How to qualify leads and demand generation

When it comes to your prospects, not all leads are created equal. Quality leads are hot-ticket items your sales team can’t wait to follow up on while unqualified leads are a waste of your team’s time at best. At worst, continuing contact with an unqualified lead could actually cause the lead to experience a negative impression of your company, jeopardizing potential future business.

The possible outcomes of a single lead couldn’t be more different, so how do you differentiate which leads are qualified to go to your sales teams and which leads are better left undisturbed? It’s an important question. To answer it, here’s a brief look at the strategy we employ here at Redpath.

Scoring on engagement

During at least one point of your formative or college years, you were scored on a curve. While that curve may have been a blessing and/or a curse to you in school, employing the same strategy when grading leads works really well.

At Redpath our curve is a visual scoring system that allows individual leads to essentially dictate the curve by promoting themselves out of our nurturing campaigns and into the qualified leads bucket. Leads enter the system once they supply us with their contact information when filling out a marketing form. From there we begin nurturing them through our email campaigns. The path a lead takes is truly up to them while they guide themselves through the funnel based on their activity.

In one case, for example, a lead may earn five points by clicking on an email or social media link supplied through the email campaign. At the same time another lead will earn 20 points if they complete a questionnaire. Leads that move through the process at a more aggressive rate will be turned over to sales as qualified leads more quickly while leads that are unresponsive to our email efforts will be removed from the system as unqualified leads. Continued correspondence is a waste of our time and theirs.

Grading on a profile

Another way to rate your leads is by grading. Based on profile attributes such as location, role, title, company, company size, past engagements, and industry, you can have marketing automation output a letter grade indicating how much of a “fit” are they for doing business with you. This can quickly sort leads who are a fit, and aren’t.

For example, leads who have a title of “intern” and a company size of 20 employees can be graded lower compared to a lead with a title of “VP” and a company size of 2000. This automated grading system can help sales reps and marketing evaluate leads based on another level outside of how much they interact with marketing.

Allowing leads to guide themselves through the nurturing process via this scoring system lets our leads progress at their own pace while providing us the information we need to understand each lead’s individual journey. It also allows us to create a strategy around truly owning our leads and guiding them through the funnel while tracking applicable data. This ensures that our sales team is provided with a list of leads that is ready for their time on both the lead’s terms and ours. After all, not all leads are created equal, but the best ones are out there and it benefits everyone to find them.

To learn more about how you can use marketing automation strategies to qualify your leads, contact us today.

With the rapid evolution of technology, Salesforce solutions are ever-changing and improving features. Contact our team for up-to-date information.

Published On: September 29, 2017

About the Author: Redpath Team

Our team at Redpath is a unique group of talented professionals who are passionate about leveraging Salesforce to help businesses simplify, accelerate, and transform what’s possible for their future.