Marketing qualified lead criteria for operations

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sometimes you have a lead and you have no idea how to qualify the lead you have no idea how to score them you have no idea how to grade them and to this conversation I want to focus on marketing qualifi lates because this mql are so Quant essential to a constellation of companies that we really need to take the time to understand what it is all about so defining and identifying marketing qualify lates is the Catalyst when you really think about it for all of your marketing efforts it doesn't matter whether you are a salesperson doesn't no matter what whether you're a sales leader you are a marketer you are a business owner you need to have a clear idea about your marketing qualify lates so let's talk about that so here's the overview I want you to pay attention to so what is the marketing qualifi Le let's go back to the origin so to speak to understand the concept we're talking about so a marketing qualif valid is a prospect who has expressed a certain level of interest in your company's products or Services simple as that nothing complicated don't let people actually confuse you and when they when they when it comes to marketing qualifi Lees it's just someone who who has expressed a certain level of interest in your company's products or services so if you if we think about the classic sales funnel with top of funnel being those who have never heard of your company before and bottom of funnel those who want are about to purchase from you mqls are roughly halfway along so mqls have all interacted with your brand in some way ship or form be by downloading a newspaper I mean a white paper attending a webinar seeing a newsletter or adding items to your e-commerce stores basket so this actions indicate that they have taken the very first steps to becoming a customer right so it's important to really start nurturing them start grading them to start qualifying them by the way boss welcome back to the show it's really a pleasure to have you here and what I want to see here is that once a prospect has been identified as a lead it's the marketing team's job to appropriately nurture them leading them further down their funnel until they become an mql and then passed over to sales at that point the sales team come in and close the deal in general mqls in other words a marketing qualify lates become SQL the de Sales qualify lates now there's often there's often a kit for Co exchange when prospects become mql in most cases they agree to give you their details this could be a email address company if applicable phone number Etc in return they get something of value like a piece of content that addresses one of their pain point or problem the problem that solves you know that gives them a clear [Music] solution now let me give you the steps you need to take to actually uh Define marketing qualify lats so your late generation process might not be so fine tune it might focus more on generating as many lats as possible instead of uh necessar L generating the right type of leads right I mean this could be great for for your organization but the question is is it effective in the long run no based on our analysis for the last 35 years we've seen that it's not really effective because typically marketers try to cast as wide a net as possible to build out a late database and then dial in with the targeted Outreach it can be nurture campaigns email campaigns content campaigns to try to turn those Lads into mqls because of this all lats that come in have to be qualified before you begin marketing to them and the initial step to qualifying a lead is seeing whether they match certain demographic criteria when we talk about leads in general and lead generation in general we have to pay attention to geography and demographics those two elements are really important now if you have a B2 B2B a B2B configuration then you want to add a third item which is company so it has to be demographic it has to be demographics it has to be a geography but also company and what I want to say here is that uh you you you want to pay attention to those three elements let me give you an example are your leades are your prospects from your target region do do they have a pinpoint that your products can solve if the answer is yes and if they have demonstrated an interest in your company then they are ready to be nurtured by the marketing team okay there are no set criteria for classifying an mql and marketing qualifi lead it totally depends from business to business it depends on the kind of configuration you have whether again you have a B2B or a b2c configuration however what's really certain is that the sales and marketing teams need to work together closely when identifying mqls and sqls this is why we really uh really Advocate a lot on this show and and and with our own business clients we need to we Advocate inter like what we call departmental chemistry departmental chemistry really important marketing and sales need to really work together by the way boss let me let me quickly uh remind you of today's topic we are having a convo about how to Define a marketing qualified lead marketing and sales need to decide how warm a lead should be before it converts from being an nmql into an SQL too cold and hard sales tactics may end up putting the customer off if they're too warm for too long and marketing doesn't pass them over to sales they may lose interest and up to do business with a competitor instead so lead scoring have really a key role to play in this process each lead that comes in should have their own numerical score indicating their position in the Journey so the higher the score the closer they are to purchasing okay so when a lead performs a certain action be it clicking through on a marketing email signing up for a webinar or requesting a demo a certain amount of points are added to their score and once they reach a certain score indicating a high level of interest in your company then they become an SQL and are passed over to sales and they must be passed over to sales bear in mind that you know lead scor and qualification more generally doesn't have to be manual okay you can use software to actually take care of the whole [Music] thing now let's talk about the key steps the key things you need to look for when the finding War makes an mql and marketing qualifi lat first you need to think about the customer history customer history second you have to think about the target personas but let's first talk about customer histories in general the first thing you should look should really look at historical customer data once you know how previous customers behaved prior to purchasing you can more easily predict which of your current leads will become buyers see if key trains keep on cropping up when analyzing previous customers buying Journeys to make this analysis as accurate as possible it's best to use an attribution model we have covered attribution models in various