How to identify the different types of leads?

The base of an Inbound Marketing strategy are the qualified leads for the company and these normally are generated when we offer them valuable content for them and through a form that must operate in a landing page, where they give us their personal information. We follow up and educate them with even more content ready for that prospect and get the lead identified in the sales funnel, depending of the stage the lead is currently at.

The growth of the qualified leads is due to the valuable content that is given to them in order to nourish them and to generate trust in our company, taking them adequately towards the buyer’s path. When the final decision time has come, these leads are prepared for the purchase, making the sales area job easier so they can complete the business closure.

The main idea of generating leads is to be able to reach that person who gave us personal information and be able to offer to that person our product or service in a direct or indirect way. A lead is an excellent start for an Inbound Marketing strategy where we analyze in which stage of the buyer cycle and in which phase of the sales funnel the prospect currently is in order to educate with the content ready for them.

Lead MQL: Marketing Qualified Lead

These leads are characterized by a real and demonstrated interest in the product and/or service or the content. Focusing all efforts of the Inbound Marketing strategy will provide a favorable result because is a prospect that we can transform into a client, but we must have clear that not all MQLs will become a sale, there will be some that we’ll need to educate them more to transform them into clients.

Now you may be wondering what’s the goal of the marketing team in this process? Very simple, the goal is to grow these leads educating them with more information about the product or service in order to get them closer to the purchase process or through the form where the prospects provide us their data and be able to provide them specific content to their needs. But that’s not all, we have to follow up these MQL leads in order to determine in which part of the process they become SQLs.

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Lead SQL: Sales Qualified Lead

These leads are already potential clients that we got through the Inbound Marketing process and have gone through the buyer cycle, ready in the decision making stage. This kind of lead is more vulnerable to respond positively to the product or service because they are already in the stage where they are very interested in the purchase. For these SQLs, is ideal to educate them through a sample, a product trial or a demo, so they can get convinced of the decision and close the sale.

Again, you may be wondering, what’s the goal of the sales team in this process? They already have gone a long way with these leads because marketing already qualified and analyzed if these are leads that really can become SQLs, making the sales team focus in more qualified leads, increasing the productivity and making good use of their time to propitiate the closure of the sale. The final result is better productivity to reach the general organization’s goal.