This is What the Perfect Sales Qualified Lead Looks Like

Optimize your marketing processes in your B2B business with professional lead management strategies. This way you can see how random prospects become Sales Qualified Leads.

What is a Sales Qualified Lead?

Within the lead funnel, the sales qualified lead is at the bottom of the funnel. It is therefore the most valuable product of lead generation within the marketing process for new customer acquisition in the B2B segment.

In this process, the Sales Qualified Lead has gone through a multi-step process within the marketing team and is now a potential customer ready to have actual sales conversations with your sales team.

He has shown interest in your company's topics and products several times during his time in marketing.

A Sales Qualified Lead Must Meet these Criteria

For a structured process to capture and rank B2B leads, it is helpful to agree on certain specifications as a set of measures. Therefore, criteria should be established that a prospect or lead must meet in order to become a Sales Qualified Lead in the lead funnel.

Here are some criteria that indicate a clear interest in your company's products:

• Return visitor to website

• Interest in informative content (blog)

• Interest in further information(gated content)

• Response to social media posts

• Interaction with corporate newsletters

• Interest in product-specific content

• Achievement of certain lead scores

• Direct contact request

During this phase, marketing team members used various criteria to register the lead's interest. The activities of the potential customer were stored in the company database and scored by the marketing staff.

When it is apparent that the lead has reached the maturity level of a Sales Qualified Lead, the contact is transferred to Sales.

Returning Visitor to Website

You can draw important conclusions from the lead's visit to your website. His interest already shows that the lead wants more information on the topic and is probably also interested in a solution to his problem at a given time.

If your lead already visits special product pages and the corresponding price lists or requests a demo version, you probably already have a SQL ready to buy.

Interest in Informative Content (Blog)

A good idea as part of your marketing process is to publish regular posts around the subject matter of your offerings on a company blog.

Here, customers and leads have the opportunity to read up extensively. Always provide your blog posts with links and teasers at the appropriate places, so that the user is actively guided through your content, which is most relevant for his profile and his location on the customer journey.

Interest in Further Information (Gated Content)

Providing gated content on your website is great for generating leads in the B2B segment. Since this content is valuable information, you shouldn't just give it out for free.

Before your potential customer can download it, it's necessary to request a digital contact form with their contact information. That's the payoff for your marketing team.

Responding to Social Media Posts

By sharing interesting articles and information about your business on social media channels, you reach a wide range of potential customers.

A lead who responds to one of the posts is very likely to be interested in your company's products and services. Therefore, use this reaction and inspire the lead with continuous lead nurturing.

Interaction with Newsletters

By subscribing to your newsletter, you have taken the first step towards converting a customer.

Now it's up to the marketing staff to gather more information about the customer by providing additional information and asking about the lead's wants and needs.

The information you receive is used for scoring on the way to a Sales Qualified Lead.

Interest in Product-Specific Content

By showing interest in product-specific content, your lead is signaling that they have extensively researched your company's products and services. Now it's critical to find out if your product line is suitable to meet the lead's wants and needs.

If this is the case, a handover of the lead from marketing to the sales team should take place directly.

Achieve Specific Lead Scoring

For every action taken by the client or marketing team, it is critical to record and score the event in the company's proprietary database. Within a well-structured lead scoring model, each entry results in an upgrade or downgrade of the level achieved.

For example, unsubscribing from the newsletter or a fruitless conversation may result in a poor score for the contact. Once the lead has reached the required maturity to become a Sales Qualified Lead in the scoring, the handover to Sales should take place.

Direct Contact Request

By digitally sending the contact request filled out by the lead to your company, the lead has expressed his interest in further sales talks in writing.

Now all the data collected so far about the lead's interest is transferred to the sales department together with the contact request. There may already be concrete inquiries about the company's products, which provide an important starting point for the first sales meeting.

Conclusion

For a prospect to become a Sales Qualified Lead within the lead funnel, they go through a structured process. Here, predefined criteria help to determine the potential customer's interest in the company's products.

It is up to you whether a Sales Qualified Lead actually has to meet all the criteria. It is important that the collected information about the lead is stored on your customer data platform so that an efficient transfer to the sales department can take place.