By Danielle Whetstone

We’ve been diving into the best tools and tricks to work your leads. This week we’re talking about cherry-picking. No, not filling your bucket with the delicious stone fruit. The practice of selecting only the best, most qualified leads from the batch. Let’s talk about why this isn’t the best use of your lead generation dollars and some ways to avoid it. 

The ugly truth

Let’s just get the ugly truth out of the way. When it comes to lead generation, if you think you can determine a person’s income level or propensity to buy based on their zip code or even their name, you can’t. And while social media sleuthing may provide insights into a lead’s personal life and even indicators as to their personality, you certainly can’t deduce if a candidate is the right fit for your concept based on their “likes” and what they posted last week. To do so is – let’s be honest – discrimination. 

Besides that just not being ok, assuming quality based on very limited information could mean you’re missing out on valuable leads. With a long history of lead generation in the franchise industry (one of the hardest industries to generate quality leads for), we often hear our clients closing deals that developed from what they initially thought was a bad lead. 

The rule of thumb: if someone has taken the time to submit a lead form, they should get the courtesy of a follow up. It’s that simple. (Ok, except for “Imma Goldigger” who submitted her email as “marryrich@gmail.com – you can ignore her. What can we say, some people have way too much time on their hands!).

Nature vs Nurture

There are a few ways to avoid your best salespeople spending their days reaching out to leads to qualify them. Automation can play a role here in feeding your leads valuable information and enticing them to engage while your sales team is doing the heavy lifting of closing already hot leads. 

A lead nurturing sales team can be invaluable for making those initial touchpoints and weeding out those that aren’t qualified. Make sure these folks are savvy at uncovering what really qualifies a lead besides the obvious – finances. A diamond in the rough is still a diamond. And while not every lead will be ready today, if treated with respect and considered just as valuable as every other lead in your pipeline, chances are when the time’s right, you’ll be the brand they remember, return to, and choose to partner with. 

Finally, most lead generation platforms will have some options to ask additional questions from the onset, allowing leads to self-qualify or disqualify themselves. However, use these additional questions with prudence. Each additional question you ask on a lead form significantly reduces response rate. Most digital users are hesitant to divulge too much information on an impersonal lead form. And this goes back to our last tip. If you’re trying to get someone to buy – especially if we’re talking about a hefty price tag – you’re going to have to work a little at it. It’s a balance of power really. Customers want to be pursued and to feel like you need them (which, if you’re a business, you absolutely do), and that means doing your fair share of wooing. 

If you’re ready to take your lead generation efforts to the next level, learn how C Squared’s years of experience and industry-leading expertise makes the difference.