Michael Hanna
There was a day when you had to choose between quality pipeline and quantity of pipeline. However, with better practices, technology, and data, you can both grow volume, and increase the quality of your pipeline through conversions.
The Old Way of Lead Creation
Once upon a time, lists were a smart lead generation tactic. However, the challenge with this approach is that data degrades over time, and if the lead started hot or warm, it’s cold by the time you get through that list. Therefore, large, generic lists are not a good thing. It gives you high volume with low conversions. Even if they get into the pipeline, they’ll likely not make it all of the way through.
High volume with low conversion is actually worse than low volume with low conversion, because you’re wasting your sales reps time. They’re spending a lot of time talking and rejecting.
The other issue with big lists is the amount of inaccurate data. Giant sources of data tend to be inaccurate, or if it was once accurate, it isn’t accurate anymore.
Contacts change jobs, roles, experience turnover, etc., and turnover rates may be high or low depending on your target industries. The result is BDRs becoming manual data cleansers, rather than pipeline builders. They’re validating and cleaning that data instead of generating qualified, quality lists, and quality leads.
The Lead Creation Solution
Instead of generic lists, look for highly targeted leads dripped steadily into your database. Here, the leads are caught while they’re hot, and you don’t heat them until you’re in a position where they can be caught. Higher conversion rates happen when you have highly targeted leads steadily dripped into your database. They’re right at the point of relevance.
Here’s the key:
The optimal rate of lead creation = the rate of lead consumption
The ideal rate at which you are actually feeding leads into your system should be the same rate at which those leads can be consumed. If you’re feeding them at a lesser rate, then your BDRs are underutilized. If you’re feeding them at a faster rate, then you’re simply risking losing those leads or the leads going cold.
The optimal rate is right in that center, where it’s the right amount of leads for your BDRs.
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