Three Things That Make a Good Lead a "Good" Lead

By Lisa J. Cramer, President, LeadLife Solutions, Inc.

Ah, the never ending question - what makes a good lead a good lead?  Well I hate to say it, but it depends.  It actually really depends on your specific situation - your business, what you sell and how.  But there are a few items that will help give you guidelines for when a lead is truly a "sales ready" lead versus just an inquiry, suspect, research or simply a click.

When determining when a good lead is really a good lead, you need to start with the correct definition of what a lead is within your organization.  What criteria or profile does the lead need to have to be of value?  What title, size, industry and behavior determine whether it's a real lead or a MBA student just poking around on your site? The definition of a lead within your organization, defined by marketing and sales, must be the guideline for determining the criteria.  From a marketing perspective, its dependent on your campaigns, landing pages, conversions and nurturing to be able to understand as much about a lead as possible. How much of the criteria do they meet over time?

However, is demographic information or profile the only indicator of a good lead?  And how easily can you get that needed information? Well, demographic information is certainly is a major component of determining a good lead, but other indicators can help marketers realize the interest of a lead even before the defined profile information is known. Often the history of behavior is all that marketers can glean from a lead early on in the demand generation and nurturing process.  They can see where the lead goes and where they don't, what outbound information sent from your company they respond to, how much time they spend on different pages of your website, what they download and more.

Finally, a good lead is one that has shown an interest in buying or at least an interest to start the buying process. When is an inquiry no longer just looking and researching, but ready to buy?  A "sales ready" lead or good lead is one that meets certain criteria as defined by your company as well as has shown interest in what you are saying and what you are selling?  How does a lead show interest?  They respond to your nurturing emails of interest by clicking on the links. They continue to come back to your site or download your materials.  They start to show interactions with your company over a condensed time frame.  You see they come back repeatedly or click on the 4 nurturing emails you sent out during the month.  Of course, by utilizing a lead scoring system, these interactions will "bubble" the good lead up to the top and when it hits the threshold, it will then be passed to sales.

In conclusion, a good lead is really one that fits your company's specific criteria.  But truly it's more than that. A good lead is one that fits your company criteria combined with showing an interest in what you are selling. The amount of interest they show for what you are selling can help determine the timing of their interest.  This criteria combined will give marketers an insight to help pass good leads or "sales ready" leads to sales.