Know Your B2B Sales Lead Type!

Leads are divided into cold leads and hot leads based on your prospect’s level of response or the number of interactions with your business. Your sales lead funnel can be differentiated to optimize results. As mentioned earlier, lead categorization is important in B2B sales.

Every lead category is unique and so are the methods used to nurture them. While some leads may convert to ‘closed wons’ more quickly, others may take longer to yield positive closures.

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for lead conversion. A ‘cold lead’ may stretch out your sales cycle, until it turns into a ‘warm or hot’ lead but with the right prospecting strategies!

#1 Cold leads

When a raw lead is scrubbed for basic contact information it turns into a cold lead. In the B2B lead creation process, cold leads are denoted by those you have shown zero interest in your business and have not accessed your business website.

Hence, these groups of leads are the hardest to convert! This means that at the beginning of the voyage, your warm and hot leads were previously cold. Whether they advance more quickly through the sales funnel or remain cold indefinitely depends on the sales techniques you employ.

Cold leads are at the top of the sales funnel, so converting them to prospects takes the most time and effort. Since they are unfamiliar with your service, you must grab their attention smartly. Here’s how:

Winning Over Cold Leads – The Techniques!

Cold emails: Sending out cold emails is the most promising lead generation strategy. Cold emails are great for prospects’ brand awareness – when written well.

• Keep email subject lines and bodies brief and to the point
• Provide your cold leads value such as a free research report that would pique their interest in your business
• Try using the one-time discount strategy to get them to buy into your offer or ask them for referrals!

Salesloft reports cold email personalization has been known to boost response rates by 112%. Before writing your email, don’t forget to investigate everything about your receiver.

Cold calls: Many firms are still determining how to start B2B sales lead prospecting from scratch! Well, start with an email, then wait for your leads to read it, before calling them. Establishing a connection will be possible, more so when your lead is familiar with your business.

#2 Warm leads

Warm prospects are those who have visited your website or demonstrated interest by responding to your email! They are those who follow your business page on social media and subscribe to your monthly newsletter.

Warm leads are happy to share their contact information with you and are aware of your product and services. You just have to play your cards right to help them transition to super-hot leads!

Remember warm leads have passed the stage of cold leads and are now prepared for nurturing. They are easier to manage than cold leads!

Winning Over Warm Leads – The Techniques!

By responding to your surveys, emails, or phone calls, warm leads have already shown interest in your organization and revealed their problem areas. You may use the following tactics to distinguish yourself from your competition and satisfy client queries:

• Personalized content: Target warm leads with tailored content. Landing pages, blog posts, emails, and other relevant information will influence their purchase. The ‘how our product can work better for your business returns’ or ‘how we can solve your business conundrum’ pitch can work well in your favor! So, try personalizing emailers this time around and drive follow-up calls to win warm leads over!

• Clients’ testimonials: Prospects always want to know what their peers think about the product or service they are going to opt for! Your positive customer reviews or case studies can improve your business credibility in this context.

Another tip is to make sure that when your sales rep goes on call, he or she is well-equipped to answer the ins and outs of your product or service so that the prospect is convinced of your competency.

Netting the Prospects: Cold vs. Warm Leads

You should develop an effective B2B outbound strategy to reach out to every type of lead that you want to target. B2B sales lead need to be nurtured differently when they are at different stages of the buyer journey.

Remember when you haven’t showcased your worth or forged a relationship, cold leads can remain way out of your reach. Warm leads on the other hand can be delicate to deal with— don’t overload them with information or leave room for competition in this case!

#3 Hot leads

Every business seeks hot leads since they are more quickly converted into sure sales. Hot leads are the most ideal prospects since they are interested in your product or service and need your business to help them out! Hot leads indicate that your business has done an excellent job at campaign customizations, capturing their interest and establishing rapport.

Hot leads are also known as qualified leads, as they satisfy all the requirements necessary to become customers. Sales development representatives (SDRs) can use various lead-qualifying techniques to separate qualified leads from unqualified ones during outreach.

A variety of indicators and popular approaches such as Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeframe (BANT) Framework; CHAMP Enterprise Sales Methodology and the Authority, Need, Urgency and Money (ANUM) technique are used to identify hot leads.

Conclusion

Hot leads may be the most valuable and high-converting leads, but there is also little need to put much effort into converting them. However, other categories of leads have the potential to become hot leads and ultimately convert, so they should be prioritized as well.

To effectively pitch to cold and warm leads, it is essential to know their business requirements, product needs, and workflow challenges. Binary Demand is a B2B lead generation company that can help you to handpick some actionable lead conversion strategies that best fit your organization and help you to gain the best ROI!