Empower Your Business with airSlate SignNow's Lead Management Cycle in Canada

How to create outlook signature

well welcome everyone to another episode of shell black whiteboard again like president founder Shelby a calm and Salesforce MVP and we're going to continue our discussion on leads and an earlier installment we talked about kind of the dictionary definitions of what a lead account contact was and how they differ in the database and in this installment we're going to go get into qualification what is this conversion process we're going to talk about the timing of when you go through that do I convert a lead early versus late and maybe some benefits and things to think about so when you're thinking about leads I want you to think about it is a really a temporary bucket of where you have these records and you really are trying to determine one thing with this whole qualification conversion process you're trying to determine if that lead record is a good fit for your products and services or what you do and that is qualifying the lead is determining fit and qualified if we were very narrow or maybe we take it in a very traditional sales focus is is this someone that would consume or buy or purchase our products and services are they a good fit for that you can expand that a little bit and think of it also as is this person this lead record someone that our company could interact or engage with so not necessarily sell them something so if we kind of broaden that thought for a second maybe put on our nonprofit hat is this someone that would help volunteer for a nonprofit activity or maybe is this another company that we could see ourselves partnering with and that would have value if we work together so maybe working together different than some than something but that could be what qualifies them if they are a good fit for your company so the leads again temporary bucket the whole purpose is to vet out or screen out this population that is not a fit for what you do versus the folks that you want to engage and continue to working with potentially sell and the way that you kind of synthesize and work that database and trying to try to narrow it down to really to get one of two results you want to know are they qualified or they not qualified and take take that population and work and synthesize that population records down into that end result of qualified and not qualified it's really determined by your bleed status which is a pick list in Salesforce to kind of see where they are the funnel of that qualification process that business process of qualifying I'm not going to get into the lead status field too much there's a blog post on our website that talks about how to create a well-structured business process and it uses leads as an example to talk about what your stages or status should be on that but your lead status is the field that you use to determine where you are in that qualification funnel and again the outcome of qualification are they qualified are we going to engage interact or sell to them or they're not a fit for what we do and we're going to kind of move them out of the database and move on and I put a third bucket in here it's a little squishy and it's called qualified but not now and that really gets into the timing of when you should convert that record so that's going to be a little segue I'm going to flip back to the side of the whiteboard for a second and what I've done to talk about when you move that lead into an accountant contact through that conversion process I've drawn kind of a spectrum here of converting the lead early versus converting the lead late and when you convert so first thing I really want to get across is your company you determine when is the right time to convert only your company will know what the criteria is to determine they are a fit are there you're ready to convert so don't necessarily use the fields that come out of Salesforce and that that business process get together try to figure out what that means but let's talk about the timing so this might help illustrate when you should convert by giving you some examples so let's talk about what an early conversion step would be and that's is that would be when you find that that lead is a fit for what you do but there may not be necessarily immediate need you may not have a volunteer event for them to get engaged with or they are not ready to buy today but they consume your products and services late in the conversion process is really when you do a lot of pre selling in the lead bucket before you jump the fence to accounts contacts and opportunities so a late conversion step would be not only do they have a fit but they have an immediate need they need a quote you need to be working on opportunities right now because they want to buy they said yes I want to buy so maybe a late conversion process would be a little bit more pre-selling rather doing the sales in the opportunity process and that would be a late convert and then there's this squishy middle and the squishy middle would be they have fit they are a fit for your products and services but there's there's a need but not now so let me give you an analogy so let's say that your company is in the business of leasing cars you find someone that has a lease today that is sitting in a lease with an existing vehicle they are a fit just by the fact they are in a lease but that lease doesn't come due for another two months or two years for so you have a choice do you convert them early just saying the fact that they have at least convert them and start tracking them as an opportunity or do you wait till their lease starts to expire and then then convert because there's a need that's immediate so you have a choice you could convert early and put an opportunity out in the database with a closed date out two years from now or they could exist as a lead with a follow up tasks for two years out when they're in