Why You Should Qualify Your B2B Company's Leads

Sales leads are the foundation of nearly all effective B2B sales strategies. You can't expect to sell a product or service by flipping through the phone book and cold calling random numbers. Rather, you'll need to source the contact information of prospective buyers. Before using new sales leads in your B2B company's sales strategy, though, you should consider qualifying them according to their likelihood of converting. Sales lead qualification is a useful B2B sales tactic that offers several noteworthy benefits, including the following.

Higher Cold Calling Success Rate

Sales lead qualification can improve the success rate of your B2B company's cold calling efforts. According to ZoomInfo, only about one in five cold calls results in a meeting and only one in 100 cold calls results in a sale. B2B companies often struggle to generate sales from cold calling because they target unqualified sales leads. By qualifying leads beforehand, you can focus on cold calling buyers who fit your B2B company's ideal audience.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

By qualifying your B2B company's sales leads, you'll promote better alignment between its sales and marketing departments. There are Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), for instance, that consist of buyers who've been vetted by marketing professionals. Your B2B company's marketing department can source MQLs, after which they can pass those qualified leads down to your B2B company's sales department.

Shorter Sales Process

Targeting qualified sales leads can help shorten your B2B company's sales process. Although there are many types of qualified sales leads, including MQLs, they all consist of prospective buyers who fit your B2B company's ideal audience. Therefore, qualified sales leads require less nurturing to convert than unqualified sales leads. You may spend over a week trying to convert an unqualified sales lead, whereas a qualified sales lead may convert in just one or two days.

Improved Sales Productivity

Sales reps are simply more productive when targeting qualified sales leads as opposed to unqualified sales leads. If a sales rep is forced to target unqualified sales leads, he or she may generate a lackluster number of sales -- all while spending a substantial amount of time contacting and communicating with prospective buyers. Sales lead qualification improves sales productivity by allowing sales reps to target the right audience of buyers.

SalesLeads Provides Identified Projects to Fill Your Pipeline

We talked about the importance of qualified sales leads, but is there anything out there to help you get those type of sales leads. The answer is yes. SalesLeads' researchers track thousands of companies across the U.S. and Canada. We find out when a company is looking to expand, build a new facility and purchase capital equipment to name a few. When we find out what the project is about, we notify you. These are identified projects that are either in the approval process or have already been approved. We also give you what the opportunity is within the project to streamline your efforts and calling the contact person. 

Finally...

While sales lead qualification is beneficial for many reasons, B2B companies often ignore it. You can set your B2B company apart from its competitors by prioritizing lead qualification. By qualifying your B2B company's leads, you can expect a higher cold calling success rate, better sales and marketing alignment, a shorter sales process and increased sales productivity.