Having an efficient sales process is by far the most important factor when it comes to turning leads into paying customers. If there are no stages of actions in place that either happen automatically or by hand, then the likelihood of leads going stale skyrockets. But even when you have amazing leads, if you don’t use them correctly, you’re going to miss out and waste them. So how can you make sure you’re using the leads you get wisely? Keep on reading for our tips and tricks!

Leads vs Contacts

For most companies, the majority of leads do not turn into sales. A larger percentage of contacts because they are qualified, are the ones who end up making a purchase.

When a sales rep follows up with a lead, that lead can then be converted into a contact, or even an account or opportunity. The differences are below:

• Lead – An unqualified individual or company
• Contact – An individual or company who has been qualified as a potential customer
• Opportunity – A lead that has committed to making a purchase from your company
• Account – A company or organization that contains multiple contacts or opportunities

Organize Incoming Leads

Keeping an organized list of your leads is vital to success. An organized list will help you get the most out of your leads for marketing and consumer communications purposes. Leads need structured attention because they can be quite overwhelming in number. After all, there is no limit as to how many leads a company can generate in a given time span. But with proper organization, it will be easier for your sales team to convert them into actual customers.

Call Leads Fast

Gone are the days when contacting someone quickly meant reaching out before the end of the day. Now, even waiting an hour can severely reduce your chance of success when it comes to leads. According to the Lead Response Management Study, the odds of contacting a lead drops by 21% when you wait 30 minutes compared to 5 minutes. For every five minutes you wait after that, your odds of reaching your leads decrease exponentially.

Qualifying your Leads

There are many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead, but to do so you have to communicate effectively. Communication can involve exchanging emails or text messages, and talking to that person on the phone or face to face. At some point during the communication phase, you’ll be able to determine the lead’s level of interest in your company.

Each of these examples below shows the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as gauge their level of interest:

• Job Application – An individual that fills out an application and is willing to share a lot of personal information because they want to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company’s recruiting team.
• Coupon – Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon an online coupon. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it’s not a lot of information, it’s enough for your business to know that someone has an interest in your product or service.
• Gated Content – Content–like an educational ebook or webinar–doesn’t give you enough insight into what your potential lead has an interest in. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person’s interest in your business, you’ll probably need to collect more information to determine whether the person is interested in your product or service and whether they’re a good fit.

These three general examples above highlight how lead generation differs from person to person and company to company. Keep in mind, the amount of information you’ll need to effectively gauge interest and sort your leads into 4 common categories will vary depending on your business. While you can define your own custom categories, the four common default statuses are as follows:

• Open – The person’s name has been entered into your system but you have yet to contact them.
• Contacted – An initial introduction has been made with the individual but no response has been received.
• Qualified – The individual has been contacted and has expressed interest in your products or services.
• Unqualified – The person has been contacted but isn’t interested in making a purchase.

So, how can EBS Help?

Finding qualified leads is challenging for even the most experienced sales teams. Unanswered calls and emails are the norm. Expensive sales data lists often end up being a waste of time and resources. The solution for this is our Improved Sales Data service that can move your business forward. Our process can help you make fewer calls, get more qualified conversions on your schedule, and close more deals. To get started today click here.