Lead Qualification vs. Lead Generation

If you think lead qualification and lead generation are the same, you’re not alone. Many salespeople and marketers confuse the two. This misconception, however, keeps professionals from opportunities to provide an enjoyable customer journey experience.

Lead Qualification

You can generate many leads but have a low number of conversions. This indicates ineffective lead management. Your leads are either pushed too hard too early or get forgotten and drop out of the funnel.

There are different variations of the buyer’s journey funnel. Many, however, include an awareness stage at the top and end with a conversion stage at the bottom. The awareness stage is the broadest and the conversion stage is the narrowest. 

To successfully move leads from one funnel stage to the next, they must be ready to move forward to the next stage. An accurate way to gauge the readiness of sales prospects is by qualifying leads.

Lead qualification involves parameters you create that a lead must meet to move on to the next stage. These parameters are in the form of triggers, or desired actions taken by a lead. Triggers can be any number of actions that indicate a lead’s heightened desire to engage with your brand. 

Some common triggers include:

• Opening an email

• Clicking on a link in an email

• Visiting your website or visiting a specific page on your site

• Scheduling a demo or a consultation

• Leaving their contact information

• Signing up for a newsletter or special insider club

• Making a purchase

When leads want to further engage with your brand, you need a buyer’s journey in place to move them forward. Each stage of the customer journey through the funnel needs relevant touchpoints to facilitate interactions with leads. This is why it’s important to not push leads too fast through the funnel nor neglect qualified leads. 

Source

Lead Generation

You can’t qualify or manage leads if you don’t invest in lead generation. This method of attracting sales prospects to the top of your buyer’s journey is the first step in lead management. 

Lead generation involves letting your ideal customers know your business is there and can help them. Your brand has the tools and services they need to be successful. Once a lead shows interest in learning more, you must nurture them well and give them a good experience. 

Lead qualification focuses more on their actions as they interact with your brand. Lead generation focuses more on getting a lead’s attention through various communication channels. 

Common lead generation strategies include:

• Search engine optimization of your business website

• Content marketing

• Email marketing

• Display ads

• Social media

• Lead generation websites

• Newsletters

Opportunities for High-Volume Lead Qualification and Lead Management

Not all the leads entering your sales funnel will convert into paying customers. A percentage of the prospects generated will fall out of your funnel in various stages for many reasons. To achieve maximum revenue, you need to produce many quality leads. 

When it comes to lead generation, going after everyone will not only produce mediocre leads, but it also isn’t feasible. Only certain prospects will make it through your customer journey funnel and become paying customers. To increase the likelihood of leads converting into sales, you must first decide who your target audience is.

To get an idea of your ideal prospects, it helps to create buyer personas. These are visual representations of the characteristics, interests, and lifestyle of your ideal prospects. Knowing who your target audience is, what they want, and what’s important to them helps you create your customer journey. 

With LeadBoxer, your sales lead generation just got easier and more effective. An automated lead generation workflow can be created with customized touchpoints along your sales funnel. These touchpoints are based on your buyer’s persona and the stage each lead is in on the funnel. 

Once your workflow is created, LeadBoxer will automatically qualify and manage your leads. With this portion of your lead generation and management taken care of, you can focus on other essential business items. 

To be successful, a company needs to invest in attracting the right prospects through a lead generation strategy. Once those leads enter the funnel, the brand must ensure a pleasant customer experience through lead management using lead qualification. 

While sales is the goal of lead management, a key component in making conversions likely is through personal interaction. Leads who feel understood, listened to, and valued by a company will have a positive relationship with the brand. Companies that treat each customer as unique, special, and important will offer a more pleasant buyer’s journey experience. 

Your leads don’t want to feel like another number or that only their dollars matter. They enjoy working with brands and companies that are interested in them and treat them as a person. 

A common challenge with lead management is how you provide mass, high-quality lead qualification that is personal and genuine. If you’re managing thousands of leads, how can you make each prospect feel like they are the only one? This is where LeadBoxer can help.

LeadBoxer’s lead management system allows you to quickly and easily see where each lead is in the sales funnel. LeadBoxer’s Lead Board helps you to visually see where each of your leads is in your buyer’s journey funnel. Each lead is a tile that is placed on a predetermined stage you create in advance. 

With the Lead Board, not only do you customize the customer journey stages, but you also create the qualification triggers. Once a lead tile activates the trigger, they are moved onto the next funnel stage. 

 Lead Board also features automation, so all you have to do is set the lead qualification triggers and the workflow. Once you’re done, you let the system automatically qualify multiple leads without you putting in any time or effort.

Source

Workflow Automation and Lead Qualification

Company-customer relationships are at the heart of successful sales and lead management. Your leads will do business with you if your company takes the time to know and treat them well. Gone are the days of cold-calling and mass sending of robotic, bland emails. 

Companies that participate in transparent, personable communication will garner the trust of their customers. If prospects trust your brand, they will likely make a purchase. You’ll be seen as legitimate and caring, having their best interest in mind.

Your customer’s experience through the buyer’s journey must include various touchpoints delivered at pre-defined stages. These touchpoints are in alignment with a lead’s readiness to convert. Segmenting your leads manually to provide the appropriate touchpoints is daunting, especially if there are many. 

Workflow automation makes it possible to deliver the most relevant and personal touchpoints to leads throughout the sales funnel. Since prospects at each stage vary in their readiness to buy, the touchpoints must meet leads where they’re at. Leads, for instance, who don’t know your brand shouldn’t be pressured to make a purchase. 

If you’re trying to manage your leads manually, it can be a daunting task. It can also make your relationship-building efforts with prospects seem forced, mechanical, and impersonal. All the time and energy you put into lead generation will go out the window. 

When your workflow is automated, you can efficiently and effectively qualify and manage a high volume of leads. Each prospect’s actions along the buyer’s journey are automatically moved into the next stage if a trigger is met. Once a prospect enters a new stage, they will automatically be exposed to pre-defined touchpoints according to that stage. 

Source

When you have thousands of leads, workflow automation reduces the number of leads that drop out of the sales funnel. It will also reduce crucial mistakes such as sending the wrong email or doubling up on customer communication. 

Automated workflow helps your business generate quality leads who have a better chance of converting into paying customers. Once these leads enter your buyer’s journey funnel, Lead Boxer’s lead qualification and management tool helps you nurture them. This automated lead management process allows you to foster crucial sales relationships with large numbers of prospects. 

For any company to be profitable, it must invest in both lead generation and lead management. At the heart of these elements is the trust coming from businesses that have personal relationships with leads. Whether you’re looking to generate leads or take your lead management to the next level, LeadBoxer can help.