The definitive guide book to

Sales Lead Conversion

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IntroductionIn today’s world of cut throat competition when only 25% of the sales leads are legitimate andare ready to be taken forward in the sales pipeline, reacting at the right moment and grabbingthe right lead and converting it into a revenue stream is the need of the hour. 79% of the leadsnever convert to a revenue stream further strengthening the fact that nurturing of leads is ofutmost importance. However, the initiatives taken by companies for lead nurturing are not thatencouraging. Research shows that only 9% of the B2B companies engage in lead nurturingactivities on a daily basis. As a result, the un-nurtured 91% stay in the group of those 53% ofthe organizations who lose on large purchases owing to their reluctance for nurturing a lead.

This eBook will take you through 10 steps of how to take a lead to a sales pipeline and beamong the 35-50% of the companies which respond first to a lead and grab the big fishes.

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Table of Contents

4. Inquiry Generation5. Response Planning and Capture6. Inquiry Fulfilment and Qualification7. Lead Nurturing8. Lead Tracking9. Lead Sorting and Follow Up10.Clarification11.Negotiation12.Sales Closure13.After Sales Service

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Step 1: Inquiry Generation

This step involves generating a call-to-action; that may involve inquiry via e-mail, a phone call or simply a click. Itbegins with reaching out to prospectsusing direct marketing methods.

Use of a key message that summarizesthe core benefits of a product helps keepthe communication clear and lucid. Fastresponse to inquiries would lead togreater conversion rates.

Most inquiries require additionalqualification before they are ready forhandoff to sales. The secret toqualification is involvement of the salesteam in setting qualification criteria.

A good way to elicit an idea of the idealprospect is to ask a few sales managersand sales reps to describe their idealprospect, in terms of type of company, jobrole, and needs.

Clear and quick response to the idealprospects is the key to lead generation

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Step 2: Response Planning and Response Capture

Even in this day and age of super fast communicationsystems, nearly 50% inquiries go unanswered in anyB2B business. This demonstrates the loss a firmsuffers in terms of opportunities just because thisprocess is perhaps the most neglected area.

However, a pre-emptive approach towards planningarrests the loss of opportunities as well as helps inanalysis at a later stage.

A 5 minute response means you’re 4 timesmore likely to qualify that lead than a 10minute response and a staggering 21 timesmore likely to convert than after 30-minutewait.

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Step 3: Inquiry Fulfilment and Inquiry Qualification

Many inquiries seek additional information,which should be provided in a clear andcrisp manner.

Thereafter, leads need to be examinedagainst set qualification criteria as per themarketing and sales team. There shouldbe a team of experts available 24*7 torespond to the lead queries as soon aspossible. Failing to respond quickly to thequeries result in loss of the lead to anothercompetitor.

50% of the consumers are notsatisfied with the responses to theirinquiry and 15% of them likely to goto your competitors.

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Step 4: Lead Nurturing

Despite showing a 35% lift in leadgeneration ROI, 65% of the B2Bmarketers do not have a concrete leadnurturing campaign. An average of 27%of the leads will be qualified to thecommunications should happen, whichaim towards building trust and awareness.point where they are ready and willing toengage with Sales. The remaining 73%are not there yet they need to benurtured. At this stage, a series of regular

Sources of leads that require nurturinginclude• Partially qualified inquiries- They are notready to deliver to sales, according to thepredefined qualification criteria.• Leads returned by the sales team-Frequently, a presumably qualified leadturns out to require further nurturing. Thecontact might have changed jobs, or thebusiness need might have changed. So,the sales people return the lead tomarketing for further follow-up.

35% lift in lead generation ROI isresulted from lead nurturing

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Step 5: Lead Tracking

Every process requires anevaluation criterion. In order totrack the conversion rate a countof number of qualified leadsversus the final conversions needsto be documented. This wouldthen act as the basis on which ourmarketing campaign could beimprovised upon.

When multiple people andfunctions are involved at variousstages of the lead generation andconversion process, evaluatingthe contribution of each elementcan be impossible. Most B-to-Blead-generation campaigns relyon a combination of activity-basedmetrics, such as cost per lead,and results-based metrics, suchas lead-to-sales conversion rates,revenue, and ROI etc.

Keep track to 2 basic metrics: Activity based& Result base

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Step 6: Lead Sorting and Follow Up

In this stage, the qualified leadsget sorted and depending upontheir importance, size anddomain, get handed over todifferent sales teams. In today’sscenario, where information isjust a click away, sales person’srole becomes even moreimportant.

It has been noticed that 80% ofpotential sales are lost due tolack of follow-up. A whopping68% of B2B organizations havenot yet identified their salesfunnel.

80% of potential sales arelost due to lack of follow-up

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Step 7: Clarification

Before a deal is finalized,customers raise many objectionsand concerns regarding thequality, performance, price etc.of the product. This phase isvery crucial as it decideswhether the final sale wouldoccur or not. So, it’s importantto clear customers’ doubts andensure closure of deal becauseany delay now can lead tocompany’s loss. For clarifyingcustomer doubts a companyshould engage highly qualifiedsales reps.

A 5% increase in selling time can yield a 20% increase in revenue & a 1%increase in pipeline value can yield a 25% increase in revenue

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Step 8: Negotiation

So, it is very important for the salesperson to be prepared beforehand with all the possibleobjections the customer may have. Prior preparations may help mitigate the damage a long way.

According to statistics, 10-15% of the sales are lost at the negotiation stage.

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Step 9: Sales Closure

The sales team should ensure a hassle free sales closure. All the terms and conditions shouldbe clearly explained to prevent any issues in future. The entire experience of buying should becustomer friendly to build long term customer relationships. It also helps in building a goodreputation in the industry.

Customer is King. So entire customer journey should be smooth and hassle-free

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Step 10: After Sales Service

After sales service is clearly a veryimportant part of maintainingcontinued revenue flow into yourorganization. For an example, in ahigh-tech industry, firms manage togrow successfully despite economicdownturn by developing their after-sales services. In B2B, after-sales cangenerate three to four times theturnover of the original purchaseduring the solution’s lifecycle.

Surveys show that 64% of consumers consider customer service to be of greaterimportance than price.

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About Zyprr

Zyprr is a Customer Success Management Platform, a new generation of business processsoftware where companies can run all their processes in one place, in the Cloud, thus getting full360 degree view of their business. Zyprr provides businesses with an integrated marketing,sales, and service management solution that helps build successful customer relations.