Have you ever felt confused by the different words used in everyday marketing? Do not worry - we have felt the same way! B2B is a vast sector with its own share of eccentricities, and it may take some time before you get used to its ways.
Yes, it may have taken us time to grasp that B2B means Business-to-Business! Also, we might have faced questions ourselves, like:
Well, we have the best definition for lead and will define it using different situations to avoid confusion. And yes, we will definitely avoid using cliched answers like “it depends” as is the norm.
This is probably one of the most challenging tasks in marketing owing to the range of opinions about “ lead ”! There are even differences between marketing teams and sales teams regarding these definitions.
In this article, we will focus on what marketing and sales teams think of a lead, which can be read as the question of what exactly a qualified lead is for a sales team to be interested in. And yes, we expect even marketing website experts and CRM admins to gain something from reading this.
A lead for companies like Zoho, Salesforce, or Dynamic CRM combines both a person and a company. Such definitions are used to simplify the processes of filling out forms and integrating them. People would be able to fill out forms without providing meaningful information (like “who owns this account”), thereby avoiding any chances of the system rejecting the data.
So, if one has to provide a basic definition of a lead , it would be:
An individual who has shown enough interest (or raised their hand) through forthcoming encounters (or proactive interaction) with the brand to attract the attention of a sales representative.
Now, what does “proactive interaction” or “hand raise” mean in this context:
This is an activity like attending an event, filling out a form, engaging in a chat, or any other way of reaching out to your company. It denotes interest that a person is “in the market” for a solution. This may also be a set of intent signals at the bottom of the funnel for a possible remedy or solution to what you might be selling.
Defining a “ lead source” can be framed as such:
It is the final webinar, form fill, event, or campaign (broadly known as a touch event) in which the person showed interest, and the sales team was requested to follow up with him.
Sales are never linear; therefore, a person may be in your contact list as a “contact” instead of a “lead”! All these definitions avoid using the word “ lead ” as other CRMs do.
In the next section, we shall take a look at how leads may seem in the initial phases.
Identifying a lead is easy for a brand that has just started out. Anyone who has shown some interest in the brand, or what is generally termed as “proactive interaction”, may be qualified to be a lead due to the lack of awareness of market conditions. Such leads are usually easy to source and locate for the sales team because they typically would not have a lot of leads to follow up on.
In such phases of the company, the marketing and sales teams may often end up doing similar jobs. Ideally, the marketing team would be looking at advertising among a large customer base regardless of their interest. On the other hand, the sales team should be interested in spreading awareness among people about how this company may have a solution to their problem and how it may be better than the other competitors.
Do not think about starting lead gating if you understand the ideal customer profiling (ICP), as it could be inaccurate, given that you may only have a small number of customers. Of course, there can be exceptions to this, especially if you are dealing in a niche market. Remember, the rule is to direct all interested customers to sales, except for third-party syndication, but again, that depends on the conversion rates by lead source.
As your company grows, start scaling these from Hot to Cold. If you do not have a niche offering, rather than the ICP fit, organize the leads by the conversion rate by lead source.
This article will consider companies backed by private equity, small, less mature ventures, and B-to-C series enterprises. These companies are currently seeing more recognition in the market and have comparatively fewer feature gaps to address.
You may get confused about your ICP as a SaaS company generally tries its hand at selling into different industries and cases. While it is crucial to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP), the sales team's success with specific subsets of accounts can provide valuable insights. By analyzing and comparing these successful sales with churn rate data, you can gain a more accurate understanding of which accounts represent your ideal customers.
ICP gating and engagement thresholds are crucial for companies in this particular phase. By now, there should be a clear tab for the UCP or Unacceptable Customer Profile—virtually the opposite of the ICP. Sales should never target these people as they would never get enough value from the product.
Engagement scoring, which entails using a threshold and point system, is gaining importance in marketing. Yet, it may seem too complicated at times. It is far better to gate the lead sources that are not yielding desired results. Either such contacts will convert into better leads, or they will be eliminated from consideration.
Companies with mature products need to deal differently with leads. The sales team should consider the entire market that has been addressed. The team is, therefore, aware of who the customers are and who are not of the product, which is often the most difficult thing to figure out.
The sales team should use multiple lead sources and omnichannel campaigns for you to choose from.
Gate the sources, apart from the ones with the highest conversion rates, and start working on building nurture programs with the marketing team. This also depends on whether your sales team wants to go through low-churning sources. Also, gate all the leads outside your ICP. Furthermore, pay attention to or nurture those who fall within the ‘acceptable customer profile’ and potential customers who are hesitant due to lower gains with your product.
Do not go after calculating intent and engagement scoring algorithms. Form a document on definitions and forward it to avoid unnecessary meetings, debates, and questions.
Various complications can arise in assigning, defining, and understanding leads . The most common issues arise when it is difficult to properly route the leads to the sales team, mostly due to problems related to integration between the various processes or a lack of testing. Problems may also arise because of the company's go-to-market strategy.
Using complex logic in the initial phases, lead gating is necessary for products exclusively for certain sections of potential customers. However, involving the sales team and providing them with a flurry of leads for such products does not make much sense in such cases.
The source through which the leads are received is of prime importance. In multiple cases, sales teams have struggled to deal with leads that need to convert. In some cases, previous unpleasant experiences have made the sales team let go of high-converting leads. Therefore, the definition of a lead and what works and what does not have to be crystal clear to you and your company.
Why do others dealing with go-to-market strategies push for certain particular definitions of leads? In many cases, there may be demands to lower lead gating if there is a high number of leads . There can also be cases where those responsible may not be interested in decreasing the number of leads and increasing the conversion rate. Reading articles like this one can easily remedy such concerns.
Well, the way Artificial Intelligence has been faring means it will soon be beneficial in deciding leads . It is probably not yet time to involve AI in a big way in this business - despite its improvement over the years; it would still need data on closed win cases. In the early stages of a company, using AI to decide leads is definitely a strict no-no. Be wary of anyone using AI or machine learning who does not have a minimum number of records or usable data sets.
Some sources can be more accurate than others in terms of intent. If there are multiple kinds of signals, understanding which of them may work can be a challenge. The task becomes easier if an expert can select the relevant signals and customer pool to fine-tune the data. Strict and narrow criteria are often followed by well-known providers like G2, which is of immediate help.
The other issue a company has in the case of leads is how to distribute among the sales representatives, also known as leads routing. Factors like account hierarchy and territory design need to be considered. Covering that would be improbable for this article, so keep your eyes on an article on leads routing from us!