Obtain and Verify Stronger B-to-B Leads

November 18, 2009 By Brian Carroll

multipage

There are things your sales team must know before an inquiry is worthy of being called a lead. You should:

• Identify company size, industry and geography. You may choose to remove inquiries based on specific marketing requirements or limitations at this point, including non-U.S. or student e-mail addresses, or contacts residing in locations or industries that you don’t serve. This step can reduce your leads by as much as 10 percent.
• Ask business situation questions such as number of users, current systems platform, etc.
• Determine the inquiry's role in the organization or authority in the buying process.
• Determine if your organization can help based on the lead's business need.
• Identify the prospect’s stage in the buying process. Many “leads” are actually still early in the buying process, conducting general market research, and although these contacts are very valuable and should be nurtured and managed over time, they clearly aren’t ready to buy.
• Purge those inquiries containing any obvious bogus information. Remove duplicates and invalid names and e-mail addresses. (Simple forms tend to generate less invalid information than lengthy, time-consuming forms.)

Create a Behavior Model to Prioritize Leads Based on Activity and Data
Use your CRM or marketing automation suite to prioritize based on:

• Size of organization: Is there an organization that fits your “sweet spot” better than others?
• Fit: Can you meet leads' immediate needs?

• Differences in activity based on time frame: Emphasize recent activity. The ongoing uncertainty about the health of the economy doesn’t necessarily reflect every prospect’s current situation. Even in beleaguered sectors, strong companies will see opportunities for growth. Activity within the past three months—such as downloading a whitepaper or responding to e-mails about upcoming events—receives a higher score. The same activities that took place six months or a year ago receive lower scores if a prospect has not engaged in additional marketing activities since then. This technique allows sales to focus its attention on prospects who have demonstrated strong interest in recent marketing campaigns. Definitely maintain older leads in your database, and keep these lower-scoring leads in the nurturing program until their activity increases again.

Use the Phone (or E-mail) to Qualify High-Priority Leads Based on Scoring
Some companies may use third-party list providers to verify information. Just remember, the phone is the gold standard for qualifying most leads. A good conversation is the best way to assess a company’s interest. (InTouch has found e-mail to be a great way to create a one-to-one dialogue by asking questions as well; be sure to test this with your audiences.) Use data from your lead-nurturing and lead-scoring systems to have relevant chats with prospects.

Based on your company’s value-proposition research, ask questions that show you understand the challenges your prospects face. Introduce ideas about how your company can help them meet those challenges.

Most salespeople are really good at what they do, and they want to help prospects meet their challenges. Make sure you give them the highest-quality leads you have. It’s worth the effort to move through the qualifying process slowly. In this economy, prospects’ buying cycles are getting longer, making it even more important to start out slowly. You’ll earn trust quicker this way, and you’ll build relationships that truly impact your sales pipeline.


Brian Carroll is CEO of Arden Hills, Minn.-based lead generation experts InTouch and author of the book, "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale" (McGraw-Hill). Carroll is a leading expert in lead generation. He is also the keeper of the B2B Lead Generation Blog.

• MORE ON
• B-TO-B
• DATABASE & CRM