Lead Qualification

Systematically Identify Your Best Leads and Then Qualify Them.

 

Divide Contacts Into Lead Types Along the Marketing and Sales Funnel

Lead qualification means differentiating all your leads according to how far away they are from becoming real buyers. This process of converting visitors to your website into paying customers is best illustrated by a sales funnel.

Lead

Contact who has registered their interest on your website or through another interaction

MQL

Contact that matches your ideal customer profile, but has not yet shown an interest in buying

SQL

Contact whose behaviour signals that they are in the middle of a purchase decision

Opportunity

Contact who has confirmed interest in making a purchase and to whom your sales team has assigned a deal

Customer

Contact with at least one completed deal

Advocate

One of your customers who is a raving fan of your company

Moving From the Classic Sales Funnel to a Flywheel

How “qualified” a lead is determined by whether they’ve already been in contact with your marketing or sales team and what information they’ve been given. It also depends on which target group the lead is assigned to, which buyer persona is involved or which problem your lead wants to solve. Last but not least, the click behaviour of leads is tracked and incorporated into the lead qualification process.

Pssst … the sales funnel is not the only way of representing the sales process! In contrast to the sales funnel, the flywheel is not aligned in a linear fashion, but is circular. Accordingly, a successful sale does not represent the end of the sales process. Instead, the flywheel also takes into account the power of word-of-mouth marketing or recommendations from satisfied customers and their positive effects on the success of other sales activities.

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