Not every lead is created equal.
Some will develop into sales opportunities, while others will disappear off your radar.
To be an efficient salesperson, you have to recognize when you should start investing time and resources into turning a lead into an opportunity.
Here are 3 important signs to look out for that will tell you when you should start ramping up your efforts to sell.
1) A Pain Point
Put simply: does the lead have a solid reason to buy from you?
Do they have a problem or a pain point that could be solved by your product or service?
There has to be some sort of issue that needs fixing. Otherwise, there’s no purpose for them to come with you deeper into the sales funnel.
2) An Interest In Addressing That Pain Point
The best salespeople ask good questions to help a prospect's pain points bubble to the surface.
Keep in mind that in some cases, even if a lead is aware of a problem, it doesn’t necessarily mean he's interested in addressing it.
That's the key here: are they interested in actually addressing the pain point?
If your lead has been dealing with this pain point for the last couple of decades, it’s probably safe to say it’s not at the top of their project list. If they’ve been okay dealing with it for this long, it means they have probably don’t have a serious interest in solving it.
3) A Good Fit
Even if a lead has a pain point and is interested in solving it, that lead still has to fit into your target market.
If you specialize in serving mid-to-large-sized companies, it doesn’t make sense to pick up a two-person start-up.
It’s also important to consider the potential maintenance level of the lead. Will the potential effort and resources be worth the return? Identifying good clients that won’t be a pain to work with can save you a ton of future headaches.
An efficient sales cycle begins with recognizing when leads should be upgraded to qualified opportunities. The earlier you can recognize when a lead is ready to be upgraded the better.
Interested in increasing the efficiency of your lead generation processes? See how the etailinsightscan help you do just that.
