Sales qualified leads are like the people ready to make a move and purchase your products and services. The word qualified means your sales team has confirmed it. Lead generation is an essential factor for every B2B marketer.
Without leads, they will not have the opportunity to convert prospects into customers. So as a B2B marketer you can’t rely on your intuition. You have to develop strategies for the types of customers you want to attract.
Without such a strategy, you will be unsure what kinds of people it should be targeting, and without this, you will face trouble generating qualified leads. So how to generate sales qualified leads effectively? To answer this question, we will go through sales qualified leads below in the article. Then, we’ll also share with you some best ways to generate these leads.
What is a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)?
As I mentioned before, Sales qualified leads are like people interested in purchasing products and services you are offering. The marketing team generates and nurtures sales qualified leads by using inbound marketing strategies. Then these leads are qualified by the sales team.
Nowadays, lead tracking and conversion are automated with customer relationship management and pipeline management software. Suppose a person wants to know about how to bring traffic to their website.
To do this, they went on Google and searched for how to bring traffic to their website. Then, they go through the results and click on any post to read all about it. After that, they need to sign up to gain more tips on digital marketing and SEO services.
In this case, a series of emails come into action known as the email nurture track. It will provide the customer with valuable information while gathering information about them also. After completing the nurture track, the sales rep begins to track leads with the help of pipeline management software.
What is a Market Qualified lead (MQL)?
Marketing qualified leads are the people who are engaging and learning about your marketing efforts, products and services. One of the best examples of Marketing qualified leads are people spending time on your site downloading white papers and getting emails from a nurture track.
With the help of the right pipeline management software, you will understand when and why a customer is ready to purchase. Moreover, you can also see if they opened and read the email.
In other words, the software will provide you with real-time analytics about tracking engagements. So you do not have to worry about losing track of a lead.
Other types of leads
Here are some other types of leads depending on where a customer is on the sales funnel.
● Product qualified leads:- A person who is all ready to purchase your products.
● Service qualified leads:- A person who is already your customer and desires to add more features and services to their account.
SQL vs MQL- Difference between SQL and MQL
A marketing qualified lead is someone who got exposed to your marketing materials such as e-newsletter or social media campaigns. On the other hand, a sales qualified lead is a prospect who needs information on pricing before moving further into the sales funnel.
These both the terms are not mutually exclusive. If the prospect is interested in your products and services, the marketing qualified leads can also turn into sales qualified leads.
However, marketing is a one time process. But that does not mean you can continue to contact the person who becomes a lead. It is one of the advantages of having marketing qualified leads, and they can turn into sales qualified leads.
Organic sales lead generation strategies for SQLs
We hope you get a better understanding of SQLs and their role in sales lead generation till now. In this section, you will get to know how to generate them. Whenever we talk about leads, the first and foremost thing that comes to our mind is real human beings.
That is why the concept of lead generation is not as settled as purchasing them. Instead, you have to think about generating leads as nurturing leads.
If you nurture a human being interested in your products or services, it shows that you care about their problems and needs, and it also suggests that you care about whether they can buy your product.
When we think about lead nurturing, it becomes easy to understand why many B2B companies invest in strategies designed to create a valuable relationship with their customers.
Lead nurturing is one of the best ways to build relationships with your customers while boosting the conversion of your leads. You have to make sure that your sales lead generation strategies are organic.
You can consider content marketing and social media campaigns to generate B2B leads. So after your inbound marketing efforts, you need to think of lead nurturing to see interest from your potential customers finally.
Then, you only have to turn their interest into their eagerness to buy your product.
Three lead nurturing strategies
Below, we will show you some ways to nurture the people engaged with your content about digital marketing services.
● Send insightful emails :- You can create an email campaign that goes out to sales qualified leads. During this email campaign, you can send emails to your customer with critical insights about their business that they never know. It will help you to gain the trust of your customer and keep them on track to conversion.
● Track lead flow and engage at the right time :- If you are not familiar with the buyer’s journey, it is impossible to nurture a prospect. A better understanding of where they are in the journey shows that you care about them. In this way, the person will be contacted at the right time. You only have to invest in the right tools and software that can track when the customers are engaging with your content. They will also tell you when it is prime time for the conversion so that you can contact them.
● Align sales and marketing efforts :- When you are finally ready to turn your SQL into an actual customer, it is the right time to bring out everything you have to show you care about your customer. You can do this by aligning sales CRM and marketing tools. In this way, your sales team will have everything needed for personalized conversion to provide real solutions to customers’ problems.
Generate sales qualified leads using sales and marketing tools
Here are some softwares that will help you nurture and close sales qualified leads.
● Marketing Automation:- Marketing automation tools are one of the best software to know which people engage with your content. Once you know, you can nurture them through personalized content and email drip campaigns.
● Pipeline management:-The software will help you see the potential and probability of your sales qualified leads. After integrating it with your sales CRM, your sales can easily track internal notes and communications. So a pipeline management tool will let you know when a person is interacting with your store, email or reports and even if they are ready to buy your product.
Why do SQLs matter?
SQLs and MQLs are two different things, but they both are essential for your sales team. They will let your sales team spend more time selling to the right team at the right time. The process of converting MQLs to SQLs will give your sales team more qualified prospects.
Moreover, tracking your sales qualified leads will provide you with insights into what brings leads in and how they can convert. The SQL system will help you determine how ready a lead is to convert.
So you can use this system to increase your sales conversions so that you can make more sales.
Let KIA Biz generate SQL FOR you!
Over the last 7 years, KIA Biz has helped customers across the globe generate SQLs with very high probability of closures.
At KIA Biz, we have a team of seasoned researchers and marketers, with years of experience in generating MQLs and SQLs. Our focus is always on delivering high quality leads that convert.
For SQLs, do write to us hello@kiabiz.com