Qualifying your sales leads can help build long-term success

An effective lead qualification process is at the core of an enterprise’s long-term success.  Yet, as many middle-market manufacturers and distributors acknowledge, the process of qualifying a sales lead is often a poorly executed, poorly managed effort.  An enterprise without sales leads is essentially out of business, while one overwhelmed by leads it cannot properly qualify also teeters on the brink of failure.  If your company is at either extreme or somewhere in between, a sales lead management process—also a key component of your CRM approach—is worth investigation.

Lay proper foundation

The following can help you construct an effective sales lead process:

• Analyze and compare the actual sales potential of your prospects.
• Pursue worthy sales leads only.
• Base qualified leads on a rational process, not a subjective gut reaction.  Base “go-or-no-go” pursuit decisions on objective, quantifiable metrics. 
• Define the conditional factors of successful lead management, i.e., those specific to services or products you offer and the prospect’s perceived motivations for buying them.  Other generic qualifiers apply across industries, markets, and service or product descriptions.
• Manage the initial contact to close of sale; understand the rules of engagement your sales team honors. 

Your company’s rules of engagement must be flexible to address the individual needs of specific selling situations.  Yet, they must also define developmental stages and support disciplined go and no-go decisions at predetermined points along the sales timeline.

Assess leads critically

The technology revolution has generated leads from virtually every direction, but it’s all in how you assess and manage them.  Handled effectively, you can convert about 80% of warm leads to sales.  Prompt replies to prospect inquiries are an essential first step to what could become a mutually rewarding customer-vendor exchange.

Come to the table prepared to answer several fundamental questions:

• Does your culture and business approach align with the lead’s expectations for solutions, focus, service and ability to deliver value?
• Does your CRM approach support lead management?  Are you driven to build long-term relationships?
• Who are your current customers?
• What prompts them to buy and continue to buy from you?

Pursue worthy customers

Thoroughly evaluate every lead.  Does it share key characteristics with current customers?  Does it meet your “sweet spot,” i.e., the market segment that represents your best opportunity to sell and be perceived as a leading source of value? 

Compare the lead to certain criteria that point to a high probability of sales success.  Carefully analyze several key measures before you invest in initial relationship-building efforts.  Metrics may include:

Degree of industry alignment – What basic arenas do you and the lead operate?  Where do you intersect?  What long-term opportunities do those points suggest?

Organizational size – Does the size of one side of the potential relationship dwarf the other in market share or financial resources?  If so, will it affect service, supply and project delivery?

Skill set – Do you have the expertise to service the lead, currently and going forward?  Can you support a long-term relationship under varying conditions?

Assumed ROI – Compared to the potential return, is the probable effort reasonable and does it align with your overall sales strategy?

Time frame – Develop a timeframe for converting the lead to a closed sale.  Use an operating model with front and back ends of a rational conversion timeline and hold to it to determine if the end result is a full-fledged pursuit or no-go.

Degree of commitment – How dedicated is the lead to the sale?  What’s the organizational level of its project champion?

Budget – Can the lead afford your product or service?  Do you know its budget?

Need vs. want – Is your offering a nice-to-have the lead can turn from at any time?

Sales lead management demands honesty and objectivity from both sides.  An effective process supports several pivotal outcomes: It protects your salespeople and your sales leads by limiting time wasted in fruitless conversation and helps control costs by making better use of what you’ve invested in your sales effort.

A lead management process allows your sales team to concentrate on high-potential, high-return sales opportunities, not just the next lead in the queue.  Start managing the essentials of sales lead qualification and start seeing the benefits.

For help establishing a sales lead management process as a component of your CRM approach, contact your Manufacturing & Distribution Group advisor for an introduction to a member of the BKD Technologies team

To learn more about CRM, BKD Technologies offers a monthly webcast to demonstrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you.  Register for a webcast.

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