Not All Leads Are Created Equal

Marketing and sales funnels can take many forms. Generally, funnels start with leads then move to opportunities and finally to sales. Some sales funnels will also include post-sale steps, such as follow-up for after-market products and services.

Not all leads are created equal. There are many notions out there, but here is a set of definitions that may help clarify some of your lead confusion

Raw Leads A raw lead is any lead you receive – unfiltered with no quality control. Data can be missing or bogus. This is the starting point of your lead funnel.

Viable Leads A viable lead is one in which there are real addresses or phone numbers. If you are a B2B organization, you may choose to eliminate personal email addresses, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, from your viable lead list. You may also decide that a lead isn’t viable until you have a first name, last name and title. This definition is completely dependent on your market and business. You get decide what a viable lead looks like!

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) A marketing qualified lead is a lead that has met some benchmark(s) that identifies it as having enough potential to warrant attention from your marketing department. This could mean that the customer profile meets some pre-determined criteria or it could mean that some action was taken to indicate engagement and interest. Perhaps a web form was submitted, or a business card was exchanged at a trade show, or some content was downloaded from the web site, or perhaps there were several click-throughs on an email. Again, depending on your market and your organization, you could have a unique and specific definition for your MQLs. A best practice for setting objective criteria involves lead scoring. Each attribute you define can be translated into a lead score. This process should be defined in collaboration with sales. Your marketing automation platform can track this for you.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) also known as Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) A sales qualified lead has met some benchmark(s) that sales and marketing have defined as warranting attention from sales. The leads have met MQL criteria and sales has visibility to that. Sales must be able to initiate a conversation, because they have the contact details they need. Finally, this prospect has the position in an organization that may at some point want to do business with yours. If the prospect is approached, and this lead is not yet ready for engagement with a sales professional, it should be passed back to marketing for further lead nurturing. Just because they are not ready to buy now, you shouldn’t forget them; you should stay in touch and nurture the relationship until they are ready to purchase.

Opportunity or Sales Qualified Opportunity (SQO) If the lead is a viable prospect with the intention to buy – either from you or someone else – then the lead should be converted to an opportunity. Sometime this is called a sales qualified opportunity, but most often it is simply known as an opportunity. Criteria for true opportunities may again vary by market and by organization. Common criteria include: - a legitimate buy cycle - the prospect is an influencer or decision-maker - the time frame is known - the size of the opportunity is known - permission to follow-up is provided

Lead scoring can be simple or complex. A discussion about lead scoring will be reserved for another blog. Marketing automation software can, as implied, automate these processes, so that certain customer actions trigger other events for follow-up – either by marketing or sales. CRM software – together with good marketing automation tools and techniques – can make a huge difference in how effective your sales and marketing work with clients and each other.

Having great clarity, clear definitions, and good communication about these steps and processes will go a long way toward helping your teams focus and drive real growth. Marketing will generate high quality leads, and sales will only chase after opportunities with the best chance for closure – ultimately leading to better topline results!

If you need an independent perspective to help assess your sales process, digital marketing process, marketing automation, or sales and marketing alignment, please give TopLine Results Corporation a call at 800-880-1960. Alternatively, register online at toplineresults.com/contact-us/ and we’ll be in touch.

About the Author
Melanie R. Varin specializes in business process consulting for organizations across many industries. With more than 30 years of business expertise, Melanie focuses on providing clients with winning strategies for improving their sales, marketing and overall business processes from assessment to implementation.

Melanie’s certifications include: Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Silver Certified Microsoft partner and Registered Salesforce partner.