What is a “Good Lead?”
Good leads is someone who is already familiar with who you are as a company, knows what you provide, has need for what you provide, and is ready to purchase. In essence, this is the person who will become a customer today or in the very near future and this is who most sales people would like to talk to.
Later, I will show you how to attract these leads, but for now, just know that I am not saying you should ignore everyone else in your sales funnel. I will also show you how to manage your sales funnel without using your resources from sales. In fact, the term “good leads” is really from the perspective of the sales team; so, “which leads are good for the sales team to handle.” First, let’s look at 3 reasons why these leads are more beneficial to the company.
1. Faster Sales Process
Getting good leads into your pipeline that are hot and nearly ready to buy is important to optimizing your sales team’s time and minimizing time wasted. So, everything that can be done to pre-qualify a lead will help the sales team keep their process going and close more sales with less hang up. Leads that are ready to buy tend to take less time than leads who have just came into your sales funnel. Therefore, it is regarded that sales-ready leads convert faster, but it is important to note that many leads may turn into good leads for the sales team at a later time.
2. Less Dead-end Deals
If your sales team is running down every lead, then it is safe to assume that some percentage of them will end up not becoming customers. Depending on your internal processes, your close rate may be dramatically affected by this. So, the concept of pre-qualifying these leads will automatically increase your sales team’s close rate and you will find yourself spending less time on dead-end deals, which means you will have more time to spend on deals that will bring revenue to your company.
3. Happier Sales Team
If your sales team’s close rate increases, then it is likely that your their morale will also increase along with their paycheck. Remember, as a sales manager or business owner, you control the morale of your team! By setting up processes that make their jobs easier, you can expect to see a shift in your company culture and how people feel toward their job, their success, and their future. Besides, it is a well know fact that happier employees make more money for their companies than overworked and stressed out employees.
Better sales will follow goes without saying, but just in case you were looking for it, there it is. Now, I told you earlier that I would show you how to attract good sales-ready leads, so here are two blog posts on that:
I also said that I would show you how to manage your sales funnel, so that sales didn’t have to nurse leads all of the way into becoming a customer, here are two blog posts on how to do that also:
