The internet has made it incredibly simple for everyone to obtain company information and make decisions based on that information. So the million-dollar question that comes here is what types of leads required for the business. Creating or having a solid internet presence is a major part of any sales & lead generation process.

The digital age has made it easier for companies to generate potential leads. If you have a clear idea of what your customer wants & their needs then you can generate content accordingly. It is essential to create & grow relationships with the prospects until the deal gets closed.

Perfect customer tastes & behavior play a vital role in improving the conversion rate. And most importantly this might change over time. If you’re in the process of building an efficient B2B lead generation campaign, then you must start with solid research metrics.

Creating & updating your ideal customer profile will tailor your unique proposition of the customer needs. A sales lead is a person or business which may eventually become your client. A sales lead is also referred to as the data which identifies an entity who can be a buyer of your product or service.

Here are the best lead generation strategies that can be followed by any company to generate leads:

• Email Marketing
• Website
• Search Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Seminars
• Live Chat
• Influencers
• Paid search
• Webinars
• Go for PPC ads with tailored content
• Hybrid events
• And more

What are different types of leads in business?

Every lead will be addressed uniquely based on their qualification in the sales & marketing process. Given below are the different types of leads:

Hot Lead:

When most of the required business criteria get aligned with the business goals for a lead, then it is referred to as a hot lead that needs immediate attention. Apply BANT to qualify the lead from the system.

BANT is acronymed as Budget, Authority, Need& Time Frame.

When you find the right authority or person in charge that approves your sales proposal & allocates the budget then you can kick-start your project. Alternatively, the need & time frame is the duration of the entire project with respect to a new product or service.

Warm Lead:

When a perfectly qualified lead misses one or two criteria that don’t allow it to move the hot lead category then it is termed as a warm lead. This type of lead can be nurtured & in due time they can be in continuous touch until they become your client.

If a prospect demonstrates a good level of interest or engagement with the marketing team then it is referred to as marketing qualified leads. Ideally, the sales & marketing team should work together to define this lead.  Generally, multi-channel lead nurturing is about matching specific leads with the right content & the right audience at right time.

Lead scoring is one of the finest methods used by the marketing & sales team to determine how worthy a lead is by assigning points based on their engagement ratio, behavior & interest in the sales funnel. So this mechanism works by adding points to all the details provided by the prospect. Thus piling up of information & improves the score to the lead to determine if the prospect can be converted to a client.

In order to set up a lead scoring system, both sales & marketing team must do the following:

• Having a clear buyer profile
• Define & Understand Prospect Interest
• Understand the key people involved in decision making
• Ask the right question to the lead
• Capture all best information provided by leads
• Find valuable influencers to interact & connect with the lead
• Identify & choose the right communication channel to score lead

MQL is useful to sales & marketers in many ways. So understanding the importance of MQL is highly useful for the potential prospects who can turn into clients.

If leads have passed the point of qualification by the development team, sales & moved into opportunity stage, then we can term as sales qualified leads. If the MQL team approves or passes the prospect to the decision stage (Where Sales Pitch in) then it can be termed as Sales Qualified Leads. If a prospect enters into sales qualified lead then the salesperson has to make an initial conversation with the prospect to make the next level of decision. Also more importantly faster SQL follow-up leads to a higher closing rate.

How to generate SQL leads:

Having an active prospecting channel & when the initiative comes from the lead itself, then B2B salesperson can provide the scalable result. Hence it is important to have a constant flow of sales-qualified leads for any company. Here are few tips on generating sales qualified leads:

Use long Tail Keywords:

It is a wise idea to use long-tail keywords while creating targeted ads on search engines, content for the website, or landing page. It is a group of keywords very specific to businesses with more valuable search intent. Use a keyword planner for keyword research to identify new keyword opportunities.

Roll out Targeted campaign:

Create business relationships with potential customers using social media channels. It is a smart idea to invest in lead acquisition in any business when the sales process is highly complex. Establish a business relationship with the audience you interact with through a targeted campaign. Targeted B2B campaign helps B2B marketers establish everlasting relationships with the audience.

Prospecting in Professional network:

Make use of the professional network to make segmented searches which can be a great source of sales-qualified leads. Having segmented contact research in any business network makes it easy for B2B salespeople to implement the best strategy well suited for your business goal.

Increase the Interaction with B2B leads:

B2B sales cycle is longer & sometimes it can be complicated depending on the industry you are targeting. If a prospect request any feature about your product or service, it is highly recommended to have a 10-15 minute walk-through instead of providing a direct link to the website. Once the walkthrough completed, schedule another meeting or call. Connect them with the internal support team for any technical-related questions & follow up with them later. This way you can interact with leads & build a trust with lead until they become your customer.

Cold Leads:

When a lead perfectly fits into your ideal customer profile but has not communicated or showed any interest in your solution. Ideally, it can be referred to as contacts that fit into your prospecting list. Similarly, such cold leads are difficult to convert into prospects. With a powerful B2B sales strategy, sales person can spark the interest of prospect using calls, emails, or social media pitch.

Information Qualified Leads:

When leads fit into your target market & have never expressed interest in your product or services but they have provided all basic information is often referred to as Information Qualified Lead. These leads give just basic information however they lack the qualification in showing buying intent. Information Qualified leads must be turned into prospect by establishing regular communication with prospects to understand their business requirement.

Sales Ready Leads:

Sales ready lead is a lead that is well prepared to hand over to the sales team to process further. This readiness is highly dependent on the organization’s sales team & their procedures. More the sources of lead for your business lower the chances of the prospect being considered as sales-ready.

Which leads you must focus on?

It is a well-known truth that a prospect gets converted into a client with more follow-ups & dedicated efforts.  With the lead scoring program, you can rate your leads & move up them in the sales funnel. High rating helps sales team to focus on quality leads rather than wasting time on leads with no intent to buy your products. Here scoring completely depend on attributes & behaviors of the lead. Common attributes include email, contact number, company revenue, company size, industry & more. Once these attributes are gathered, you need to analyze the behavior of the follow-up leads. Here lead behaviours include email open rate, email open rates, webinars, web page or landing page visit, social media engagement & more.

Knowing which types of lead to be used maximize your profitability is the key here. Also, high amount of hard work, efforts & goal nurturing tactics is required to achieve a business goals.

Conclusion:

Are you looking for quality and in depth services for lead generation? Then Data staple can help you in segmenting leads well suited for your business. Build top-notch lead generation strategy & take your business to next level by partnering with Data Staple. There is different B2B lead generation software that makes your sales process simple & more accessible. DataStaple team can help you to build a strong framework that helps sales to identify the key decision-maker & boost your B2B sales. Earning a higher conversion rate completely depend on knowing your audience & their interest.