Looking for sales ready leads? This is how to find them…

Every business needs a constant flow of sales opportunities and is always looking for effective ways to uncover prospective customers. In other words all businesses need sales ready leads: prospects who have engaged with them on multiple occasions and who are now sufficiently interested that they will hold a meaningful dialogue with the sales team.

Marketing’s role is to attract those prospective clients who need your products or services. By employing great creative coupled with strong, relevant messaging, you will attract people to your website, a seminar, or your shop; the next step is to have the means to legally identify who they are, who they work for, and whether they are a real prospect or merely appreciative of your creativity.

Let’s consider two groups of people. One sees a tweet and follows the link to your website to download a white paper or ebook. They give you their name and email address to access the content but their role or business sector doesn’t match your customer profile. In addition, they do not engage further with your ongoing communications. What is the likelihood that they will eventually become a customer?

The second set of people also share their name and contact details to access content, they go on to open subsequent emails and engage with tweets. They are clearly interested in your business and in addition, work in roles or for businesses that will directly benefit from the products or services that you offer.

Practice Patience

It is quite clear on which group you should focus your attention. You want to spend your finite resources nurturing the group who are most likely to purchase from you. However, do not assume that as soon as someone engages with your business, they are ready for your sales team to give them a call. It’s too early and it is quite likely that they will back off quickly.

You have probably had a premature call or email shortly after browsing a website that left you feeling uncomfortable. It’s similar to cold calling – when contacted too early and unsolicited, it feels like a hard sell and turns you off a company, their services or products.

Instead, be patient and nurture the relationship with this prospect. There are ways to clearly quantify when the interest has matured sufficiently and the prospective customer is ready to be called a Sales Ready Lead.

Great Creative + Strong Messaging + Ability to Track & identify = Marketing Qualified Leads

Marketing Qualified Leads + Nurturing + Tracking = Sales Ready Leads

Here at MC+Co we run campaigns that deliver marketing leads and sales ready leads to SMEs and corporate clients.

We will delve into the process and the reasons you need to restructure Sales and Marketing to work together to deliver new clients in future blogs but if you want to learn more now, why don’t you give us a call? We can share many examples of how we have helped identify real prospects and helped our clients to grow their businesses.

Don’t delay - your future customers are out there and just waiting to hear from you.