The 1 Thing Smart Companies Do to Focus on Hot Leads

Business is pretty simple. We make products that people want to buy and we sell them for a profit.

However, to get to this point there’s often many more details that we need to factor in.

One of these important factors is segmenting (or tagging) incoming leads so that you can focus on the leads that are hot and ready to buy now and community with those leads who are not hot in other ways.

Too often marketing managers put all their leads in one “bucket” and assign them the same priority. This results in sales reps (or whoever is responsible for lead follow-up and sales – even if that is the business owner) giving the same time and energy to each lead. This not only wastes the time of the person who is following up, but it also wastes the time of the prospect.

As leads come into your sales funnel, be it through an online form, fish bowl, raffle, or other means, ensure you assign the proper tag and ranking to each lead.

This tag (or ranking) will be based on a few key questions you must ask the prospective customer.

For example, if you sell dog toys and accessories to large dogs, you might want to ask.

1. Do you own a dog?
2. Do you have a large dog?
3. Do you invest in premium accessories for your dog?
4. Would you be interested in how your dog can be happier with premium accessories?
5. Would you like someone to call you about premium accessories for your dog?

These types of questions, in this example, will serve to be a quick guide of the type of prospect who just landed into your funnel and expressed some sort of interest in dog toys!

If a prospective customer indicates yes to question four – this means your sales team has permission to immediately call them and follow up. This call would be to confirm who they are and quickly sell them on one of your premium accessories for dogs.

Let’s say a prospect selected that they owned a dog but not a large dog. This would be an opportunity to not have anyone call them but to send them information, through an automated campaign, about how to better care for their dog with premium dog accessories. You can educate them and nurture them so that when they are ready to buy, they’ll buy from you.

Do you see why lead prioritization is so important now? You can have your CRM system automatically nurture and educate leads who might not be ready to buy from you. Those who express that they’re ready to buy from you can receive a phone call or other communication that enables them to “buy now.”

Your CRM system is not just for storing contact information. It’s a powerful tool to allow you to segment leads so you can respond to them in an appropriate way to drive more sales for your business.