Contrary to popular belief the focus on quantity when it comes to lead development is not always the optimal route. Often when a business needs to up its lead generation it will throw money at recruiting new reps and double down on the number of leads they need to conjure up each day.
While numbers, of course, do play a large part, so also does the quality of the leads that are generated. Focusing on upping the quality can lead to a more cost-effective solution over hiring more staff. Part of this process is to identify the more promising leads – the higher quality leads and following up on those. Here are a few tips to help with this identification process.
What is a good Lead ?
First you need to determine what is a good lead? It can be tough to determine and rank the quality of a lead but a couple of things to keep in mind are how likely the potential client is worth when the deal is closed, and how much potential revenue that the client could bring in over the long term. If you have a clearer picture of this it can help you decide how much time to put into pursuing each lead.
You don’t need to pursue every lead. It can pay to be choosy using the above metric and also honestly assessing if they are a right fit for your business. If you can narrow down who the ideal customer is for your business it will help with developing a strategy for choosing which leads to focus on and pursue.
Don’t forget the basics – make sure that you are asking the right questions to get to know the lead better and form a genuine relationship with them. This takes time but is worth it as you will build up a clearer picture of their business and its needs which means you will be able to make a better judgment over spending more time going after the prospect.
Being honest and not getting caught up in short-term gains over greater long-term one works in here. Prospects will appreciate being told that your product might not be right for them and can lead to sales later down the line as their needs change.
There are many ways to assess the quality and get better leads and we have only scratched the surface here. The internet has a ton of great resources that can help improve lead generation further and the more research you do the more successful your business will be.
