New Age Lead Generation
Qualify Sale Leads
A simple How‐To
By Alan Brocious
NewAgeLeadGeneration.com
717.891.1730

New Age Lead Generation
Contact Alan Brocious
LinkedIn Profile
Twitter @NewAgeLeadGen
NewAgeLeadGeneration.com
717.891.1730
Copyright © 2009 New Age Lead Generation. All rights reserved
This document and its content are copyrighted. All worldwide rights reserved. Redistribution is
prohibited without express written permission.

What this E‐Book is and Not
Why read this?
If you are tired of 200+ page books about Lead Generation.
If you want to develop a system for qualifying leads.
Want to integrate your lead generation with your CRM software.
What this e‐book is?
Simple steps and techniques to build your lead nurturing and qualification process.
If you ever wondered what you should do after a successful marketing campaign.
Who this e‐book is not for?
For managers that think quantity of leads is more important than quality.
If you think Sales should just be happy with a phone number and name.

Do your Homework!
The steps we will cover
1. Define your customer
2. Create your marketing funnel
3. Lead R&D
4. Categorize
5. Nurture
6. Role play
7. Handoff to sales
8. Marketing campaigns
9. Return on Marketing
10. Further Reading

Current State Of Sales Organizations
• Sales cycles are longer: • Number of calls required
22% longer when to close a deal has
compared to 2001 increased
• Average sales rep • More decision makers
spends only 21% of means more sales calls
their time in front of • Inconsistent prospecting
prospects

Current State Of Sales Organizations
Difficult to enter Inability to
Inability to access
new markets or capture prospect’s
key decision makers
launch new attention
services
Sales rep gets Lack of a robust Pursuit of
busy…pipeline internal lead unqualified
slows generation engine opportunities
Only “hot” leads
are pursued = Revenue
rollercoaster

Current State Of Sales Organizations
Difficult to enter Inability to
Inability to access
new markets or capture prospect’s
key decision makers
launch new attention
services
Sales rep gets Pursuit of
busy…pipeline unqualified
slows opportunities
Only “hot” leads
are pursued = Predictable
$$$

Define your customer
Create the traits of your perfect customer
1. Is it a consumer or business?
2. What is their minimum amount of income or maximum?
3. Are they in your industry or could they use your product or service?
4. Is there a demographic? (male, female, region, job, etc)
1. If B2C what other demographics, own a home, kids or cars.
2. If B2B the demographic of the decision maker.
5. If B2B, is there a certain level or title the lead must have?
This will be the base for the entire process for sorting your leads. It is
important to know when to drop bad ones in order to save time.

Example of a customer
It is important to keep it simple
1. Our products and services are for B2B and not B2C.
2. The customers sales should be greater than five million dollars.
3. They use widgets for their business.
4. They are in the north east so our winter widgets will sell.
5. Director or greater of operations normally make the buying decisions.
6. Will purchase several times over a period of time.
It is really that easy you can simply go through after the research on a
lead and decide if you should move them through the process. Never
make more than 7 traits; that way the process will not be over
complicated.

The Marketing Funnel
Fill
Response
Verification
Qualify
Sales

The Marketing Funnel is a Two Way Street
Funnel Rules of Engagement
1. Realize the target is also qualifying YOU.
2. Provide value every step of the way.
3. Give then ask for something in return.
4. Don’t preach your value proposition, demonstrate it.
5. Remember you could be off the radar with a push of a button.

Marketing Funnel Steps
Fill
Gather a list of targets from multiple sources. Be
creative. They can come from trade shows, business
listings, trade journals, web sites and even just word of
mouth. Use your customer profile to define the
parameters when developing the list.
With the list make sure you have something to offer. A
white paper or industry news something of value to
them. Do not sell first, start the conversation and make
it about them.

Marketing Funnel Steps
Response
The Target gave you a nod or some other type of
“hello” or “thanks”. Insure you have a process to
gather the responses and be able to respond in a timely
fashion. This is by far the most important step. Your
response needs to match what you sent them. If
doesn’t you will appear too “bot” like and become
spam.

Marketing Funnel Steps
Verification
The Target has responded by showing an interest in your
firm. Now start the process of confirming the fit. What did
they receive? How did they receive it? This will start to
create a picture and the potential of the target. Should you
spend more time to further qualify? See “Lead R&D” for
ways to verify a Target.

Marketing Funnel Steps
Qualify
How does Verify differ from Qualify? When you verify you
are confirming the source. Does the target respond to a
particular message. When you Qualify you want to match
your products and services directly. Does the Target have a
“pain” you can cure? Could they become a good customer?
See “Lead R&D” for ways to verify a Target.

The Marketing Funnel
Role playing is the last step before you hand off to sales.
You can do this with yourself, as a group or a little of both.
The purpose is to confirm your Lead has been Qualified.
Does the Sales person have enough information to develop
a relationship? The Lead is then moved to the appropriate
sales person.
Sales

Funnel Recycle
At any point a target or lead can leak
out of the funnel. There could be a
number of reasons for this.
– Not ready to purchase with 60 to 90 days
– Current products or services do not match
– No contact is known
– Lead does not currently have the volume
required
You need to keep in touch but not constantly.
Do not become annoying to your current
contact since word travels fast.

Lead R&D
Verify the Lead – more about elimination
– Are they who they say they are?
– Do they work for the firm they say they do?
– Narrow to the 80/20 rule, your looking for only 20%.
Use Excel or some other spreadsheet application
• Sort the email address to eliminate and narrow the list
Email address that end with Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com xyz.com
and abc.com. If you are dealing with B2B and the email doesn’t
appear to be firm name then remove.
For B2C if it doesn’t end in AOL, Comcast, Verizon or some
other ISP suffix should not rank as high but not remove.
If no email and only a mailing address then again most likely
not serious about purchasing.

