TSE 1261: How To Pair Inbound Leads With Sales Triggers For Higher ROI

How To Pair Inbound Leads With Sales Triggers For Higher ROI

 

Are you thinking of ways you can pair inbound leads with sales triggers to get a higher ROI? In this episode, we’ll talk about how to do just that. 

 

Tukan is the CEO and co-founder of LeadSift. It is an intent data platform for B2B technology companies. Tukan's company helps them identify which accounts and which contacts within the accounts they should be going after based on signals of intent. 

 

What is an inbound lead?

For Tukan, an inbound lead is anyone who comes into your website and fills out a form on gated content, requests a demo, or in other ways your website offers engagement. Other inbound leads may have come to you, chatted with you and given you their email address.  They could have also downloaded your webinar, your ebook, or another offering. If a person requests some form of information from your company, that is considered an inbound lead. 

 

There’s a variety of sales triggers, including internal triggers or first party data triggers. These include:

• The number of pages that were visited
• Average time they spent on the site
• Number of downloaded content from the site
• Number of webinars attended
• Times they’ve opened an email from you

 

All these are triggers that can offer you insight about how far along your prospects are on the buying journey. Several marketing automation tools such as HubSpot and Marketo provide this information for entrepreneurs. 

 

External sales triggers  

The second type of triggers are the external sales triggers. These are outside your digital properties, not on your landing page and not on your websites. The reality in sales is that less than 1% of your market is coming from your website. Many companies’ activities happen outside of their digital properties. Inbound leads coming from external sources can be broken down to two categories: the company level growth event and the behavioral intent triggers. 

 

The company level growth is when other companies get funding to host certain events. These companies may be hiring specific roles or skills whereby your software and services can be used.

 

As for the behavioral intent triggers, these are triggers coming from other people looking into your products and services.  Make note of the people who are looking at your competitors and your industry. Helpful questions include: 

 

• Are they researching our competitors or another third party web?
• Have they been engaging with content you can pick up?
• Have they been talking to competitors?
• Are they asking questions on blogs?
• Have they mentioned their needs in forums?

 

Challenges of inbound sales

Marketing is typically responsible for generating inbound leads and sales people follow up on the leads to create opportunities. However, not all leads are equal and a lot of times, they don’t fit the profile of your ideal clients. Those are easy to spot. Then there are people who fit your target market but that can be where the challenge is because many salespeople mistakenly think of these as equally valuable leads. 

 

Based on stats, only 3% of your target is in the market right now. Without external leads and additional knowledge, the sales development team is just sent on a wild goose chase. It is imperative that they pair these ICP fit inbound leads with some triggers to figure out which ones they need to go after first.  As they are able to prioritize, armed with the right information, the contacts become more meaningful. 

 

Inbound sales that aren’t ready yet can be put on a nurture track.  When salespeople are reaching out to them, they can gauge if the timing is right. Salespeople can then follow up when they’re ready to purchase. 

 

Pairing inbound leads with triggers

There are a lot of tools that try to solve the nuance of pairing inbound leads with triggers but it all boils down to CRM. This is where you can see most of the information you need as a salesperson. 

 

When a lead comes in, it is being captured by your automation system. The lead then syncs with your CRM (Salesforce). When the data is already in your CRM, the marketing automation can log within the lead at the account level. This means that the account marketing can analyze the data and look at the kinds of activities the lead does on the account level. You can then add additional plugins to offer additional information from the base data you got from your CRM. The data includes the activities the lead engaged in on your website, if he attended your event in the last 30 days, if a company has used your tools, hired a new executive in the last 90 days, and more. 

Salespeople can get all this information without much trouble. If they need to do a follow up, the sales rep can just click on the lead and look at their account within the CRM. They can gauge with better accuracy if the lead is worth pursuing based on the data.

 

It is important for salespeople to be trained on how to use CRM so as to avoid following up with leads that won’t turn into a sale. Always look at the account, and not just the individual person, to see the leads with the highest potential. 

 

Reaching out your inbound leads

Sales reps need to be brave when reaching out. There’s no space for being shy in the sales industry. When you are reaching out to your leads, connect with multiple people within the account who you think might fit the same criteria. 

 

Pairing your inbound leads with triggers is especially helpful when a certain lead starts showing interest six months after you put them in your CRM. You may have forgotten about them but because you have the data coming from your CRM and other plugins, you’ll see they are now ready for your services. Sales reps need to spend time following up on inbound leads. When picking up on behavioral intent triggers, sales reps can utilize internal and external triggers. 

 

Tukan’s company LeadSift searches the web and looks for the different kinds of triggers based on the data pushed from your marketing automation and your CRM. When their system spots a trigger event, it shares the information directly to your CRM. This information will tell you if it’s a new lead and if it’s from an old account, it updates the account so that sales reps can follow up. 

 

Don’t waste time and resources on hope. Have solid leads for your sales development team. #SalesLeads

 

“How To Pair Inbound Leads With Sales Triggers For Higher ROI” episode resources

Connect with Tukan and ask about his software by visiting the official website. If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald about it. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.