You may not think that having too many leads could ever be a bad thing, but it can. When you waste time chasing down bad leads for your business, you’re not only losing out on that individual lead, but you’re missing out on potential clients who might actually payout.
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Lead qualification is essential as it can help you secure the best opportunities in the market. Initiating this process immediately can help you find better leads and secure more worthwhile jobs.
Modernize Your Presence
Think about how you present yourself and your company to your client base. These days, most companies use websites to begin the initial contact. But the process starts before you even meet your client; what they see when they find your website will tell them what to expect from you.
If your client doesn’t feel like they are being heard, especially in today’s fast-paced, ultra-visible, social-media galore climate, they won’t become a good lead. Modernizing your approach and your online presence can help bridge the gap, so you meet your client and their needs halfway.
Modernization will lead to your clients feeling like they are receiving quality service. Three things you can do to help along this process are:
- Using concise instructions
- Use automation
- Using Video
Concise Instructions
Your clients likely won’t know you right off the bat. They won’t understand how you run your company or what procedures you use. Because of this, they might reach out with unclear demands or be unable to describe their budget.
Ever heard this phrase? “You’re the contractor, so you should know?”
That’s the sound of miscommunication at work.
Help your clients give you the most information possible. Leave short and simple instructions to help them explain what they want from you. If they don’t understand what you need, they could become frustrated and less likely to cooperate.
Automate Part of Your Website
Most people these days don’t want to talk to a real, live person right away. Automating the initial sales process of your website can help your clients become more comfortable before speaking to someone on your team.
Automated processes can also make certain elements easier and help clients understand what they need to bring up once they meet a contractor. Plus, you can learn more about the lead without having to immediately decide if it’s a project you can take on.
Make Use of Video
As our lives become more online, video is a more prominent way to see and understand someone we don’t know. A short, specific video introducing yourself and your team can help a client be more comfortable before offering a lead.
Most people still rely on face-to-face meetings to judge a person’s character and whether or not they want to work with someone. Videos can provide the same kind of insight. It allows your client to see you as a real person.
You can also include brief instructions in the video about what you need from your client before looking into a job. Pairing spoken instructions with written ones on your website can reinforce what you need to see and make it easier for a client to understand exactly what kind of information they should provide.
Have a Sales Process
Every step of the way, from before you meet your client to closing the deal, you need to have a sales process.
Your website is one form of initial contact, but you also need to consider your email, phone lines, or people off the street. The moment they try to contact you, you need to be ready.
Scripts
Have a script that can help you run through every item you need from the client whether it’s budget, timeline, or the job itself. Similar to your website, you need to provide concise instructions that can help you understand your client’s needs.
Define Your Steps
Training a new employee is a good place to see the holes in your process and where it needs definition. If they pose a hypothetical “If they do/say this, what do I do?” and you don’t have an answer, it’s time to define each step in your sales process, so communication keeps running smoothly.
Reach Out to Customers
Good customer service is a must, no matter if you have two leads or two thousand. Have a plan in place to deal with every lead politely, even if you don’t think it’s worth your time.
If you can’t keep up with the number of leads you get, it might be time to start thinking about expanding your crew so you can meet demand.
Some leads might turn bad if they see you have hiked prices. Often contractors make the mistake of increasing or decreasing their prices too far either way. But if you don’t have to jack up the prices to make ends meet, consider keeping them closer to your baseline. This will create better customer relations and limit the number of bad leads.
Qualifying Out Bad Leads Process
When it comes to marketing your home improvement business, you would like to follow up on prospects likely to convert into customers. The practice of filtering best prospects from thousands of leads is called lead qualification.
Lead qualification is essential as it can help you secure the best opportunities in the market. It also helps you avoid the loss you would otherwise incur if you followed all the leads in your home improvement site.
In this piece, you will learn how you can qualify sales leads from the time they land your home improvement site, through the initial discovery call, to deciding whether to pursue the prospects or not.
Lead Qualification Steps to Follow
Below are the steps you need to follow to qualify your leads successfully:
Collect the Lead Contact Information
Capture the leads contact information from site visits, social media, and email subscriptions. After collecting the contact details, the next step is determining which leads meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) through lead scoring.
Determine the Lead Scores
Before contacting any leads, you should conduct a lead score to assign a point value to them depending on their information in the above section. The lead score results will help you decide which leads to contact or avoid.
Examples of the things you should consider include:
The Buyer Profile
Does the lead fit in your home improvement niche?
Online Activity
How much time does the lead spend on your website? What is their online visiting frequency?
Social Media Activity
Has the lead shared, retweeted, or liked any information on your social pages?
Spam Detection
Are there any warning signs? You can suspect a spam email If any of your leads use Gmail or Yahoo accounts rather than corporate emails. You should avoid such emails not unless they come from a lead whom you know well. Also, avoid emails using the lower case as they could imply that your lead is a bot.
The lead scoring process will help you prepare a new list of the qualified leads and then proceed to the step below.
Conduct the Initial Discovery Call
Use the results of the lead score to conduct a discovery call. The discovery call will mark your first communication with the leads. It will help you discover their needs, purchasing authority, budgetary constraints, and even their project timelines.
The main idea is to determine whether the leads can add value to your home improvement business or not.
If a lead meets your ideal customer profile at this stage, you can pursue them to strengthen your business relationship.
So, how will you qualify a lead during the initial discovery call? Generally, you can qualify your leads depending on how well they meet your ICP. Perhaps comparing a qualified and unqualified lead below will help you learn how to qualify your leads.
| Qualified Leads | Unqualified Leads |
| Are aware of your company and the solutions you can offer | Are not confident about your company, its products and services |
| Have a well-structured budget and can afford your products and services | Have ambiguous budget structure and can’t afford your product offering |
| Can explain their challenges in detail to demonstrate that it is crucial to solving them as soon as possible | Can only explain their challenges briefly |
| Have clearly defined goals that you can help them solve | They are not consistent about their goals. For instance, they may give contradicting answers about their objectives |
If you are doing it for the first time, you can use the lead qualifications frameworks to enhance your discovery call results. Examples of the commonly used lead qualification frameworks include:
BANT
BANT means Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline.
- Budget- Does your product offering favor the prospects’ purchasing power?
- Authority- Can the prospect make the purchase decisions, or is someone else responsible for making purchase decisions?
- Needs- Do the prospects need your products? To what extent?
- Timeline- Is the prospect prepared to purchase from you?
BANT can be your best lead formulation framework if your home improvement products and services are expensive, as it will help you secure leads who can afford your offering.
CHAMP
CHAMP stands for Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization. It is an alternative to BANT. Using CHAMP, you will study the lead’s challenges and assess whether your home improvement business can solve those problems. If not, then you should disqualify the lead.
Letting go of some leads may seem like a loss in the first instance. But, it is more sensible to focus on prospects who can convert into customers than following both good and bad leads. That will only be possible if you follow the above tips and get expert help on how to rank on Google, do online marketing and qualify the best leads for your home improvement business.
That way, you will be in a position to qualify leads sooner and stop chasing bad home improvement needs.
Final Words
Making potential leads feel comfortable reaching out to you will help you gain more information and more profit in your jobs. Using expert help to modernize your approach and focus on transparency with your clients can help you qualify the best leads for your home improvement business.
