What is a lead?
A Lead is an individual or an organisation who have shown interest in what you are selling but have not yet made a purchase of your product or service. The interest here refers to providing contact number, email ID or social media username.
What is lead qualification?
Lead qualification is a process of categorizing a qualified sales or marketing lead as a customer who has been contacted by the sales and marketing team, and so is further along the sales process than other leads.
Lead qualification is crucial to ensure that your sales and marketing resources are allocated as efficiently as possible. If you are investing an equal amount of resources into all potential customers without first assessing their qualifications, you will end up spending time and money on leads who can be less likely to make a purchase, no matter how well you engage with them.
Lead qualification is a multistage process. Firstly the marketing team will collect the contact information of the leads as part of inbound marketing operations, then assesses whether the lead is likely to fit an established customer profile for your target audience. If the lead is considered to fit, he or she will become a prospect. At some point, a sales rep will get involved by scheduling a call in which they will discuss the needs of the prospect, buying timeline, authority to make a purchase, and budgetary requirements. Based on all this information, the sales team will make a final resolution about whether the prospect is a good candidate for pursuing further.
Why lead qualification is important?
Nurturing and qualifying leads becomes important because –
- Lead qualification saves your time and allows you to interact with the right ones.
- Lead qualification improves close rates and boosts revenue.
- Nurturing prospects before having direct conversation, increases the efficiency and overall performance.
- Lead qualification also helps you to identify which of your sales and marketing channels generates better quality leads.
- Lead qualification helps you to identify which sales team closes most sales.
- Lead qualification provides better focus for your sales as well as marketing team by ensuring resources are not wasted while chasing leads.
How lead qualification helps to align sales and marketing?
- Right targeting
If your sales or marketing team is targeting the wrong audience it will not help them in closing the leads. Lead management software helps you in the qualification of interested lead. It tells the prospective opportunities for sales which helps your sales department to draw effective focus on the leads and moreover helps to decide to take all necessary majors & efforts to close a fruitful deals.
The sales department can help the marketing department understand which kind of leads are turning into sales or say deals. As the sales reps are the ones who act as a bridge of communication between the prospects/customers and the company, the sales reps can help the marketing reps in understanding the right target customers. Thus, the sales and marketing team can work together to qualify quality leads.
Read our blog – Win more Customers with Lead Management Software
- Lead generation
Lead generation is a process of attracting and converting prospects into active leads who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Lead generation is a part of sales as well as marketing in the digital era. Sales and marketing alignment leads us to modern lead life-cycle management.
The best lead generation sources are –
- SEO – SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It is a process that lets you to get traffic from natural search results on the search engines.
- Social media – Social media is one of the most trendings and easy form of generating sales leads by marketing and advertising to larger set of consumers. It is also one of the most versatile and cost effective strategies of marketing.
- Email campaigns – Email marketing campaigns are the email sent from a business concern to large numbers of customers or prospects. It is one of the basic online lead generation strategies which helps you to get more leads and sales.
- Online advertisements – Online advertisements are one of the most effective forms of advertising at the present world because pictures speak more than words.
- Use a lead management software
The CRM lead management system is a one step solution for all lead and sales cycle requirements. A lead management software stores entire information about the prospects and customers in a cloud integrated database.
Lead Management Software is an effective tool not only to track inquiries but also to capture details like lead source, date, industry, competitors, website, multiple contacts and a host of many other fields. You can easily get all the details of the customers and prospects in a single click. Once you have entered the lead or enquiry details in the software, you can make activities according to your interaction like follow-ups, e-mails, meetings, appointments and payment collections and also assign the lead and activity to an efficient sales rep.
Read our blog – Online Lead Management Software | SalesBabu CRM Software
SalesBabu Lead Management Software Key Features
- Comprehensive Leads Database:
Document all gathered leads data meticulously in the cloud system, involving preferences, requirements, and future references. Enjoy easy availability with just a single click.
- Efficient Leads Sources Tracking:
Monitor lead sources to gather insights into customer point of view, marketing campaign decisions, and the type of inquiries collected. Save time and improve your understanding of target customers.
- Streamlined Leads Assignments:
Allow seamless assignment of leads to several sales team representatives. Experience stress-free lead distribution, assuring that leads are assigned to effective sales team reps, significantly affecting lead conversion.
- Effective Leads Management:
Effectively maintain and manage leads, enabling you to prioritize them depending on requirements or interests. Such features are supported in follow-ups and improves your sales pipeline management.
- Structured Leads Follow-Up:
Maintain day-to-day follow-ups efficiently with the lead management software. It caters as a guide for sales team reps by delivering follow-up strategies and assuring that no leads fall through the cracks.
- Lead Tracking App Integration:
Effortlessly integrate a lead tracking app to improve the entire functionality of the SalesBabu Lead Management Software, delivering a comprehensive solution for lead monitoring and management.
- Leads Qualification:
The fundamental functionality within lead management includes qualifying leads depending on client interests. Such an attribute encourages the sales team representatives to strategically pay attention to leads, supporting in determining the essential steps to successfully transform leads into fruitful sales or deals.
- Lead Reporting and Tracking:
Ensure the accessibility of precise reports to evaluate the quality of leads. Such automated software generates systematic sales reports, delivering a clear understanding of your business’s dynamics obtained from lead interactions. Furthermore, such attributes regulate monitoring your sales team members via GPS, streamlining the evaluation of their productivity.
Alignment of sales and marketing
Alignment of sales and marketing department helps in the creation of more and more leads ultimate for sales. The sales leads may fall through the cracks of the sales funnel if the sales team judges leads to be a lower quality. Marketing team can gather prospect data which can be further used by the sales reps in the sales process. Lead qualification also helps the sales and marketing team to make decisions with regard to the leads. Once the sales representative has gathered the feedback regarding the customer’s pain points by the customer during sales calls, the marketing team can work on creating new messages in order to refine the product or services provided. Thus, the sales and marketing team improves their data gathering and assessment efforts in order to get better insight on leads.
Read our blog – How Your CRM Helps You Align Your Sales & Marketing Strategy
Conclusion
The business firm that focuses on alignment of sales and marketing in order to work more productively are the companies which are able to outshine in the market and push their competition into the background. You can use the best CRM software which is basically a cloud based CRM application for small businesses as well. If you have not yet got one, then feel free to request for a free demo on our website https://www.salesbabu.com/. You will surely not regret the use of Cloud based CRM software for your business.
