Lead Qualification

Content and lead magnets are excellent marketing tactics for building trust and qualifying potential customers or clients. Often a marketer’s best tool for luring prospects and moving them down the marketing funnel, their success greatly depends on delivering content that answers people’s queries and addresses their pain points in the most relevant way possible. In this post, we’re covering some of our favorite tips for driving higher lead-to-opportunity conversions and suggesting ways you can engage with and convert content leads into ones that are sales qualified.

“No matter what you do, don’t pass leads directly to the sales team.” — Jon Miller, Marketo Data from a MarketingSherpa report indicates that over 61% of B2B marketers pass all leads directly to their sales team, of which only 27%, on average, are qualified. Lead generation is complicated. According to a survey from HubSpot, about 61% of marketers have reported generating leads as one of their biggest marketing challenges.

As any good salesperson can tell you, it’s impossible to help your client unless you know what they want. If you skip the buyer’s needs assessment, you run the risk of making assumptions about the buyer’s needs and offering a solution that misses the mark. So, after greeting a new prospect, assessing their needs should be your priority.

Since James Oldroyd's 2007 Lead Response Management Study, we've known that speed counts. The difference between a sales rep successfully connecting or not with a lead can come down to minutes. Oldroyd reported that reps who responded within five minutes were 100 times more likely to be successful.

The simple act of putting up a sign to announce something for sale is advertising. More specifically, it's outbound marketing. It's the oldest and simplest form of marketing. Today, we include in the mix newspaper, radio advertising, television commercials and pay-per-click ads, all of which are passive outbound marketing. Then you have your proactive outbound marketing, such as cold calling, email blasts and direct mail. Bringing it all together, you have your account-based marketing.

Only around 10% to 15% of leads, on average, convert to sales. So lead qualification is essential for helping you focus your time where it will be the most effective and profitable. When it comes to B2B lead qualification, many will argue that the BANT strategy is outdated and has outlived its usefulness. It’s been more than 70 years since IBM developed the BANT lead qualification framework for its sales reps. With today’s long sales cycles, the Internet’s impact on the buyers’ journey and the size of decision-making teams, some say BANT is dead. However, perhaps we just need to enhance BANT. First, though, let’s have a quick refresher on what BANT is.

Only around 10% to 15% of leads, on average, convert to sales. So lead qualification is essential for helping you focus your time where it will be the most effective and profitable. When it comes to B2B lead qualification, many will argue that the BANT strategy is outdated and has outlived its usefulness. It’s been more than 70 years since IBM developed the BANT lead qualification framework for its sales reps. With today’s long sales cycles, the Internet’s impact on the buyers’ journey and the size of decision-making teams, some say BANT is dead. However, perhaps we just need to enhance BANT. First, though, let’s have a quick refresher on what BANT is.

As your sales reps take on the front lines of selling, who’s doing your lead qualification? Think about this when you sign up for a live transfer service. Inbound “sales” calls potentially can convert ten times better than clicks, but are you sure that you’re getting highly qualified leads that your reps can act on? Or are you buying a glorified answering service?

As the year comes to a close, we doubt that you will be sorry to say goodbye to 2020. It’s been a challenging year for all of us, with more than a few surprises along the way. Even so, once the dust settles and we’re well-entrenched in 2021, could we look back and see the year from hell as a blessing in disguise?

Every sales representative wishes for a bluebird—that fabulous sales opportunity that out of the blue drops into their lap. But the reality is that most leads require a lot of time and effort before the sale is closed.