One of the main goals of any Digital Marketing strategy is lead generation, but the real magic happens when qualifying leads.
And it’s no wonder this is so important! The more qualified leads you have, the greater the chances of increasing your company’s sales. It’s like casting several fishing lines into the sea — the more lines, the greater the chance of catching the right fish!
But here’s a truth that isn’t always so obvious: not all the leads you generate are ready to buy. That’s why investing in lead qualification is essential!
By focusing on identifying and working with qualified leads, you can move them through the sales funnel correctly and increase conversion rates.
So, to help you better manage the business opportunities that arise, I have listed below the 11 worst mistakes in qualifying leads that you should avoid. Check it out!
1. Failing to define the audience
Imagine that you are a member of a famous country music duo with award-winning songs, and being at the top of the most-played songs is already a habit. On one occasion, you started a show with your best performance, the musicians were incredible and the vibe among everyone was exciting!
However… One, two, five, ten songs later, the audience still hasn’t moved: they’re apathetic. Experienced, you and your duo start talking to the audience and use all the resources you’ve learned throughout your 10-year career, but nothing — NOTHING — helps you get any excitement out of them.
At the end of the show, disoriented, you look for your manager who, also disoriented, looks for the event’s production:
“We’re devastated. This is the end-of-year party for Company X, a leading technology company. The owner’s wife is in love with you, but apparently the employees like rock music…”
The moral of the story? Knowing the profile of your ideal customer — or, more technically, your persona — as well as their preferences, doubts and problems they face on a daily basis is essential for the success of a lead qualification strategy.
Without knowing your audience in depth, there is a good chance that you will waste time (and money) offering content to people who are not interested in your solutions.
Therefore, it is very important to define your persona well, avoiding errors in your communication!
2. Thinking that leads already know your company
Another very common mistake in the lead qualification process is assuming that they already know your brand, products or services in depth. This means you end up failing to produce bottom-of-the-funnel content, which is essential for converting leads into customers.
Without content that tells the company’s story, its solutions, testimonials and success stories, your potential customer will feel insecure. They will have doubts about your business’s ability to help them achieve their goals, leaving before buying from you.
Making this mistake means losing business, because you educate the lead but never offer the solution. In the end, either they don’t buy from anyone or they buy from a competitor who was happy to have found a lead already qualified by another company — in other words: a much easier sale.
3. Giving importance only to the prospect’s position
Many companies place great importance on the position held by the prospect in a lead-nurturing strategy. Generally, there is the idea that the higher the hierarchical position of the lead within the company, the greater their decision-making power will be.
This tip reminds me of a story I heard during a visit to a leading ERP software implementation and customization company in Curitiba.
The CEO of this company asked the sales team to actively prospect a particular company. After some effort, it was possible to speak to the company’s president, who reported:
“Now you want us?! When I asked my intern to bring a quote from your company, you didn’t even reply. Now I’ve already bought from company Y.”
Shocked, they saw on their RD Station that the lead’s score was negative. Because of the “Intern” position listed on the contact form, they ignored the opportunity without even responding to thank them for their interest. Lesson learned…
It is essential not to make this basic mistake so as not to miss out on opportunities. After all, it is very common for a director, manager, or even the owner of a company to delegate the supplier selection process.
In fact, it is quite common for those who will use the product or service on a daily basis to be the leads. Therefore, despite being an important piece of information, focusing only on the prospect’s job title is one of the worst mistakes in a lead qualification strategy.
4. Treat all leads equally
To ensure the success of your organization, it is essential to understand that the leads generated in your strategy will be at different stages in your sales funnel.
Therefore, remember that segmentation is essential for efficient communication. By ignoring the different needs of each customer, your entire lead qualification strategy will be compromised.
That’s why it’s so important to know how to educate your leads efficiently, according to the stage of the funnel they’re in!
5. Focusing only on the short term
Imagine you are preparing a delicious dish. You have the necessary ingredients and they are all of excellent quality.
