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Securing a pipeline of new sales opportunities is imperative to see your business grow. This means your business must depend on leads of significant quality in order to have any chance of securing sales. Lead generation and lead qualification are common terms in the world of business. But do businesses really know how best to exercise these tasks?
What is a lead in the world of B2B?
A lead can be defined as a new or existing contact in your database or CRM that has filled in a form to download a piece of content. Ideally, you will hold many fields of information on this contact beyond just an email address. This could include, job title, job function, seniority, location, and more.
The quality and source of your leads will vary, and therefore it is important to distinguish which leads should and shouldn’t be progressed.
When to disqualify leads?
Some may simply be browsing and land upon your content by coincidence, others may be seeking a product or service to address their needs, only to find that your product/service offering just doesn’t accommodate. There will also be leads who just do not meet your buyer persona - for example a student or an academic using the content from your report for research purposes but has no intention to purchase. On the other hand, there will also be leads who match your buyer persona but do not require a solution to the problem you solve.
When and how to progress and qualify a lead (MQL>SQL)?
To qualify a lead, it is important to assess how good a fit that lead is. You must understand both your customer persona and your product or service and determine how well they both align. One of the most frequently used frameworks used by sales to qualify a lead is BANT, however, there are alternative models too.
Using BANT to qualify a Lead
Budget – Can your product or service be afforded? Typically, the size, reputation and historical data of a company can give an indication of this.
Authority – Distinguish whether you are talking to the right person or whether you need to be referred to a superior. This is why a job title field is implemented on many lead generation forms.
Need – Identify if the prospect has a need for your product or service by mapping your offering against the pain points of the lead.
Time – Is your lead ready to purchase now or are they just getting a grasp of potential solutions? Identifying when they will be ready will enable you to position them in your pipeline.
Lead generation is imperative to any business looking to grow. Pursuing a lead that fulfils three of the scoring conditions from the BANT model is a sensible decision, however, a lead that has very little likelihood of converting simply is a waste of your business’s time.
Speak to a member of the S2W Media team today to find out how we can help you drive leads and ultimately win new business. Our experts leverage years of experience in marketing and sales to help you generate exposure among the right audiences. From the offset, we can help you capture leads with our soft BANT approach by targeting an audience aligned to your business solution.
Securing a pipeline of new sales opportunities is imperative to see your business grow. This means your business must depend on leads of significant quality in order to have any chance of securing sales.
