Quality Leads vs. Quantity of Leads

One of the biggest challenges companies face nowadays is generating high-quality leads for their sales department. Most CMOs are under increasing pressure, because lead-generation is actually one of the most important processes a B2B company should develop, because providing your sales force with quality leads means staying in business.
But if lead generation is so important, then why so many companies struggle to achieve good results in it? Because every department in a company has its own understanding of what a lead is.

 

What is a lead and why should I generate it?

 

A lead is a prospect who has a potential of becoming a customer. Most of the times people can’t distinguish leads from business inquiries. Also, a passive list of names of some people is not a lead list. If a person expressed a little interest in your product or company, this doesn’t mean he wants, has the time or the finances to actually buy your product or service. Most marketers can’t tell the difference or can, but prefer the count those as leads just to complete its list. In a matter of fact, the business inquiry can become a sale-ready lead at some point, so don’t scratch these off the list yet. However, the quality lead is a prospect that has all the right features of a customer – needs your product/service, has the right budget, has the authority to make a decision for purchase and is ready to buy in a suitable amount of time. Such lead is ready to be transferred to the sales department.

 

Quality vs. Quantity

 

Most companies believe in quantity over quality, so they try to generate as much leads as possible. But the truth is a quality lead generating program results in higher ROI. But in order to generate higher ROI, you need to use quality metrics, because what gets measured gets done. This can be accomplished by your internal lead generation team or you can hire a third party company that specializes in quality lead generation.
So, let’s say your company has two lead generation programs – one focuses on quantity of the leads and one on quality leads. The first one will generate more leads per week, but with that – higher sales rejection percentage and an overall low conversion rate. The quality strategy will generate smaller amount of leads per week, but lower sales rejection percentage and therefore higher conversion rate. So, with less leads you will get more sales and you will save from sales department not having to manage as many unqualified leads.

 

As you can see, marketers should deliver a lead to the sales team, only when it truly qualifies as a quality lead. The criteria for a quality lead should be developed in close cooperation with the sales department, because they know very well what makes a customer of the company. Most companies that generate leads professionally for their customers know that quality will always be more perceived than quantity when it comes to leads. This is why you should use company that specializes in quality lead generation if you want to make the most of this very important process.

 

The process of lead generation is pretty straightforward. Or so it seems. Actually, it involves a long and complex series of steps – from making or receiving the calls, qualifying the inquiries, handing the right leads to the sales force and measuring the right metrics, to tracking the conversion rate and making the needed changes. Lead generation is all about developing rules, testing and refining them, tracking them and analyzing the results. Because consistent quality lead generation that helps you meet your quotas is the hallmark of every B2B company.

 

And if you need a professional company that exceeds in quality lead generation – contact us, we will be glad to help you.