Today, leads mean nothing if they aren’t qualified for sales.
Sales qualified leads aren’t just random users browsing your ad or website. They are prospects with a genuine and time-sensitive need.
These leads are often prepared to enter a serious dialogue with the sales team!
So now, the question is, how do you find such high-value and elusive leads and convert them into paying clients? Honestly, it isn’t about net fishing but spearfishing. It refers to being precise and personalized to engage with only leads that matter, meaningfully! Let’s look at five practical tips in this regard.
1. Know Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Businesses often send bulk emails or run campaigns with generic targeting. Unfortunately, they aren’t clear with whom they must engage.
For instance, an IT company runs generic campaigns, targeting startups. Although startups refer to a specific segment, there’s no clarity about precisely which startups!
So here, the business doesn’t have much clarity about the ICP.
A focused ICP in this case can be EV startups in Western India with 100-150 employees struggling to scale their IT infrastructure and needing robust and scalable IT support.
Understanding the ICP precisely will help you engineer your marketing efforts and campaigns to suit the audience’s requirements and pain points.
Useful Tip: Map your best existing clients and reverse-engineer their characteristics to determine the best and most useful ICP.
2. Establish Thought Leadership
Generic content doesn’t work as effectively anymore. It adds weight but not the value it takes to engage with prospects. The B2B space is very specific about its needs. Hence, they look for solutions instead of poetic sales pitches!
Accordingly, you must emphasize establishing thought leadership through valuable content that addresses your ICP’s pain points.
So, you must think beyond blog posts. Instead, you should broaden your horizon by publishing whitepapers, industry reports, webinars, and more.
For example, a cybersecurity firm hosts a webinar on ransomware attacks on legal firms or publishes a whitepaper that focuses on practical guidelines to protect client data. While positioning the firm as a domain expert, it can drive legal firms that understand the gravity of the problem and are looking for cybersecurity solutions.
Ready to Attract High Intent Buyers – Get Sales Qualified Leads That Actually Convert.
3. Leverage Intent Data
The internet may have a billion people searching for a particular solution. However, most of them may only be searching. Many others may consider it sooner or later. And a few of them want to buy it soon. The last category is what you should find and reach first!
For example, a staff augmentation company partners with a third-party data provider to track companies looking for IT staff augmentation services and similar terms. Once the company has the required insights, it prioritizes outreach to those leads.
The outcome? Email campaigns were more productive, leading to more appointments.
Useful Tip: Procuring data, analyzing, and working on it can be cumbersome. Partnering with professionals who help businesses generate sales-qualified leads and marketing quality leads, based on data, can prove to be a helpful and prudent move.
4. Implement a Lead Scoring System
While it is optimistic to look at every lead as an opportunity, the question is, whether it is, and to what extent! That’s because not every lead is created equal. Each one is unique with varying degrees of interest. You obviously need the most interesting lead! However, how do you know which ones to chase and connect with first?
The answer is a lead scoring system. It is a systematic mechanism that assigns points to prospects based on their engagement with your content and demographic fit.
The system helps you prioritize the leads you want to focus on.
For example, a business consulting firm can assign points in the following manner.
- Downloading a case study: 8-10 points
- Attending a webinar: 15 points
- Visiting the pricing page several times: 20 points
- The prospect’s title is CEO, CFO, or director: 25 points
A lead that scores 70+ points can be considered a sales-qualified lead for sales outreach.
5. Showcase Your Success with Case Studies
B2B audiences abhor fairy tales. Rather, they don’t have the time for them. Instead, they prefer seeing proof. Case studies precisely serve as one. They tell stories but practical ones with realistic numbers and outcomes. For example, a logistics firm can create a case study of how it helped an automobile manufacturer curtail transportation costs by 12% and enhance delivery times by 22% through optimized route planning.
Final Words!
Lead generation is strategic these days. It isn’t about merely running campaigns or participating in the generic marketing clamor. Instead, it is a sharp approach that you can amplify with professionals who can help you adopt it and generate measurable outcomes. DemandFluence is one such partner. We’ve been helping companies drive sales and marketing qualified leads for years with our specific strategies. Want to explore how we can help you? Email us at hi@demandfluence.com.