During preparation, you follow the entire recipe except for the cooking time, taking the dish out of the oven early. This rush will cost you a positive experience with the meal, which will not turn out as expected, right?
When dealing with lead generation, this can also be the case. This is what happens when the team tries to rush a sale, causing the consumer to not fully understand the benefits they will receive by choosing your company.
In practice, you won’t be able to nurture your leads with all the information needed to close the deal. The immediate consequence is the loss of an opportunity that could have been realized with a little more time and dedication.
So don’t forget: lead qualification isn’t just about conversion. Instead, it’s also about building a lasting relationship with each of your customers.
By giving it time and following the steps of the strategy correctly, your business will finally be able to achieve great results!
6. Not aligning Marketing and Sales
One of the main and most damaging mistakes when it comes to qualifying leads is the lack of alignment between the Marketing and Sales teams.
Just imagine what would happen if the musicians in an orchestra played their instruments however they wanted. No matter how well they hit the notes, there would probably be no musical harmony.
For the company, the lack of alignment between Marketing and Sales means that Marketing generates opportunities that are not ready to purchase or that do not fit the ICP, for example.
On the other hand, the sales team may discard leads that, although not ready to buy, could be nurtured. The result is the same: lost sales opportunities and revenue generation.
To avoid this problem, it is essential to hold regular meetings between sectors and join forces, aligning goals and indicators. This way, it is possible to achieve the qualification with less effort and more efficiency.
7. Acting without clear qualification criteria
Imagine a person who goes to a market to buy fruit, but has no idea of the ideal characteristics to choose the right products.
This causes her to buy bananas that are still green, oranges that are too acidic and lemons with little juice, for example. In the end, she wasted time and money, as she did not know how to evaluate the characteristics to select the right products.
When dealing with qualified leads, a similar situation can occur: if you don’t have clear criteria, you won’t generate qualified leads. Without this, there’s no way to measure the level of readiness a lead has to make a purchase at that moment.
Therefore, it is ideal to establish clear lead qualification criteria — which should be shared between Marketing and Sales. With these criteria, it is possible to create a scoring system ( lead scoring ), which allows you to prioritize the leads that are closest to purchase.
By doing this, you can direct your efforts, knowing which leads need to be nurtured and which are ready for a sales approach. Ultimately, the sales process becomes more efficient.
To define these criteria, it is essential to have the ideal customer profile (ICP), establishing the criteria that indicate that this is the right person.
If the company offers software for small and medium-sized retail companies, the ICP can be an entrepreneur in a business with a turnover of up to R$1 million per year.
This means that you can use the lead’s position, company size, industry, and other qualification criteria. This makes it easier to identify the leads that fit this profile.
8. Favor the quantity of leads
The more leads, the better? Not always! When it comes to qualifying leads, prioritizing only the number of potential opportunities is a big mistake that can affect the achievement of real results.
Instead of getting carried away by a funnel full of leads, it is more interesting to focus on generating opportunities with a higher chance of conversion. To do this, it is necessary to prioritize the quality of leads over quantity.
By doing this, the sales team can better direct its efforts and become more efficient. Instead of having an overworked sales team with results that do not reflect its efforts, the team will have a higher conversion rate and will be more motivated.
9. Use any data or metrics
Although it is important to have data and indicators about processes and leads, using any type of metric just for the sake of it is a big mistake. This is because this information will not be truly useful and will affect the strategy.
To better understand this, consider that the company blog is one of the main channels for generating leads. It is essential to be able to identify the leads that come from this medium in order to treat them.
However, simply using the number of blog visits is not enough. After all, not every visitor will become a qualified lead, and simply visiting the blog is not a sign of interest in purchasing. Instead, it is better to look at data such as downloads of rich materials or visits to product pages.
To avoid falling into the trap of using any type of data, the ideal is to define clear qualification criteria and rely on automation tools. Among the options is RD Station.
By implementing it, you can use resources such as lead tracking to monitor the behavior of leads. Lead scoring allows you to score opportunities according to criteria such as frequency of website visits, email openings, and other metrics.
