When you are a proud owner of a B2B business, the most worrying thing about the business is “how to get more leads”. Yes, the success of your business largely depends on that. But, more than just getting leads, it is important that you should get “more quality leads”.
It is the reason, smart B2B marketers always try their best to get more leads that can really bring the business. The number and quality both are critical aspects.
Several strategies can be adopted to improve lead quality. Let’s figure out some of them.
Defining “Sales Qualified Lead”
Two pillars offer strong support to your B2B business. They are your sales and marketing departments. When you define the term “sales qualified lead”, it is essential that both sales and marketing functions agree on it. You will wonder, but in a majority of organizations, the definition is not companywide. Therefore, it always remains a bone of contention.
Lead Scoring implementation
When you develop leads, there is always an interest level associated with that. You must implement ranking to rate customers as per their interest level. It could be a grading system like A Grade Leads, D Grade Leads, and so on.
Alternatively, it could be a ranking like “Cold”, “Warm”, or “Hot”. It denotes the eagerness and interest level of the lead.
Sometimes, you need to work on the deals to improve their quality. For example, you do not have adequate implicit and explicit data for the customer. Explicit data means demographic details that are title, company name, and so on.
Apart from that, there is a lot of implicit data that shows the behavior and temperament of the lead, the number of visits to the site, number of pages visited, and the frequency of visits.
Implement a Lead Nurturing process
This process is very much important in building a relationship with the prospect. It doesn’t matter when the lead is going to actually buy. The process makes them ready for buying. Studies show that companies that excelled in the lead nurturing process could generate at least 50 percent more sales-ready leads at quite a lower cost.
Research also reveals that 95 percent of prospects that visit the website are there for research purposes only. They do not show interest in talking to the sales representative. However, 75 percent of them eventually buy from you or your competitor.
Build a feedback mechanism between sales and marketing teams
This is all the more crucial when you run a B2B company with a long and complex sales cycle. Here, it is very much important that both functions work in sync. If one function brings the leads and hands them over to sales but does not what happen to them, then there is no point. The chain is broken, and the organization does not get any benefit from it.
Therefore, to improve B2B lead quality, it is crucial building a communication bridge between sales and marketing teams. A close-loop reporting enables marketing to send additional lead intelligence to the sales force. The sales department in turn should give a sales activity report to the marketing team.
Use of automation
In the modern world of communication, improvement in lead quality is not possible without using marketing automation. It is smart working. In the initial phase when the volume is low, it is possible to manage things. But it brings a limitation in scaling the business up. For that, you have to automate the process.
Conclusion
Quality of leads plays a significant role in the B2B business. The strategies mentioned here are quite useful in nurturing and maintaining it. They can take the business to higher levels.
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