How to Get and Convert Your Sales Leads?

Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads

Before discussing why leads are so important, it is worth making a very important distinction between a marketing lead and a sales lead.

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): These are people who have just been introduced to your company in a significant way through your marketing efforts. As a company, you need to define what constitutes a significant interaction.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): These are leads that have already been reviewed by your marketing team and have shown interest in your specific offer.

The main difference between the two terms is that an MQL becomes an SQL when your team has nurtured it sufficiently and it is ready to move forward in your sales funnel.

The different stages of a lead

This is where you will generally hear about cold, hot, or warm leads. These are the three levels of lead qualification.

Again, you will find different interpretations of these types of leads, depending on the size of your company, the product or service you offer, etc.

Nevertheless, here is a general definition of each of these stages:

• Cold leads are at the very top of your sales funnel; they may never have heard of your brand and are not ready to engage in a sales process immediately. You need to familiarize them with your product/service.
• Warm leads are a bit further down the sales funnel. These are people who have at least heard of you or even used a free trial of your product. They may be looking to acquire what you offer.
• Hot leads are, essentially, your next customers. These are people who are not only interested in your product/service but also have the budget to close a sale with you. Your goal is to reach this stage for most of your leads.

At this stage, the watchword is information: your goal will be to correct, enrich, or complete the information you already have about your leads and to get closer to them to increase your chances of converting them.

At this stage, a solution like LaGrowthMachine will allow you to perform these tedious tasks with a single click: you just need to import your list of leads into the tool!

Thanks to our data enrichment feature and our in-house scraping techniques, we find all the data you will need to contact your leads on various prospecting channels!

Then, you just need to set up your automated campaigns using our drag & drop system, and then let the leads come to you gradually.

Develop organic and paid marketing strategies

The very first thing you need to do is ensure that people find your company when they search for the features you offer. This can be done through organic means (SEO) or paid means (SEA).

These methods will direct traffic to your chosen landing page and thus increase B2B lead generation. This statement is supported by the fact that 43% of marketers surveyed said search was their primary lead generation strategy. (Source)

Develop a social media strategy

This step may seem obvious to some, given the abundance of sponsored content we encounter every day on all social networks.

Be sure to study your target audience, understand where they are, and where they consume most of their content. For B2B inquiries, most of your lead generation strategy should focus on LinkedIn, as it is reported that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. (Source)

Find leads through your network

In our humble opinion, this is the most underestimated step you can take to generate leads. Your network is a goldmine of prospects waiting to be approached and nurtured.

Ask your network for recommendations, to identify potential leads, to host content on their website/blog, etc. There are several ways to leverage your network and close mutually beneficial deals.

There are several ways to leverage your network and close deals that are beneficial to both parties. “But what if I don’t have a network? Well, build one! We answer. There are a plethora of online and offline events happening every day, here is a list of events you can attend:

• Webinars: you can check sites like Eventbrite, GoToWebinar, BrightTalk…
• LinkedIn Live sessions
• Offline conferences/seminars
• Online and offline events organized by Slack communities

All these events are extraordinary opportunities that allow you to interact directly with your potential leads and, at a minimum, gain a few contacts, which is always a plus.

Other tips to complement your lead generation efforts

We have covered a ton of ways to go further with your leads and their generation, but there are still other possibilities that may better suit your preferences.

Here is a list of ideas that will get you thinking and that you should explore further to optimize your efforts:

• Organize your own events and webinars
• Retarget cold leads (most often, “no” means “not yet”)
• Create/optimize a newsletter
• Partner with other brands to reach their audience
• Introduce a free trial or a simple contest system.

Now that we have covered the different methods for generating more leads, let’s dive into the part about converting leads into customers.

Use the right channel to target your lead

Normally, sales representatives use the information gathered about potential customers to communicate their “sales pitch” through various channels, here are some examples:

• Cold Calling: This method is still considered by many to be an essential part of sales prospecting, as it brings a more personal touch and builds trust. However, it is an intrusive method for a number of reasons, the main one being privacy.
• Cold Emailing: A much less intrusive method, emailing can be very effective in generating leads’ interest in your product or service, if done well. Sales emails are more organized and can demonstrate exactly what your company brings to the table.
• LinkedIn: Prospecting through LinkedIn is the new star of the B2B world, especially with tools like Sales Navigator having a huge impact on the industry. It’s as simple as that, it allows you to have the personal touch of a call (using your profile), without the drawbacks.

Have a good overview of your lead management process

Once contacted, qualifying your lead is the hardest part, and it depends on the depth of information you have about them, its accuracy, their response (interested or dismissive), your messaging, etc.

To do this, you need to go through a number of steps, let’s explore them:

• Create a conversion process: Even if it’s a more or less obvious step, we can’t stress enough how important this step is; everything else depends on it. Define and meticulously develop your process so that you have a clear path for your leads to follow.
• Organize your database(s) and track your leads’ needs: This will help you align your strategy with your customers’ pain points. Make sure you are communicating with them where they are most present instead of them coming to you.
• Identify each of your customer’s actions and assign a level of importance to each: How do I know a lead is ready to negotiate a deal? What actions do they take before exhibiting this specific behavior? These are questions you need to ask yourself to clearly define your lead’s stages.

If you use LaGrowthMachine, you will also have access to a lead management dashboard that will allow you to manage your lead lists directly within the tool…

… But also a view on the performance of your outreach campaigns…

… And finally, the icing on the cake, the ability to connect your CRM directly to our tool, to feed back the leads you generate with LaGrowthMachine directly into your CRM, and automatically qualified according to the preset you have configured!

These are essential first generic steps to launch your lead conversion process. Let’s now move on to concrete strategies you can apply.

Apply the right strategy

Now that you perfectly understand your leads’ behavior and have developed your conversion process, you are ready to devise a strategy to convert these leads.

Let’s dive into some of the most relevant conversion strategies:

• Lead Scoring: you evaluate your leads’ actions using a point system. By organizing yourself this way, you will be able to prioritize the highest-scoring leads more effectively.
• Automation: Since you now understand your customers’ actions and have categorized them according to different levels of intent, you can easily automate their journey. This not only saves you a lot of time but also helps them progress.
• Lead Nurturing: This can be done through several tactics, but we will focus here on sending emails. By sending different emails for different actions taken by your potential customers, you aim to add value to what you already offer. Two very important details here: make sure to personalize your emails (add at least their name) and always offer useful information in each email.
• Leverage your existing customer base and showcase it: Place testimonials, reviews, or any other type of feedback in an accessible place on your website. This encourages leads to make the purchase decision or, at the very least, encourages them to think more seriously about it. This is what we call “social proof” in the industry, and you must leverage it.
• Maintain a constant flow of communication: Whether through a newsletter system or other outreach techniques, always be present. With our attention spans being so limited, it’s very helpful to remind your potential customers that you are there to help them and solve their problems.

Of course, this is a lot to take in, but remember that the key element you cannot do without is this: lead conversion is not a one-size-fits-all solution that will solve all your problems. It is a continuous process that you must iterate and adapt at each stage to perfect it.

Once you have chosen and applied the strategy that best suits your goals, test different steps; you will get many positive results, but you will also make mistakes at first, and that’s okay.