Let's Score Some Leads, Dude!

We all know that lead scoring and prioritization is a great assist to increasing the efficiency of our outbound sales efforts. Instead of spending weeks grinding through our prospect lists hoping to find the few that might be interested in our solution, using one of the (top 25) lead scoring and prioritization solutions is a good way to define our ideal customer profile (ICP) in a more granular way.

Lead prioritization solutions work on the assumption that by identifying the attributes of prospects most likely to buy (our solution) the software can separate quality leads from junk ones, and thereby improve our conversion rates. They assume that you have more prospect intelligence available and that you are lead scoring based on tracking visits, registrations and subscriptions to your website, blogs, webinars, newsletters, demos, etc.

But as a seed or ‘A’ round funded startup, you are not the ICP for lead scoring and lead prioritization providers. I mean, even if you could afford the “just starting out” version of the solution for say, $200/month, who would manage it internally and how would it get implemented? Claiming that it integrates with your CRM is one thing, but ‘simple’ integrations require a lot of hand-holding and data massaging to get working right. You, oh lean early stage startup, may be able to afford the $200/month but you don’t have the staff or time to make it all work.

In fact, as you know, the average sales rep spends 1/3 of their time on CRM administration (creating contacts and companies, logging tasks to follow up on, creating opportunities, and associating them with records) as it is. For every two hours spent selling, they spend an hour not selling. This is not a desirable ratio for a startup (or IMHO any company).

And, in addition, you don’t have all that other data. You are not tracking activities around your brand presence because you don’t yet have a blog, a newsletter or a webinar. In fact, beyond your website, you barely have any content. Maybe you have one white paper that explains why your solution is so cool in the renewable energy sector or whatever, but you don’t even have a way to socialize that.

Lead scoring and AI-enhanced lead prioritization is highly valuable and can save your sales reps a lot of time while improving your conversion rates, but the ideal customer for those services are companies that have already achieved some market momentum, have already proven product-market fit, have already established both an inbound and outbound lead process, and have in place an established sales and marketing team who are creating the tools from which leads are generated. This is not you.

So, how do you get that 10,000-prospect lead list to come to life? How do you focus your own SDR team or your outsourced sales crew on the most likely future customers to contact first?

What you really need is a simple way to transform your lead list into a rich prospect intelligence repository or scouting report that can become the basis for lead scoring tools in the future when you have some sales momentum and more data about your own ideal customer profile. In the meantime, what is needed is a way to characterize the most likely future customers based on what you can know today.

What you can know today comes in two flavors: One, you can know the composite makeup, psychographics and demographics of a potential customer by analyzing data around industry segment, revenue history and employee head-counts, buyers’ roles and responsibilities, buyers’ job and education history, buyers’ social media reveals, current product install mix in your segment, purchase history, competition and market position, etc. And two, you can know the same information about your existing customer(s). Knowing the key reasons why even that single customer chose your solution over your competitors will provide high value information that can be leveraged by the prioritization process.

Matching what you can know about your prospects with what you can know about your existing customer(s) or the ones you almost won, may become the difference-maker in your ability to move on to your next round of funding.

More Of These!

What you are trying to tease out of your existing contact list are the MOT-qualified (More of These) prospects so you can focus your sales energy on that group first, dramatically increasing your chances of conversion. MOT prospects are prospects that look just like your existing customer(s). And by ‘look’, I don’t mean the demographic data. ‘Look’ means that intrinsic psychographic that drove your customer(s) to you. That demographic data is essential for the first cut, but you really need to next understand why your customer(s) chose you and then find the same driver(s) within your prospects.

It could be that your solution works best in a company that is downsizing and needs to consolidate a specific function. It might be driven by a specific set of regulatory requirements that only affect 5% of your prospect list. It might be only attractive to people who spend an inordinate amount of time on Pinterest and not on Facebook. It may be that a segment of your market is affected by a new set of business rules that only apply to interstate transactions. It could be tied to International growth or new markets. It might relate to internal audit reporting or external audit compliance. It might be driven by risk aversion or conversely an enthusiasm for early adoption. It might be only companies that have just closed their ‘B’ round.

Whatever the specific drivers are that created the pain in your current customer(s) or even those whom you came close to closing are the key elements of the MOT profile view and should be the primary characteristics informing your prospecting.

A study by MarketingSherpa found that 79% of leads never convert to sales opportunities. In a study by Implisit Insights, the data suggests an even smaller amount of conversions, with just 13% of leads converting to opportunities. As an early stage startup, you cannot afford to offer yourself onto the alter of an 87% conversion rate, as death will follow as surely as night follows day.

So, in addition to speed, the right kind of prospect intelligence is a critical factor in lean startup sales success. Our particular solution is called LeadGenetics and we simply enrich your existing lead list with deep demo- and psychographic intel and ship it back to you or your CRM, but however you slice it, gaining that ideal customer profile insight will contribute to your acceleration through the funnel and increase the pipeline velocity.

Confirmation that your solution was not just a cool idea, but also one that companies will pay for is critical to getting from that first round of financing to the next round, and startups need all the help they can get.

Speaking of pipeline velocity, you may want to download this entertaining eBook that Chris Beall (the brilliant CEO of ConnectAndSell) and I recently put together.

?When you click on this link, you will be taken to our website. Scroll down to ‘downloads’ and click there. You will not be asked to register nor, will you be amused or annoyed by any pop-ups. There is no CTA (gasp!). There is just a little eBook that tells the story of the discovery of the mythical ‘conversion machine’ and I’m pretty sure you will enjoy it.

https://contactgenes.com/

Happy selling.