The 3 dimensions that data-driven marketers can use to identify leads that are ready to create sales opportunities:
Fit
Intent
Qualification
Dimension #1: Fit – Leads Matching Your Ideal Customer Profile
Your Ideal Customer Profile can precisely define what kind of data you need to qualify leads. So, in order to determine whether your lead matches your ICP, most data-driven marketers use data enrichment tools.
This saves them precious time and resources by filling in the blanks in their profiles with data points like job titles, employee count, country, industry, and more.
By using data enrichment, your marketing team can segment and prioritize your leads based on data. This will help your sales team to qualify or disqualify leads.
Dimension #2: Intent – Request Signal
Signals, like scheduling a demo with a sales rep, starting a free trial, or subscribing to receive a newsletter are signs that your lead is showing a buying intent. Moreover, they imply engagement.
The trap here is that this doesn’t mean that all leads will be the fit you are looking for. They may try your product for free, but this doesn’t imply that they'll purchase it later.
Besides, these are your inbound leads. How can you track buying signals from your outbound leads? Enters: Sales Triggers.
Dimension #3: Qualifying Leads According to Their Engagement
You can segment your lead lists according to various criteria:
- Industry, location, job title, tech stack, company size, etc.
But, when it comes to identifying which leads are ready for the next step we segment them into three main groups: MQLs, SQLs and PQLs.
MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) – are the inbound leads that found your company thanks to your organic marketing efforts (by searching on Google or social media) and *have taken an action* related to your brand, showing an interest in your product or service.
When identified, they're incorporated into a nurturing sequence to get more acquainted with your business and the problems you can solve for them;
SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) – Once the MQLs pass through the nurturing stage (and depending on their engagement levels) they are handed over to the sales team and enter the sales process;
The treatment shifts from informational to conversion-oriented, and so does the messaging they receive from you.
PQLs (Product Qualified Leads) – are potential customers that already had a positive interaction with your software, using the freemium or free version.
PQLs have a major advantage over others thanks to this new self-serve model where users are not forced to sit through a demo given by a salesperson but take the action themselves.
Whereas MQLs and SQLs are defined by marketing and sales teams, PQLs are unbiased because they are based on product usage.
If you have a good history of product data at your fingertips, try looking for what behaviors closely correlate with users becoming paying customers.
By tracking and measuring the behavior of potential customers with your own product or content, you are able to initiate conversations with the right people at the right time using the right message.