shows so I'm not going to uh spend too much time on that here so the thing is that if you analyze if you go granular on attribution models and if you're lucky a strong Trend May well emerge when looking at previous customers perhaps the majority visited your website's pricing page before signing up to receive email alerts or click through five or your marketing Outreach emails before requesting a demo and finally purchasing so in this case you have a nice and simple buyers journey to form the basis of your late scoring and late qualification process you also need to pay attention to to Target personas okay so once you have reviewed your customers history it's now time to fir up on your buyer personas what sort of people buy your products are there typical demographic factors that you need to take into account so if you are let's say if you are a CRM provider it's not very valuable to focus all your energy on selling to a sales as executive not only are they probably too Junior to make buying decision for their company but it's probably also not their area of expertise in this case it's probably best to immediately disqualify the lead they're never going to buy so you're just wasting your time pursuing them just because that particular Prospect is not the right fit for your company doesn't mean you want to disqualify the entire company so you might want to hunt down someone that has who has let's say a more targeted job title or better fit for you for example if you see a CMO engaging with your brand he or she should probably receive more attention from your marketing team so location is another key demographic Factor right location location location say you are a b2c company that sells handmade shoes to Europe and North America this means that you can easily disqualify any prospects who are based in say Asia Africa or elsewhere so while these examples are overly simplistic what I'm trying to say here is that you need to really put more factors into your lead qualification models it really depends on your company and each company is [Music] different what I want to talk about I want to talk about customers that you know let's say leads that leads who have spoken to your sales team again we're still having a conversation about how to Define marketing qualified leads right so we spoke about customer history we spoke about Target personas now I want to talk about folks who spoke to your sales team make sure you receive as much feedback as possible from your sales team who do they find easiest to sell to why and who's hardest to sell to your sales team directly interacts with your company's Prospect every day so they have a wealth of invaluable insights that you should take on stick on board really because marketing and sales team should not lock horns or see each other as competition that's what I said before we need to seek departmental chemistry departmental Synergy okay instead those two departments need to facilitate one another ask your sales team to make a conscious effort to gain feedback from each and every Prospect how do they come across your company what in particular made them want to purchase your goods how did your company differentiate itself from the competition as well as giving it as as well as giving you feedback from the prospects themselves your sales team will also give you feedback on their experience interacting with them okay so after all it's marketing job it's marketing's job to enable sales to help them close more deals right ask your sales team if there are any let's say any content pieces they need the that might help them white papers email templates call scripts data sheets Etc are all tools marketing can deliver to help sales win more and and they should be doing that okay we need to have a winning team here and one common problem that we have seen in our analysis is that mqls are qualified as sqls too early on in on in the funnel okay so while this may make the marketing team feel feel good this prospects are not yet ready to purchase then it's really pointless what I'm trying to say here is that you know the marketing team should not qualify uh a lead quickly so that they can they can just you know shove uh quote unquote shove the test onto sales because then what will happen here is that the sales sales team will be very very frustrated because they're just being passed on very bad quotee unquote bad leads okay by the way boss let me quickly remind you of today's topic we're having a conversation about how to define a marketing qualifi Aid okay and uh the next thing I want you to really think about is thinker away so Define an mql is an ongoing process if the sales team is unever let's say if they are ever unhappy with the leads they are being given then that means you are incorrectly qualifying them and so it's unlikely that you get the qualifying criteria spot on the first time around however the more you learn about your customer buying Journey the tatter you become when it comes to uh like the the the clear you become when it comes to having a clear Persona okay and uh so the more feedback you get from your sales team the closer you'll come to hit in the mark [Music] let me give you a few Pro tips here why is it important to Define mql in the first place I mean this whole conversation is actually revolving around defining and marketing qualified leads but why is it so important we have a let's have a clear conversation about that see the thing is that correct lead qualification will will save your organization time make your marketing efforts more productive and ultimately improve your bottom line by converting more prospects into customers and this is what you should care about sales generation Revenue generation right and it doesn't matter again it doesn't matter if you have a B2 B2B or b2c configuration doesn't matter Your Role it doesn't matter if you are a marketing head if you are a sales sales engineer if it doesn't matter if you are if you're a marketer if you are a business owner it doesn't matter lead qualification should occur very early in the p in the pipeline by doing this as soon as a new lead comes in you can quickly work out whether they are worth your attention in other words qualifiable or if they are unlikely to ever purchase plus qualifying at the very beginning phase of a of a buyers journey is a great way to personalize your marketing and sales approach right and not all aades are created equal we know that for example if you have a really hot laad com in then you're better off passing them over to sales sooner rather than later likewise you don't want to adopt a hard sales approach if a prospect is is only slightly interested in your company so this is kind of important for you to really pay attention to that so how many SQL have come through each week without first hav been mql how many potential customers sign up before a demo what do how many customers uh sign up for a demo or get in touch directly with the sales representative and really that number is pretty low