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The following is an excerpt from: James Obermayer, Managing
Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects Into Hot Customers,
(Mason, Ohio, Textere an imprint of Thomson/South-Western,
2007) and Racom Books, Page 108 Marketing Process Prior
to Inquiry Distribution
Figure 1
Once inquiries have been accepted into the
company by marketing – the company has eliminated the
duplicates, has gotten rid of competitive inquiries, has
checked to see if the person has inquired on the same product
in the last 30 days, and has dropped the inquiries from Mickey
Mouse and Donald Duck – they can then be graded according to
the applicable business rules. The inquiries will emerge as
either suspects or prospects. Suspects are considered
unqualified inquiries, and prospects are those that have
reached a higher level of confidence so that their potential
for a near-term sale can be taken seriously.
The marketing manager has two choices. One, he
can send the unqualified suspect to the salesperson and let
him or her deal with it. Two, he can send it into a nurture
process and withhold the inquirer from the sales team until it
is qualified and is considered a prospect or declared dead
(see Figure1).
• Suspect: Nothing
is known about a suspect except name, company, address, and
product of interest. There are few answers to profile
questions that qualify this person so they receive a low
numerical grade level, a letter grade of C or D, or a low
temperature rating of cool or cold. These inquiries are often
from advertising and public relations sources where you can’t
ask questions in order to understand the prospects needs.
If a person sees your advertisement or press
release and circles reader service number, you will most
likely get the least information concerning a suspect’s
propensity to buy. Be careful not to call these kinds of
inquirers “unqualified.” While that may be an apt description,
unqualified to the salespeople will often translate into
non-buyers who are not worth their time to follow up. And you
do want them to follow up to determine whether the inquirer is
indeed a non-buyer or an active prospect.
• Prospect: This
person has answered profile questions in a positive manner and
has attained a high numerical grade – a grade B level or
higher, or a temperature grade of hot or warm. Sometimes
prospects are interchangeable with the term qualified.
Regardless, the prospect is a person who has answered profile
questions, so that you can screen the person’s need
sufficiently to understand their intent to buy and their
degree of seriousness. These are called qualified
inquiries.
• Nurture Stage:
This is where low-level suspects (not a sufficiently high
grade level to be called a lead) are sent. Nurturing is done
by:
a. An inside lead qualification department;
this can be marketing and telemarketers that pursue, qualify
and nurture the inquiry until the person says, “Send in your
salesperson.”
b. Inside Sales.
c. An outside inquiry management/telemarketing
vendor.
• Dead: An inquiry
can be dead on arrival in marketing for many reasons, but by
going through the nurture stage, it is found to be a
non-buyer. Resolution designations are used at this stage to
close out the inquiry and to give it a final grade for
marketing reports. We cover the resolution codes later but
most of then are:
1. No interest.
2. Information only.
3. Could not contact.
4. Bought other (could happen before sales can
reach them).
5. Remarket: worth going into a file for on-going
communications.
In most instances about 25% of the inquiries
are screened out and never reach the salesperson. Of course,
the majority of inquiries will die later- in the sales stages
but it also can happen earlier-in marketing. If it dies later
in the sales stages, the prospect bought from a competitor or
didn’t make a decision. |
