8 Metrics Of Precise Business Lead Qualification And Nurturing

Businesses that directly cater to other businesses often times lack precision in quantification, scoring and proactively nurturing leads.  This lackluster approach, not purposely taken, could cost potential sales to fly away permanently, drastically diminishing your marketing ROI until another path must be devised to pick up the slack.  Today we examine the eight metrics of precise business lead qualification, what’s involved in each process and how each step takes exacting effort to properly grade each lead that comes across your desk.  Our intent is to save businesses time, money and frustration when gathering leads relevant to other businesses they wish to furnish services or products to.

1.       Identify Contact Methodology

In order to accurately mark your lead as plausible for engaging, tracing the source of where the lead found you is an imminent necessity.  Since every business marketing team desires to understand where their marketing dollars are being ostensibly spent, tracking where the lead came from through a simple questionnaire, customer service inquiry or even direct email contact will help keep your marketing efforts tracked.

2.       Review Request Reasoning

This is where the adage of selling ice to an Eskimo comes into play.  Step two in our process is identifying the needs of your inquiring business to match those needs with your service or product offerings.  Should your business misalign with their needs, the lead needs to be File 13’d since it will do little good to keep it in your database, unless you foresee drastic shifts in business offerings in the near future.

3.       Separate Levels Of Seriousness

In business, you have askers, doers and some which remain on the fence when making purchasing decisions.  Your database or spreadsheet needs to clearly mark your leads’ level of seriousness for your sales closers to move in and seal the deal, or at least rescore the lead as probable. Taking this step is vital for marketing professionals who want specific reasoning to target future lead possibilities.

4.       Identify The ‘Why’

Eventually, you’ll meet an impasse where the business which contacted you will either cordially accept your business based off cost, level of return and customer service, or simply turn their cheek.  Taking the time to converse with your lead will render why they felt inclined to invest in your services or why declination was given.  Careful documentation for internal usage will allow your HR, VP and other business officials to make necessary product or service adjustments and get more “yes’s”.

5.       Follow The Lead’s Interactions

This step is vital should your lead capture efforts render leads for service offerings.  Once your lead has converted to a sale, every interaction needs to be recorded and documented to assure top levels of service have been given, carefully detailing the interactivity of customer service, techies, and other business officials who discuss business with the other business representative.  May seem mundane to some, yet this step is for basic quality control and internal training of customer support personnel while also important for future sales potential to this lead.

6.       Exit Survey

Once your product or service has been amply delivered to the business, it’s time to take an exit survey to grade your delivery, knowledge and overall handling of this business lead.  This doesn’t have to be an exhaustive two-hour affair; a few simple yet succinctly written questions could capture loads of information.  For example, asking the business lead to “Describe your overall business experience with us” could capture vital information used to improve services delivered to future leads while also deciphering whether your benefits are meeting or exceeding the costs.

7.       Save and Document

Once you’ve closed the lead from your exit survey, you can save this lead in your database and document the overall experience your company delivered to the business client.  This documentation can be a singular paragraph or two-sentence statement put into a ‘comments’ section of your CRM.  This statement can immediately be recalled when future interaction is made.  You now have one lead in your database that has been properly acquired and needs only to be nurtured.

8.       Follow-Up

Notwithstanding to your normally aggressive sales approach, contacting the representative of the business you did business with after one week of the lead being closed will not only show you’re truly interested in delivering quality goods or services, it proves your sales department has more than altruistic commission figures in their heads when dealing with business leads.  Don’t offer sales coupons, pitches or pander other products similar to the one sold; simply approach as you would an old friend.

Conclusive Thoughts

Each step in our lead qualification and nurturing piece carries the highest vitality since you’re dealing directly with other businesses and corporations.  The way you treat your leads is a reflection of business efficacy, strong standards of practice and ability to handle leads which your marketing teams assist in capturing.  Keep everything outside of status quo when your business collects every lead, and treat every lead like it was your biggest – it just may actually be one day.