Every sales manager is aware that in order to get quality sales, they first need a quality lead. But often times, the leads generated never went through any filtering process to distinguish which lead is good or bad. Giving bad leads to the sales team will cause:
- Wasted time dealing with leads that will not get buying customers.
- Wasted effort dealing with leads that will not get buying customers.
- Wasted cost to spend on your team’s salary to deal with leads that has no turnover.
As a sales manager, providing the sales team with disqualified (bad) leads is an act that must be avoided. However, how do we tell apart and identify the signs of a bad lead in order to avoid giving bad leads to your sales team?
You can use the B.A.N.T. formula, which is:
- Budget
- Authority
- Need
- Timeline
Sign 1 (Budget): Leads that do not have the BUDGET to purchase your products or service.
Have you ever encountered a prospect where after you have explained the in and out for your product, they say “I don’t have the budget to buy this product”? I am sure you have experienced this scenario plenty of time before right?
If the leads do not have the budget on hand, surely they wouldn’t be purchasing the product or services in the nearest time. Hence, providing a lead of this form to your sales team will cause a waste of time and energy.
Do keep in mind that asking the leads questions about budgets can be quite sensitive. If we ask them too early on, this might scare the prospects away, and if we ask too late, this may cause your efforts to be wasted.
Do identify the best time and place to be asking this question.
Sign 2 (Authority): Leads that is not the DECISION MAKER
To allow all leads to make the purchase immediately, he/she must be someone at a position of a decision maker.
If the decision is at the hands of another authority or individual within the company, do not waste your time and energy to engage with this lead because the end answer you will probably receive is “I will ask my boss later”, or “I will pass this to the department in charge first”.
This lead will be very tiring because the actual decision maker did not hear the full and clear explanation from the sales agent and they might have a lot of questions as they may not fully understand. This will only drag both parties’ time.
So, do avoid giving your sales team a lead that do not have the power in making the decision.
Sign 3 (Need): Leads that do not have a NEED to solve any existing problems.
Every existing product right now exists because it solves a certain problem. There are only solutions because there are problems, right?
If each lead has no problem to be solved, or the problem doesn’t align with the solutions that you are providing, there is no need to waste your time and energy engaging with this lead, do you?
This question can be answered immediately with the question of “What problems would you like to solve?”.
It is that easy to identify the quality of this lead through this filtering process.
Sign 4 (Timeline): Leads that has no interest in BUYING NOW.
Leads that has no urgency to purchase immediately will cause the timeline of their purchase to be extended.
It might takes months, years or even lose interest, Who knows right?
As a sales manager, why would we want to waste the time and efforts of the sales team with bad leads of such.
Leads like this should be categorised under email automation or others automatic nurturing process.
Sign 5: Leads that provide false information.
When we roll out marketing campaigns or provide lead magnets such as e-book, quizzes or others, sometimes we may come across a lead that has provided false information.
For example, the email or phone number provided do not exists.
Such leads usually is only interested in know what is provided or given for free and show no interest in knowing your company further.
To make the lives of all parties easier, everytime someone provides false information, exempt this lead to your sales team.
When the prospect is ready, they will provide the right information to us.
