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Lead vs Prospect – Effective Ways To Convert Your Leads Into Prospects

December 6, 2020
11:00 PM

‘Lead’ and ‘Prospect’ are the nucleus of the sales market. However, sales reps often get confused with their meanings and their appropriate usage during the sales processes. Though the terms, lead, and prospect are intertwined with each other and used interchangeably, it is important for sales reps to know the difference between them for a more effective sales strategy and execution. Misinterpretation of the two terms could lead to poor or low sales.

What is a lead?

A lead is an unqualified contact at the top of the sales funnel. It is a piece of contact information that has shown a little interest in your service/product directly or indirectly. The information could be from a form filled, a sign-up, digital platforms, or has been provided directly, with or without the authority, resources, or intent to buy your product/service and indirectly points towards a sale.

Fun fact – Did you know that today’s sales process takes 22% longer than the process 5 years ago?

What is a prospect?

A prospect is a contact that has been qualified as an ideal buyer persona of a company, fits in well to benefit from the company’s service/product. Through regular checks and development, these leads demonstrated a strong intent of buying the company’s service/product. In other words, the prospect is the final step before the actual sale’s outcome.

Fun fact – 92% of sales pros give up after the 4th call, but 80% of prospects say ‘NO’ four times before they say yes.

Lead vs Prospect

Leads are characterized by one-way communication where they approach the business through a form, sign-up, or online platforms. As the company receives the contact information, they would enter the lead into the sales nurturing process, which then receives several types of communication regarding further engagement.

More qualified contacts may engage with the content, but there exists no continuous communication. Prospects, on the other hand, are characterized by two-way communication. The qualified lead would require engaging in a conversation with the sales rep. This could be in the form of emails, calls, or meetings.

The mode of communication is the second major factor to understand the difference between lead and prospect. Leads are contacted on a bulk basis, generally in large groups and automated. Whereas, associated reps contact prospects in smaller groups or individually with highly personalized messages/calls.

Sales are 80% execution and only 20% strategy!

Read about the 8 most critical sales challenges and ways to overcome them in 2021!

Tips to turn leads into prospects

The transition from a lead to a prospect is not a long journey but is integral to the sales funnel. Failure to adhere to smart tactics and improvised strategies often result in lead loss.

Fact – Do you know that 50% of qualified leads are still hesitant to turn into a buyer?

Tip – 90% of the top-performing salesperson in the USA uses Social Media interactions for customer service to turn the audience into buyers.

Get access to comprehensive prospect data.

Sales qualification process

It is suggested to take the lead through a sales qualification process before entering them into the sales nurturing process. This way, the companies, and their sales reps save a lot of time and effort in case of trying to nurture negative leads. Three steps to qualify leads before converting them into prospects.

Determine your ideal buyer factors like location, industry, interest, and company size, and check if the lead qualifies them.
Analyze the pain points and present how the lead can implement and utilize your product/service to benefit from it.
Confirm if they have the authority to make a final decision to purchase. If the lead does not suit, then you may need to look for the right fit for your service/product.

Factors to consider while qualifying leads

Pain:
Invest resources to know and understand the problems and requirements. Lead may or may not put it out straight away, but it is the duty of a sales rep to bring it to the table. For instance, if a sales rep receives the contact information of a leader who has downloaded a study material from the company’s website, there is a high chance that the contact just wanted to learn the content, and is not interested in the service/product. Thus, a sales rep must learn to classify the different sources of contact generation and prospect accordingly, thus making optimum and effective use of the marketing budget.
Interest:
It is also important to know if the lead is interested in resolving his problems. Many times, leads do acknowledge their pain point but are not willing to solve it. A sales rep should act smart enough to pick the lead’s pain point and play strategically in such cases.
Fit:
Once you generate the interest, check if your product fits his need. If not, do not sell your product. Even if the lead wants to go for it, it is not suggested to recommend them to buy. Because they might realize the fact later and unhappy customers often take online review sites to express their dissatisfaction.

Organizing your prospects

‘Prospect’ is one of the most crucial and important parts of the sales process. It helps companies in gaining potential customers and earns you a reputation in the market as a trusted advisor. Hence, it is suggested that maintaining a clear and handy track of the prospects helps solve further unexpected concerns.

The best way to track your prospects is with a customer relationship management (CRM) database. Many great and free CRM tools are available on the internet, where you could use them according to your needs and necessities.

Benefits of tracking prospects

Estimates your goals and the effectiveness of marketing
Generates a better-organized operational system
Improves overall buying experience

Exclusive ‘ASAP’ solutions to generate intent-based leads!

Boost your prospect qualifying rate with DataCaptive™

DataCaptive™ is a B2B database platform that provides intent-based and actionable contact and company data to ease and boosts your sales process. Design and execute data-driven solutions to generate sales-qualified leads and a higher percentage of conversion rates with DataCaptive.

Datacaptive’s data-driven solutions

Identifies and nurtures sales qualified leads
Maximizes customer acquisition and retention rates
Improves sales funnel management at every stage
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Boosts ROI by 4X
95% deliverability from all marketing channels
Build a global brand with geo-targeted data
Personalize communications

Turn your leads into qualified prospects to strengthen your sales funnel and business goals by executing the best lead generation tactics and data-driven solutions from DataCaptive™. Let us know if you were benefitted from this article.

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Julie Williams

Julie writes to motivate, inform, and educate people. Her major interests are marketing, artificial intelligence, and related areas. She is passionate about poetry on nature and human psychology. When not writing, she's found dancing or exploring new tourist places around!

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