Although I hate to break the news, most B2B leads won’t turn into sales.
Others might need more time to be ready for purchase, losing to the competition and needing solutions that don’t fit their needs. This is a challenging task. Only 12% of B2B marketers are satisfied with their lead-conversion initiatives.
You need to determine which prospects are high-quality leads as B2B marketers. Leaders must be qualified based on potential lifetime value (LTV) or the expected net profit that the customer will make by doing business with you.
To maximize your revenue, your costs should be proportional to your customers’ spending. How can you determine LTV and convert potential before you sell? It all boils down to practical lead qualification.
The Evolution of Qualifying Leads
After identifying potential leads, it is time to decide which ones you should pursue and when. There are many ways to determine which will be the most effective for your marketing team, including the BANT (budget. authority. need, and timing) and the CHAMP (challenges. authority. money. and prioritization) frameworks.
BANT and CHAMP are two traditional lead qualification methods. They form a system you can use to assess the “quality” of a lead.
Digital marketing technologies allow for more modern methods to qualify your leads. You can now tap into various data from your customer relation management (a CRM system) to create a lead-scoring program for potential customers.
Modern lead scoring allows you to assign points to every new lead you receive based on their behavior and demographic information. This total score can then rank your prospects and measure their interest in your brand.
Scoring criteria today include a more comprehensive range of attributes. But traditional methods such as BANT or CHAMP are effective. You can use their basic principles to create a lead-scoring system that suits your business model.
You can assign points to B2B leads based on the CHAMP or BANT frameworks. However, you can also include other criteria or values such as how a lead responded to your sales activities. This will give you a better understanding of the leader’s intentions
