Why Do We Need the Concept of Leads?
Do you remember the moment you first heard the terms BANT Theory and Leads?
In a sales organization surrounded by concepts such as Customer, Company, Person, Opportunity, and Proposal, what did the term Lead mean to you when you first encountered it?
To be honest, Lead is a concept that cannot be precisely translated into Turkish, and it’s a concept we might not even feel the presence of in traditional sales when we are having initial discussions with the first 5-10 potential customers. However, as sales organizations grow, the concept of “Lead” greets you to enhance efficiency, maintain the cleanliness of thousands of rows of data, and build a healthier institutional memory, ensuring that it doesn’t turn into a landfill. Today, I’ll try to touch upon the points you might be curious about regarding the concept of Lead, which can be translated into our language as “Potential Customer Candidate.”
Let’s start by looking at Outbound and Inbound Lead concepts:
Inbound Lead: These are potential customer candidates who discover you by filling out an information/request form on your website, downloading the E-Book you prepared, or, in other words, those who come to you by self-discovery.
Outbound Lead: These are potential customer candidates whom you, from an external perspective, say, “Yes, this person/company could be a future opportunity.”
In general terms, a Lead is a potential customer candidate about whom you don’t have much information, but there is a possibility of a future opportunity. About 70% of companies do not follow any approach to identify qualified customer candidates. According to research, companies implementing a qualified candidate approach can increase both customer and sales rates by 60% to 180%.
BANT Theory
After the initial contact with Leads within the framework of the “BANT” theory, the “Conversion” process is performed by saying, “Yes, an opportunity can arise from here,” or the “Closing” process is carried out with the thought that “An opportunity will not arise from here.” By converting, you essentially add a company and/or person to the system based on the information gathered under the Lead.
Before delving into the details of the BANT theory, I would like to mention that in multinational companies located in countries like Ireland and the USA, there are roles such as “Sales Development Representative” and “Business Development Representative” that are solely responsible for converting/closing Leads, sharing the converted qualities with the sales team, and have no sales targets.
Budget: It is necessary to find out the answer to the question, “Is there a budget set for this purchase?” If the answer is yes, you need to know in which range the budget is.
Authority: Who are the decision-makers on the other side? Ultimately, during sales discussions, you will want to convince the decision-makers.
Needs: Understanding needs correctly is crucial to position the product/service you are selling correctly.
Timeline: By obtaining answers to questions such as, “What is the schedule of your potential customer candidate? How urgent is this purchase for them? If they are currently using a product, when does their commitment expire?” you can better structure the timeline.
Along with the questions asked within the framework of the BANT theory, Leads that are deemed qualified can be converted into a person and company in the used system and can be tracked through the stages of the sales process via the “Pipeline,” which was the subject of our previous bulletin. Leads predicted not to generate an opportunity can be closed by selecting a reason. It is crucial to configure the closing reasons accurately for the reporting and interpretation of the data.
On the other hand, although the roles of Sales Development Representative (SDR) and Business Development Representative (BDR) who touch Leads first in Turkey and many countries are generally performed by the same individuals, and we don’t observe the roles of SDR and BDR much, we can say that the concept of Lead is becoming more widespread.
While these processes are generally evaluated under the title of “Lead Management” I will also share my writings on industry best practices related to “Lead Generation” and “Lead Scoring” soon.
Tips for Lead in FowCRM
If you have received the answer to the question “What is a Lead?” then you can start adding Leads now!
You can add Leads to the system one by one. But if you say, “I have a list that won’t end with adding them one by one,” you can import your Leads in bulk. It will be sufficient to fill out the example Excel we shared appropriately.
Do you collect different data when taking a Lead record?
Let’s say the fields we provided are not enough for you. In this case, you can add the data field you want to the Lead entry form. You can even change the status of the Lead as you wish. You can make all these customizations quickly through the FowCRM interface.
“If Leads could come to CRM on their own, and I didn’t have to deal with them one by one?”
Yes:
1. If Leads come from the call center you use, we integrate with the call center application you use, and Leads automatically appear in FowCRM.
2. Every request form filled out on your website is added to the system as a Lead.
If you say, “I use a custom application for my company, and I collect requests from there,” we have that covered too. Just let’s get together with the relevant technical team. We’ll have a tea, and we can quickly integrate with it 😀
Fow CRM by Bilge Adam Teknoloji