Lead R&D
Qualify the Lead – Do your homework
– Has a rapport been established?
– Establish how they fit your perfect customer profile.
– Again narrow to the 80/20 rule, your looking for only 20%.
Turn to the Web for Qualification
Review their website and look for the latest news in particular along
with their goods and services, and the management team list. This
should give you a good overview if your product or service will work.
Search Engines Google – Yahoo – Live
Setup a Google Alert – You can then get any write ups about them.
Also search for industry news, is their industry up? If down
perhaps recycle them.

Lead R&D
Qualify the Lead – Continued
LinkedIn, look for the company, review who works for or has been with the firm. Find out what
groups they belong to and if you have a connection. This will give you a much more personal look
at the lead and the firm.
Twitter‐ see if the individual or firm has a Twitter account. If so, what are they tweeting about?
Tweetbeep‐ similar to Google alerts but for Twitter. Check if there are any conversations about
them.
Facebook‐ do they have a fan page or an account?
Enter this information into your CRM software and start to piece the puzzle together. When complete
your research you should be able to decide one of three actions;
1. Drop them from the funnel
2. Move to Sales since they meet your customer profile
3. Recycle them. Just be sure to note why they where recycled.
4. Further develop the Leads during this process, send literature, visit or invite them to meet.

Categorize
Create priority on potential profit, actual profit and how quickly the sale will
close.
Most CRM packages allow you to add custom fields to a profile. Add two
drop down boxes. One for Actual Income, the other for potential. Drop
down boxes with just two choices; “High” and “Low”. The third field will
be for timing. The choices should be 0‐30 days, 31 to 60 and 61 to 90.
Why not less than “Low” or 90+ days? If there is a potential of less than
low or 90+ days then they should be recycled for further development.
1. Create a potential matrix for each lead, and note it in CRM.
2. Rate the leads with a “1” or “0” if they show the characteristic.
3. Add them up and mark them as an A – B – C
4. Recycle the C’s for further development.

Nurture
According to Stanford University research, 85% of all customers buy
after 5+ touches. Problem is that 95% of salespeople give up after four,
typically because they don’t have the time to keep in touch with a
prospect they are not sure is going to buy.
• The process of maintaining a consistent and relevant dialogue with
viable customers and prospects not yet ready‐to‐buy.
• Builds relationships with people who will eventually look to solve
their problems with someone else’s help (yours or a competitors).
• Keeps you in the buyer’s mind so that when the time of need
arrives you can be the first one back in the door.
• Positions you as a resource and trusted advisor who can help
buyers sort through the challenges they’re facing.

Nurture
Nurturing never stops once a lead has entered the funnel.
This is very important to understand and will continue even after it has
been handed off to sales. The nurturing process will also continue even
after a sale has been made.
How to Nurture?
Have something special, don’t wait for them to ask but offer it. The item
could be a special white paper, a news letter or information on your web
site. You could even have something unrelated the sale, rather an
unrelated need. If you have some special IT knowledge, website skill,
purchasing contact or a lead for them.
If you help them they will continue to help you by becoming a champion
for you. As you learn more about the lead try and figure what you can
offer, but never make them feel obligated.

Role Play
Ask yourself could I make a sale with the information provided?
It is that simple of a question. If you think you can make a sale then it is ready
for Sales. If not, then you need to go back and fill the holes.
This can be handled many different ways. The manager can have a lead for
everyone at the next marketing meeting. Have each one of the staff review
the information and determine if it is ready for sales. A simple peer review
will provide a lot of insight to your process.

The Handoff
Handing off to Sales is a very critical step so have a plan.
1. Insure that a sales person is designated to the lead.
2. Personally speak with the sales person to confirm and answer
questions.
3. Do not hide any information but do not overwhelm, either.
4. Feed the leads to sales, but do not overload them.
5. Try not to let management dictate when a lead is ready.
6. Help sales manage the pipeline of opportunities.
7. Most importantly, it is a team effort.
The biggest danger is overloading the sales staff with leads. If you do
overload them, all your hard work is for nothing. They will sit in the “in
bin” only to grow stale.

Marketing campaigns
Marketing campaigns are treated special some reasons why:
1. They are focused on a particular segment.
2. You want to test the market segment with a directed message.
3. If you want to test a message before the masses.
4. Test marketing a new service of product.
These are some very simple reasons for a campaign, so treat them a little
different in your funnel. Marketing campaigns are targeted on a segment
with a special message. Your customer profile needs to match your goals
so it may change slightly. Marketing campaigns are the best way to
calculate an ROI since they are so focused.

Return on Marketing
Return on Marketing is difficult to calculate
1. Run campaigns to create an ROI model.
2. Stay focused and deal in cost per lead.
3. Keep records of your lead generation efforts.
4. Track targets through the funnel then close the loop with Sales.
5. Always track where targets come from and how many become
customers.
Follow these 5 simple items and you can start to create a model. Think of
it as a Marketing Overhead rate. Apply that rate to your budgets and this
should make your accounting department somewhat happy.

Further Reading

Websites & Podcasts
• Sales Round Up – Podcast and website, get the sales
perspective.
• Sales Action Plan – Sales round blog useful sales tools as well.
• Marketing over Coffee – Excellent resource for doing any
marketing online.
• Marketing Profs – Perfect resource for white papers and case
studies for marketing.

New Age Lead Generation
Let’s Get Started!
Contact Alan Brocious
LinkedIn Profile
Twitter @NewAgeLeadGen
NewAgeLeadGeneration.com
717.891.1730