Want to double your number of qualified sales leads this financial year?
When I started my first sales position 25 years ago, I lost my first sales deal and my colleague said to me “don’t worry about it” that customer was a tyre kicker anyway.
I went home to my dad and asked him: “Dad, what is a tyre kicker? (This is long before Google home).
Dad said “it was the expression used for people who walked into car yards and kicked the tyres; meaning these customers we’re just looking for an excuse not to buy the car.”
In other words, the prospect was not a serious potential buyer.
What a relief, it was not my lack of sales skills!
2022 – The new world of inbound marketing Fast forward to 2022 we all have the tools and power to deliver more qualified leads and minimise the number of “tyre kickers”. We can control the profile of customer which engages with our website and digital marketing.
From my experience ; these simple 3 checks from the sales team can really improve the quality of the feedback provided to the marketing team.
For Example:
Scenario 1 – The sales team provided feedback that many of the white paper downloads cannot be followed up because the lead does not contain a valid phone number.
- Corrective Marketing Action: Make the phone number a mandatory field in the form; plus make the user validate their email address before they can access your White Paper
- Result – Say goodbye to false conversion stats and enjoy an instant improvement in qualified leads
- Corrective Marketing Action – Change the location & keyword settings on your campaign, plus modify the website messaging to be clear about your service area. Save 30% of Ad Spend in the wrong location and use that money to invest in your best service area.
- Immediate increase in qualified leads.Result
- Corrective Marketing Action : Isolate the potential traffic & web pages providing the consumer leads. Gradually reduce and turn off this part of your media spend.
- Re-invest the 25% into your best B2B products & industries.
- Increase qualified leads and B2B sales pipeline within the next month Result
- The customer cannot afford your services – very subjective and hard to determine in B2B sales as most contacts are not the economic buyers. So, I find this data far too subjective to make informed decisions.
- The customer who is not ready to buy – this does NOT represent an unqualified lead; its merely a reflection of the customer’s position in the sales cycle. Position in the sales cycle and lead qualification are different concepts and should not be confused.