that window when they're getting out of the lease and then you can decide to convert this is up to you you might have multiple criteria if they're the decision-maker they consume those products and services maybe they already have one of your competitors product in place they have budget they have need you might just say that if two of those four things are in place we're going to convert them regardless of which at which two of those are in place you determine that but that's in maybe in an analogy to help talk about the spectrum of wind to kind of help you guys focus on when is it time to convert that lead are there other reasons why you should convert a lead there probably are some one give you some examples to think about not a sales need but there are some other reasons why you want may want to go ahead and jump the fence and make lead into an accountant contact so here's four quick ones that I could think about so the account already exists in the database so let's say that you go to a meeting and you find someone that works for Acme and you meet John Doe but you already know a ton of people that work at Acme and you already know you know 14 15 people at Acme you may want to keep the data more organized and go ahead and move Joe over here to the existing acne account just because that relationship board exists and you want to go ahead and get them over there let's talk about duplicate records this happens quite frequently you buy different lists you meet the same people the same trade show and they come back in the database maybe you had an email marketing campaign out to your conne to your contact they came in through your website from a web delete process which spawned a lead record for this context a joke and it exists here and Joe could exist here go ahead and convert them and get get back to working with a contact when you convert if there's a campaign associated with this lead that campaign information will fold in just nicely during the conversion process and you can merge the lead into the existing contact there's a blog post on shell by com that talks about how to D do prec ERDs during the conversion process and what to look for so I'm not going to go with a step by step on that but I'll give you the link in the transcript of this blog so you can go look at that so let's also look at the use case of you go to a trade show and you find 14 15 people at the same company and so you have 14 15 leads that are all working for the same place and again because we talked about in the first episode or their first installment of this series that all these leads are swimming around in a fishbowl and you can't associate them together you may want to structure the data better and you may want to say hey I have 15 folks that are at a company I'm going ahead and going to go ahead and convert into account so I can put those 15 people that I found at the trade show under this account and keep the data more organized that might be a compelling reason for you to convert rather than having a sale and the last thing I want to talk about on wait maybe why it's okay to convert is if you have this need to create a custom object I don't want to get into too much what a custom object is but let's say that it's not a standard object it's not a lead account contact or opportunity there's something else multiple record-wise that you want to have about this person and the problem with having a custom object on the lead side of the fence is without custom code when you hit this convert button and you move to an account in contact any customer any custom object that you've associated to this lead record will get lost the lead record does not bring custom objects over the conversion process you're going to break that data relationship you're going to leave the custom object as an orphan record basically so if you do need to have a custom object it's better to convert and create the custom object on the account and contact side you can brute force and bring that custom object over but requires custom code and not too many people are up for that challenge so that covers a lot about lead conversion I want to wrap up with the question that comes out a lot and that is do I have to use leads and the answer is no you really don't it really depends on your business model if this makes sense I'm gonna give you an extreme example to kind of make this a go home and that is let's say that you're a lobbyist and you're calling on Congress your house representatives in your centers that's five hundred some-odd people if I remember my high school government class correctly that is a finite universe of people there's no people that you have to qualify to understand if they're a good fit you are lobbyists you call on Congress it's a finite universe just make them accounts in contacts you really don't have a need for a lead bucket now where the need grows is when your size of your database grows so if you have 10,000 leads and a couple hundreds and hundred accounts and contacts that you do business with leads is a good place to separate the noise of who you could interact with it who you could sell to versus the folks that you're engaged with that you're interacting with that you're selling to and supporting from a customer standpoint noise marketing got to be vetted out got to be qualified versus who do you have a relationship who you're interacting with today the bigger database the gray the need to have leads to be able to filter out and segment that population out in your database that wraps this up so thanks for hanging in there with us a couple things before we sign off if you have any feedback we would love to hear it good batter and different you can reach me on twitter at shale black shale underscore black or you can hit us on email at whiteboard at shale black comm that email goes straight to me i love to hear more from you on what you want to see in future episodes thanks so much