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Have you ever tried to fill a leaky bucket? A bucket with holes in it? It can be a very frustrating experience. A lot of times, marketers have this same experience when they are trying to keep their sales pipeline filled with new leads. There's a lot of pressure on marketers to generate new leads and to keep new leads in the top of the funnel to generate more sales activity.
Often, marketers are having to do this is because the leads they are generating aren't receiving the attention that they deserve. The next best sales opportunity that your company has isn't going to come from a brand new lead, but it's going to come from a lead that was generated last month, last quarter, or last year. When relationships and leads are nurtured and built over time, this can result in some of your best sales opportunities.
So, how can you ensure your leads aren't falling through the cracks?
1. Reviewing Leads
Ensure each lead you generate is reviewed and input into a CRM. During the review, you want to assign it one of two statuses: MQL or SQL.
What is an MQL?
A marketing qualified lead is a lead that meets all of your target persona specifications. It's your sweet spot. It's a lead that really warrants additional attention and marketing.
What is a SQL?
A sales qualified lead is one step above the MQL. It not only meets your target persona specifications, but it warrants the attention of the salesperson, and they can start to engage with that lead.
2. Tracking Leads
One thing that needs to be done is to ensure they are in your CRM and on someone's radar stream.
Tracking MQL's
MQL's should be on the marketing team's radar. They should be enrolled into a lead nurturing workflow so you can continue to digitally engage them over time. If an MQL isn't enrolled in a workflow, marketing should be reviewing these leads and adding them to new campaigns and new content that might be shared.
Tracking SQL's
SQL's should always be assigned ownership within the CRM to one of your salespeople. Each of the SQL's should always have an assigned task and future follow-up date. They should always be on someone's radar stream. If an SQL no longer warrants the attention of a salesperson, it should be changed back to an MQL so it can be included in future nurturing workflows.
With this process to help you keep leads from falling through the cracks, you always have visibility into your lead activity, and you won't feel tremendous pressure to constantly be generating brand new leads.
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