based on our research for most businesses the number is pretty low however many more people are still interested in your products but they just are not yet ready to purchase I want you to really think about that you know they're not really they're not ready yet so maybe they have been on your website click through on a a few of your ads but are still unsure about your offerings in this instances you don't want to scare off prospects by treating them like true sqls there's nothing more annoying than being bombarded constantly with sales emails from a company that you haven't even bought from yet right so by immediately identifying them as mqls as soon as they come in you can start to plan a more subtle approach to converting them and the thing is that when you the way you approach them if you have a marketing instead of sales contacting them the approach will be softer so in short without properly identified mqls you would end up wasting time and energy marketing to prospects who have no need or desire to purchase your product or you would pre prematurely send all prospects to your sales team and risk putting them off perhaps more importantly you will be creating an environment where sales does not value the leads the marketing is passing over this is really bad this is really bad because it really brings a an environment of distrust okay sales are are really are you know they're really fighting against the marketing and you don't really want that as I just said a few minutes ago you really want to Foster an environment that promotes departmental chemistry departmental camarad departmental [Music] synergy let me give you the approach I really want you to follow I really want you to really uh pay attention to so how defining an mql helps your uh your uh Roi and you really want to pay attention to your Roi because this is what really this is Quant essential to long-term Revenue generation because if you don't have the resources to sustain your uh your your late generation efforts you're not going to survive in this in in whatever industry you're in for a long time so it's it's really important to have the right strategy one thing I want to say here is that certain aspects of marketing such as brand awareness and brand reputation rest on when you really think about intangible metrics right it's hard to evaluate awareness and reputation so you are let you really a left second guessing the ROI of your of your efforts when marketers identify mqls however it gives them a tangible metric and goal on which to judge their efforts for example the marketing team might be given a budget of 1 million for a single quarter their performance for that period will then be evaluated on both the number of mql that generated with that budget and the percentage of mqs that become sqls by the way boss let me quickly remind you of uh today's topic again we are talking about how to define a marketing qualified late so going back to the hypothetical example I'm giving you with the marketing team receiving a $1 million this quarter when it comes to the next quarter the marketing team's budget going forward with depend on the ROI of the efforts to date so this obviously is not the whole story right perhaps only a smaller number of leads that you have passed over to sales become customers and so you need to Tinker with your definition of an mql however having a solid definition of what success looks like is critical what does an mql look like and at what stage of the finnal should it become an SQL this is so important this is so important because then we are really getting to the whole conversation about what an mq should be what an SQL should be who should who should take charge at what point and you have to really have a clear idea about the customer Journey the length of the the length of the customer Journey how many touch points do we have and who really should you know and you you need to have a clear segregation of Duties between uh sales and uh and marketing and the thing here is that when you have when you have uh if you have a flat organization versus a ver if you have a vertical organization versus a horizontal organization you need to pay attention a lot to the this uh departmental uh chemistry that I spoke about earlier otherwise I'm telling you all your efforts will be sabotaged like the sales sales will actually spend their time sabotaging marketing e marketing efforts and vice versa and you you definitely don't want that if you have an organization you don't want [Music] that so how many mqs does your organization need to generate let's have a clear conversation about that so this is the bonus I wanted to I want to give you before I closing off onto this conversation there is no really simple answer to this okay if you it really depends on your industry it depends on the constellation of factors it really depends on your industry the quality of your products the competition and the skill of your sales team in essence you need to create enough mql to turn into SQL which sales will then hopefully turn into customers to work this figure out you want to look at your historic conversion rate between mql and sqls how many mql became sqls let's say over the last 6 months over the last year over the last 5 years then you want to look at the drop off rate between sqls and customers so from your from your SQL how many actually uh finally convert into customers 10% 20% 30% talk to me about that talk to me about that and the thing is are you tracking this data over time as well so what what are the train what are the patterns do you see let's say a growing Trend in other words is a larger number of your your SQL becoming customers or vice versa you really have to think about that so so why should always be refining your processes in order to reduce the number of drop offs this historic ratio should give you a good idea as to how many mql you need to generate right because imagine if you have let's say you generated let's say you have 1,000 Lads and ,000 L give you 100 mqls 100 mql give you let's say 50 sqls and out of 50 SQL you have 10 customers now you know right off the bat that from 1,000 Le you only get one you only get 10 customers so that's what 0.1% so you know from that number how many leads you should be generating in the first place if you want to reach a certain Revenue generation and sales generation quota remember though that this will require continuous work and tinkering on your part if the sales team is having difficulty let's say converting mql that have been passed over to them as sqls then you need to change your mql criteria as we all things digital marketing is is a constantly evolving [Music] process thank you so much for your attention I really appreciate today's conversation I was I was just talking to you about how to define a marketing qualify lead so I give you the overview the steps the pro tips the approach and the bonus thank you God bless you I'll see you another time but until then remember stay [Applause] [Music] marvelous he