Getting The Most Out Of A Sales Qualification Centre

There’s no denying that Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are one of the driving forces behind customer acquisition and conversion for any thriving business. MQLs moves away from quantity and places it firmly on quality, and that’s what drives early trust signals and the strongest and most loyal future brand customers. When it comes to qualifying leads, it is important to nurture them, understand where they are at in their buying journey, build rapport, and qualify them, making them ready for the sales team to take over and convert.

Focusing on MQLs shouldn’t just be a focus for the marketing or sales department of a business, but it should be taken into consideration at all tiers of the brand to better streamline the acquisition and conversion processes. Doing so might seem easier said than done, so here’s why your business will benefit from getting the most out of a sales qualification centre.

Consistency and speed are key

The speed with which your business responds to a potential lead is one of the biggest key points to driving successful conversion. Onboarding the client sets the tone for their overall experience and satisfaction with your business and making sure you get off the right foot with your client speeds up the chances of creating cross-selling and share of wallet growth opportunities.

Consistency with your communication across platforms and buying stages also greatly improves the conversion rate of leads into opportunities. You are 4 times more likely to qualify a lead with a five-minute lead response time as opposed to a 10-minute response time. That’s 21 times more likely than a 30-minute wait time.

Get on their level

Communicate with your potential customers based on where they are in the buying journey. Catering to each stage, you can improve your business’ customer experience, ensuring that a consistent point of contact is made at the right place and the right time. Follow up calls and ongoing account management and maintenance calls help identify any issues that have or may arise and increases client retention percentages.

Increasing your conversion rates comes with taking into account quality sales qualification. It also comes with having the ability to listen to, understand and tailor offers that fulfil their requirements and desires.

It saves your business time and effort

Qualifying leads improves the customer experience overall, as you’re only speaking with potential clients at the right time with the right message. It saves valuable time and expenses of the field sales team, allowing them to focus on larger opportunities and closing potential clients that are ready to buy. It improves your sales workload by allowing your relevant teams to focus their resources and energies on prospects that generate the highest ROI.

Focusing on MQLs allows you to differentiate between decision makers and influencers; between tyre kickers and buyers. Being able to understand the market and knowing when customers are ready to purchase are both important in building a reputation as a trusted partner.

Additional improvements are also made to the sales team’s calendar. By focusing on MQLs, you’re providing lead scoring, previous conversations, products and services of interest, size of the opportunity, and potential cross-sell opportunities — all booked straight into their appointment calendars. By doing so, you create full visibility of how the lead came in and how it should be appropriately handled.

Even by just having your sales team involved in the last five yards with customers that are ready to buy, conversion rates of over 80% are achievable. This optimises resource management, improves the customer experience, and increases the share of wallet percentage through trust and customer loyalty.

It improves alignment between sales and marketing teams

Sales and marketing often diverge in the way they view their respective roles in the flow of generating and nurturing leads. By focusing on MQLs, it allows both sales and marketing teams to revolve around the same goal. It allows them to look beyond their differences in function and objectives and allows them to view the business’ goals from a broader perspective. They’re now focusing on how to get MQL seamlessly through the marketing funnel improving the customer experience and providing insight back to the business on their intent. Companies tend to spend about 40% of their revenue on sales and marketing, and if your in-house teams can work together as one and learn to optimise lead generation, there’s no doubt that the relationship will prosper into a generous influx of lead conversions.

The takeaway message is this: MQLs don’t just function solely on sales or marketing or on the frontline level. They’re not just a bunch of random numbers and figures to be looked at as an afterthought once the conversions and acquisitions have been done. They’re about observing the customer journey at every tier of the business and understanding how to optimise each department’s roles to push your sales and acquisitions.