Now that we have defined a qualified lead, gone over characteristics to help you define a buyer profile and reviewed types of leads through the marketing funnel, in this fourth article in our series, Defining a Qualified Lead, we’ll go over ways that your sales team can qualify leads when they meet in person
Assessing Leads in Person
In a retail operation, prospects and even suspects, may walk into your sales center. The difficulty then becomes focusing your sales teams to ask the right questions to quickly move the leads into the right path, so that their time can best be spent with qualified leads and buyers.
In the online environment, this is easier to do as you can track and use their online behaviors to move them through your funnel.
A critical element here is capturing the lead information and storing it in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system like Cirrus, Salesforce and many others. Use a marketing automation and CRM system to setup segments and provide content aligned to your buyer’s characteristics and to their funnel stage/lead type.
In the sales center, your sales teams will need to be equipped to make that assessment and treat the potential customers appropriately. This can typically be done with a few succinct questions and action steps as follows:
- What caused you to stop in today?
- What type of unit are your looking for?
- When do you think you will purchase?
- What steps have you taken so far towards a purchase?
How they might answer by lead type are detailed below:
Based on the lead types then your actions could be as follows:
In all cases, obtain the customer’s contact information, timing and email address for ongoing communication.Sometimes suspects do turn into buyers, it just takes time. Nurture these leads through emails and other marketing communications to drive them back to your sales team when they become a qualified lead. Lastly, consider using appointment selling to finalize the sale among your qualified leads.
We hope you enjoyed this four-part series on “Defining a Qualified Lead.” If you’d like to refresh on any of these topics, simply click on the corresponding link below to jump to that article:
Defining a Qualified Lead, Part 1: Is My Lead Qualified?
Defining a Qualified Lead, Part 2: Understanding Buyer Characteristics
Defining a Qualified Lead, Part 3: Types and Stages of Leads
