The following is a guest post from lead generation / nurture platform and Base integration partner Wishpond.
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The point at which you send a lead or visitor to your sales team is a huge factor in whether that lead converts or not. Too early and you jump the gun, hitting them with a sales pitch before they’ve had time to get to know you and your service. Too late and you’ve missed an opportunity – they’ve moved on to your competitors. Either way you’ve wasted time and resources.
So how do you know when the time is right? The answer to that is hidden in a user’s behavior – the interactions a lead has with your website, the pages that they view and the types of emails that they engage with. If you’re curious to know what those triggers are, we’ve compiled the 5 primary indicators that a lead might be ready for sales.
Sales Indication #1: Bottom of the Funnel Conversion
You might have heard the old adage “strike when the iron is hot.” Well that couldn’t be more true for marketing and sales. The problem is that not all engagements are created equal. Not all downloads display the same degree of buyer readiness, and not all engagement warrants the same degree of follow up.
That’s why it’s important to categorize your content based on where it fits within your buyer’s journey. Once you have a clear understanding of what different types of interactions can tell you about a user, you can go to work to automate the process of sending them to sales.
One of the most important triggers a lead can give you is based around a bottom of the funnel conversion. This can include things like:
– Free consultations
– Demos
– Platform-specific case studies
– Product spec sheets
For example, if a user downloads one of your product case studies, you can assume that they’re in the decision stage of their product research. It then makes sense to send them to sales to follow up right away. And that’s because web leads that are followed up within the first 5 minutes of conversion are 9 times as likely to convert.
Sales Indication #2: Pricing Page Visit
If a lead manages to make it to your pricing page, chances are you’re doing something right, and they might be warming up to the prospect of purchasing something from you. However, don’t get this confused with someone who’s 100% ready to buy.
Pricing page visits show a good degree of intention, but a pricing page view without a conversion is equivalent to someone trying on a jacket at a store and then walking away. Pricing page abandonment means that users might be considering other options, doing more research, or simply aren’t ready to buy at the moment. However, if a lead returns to your site after visiting your pricing page, chances are significantly better that a user is willing to convert, and should be treated accordingly.
One tactic to capitalize on leads who have recently visited your pricing page is to show them a customized popup upon their return to your website. This can be triggered using a simple marketing automation workflow that specifies if a lead has visited your pricing page but is not on your customer list, then show a custom offer.
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Sales Indication #3: Case Study and Product Page Visits
There’s a lot of data that can be inferred about your leads depending on the type of product and case study pages that they visit. For instance, at Wishpond we can assume that someone who has ended up at our product page for our popup builder multiple times has a keen interest in popups.
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And rightly so, a combination of product and case study page visits (even non-conversion page views) does start to indicate a certain degree of buyer readiness.
In order to capitalize on this interest, we recommend awarding a lead score to leads when they view product and case study pages. If you want to get even more advanced, set up a simple workflow that awards an attribute to leads based on the types of products they’re most interested in.
For instance, we can set conditions for if a user visits our popup product page more than 3 times:
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Then set an action that adds a new attribute of “popup builder.”
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Now when you export this data, your sales reps can have a better understanding of who they’re talking to and what types of products they’re interested in.
Sales Indication #4: Email Engagement
Email engagement is a great indication of how interested and purchase-ready your leads are. And that’s because the types of data that are available through email are invaluable, primarily open rates and click throughs. We can assume that the leads that are consistently opening and clicking through on the links in your emails are more interested in your products and services, and therefore should be treated accordingly.
One strategy for maximizing the value of a highly engaged lead is to trigger a sales email or a bottom of the funnel conversion opportunity such as a consultation and demo for anyone who’s clicked through on a number of previous emails. This could be set based on any number of click throughs within a certain timeframe, anything from 3 – 10 emails depending on the type of business you have and the specific industry you’re in.
Sales Indication #5: Hot Lead Status
Each business will have a different idea of what a “hot lead” is. For you that might be someone who’s converted on a bottom of the funnel content offer, attended one of your webinars, or visited some key pages on your website. Whatever that definition is, it’s possible to combine a number of those conditions together to comprise a list of your most engaged prospects.
One of the most common definitions of a hot lead is a lead that’s visited a pricing page multiple times within a certain timeframe. For us, we generally set that timeframe to a 14 day period. Using an automation workflow, you can automatically pass leads that meet this “hot lead criteria” to your CRM so that your sales team can get to work.
Putting It All Together
There are a number indications that can help define the sales readiness of a lead, and understanding what those are is a critical component of an informed marketing and sales strategy.
To recap, the five main sales indicators that you can pull from your website are:
1. Bottom of the funnel content offers
2. Pricing page visits
3. Case study and product page visits
4. Email engagements
5. Hot lead status
Start by implementing one of these strategies, or combine them all for a 360 view of who your leads are, and when they’re ready to buy. Your sales team will thank you later.
For more information about how your sales and marketing teams and tools can work together to better manage and prioritize leads, check out the Wishpond and Base integration.
Kevin Ho is a Content Marketer at Wishpond focusing on lead generation, conversion rate optimization, and marketing automation. He is a contributor to Social Media Today, Convince and Convert and Social Media Examiner. Kevin has taught courses on Udemy and Wishpond Academy on all things marketing.
The post 5 Primary Touchpoints That Define a Lead’s Sales Readiness appeared first on Base CRM Blog.
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