They have stepped forward out of the masses and inquired about your services and / or responded to a marketing campaign . Their interest may be limited to downloading a free report you offered on your website ( slight interest ) or calling your office for more information ( high interest ). It can be someone you met at a trade show or someone who attended a webinar you hosted .
But to be clear , a lead is not a name on a list you rented or otherwise acquired , even if you ’ ve carefully qualified them , sent them multiple marketing campaigns , had a telemarketer call them , or connected with them on social media . In our world , such prospects stay on the Farm List . They are only moved to a “ lead ” status when they take action or show interest . Leads can and should be broken down into various categories as well . ( See later in this article about how leads are further classified .)
Unqualified Lead This is an individual who you have discovered to be unfit for further marketing and sales efforts . Perhaps they want something you don ’ t deliver , are outside your service area , or are simply not the decision-maker . You may elect to keep them on your list and send drip marketing campaigns for some future purposes or because they may lead to an opportunity indirectly ; however , these are not people you want to invest money and time into mailing , calling , or directly communicating with to secure an appointment . Unless you have a legitimate reason to remove them from all marketing forever , I would keep them on your email drip marketing list , since that costs nothing and may eventually lead to an opportunity down the road .
For example , our perfect prospect is the CEO / owner of an IT services company in the U . S . If the marketing manager of an MSP opts into our list , which is a lead , we won ’ t delete them or suppress them from emails , but we won ’ t mail them packages and conduct telemarketing calls to try to get an
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appointment , either . That ’ s because we know from experience they are a low-probability lead due to the fact they aren ’ t the decision-maker . Only sweet-spot prospects are tagged “ sweet spot ” so we can pull a list of them to conduct various marketing campaigns .
Avoid This is a classification reserved specifically for prospects and clients we do not want to do business with or who have told us to stop marketing to them . We don ’ t delete them from our CRM because we want to keep a record of how they got on the Avoid list and prevent ourselves from accidentally adding them back into our CRM and marketing to them . To be clear , these are different than unqualified leads . We may continue to send emails to unqualified leads but not to those on the Avoid list .
Clients A client is anyone who has given you money for services at some point . Like leads , clients can and should be in a CRM / marketing automation platform that allows you to segment and track their spend , interest , and other characteristics so you may intelligently communicate with them .
Another big area of overlooked opportunity is marketing to clients by sending them offers for services and products they don ’ t currently own or upgrading them to a higher level of service ( break-fix to managed , for example , or an advanced cybersecurity package that is added to an existing managed services contract ). Another is marketing to them for referrals .
Could there be additional qualifications you need or want ? Of course . These are general , high-level categories we use . As you drill down into segments in each category , you will ( should ) get more granular . We use tags and fields in our CRM for this purpose . For example , I can segment and pull lists of clients based on what they bought , their level of membership , how long they ’ ve been a client , if they are a refund or late pay ( usually for suppression ), and various other data points . But we put them all into the category of “ client .”
Same goes for leads . You want to track where leads came from and how they progressed through the sales funnel so you can appropriately market to them and start to get good metrics for how many raw leads turn into opportunities . Doing so allows you to put together an accurate sales forecast , which also allows you to plan for hiring more engineers and for resource allocation , budgeting , and , of course , future growth and profits . If you don ’ t have such a funnel , you are using the WAG method : wild a-- guess .
How Leads Are Further Classified
Raw Leads This is the total number of responses ( leads ) from a campaign before qualification and may not be worth pursuit . These leads should be immediately reviewed , qualified , and followed up on . If they are completely bogus or spam , delete them . If they have incomplete information , you should attempt to gather more information and continue to follow up . In our CRM , we have a tag called “ sweet spot ” ( mentioned previously ) that we apply to leads that match our ideal client ( qualified leads ). Those are the ones we put the most effort into following up on and converting to a client . However , we keep non-sweet-spot leads in our CRM and allow them to be
10 | MSPSuccessMagazine . com • VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1