Leads don’t get better on their own

Leads don’t get better on their own

Of course we all want to only deal with the ‘low hanging fruit’. Unfortunately this usually does not bring us enough business, and therefore we need to work long term to build a healthy pipeline. This is fundamentally important.

I am still shocked when I meet people who believe that their leads will automatically get better on their own.

Sales & marketing professionals often wrongly assume that their leads will read all of the company marketing / sales collateral and somehow be magically convinced of the vendor’s true value.

Marketing teams expect the Sales team to simply sell with the leads they have been given.

Sales teams expect to receive leads already fully educated, nurtured, and ready to buy.

Also, in my opinion people get confused between two different points. Leads DO qualify themselves to a certain extent. They do this via the information they fill-in on the company website form, their behavior and also simply from their profile.

However, they definitely DO NOT get better with time and move themselves along the funnel without external assistance from the vendor.

Why don’t Leads get better on their own?

I believe this is because of many reasons. Maybe the leads were too busy and forgot all about the vendor; maybe they have more pressing priorities; or maybe a competing vendor made more effort and had a more compelling case.

What can we do to combat this?

Good leads are made, they don’t just fall out of the sky with no effort made.

There are many things that we can do to help leads get better.

Here are a few suggestions:

·         Connect with our leads faster & more often:  before they forget us; or before our competitors grab them; or before they get too busy with other projects.

·         Improve our short & long term nurturing, making sure each lead is in the right track to match his profile & behavior and therefore receiving engaging & targeted messages.

·         Improve our value proposition to maintain interest, even at the initial qualification process.

·         Engage with the lead via the correct channel and at the right time according to the correct lead profile & behavior (social media, phone,  email )

·         Focus our messaging (both marketing and sales) to make it a lot more specific and directed at the individual leads’ needs.

These are just examples and I would be happy to hear some other ways you are helping your leads move along the sales cycle.