Project Description

After you’ve spent hours talking with a lead, you might assume you’ve sold them on your business. Then just as you’re about to close the deal, you find out that the lead’s website doesn’t support your product, or they don’t even have the authority to make the buying decisions. Have you ever been in this situation? If you have, it’s because you didn’t qualify your sales lead first.

Qualifying a sales lead is deciding whether someone who is interested in your business is a good fit as a customer. If they are, they will have the ability, authority and inclination to purchase. From there, you can put in the effort it takes to convert them. Here are three tips to qualify sales leads for higher conversions.

1. Use a chatbot to ask pre-qualifying questions

You can’t personally interview each visitor on your website, but a chatbot can. A chatbot can take care of your most monotonous conversations and quickly qualify your leads for you.

There are many tools like Chatfuel that will allow you to create a chatbot for your website without having to touch code at all. In a matter of minutes, you can set up conversational rules in the dashboard so that your chatbot will ask your leads pre-qualifying questions to determine if they are ready to purchase.

Some examples of pre-qualifying questions are:

Can you tell me a little bit about your company to tailor the information to your specific needs?
When are you looking to switch?
What’s your name and title?
What’s your email address?
By using a chatbot to automatically collect this valuable information for you, you’ll be able to quickly determine if a lead is the right fit for your business. For example, you could have your chatbot triggered to open when a user starts checking out your prices. Once they’ve answered the questions from the chatbot and are determined to be a qualified lead, your salesperson can be alerted to jump in and complete the sale.

2. Segment your emails

If you have thousands of email subscribers, attempting to decipher which of them are qualified leads can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack; and calling each one in hopes that they’re ready to buy would take an eternity.

That’s where email comes in. Email marketing is a great way to find out if a lead is qualified, but you can’t just send the same blanket email to all of your prospects. Each one of your subscribers is at a different point in the sales cycle and has specific needs. It’s important to segment your email marketing campaigns in order to find out which leads are hot, warm and cold, and which stage of the buyer’s journey each of your subscribers are in.

You can segment your emails a number of different ways, including:

How long a user has been subscribed
If they’ve downloaded your free ebook or guide
If users have visited your pricing page
When you send each segment a targeted email based on their actions or demographics, not only is the email more likely to get opened, but you’ll also be able to qualify these sales leads based on what actions they take with your email. For example, if you send an offer to purchase an e-book to users who have previously downloaded your free content, the people who open your email and click on the link are easily identifiable as a qualified lead, whereas users who don’t click on the link may only be around to get your freebies.

3. A/B test landing pages and analyze website data

Just like your emails shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, neither should your website. Each person who visits your site has different needs and is in a different stage of the buyer’s journey. So instead of driving traffic to your broad “services” and “about me” pages, start experimenting with multiple targeted landing pages.

A/B testing different landing pages can help you determine which pages have the highest email and sales conversions. Similarly, by analyzing your website data, you’ll be able to see which users are visiting which pages often. If a visitor to your site repeatedly visits a landing page that features your paid course or is consistently checking out your pricing page, this user can be identified as a lead for your business.

Taking a shot in the dark when you’re trying to increase sales for your business will waste your time and resources. Now that you’ve learned some simple tips on how to qualify a sales lead, your conversions will be able to grow to new heights, and it will take minimal effort to get there.