost your sales, provided you are getting high quality leads.
Ideally, in order to achieve real growth in your business, you should maintain a steady stream of premium, real-time leads. In reality, however, there may be times when budget considerations or lack of sales staff compel you to look for ways to ‘fill in the gaps’ between premium lead purchases.
If the marketing campaigns you have in place are producing a certain amount of leads for your business, you may wonder if it’s really necessary to purchase additional leads from a lead generation company. And if so, what kind of returns can be realized by using such vendors? There are actually several compelling reasons for considering this step.
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