All your examples indicate possible opportunities, but unless and until you communicate in some fashion with the person/people taking the actions, you are chasing phantoms and likely going on some costly wild goose chases.

That is because even the download “lead” without your learning the business and technical motivation behind it is not a lead at all … it simply is a download. Conversely, the white paper requestor or webinar participant may be entirely viable AND authorized to consider and buy your software.

Net: don’t rule them in or out without some form of interactive engagement.

Pavel Trushin

Online B2B Manager

Posted on Jan. 11, 2012

Hello, Michael.

Thank you for your reply.

But we can't call everyone, since there are basically thousands of leads going in, hence we need to prioritize them in some fashion.

What would your idea be of such an engagement? If its about calling up every one of them and talking to them to find out, wouldn't it be much more costly in terms of salesforce time consumed?

Regards
Pavel

Michael A Brown Replied on Jan. 12, 2012

Hello again! Because all the respondent categories you named … a whitepaper, webinar, live event, trial download … prove interaction with your organization already, the best way to further the engagement is to thank them for doing whatever they did!

This could be by phone OR by e-mail, with the objective in either or both media to provoke another interaction. For example, an e-mail “thank you” note after a download might also contain an invitation to a live event. If the contact then participates in the live event, that is when the dialogue typically takes place, and is the time at which could can make valid judgments about which interactions represent actual “leads.”

Also see Carlos’ answer for good suggestions.

Pavel Trushin Replied on Jan. 12, 2012

Michael, hi!

I must say, excellent and actionable point. We are delivering thank you s with serial number for activation and download link, but it never crossed my mind for some reason to use it for figuring out how live a lead is.

Thanks
Pavel

Carlos Hidalgo

CEO, The Annuitas Group

Posted on Jan. 12, 2012

Pavel:

I agree with Michael as one action taken by a potential buyer does not indicate that they are a true lead.

Before you determine what a lead will be, work with sales to define what is a true qualified lead. Furthermore, define every stage of the buying process from initial inquiry through to customer.
From there define the various criteria that make up a lead. If a student doing research on your product downloads a trial, I would submit they are probably not a lead. Look at a mix of the behavioral actions and demographic of your ideal buyer as part of the make-up of an MQL.

I would also submit that it is not about calling every single one. While tele and human interaction should play a role, just because they take an action does not mean they necessitate a call. Look to engage through relevant content before you take the step of calling.

Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo

Pavel Trushin Replied on Jan. 12, 2012

Carlos,

student leads, junk are filtered out in our marketing automation system, hence only more or less live leads with decent name, company name, legit phone number, industry (at least on the first look) make it into CRM for further follow up.

We've pretty much defined the size of our company and typical buyers - SMB, most of them into automative or construction industry. But does that give us anything in the end? No, because we are still following up all of TD leads, since they all convert at a more or less normal rate.

We actually did this session with sales and this is when it was decided to have only trial download leads as MQL. All other leads like whitepapers, webinar visits we are trying now to push into some marketing funnel to lead them to trial download, but conversion is not too high, hence I'm not sure if we are doing it right.

What would your suggestion be about how to engage them? We are doing some email flows right now to test this stuff, maybe there's some generic rule of thumb or some standard guidelines- like do three follow-ups for a month 1 every week and if there's no result, leave it at that.

Regards
Pavel