On the road to success, some businesses are just a few leads away in order to increase their revenue and nurture their brand positioning in the market. Lead generation and management, when done in the right way can serve as a catalyst for your business growth. It would not be wise to say that journey from a lead to a customer is pretty smooth and simple. However, having a deeper understanding of this lead journey and ensuring sufficient checkpoints on the way can help businesses in transforming a lead into a customer quite effectively. So, it’s time to put your seatbelts on as we take you through the journey of a lead.

Warning: The road might be a bit bumpy. So, please be careful.

Knowing your audience

The first and foremost stage among the various stages of the lead is knowing your audience. Based on the nature of your business, first, you need to identify the target audience who would be interested in your product or service. However, just identifying the audience will not help you in any way unless you do extensive research about the nature of your audience. This research will help you identify the communication channel through which the audience will get to know about your products/services. Also, based on the nature of your audience, you will be able to identify the tone of communication that would be needed for efficient communication with the audience. Don’t forget to communicate the value that you will add through your product/service.

Wait, did we forget to talk about leads?

Don’t worry! Your lead will come from your targeted audience only.

The birth of a Lead

From your targeted audience, there will be people who will be interested in knowing more about your products/services. However, it’s imperative to note that after lead generation, instead of jumping on to the process of telling them more about you, just try to know more about them. At this stage, you will not be having much information or data about the lead. So, just try to capture their data as much as possible.

Note: A meeting (virtual/physical) is never a bad idea!

Lead segmentation

After the initial lead journey stages and capturing enough data, you will be able to segment the lead based on their geographies, interest, needs, etc. The importance of lead segmentation is unmatched because post this only you will be able to deliver personalized information about your products/services to the lead.

You are as important as your lead (or maybe more)

There is no doubt that leads are instrumental in the growth of your business. However, don’t forget that the time and effort of your sales team also matters upto a great extent. So, before investing your time and effort in a particular lead, every lead must go through the lead qualification stage. Based on the results of this qualifying stage, the leads shall be categorized into hot, warm, cold, dead, etc. This categorization will help your sales team to decide the extent of time and effort needed on a lead journey.

Nurturing of lead 

This stage is all about establishing a good relationship and rapport with the lead. The mistake that businesses do in this stage is that they start hardcore selling at this stage that sometimes acts as a lead repellent. Your sales team should be skilled and trained in such a way that at this stage they must try to understand the need of the lead. This will help your sales team showcase your product/service in a way that the lead would like. Also, instead of telling them about the products/services, you should start educating them about your products/services and how it will add value to their lives/businesses. Among all the stages of the lead, this is the stage that requires unmatched skills and a high level of patience.

Hitting the bull’s eye

After all the effort and hard work in the journey of the lead, you’ll be able to establish the required trust and relationship with the lead and thereby closing the lead. This is the stage where your lead(s) will get transformed into your customer(s). The lead would be arriving at this stage in the journey only when the checkpoints discussed above as ensured in a timely manner.

It’s not the end  

After successfully transforming a lead to a customer, it is crucial to maintain a good relationship with customers and ensuring that you are consistently delivering value. This smooth customer journey will help in ensuring a high probability for upsell and cross-sell for you.

Note: It’s not greedy when you are delivering value.