A Comprehensive Guide To Qualifying Leads

Generating new leads is great—essential even—but not every lead that comes in should be pursued immediately. Chances are good that brand new lead at best isn’t ready yet, and many may never be a good match for your product or service.That is where lead nurturing and lead qualification play a role.

This infographic from Spiralytics points out that B2B prospects typically require between 6 and 13 contact points or touches before they become potential sales leads. Automated lead nurturing that continues to offer contacts additional useful information and other offers after their initial interaction with your website can provide those touches.

The information you get back from lead nurturing, such as what website content the contact accesses and additional customer information gained through progressive forms on landing pages is also important in determining when and if the lead should be advanced to sales.

Only 56 percent of B2B companies qualify leads before passing them on to sales. That means 44 percent of B2B companies are wasting time and money on leads that are definitely not going to convert into sales.

Read on for Spiralytics’ guide to lead scoring, then download our Lead Qualification Checklist for directions on how to establish your own criteria for marketing-qualified leads.

Our lead qualification checklist uses 5 criteria and most closely matches the “BANT” framework here, with one additional criterium: fit.

To determine what qualifies a lead to be advanced to sales in your organization, you need to set parameters for:

• Need: Does the prospect have a need for our product or service? What urgent challenges must be solved?
• Fit: Are those challenges something we can solve?
• Budget: How much is the prospect able or willing to invest in a solution?
• Influence: Does this individual have the authority to make a purchasing decision?
• Timeline: How soon does this prospect expect to make a purchase?

You can use our template to create your own definition of a qualified lead for each of these criteria. Or if lead qualification is just one part of a larger marketing strategy your team needs assistance implementing, let’s talk about how JONES may be able to provide those resources, from strategy development to content creation and launching automated processes like HubSpot. Schedule a time on my calendar here.