10. Not investing in team training
When there is no investment in team training, the chances of missing opportunities in qualifying leads are much higher. And this does not only apply to the sales sector; it is also necessary to train the Marketing team.
Without constant training, professionals may have difficulty identifying opportunities or analyzing data and metrics. This can hinder decision-making.
Therefore, the ideal is to carry out internal training, workshops and webinars on trends, tools and strategies, for example. Various courses and training are also available.
The important thing is that training is ongoing and carried out with alignment between Marketing and Sales. This makes it easier to ensure that both teams work in sync.
11. Buying a list of “qualified” leads
Do you know when you want to shorten your path, take a shortcut and end up lost, spending more time than if you had followed the original route? This is what happens when you resort to “tricks” like buying a list of “qualified” leads.
At first, this may seem like a great way to shorten the sales cycle and supply the sales team more efficiently. However, this is a very detrimental situation that can cause several problems.
The most common one is the questionable quality of the leads. Just think: if this list is being sold to any company that wants to buy it, there is no way to guarantee that it is aligned with your ideal customer.
In fact, in many lists, the lead may never have heard of your business, product or service — or simply not be interested in purchasing.
Another major issue involves compliance risks with the LGPD, which is the General Data Protection Law. Since people have not necessarily authorized the contact, this type of use of information can result in fines.
This approach can also damage your brand’s reputation. People may feel uncomfortable when they receive an unwanted approach.
And if you’re still not convinced, know that approaching “qualified” leads this way tends to generate less engagement. This means that the sales team will dedicate time and effort and not get the same results — or even no results at all.
What is your lead qualification process like?
In addition to avoiding mistakes in qualifying leads, you need to create a process that works towards the ultimate goal of generating more sales. However, there is no single way to qualify leads.
In fact, there are several methods and criteria that can be adopted to qualify opportunities. The process chosen should be the one that best meets the company’s needs and operational capabilities. This way, it is possible to avoid mistakes right at the beginning of the strategy implementation.
It is even possible to start with a simpler qualification process and adapt it as new needs and opportunities are perceived. In this case, these are the basic steps:
- Data is initially collected through online forms;
- The information feeds a CRM system.
- The system assigns a score to each lead, according to the defined criteria;
- Leads are categorized as “hot”, “warm” and “cold”;
- Leads with high scores, categorized as hot, are prioritized and forwarded to the sales department;
- Both warm and cold leads can enter a nurturing flow until they are more ready to purchase.
The competition’s lead generation strategies
Another tip I consider essential is to examine the performance of competitors in lead generation. Even if you don’t know the exact numbers, you can understand which channels they use and what strategies they adopt.
Did you know that it is also possible to become a lead for a competitor? By filling out a form, for example, you can understand how the contact is made, what flow is used and other questions.
This is an opportunity to implement strategies that have worked and understand the mistakes you made. This way, you can avoid mistakes in your process and even stand out in front of the public.
153% more sales with Rodojacto’s sales funnel
At Orgânica, one of the Digital Marketing solutions we offer has to do with generating qualified leads. And one of our main success stories on this topic was with Rodojacto.
Before we focused on this, we worked with paid media campaigns aimed at the bottom of the funnel. To meet bold growth goals, we conducted an audience qualification strategy.
The goal was to precisely segment the audience, focusing on attracting the right people. This caused the number of visitors to drop by 18% and the number of leads by 45%.
However, our qualifying emails had an average open rate of 48% and a 362% increase in Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). Ultimately, this led to a 153% increase in sales!
The case stood out so much that it was one of the 5 best Marketing and Sales Cases of 2023 by RD Station!
More qualification, more sales!
Qualifying leads is essential to achieve greater efficiency and results. However, it is not just about closing a deal; it also involves building a relationship.
With qualified leads, your company will be able to grow in a much more sustainable way.
Need help knowing how to act strategically? Orgânica is a Digital Marketing agency with over 16 years of expertise and ready to help you generate and qualify your leads!
Get your personalized lead generation diagnosis, carried out by Orgânica experts and completely free of charge!
