What is a "Qualified Lead"?
Take a moment and think: Have you ever sat down to unwind in the evening, grabbed a cold drink, and pulled out your phone to browse Instagram, Pinterest, or your favorite blogs? Have you ever signed up for a free ebook? Perhaps a free guide? Maybe a coupon? If any of that sounds familiar, you have more than likely been considered a Qualified Lead!
A Qualified Lead (QL) is someone a company has identified as a potential customer. Figuring out who is most likely to buy a specific product or service is key. If companies do not attempt to focus on who actually has the best chance of going from a lead to a sale, they are wasting valuable time and resources somewhere along the way.
A specific definition of a Qualified Lead is extremely important for a sales team, and they should revisit and reconsider it often. According to Hubspot, only 34% of companies with no formal definition were able to advance a lead to a first discussion more than half of the time. When the companies had clear definitions, that percentage increased to 63%!
Every company will define their Qualified Lead differently because each company caters to a unique type of customer. Therefore, individual marketing teams have to consider what criteria will truly give the insight they need. To define the target customer, they may consider:
The marketing team encounters the potential customer first. With a solid digital marketing strategy, companies will attract attention from a variety of audiences. Qualified Leads will distinguish themselves through engagement with anything the marketing team puts out there. This may include podcast subscriptions, watching YouTube videos, or engagement with social media posts and ads . Qualified Leads may sign up for email updates/newsletters as well.
Many marketing strategies are depending more and more on providing free content. What better way to show expertise on a topic? For instance, say you are searching for more tips and tricks on marketing and increasing website traffic. You find a company with a free webinar giving you tons of useful information on the topic. You realize the company offers a fairly priced package with an analysis of your marketing approach and advice to improve your overall strategy. Now that you’ve seen that they know what they’re doing, why not go for the complimentary consultation? You have just become a Qualified Lead for the company, all because they earned your interest and trust through free content.
Customers need to show a certain level of interest in what the company has to offer. If this is not the case, is it truly worth the company’s time? Cold calling and prospecting is still a thing in the marketing realm, but it’s much more time and resource efficient to utilize leads. A Qualified Lead is based on actual market research and shows that the potential customer has already taken a few steps in the right direction. Research shows that people have often already made 50% of the buying decision before even talking to the sales team.
There are different types of Qualified Leads. When the marketing team has identified someone as a Qualified lead, they are decently confident this could convert to a sale. This is a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).
Once they hold up their end of the bargain, the marketing team hands the MQL over to the sales team. The sales team further evaluates the likelihood of the MQL becoming a paying customer. Sometimes the customer will express specific interest in taking the next step, giving the sales team even more reasons to proceed. Often the BANT system is utilized at this point:
If the sales team decides to proceed with the MQL, the MQL transitions to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
This whole process seems straightforward, but nothing will work smoothly unless the company sales and marketing teams are on the same page. It benefits everyone to agree on the criteria for a Quality Lead. Not only does a company need to establish a definition in general, but marketing and sales need to decide on the definition together. Agreeing on QL criteria will optimize conversion rates and digital marketing strategies. How will any company know what’s working best if sales and marketing function as two completely separate entities?
Quality Leads are important and companies are out there using these QL’s to their advantage! Instead of cold-calling or pursuing just any “potential customer”, consider what your business can offer to entice the customer to come to you. How can you adjust your online/social media presence to attract people seeking certain information? What is in your toolbox that could bring your company Quality Leads? Optimize the time of your sales and marketing teams while still finding the customer that is the right fit!
-Off you go! Your horizon awaits.
You want to take your business to the next level, but it can be difficult to discern where your team should put the bulk of its focus. So, you find ourself wondering about automating your business processes
Enter Zoho One.
Most likely, you’ve noticed the influx of automation platforms businesses are implementing. Technology, no doubt, shifts drastically even within a year. It’s no wonder that you’re receiving targeted ads and emails for new, innovative automation platforms. Many of these companies present tall promises of cutting entire workdays, saving your business tens of thousands in operation costs, and generating triple-digit leads in half of the time.
We’re here to level with you. Your needs and your strategy must be clear before you opt-in simply because a platform looks great on paper.
So, what is the big deal with automation, anyway? Does streamlining your business processes really save time, money, and get you ahead of the competition?
Join us behind the scenes for a moment. We’ll tell you exactly how your business can benefit from automating your business processes.
We may be showing our age, but to use it seems like no time at all passed between the iPod being all the rage to the release of the iPhone 12 Pro. Because technology is always moving forward, companies must educate themselves on the changes and respect that forward motion is the best flow for any business to adopt. Hey, no judgment if you’re still using an iPod, but we guarantee you that your friends that are rocking the newest iPhone have more storage space and less to carry around.
The percentage of companies that have fully automated at least one function, however, has grown more modestly, from 29% in 2018 to 31% in 2020.
Automating processes is an obsession of ours. That isn’t a sales pitch. We’re passionate because we watch it work for client after client. Here are the benefits of moving forward with automating your business processes. Yes, even implementing one fully automated process will produce noticeable, positive changes!
Industries spanning the spectrum and divisions within those industries are beginning to automate their processes. Here are the top trends we see here at Woggle:
Now, don’t ditch this blog post if you’re not in those niches listed. Automation is available and advantageous for any scope of business that you can imagine.
There are so many reasons why you should automate your processes, but we've narrowed it down to our top three. You can reach out, and we’ll give you our complete pros list! (Did we mention we’re obsessed?)
Automating your processes will indeed up-level the efficiency of your business.
For example, HR departments can thrive with AI automation technology that seamlessly scans resumes and pinpoints candidates for consideration based on pre-determined keywords. On a smaller scale, entire departments can easily automate their client management systems. Hence, tasks are dependent on other team members and functions to move to the approval process.
So, how much time can automation save your business? Keep in mind that automation can work when humans can’t. An automated process doesn’t need sick days or the occasional vacation to Disney.
To find out how much time automation can save your business (down to the minute you want to get intense), just follow this formula.
Where did you spend the least amount of time? Now, work your way through each of your business processes and compare. Seeing how much time is spent on any given task will help you to see how automation can save you time in one or several areas of your business.
Once you see where your business would benefit from automation, you’ll be able to recognize areas where processes are bottlenecked. This will guide your team to delegate otherwise mundane, time-consuming tasks to a platform rather than a person.
Even beginning with automating a simple task such as emails to incoming inquiries can offload your team of repetitive, time-consuming tasks. When teams are able to focus on their zone of genius without the distraction of frequent tasks, your business not only becomes more effective; but your team’s morale gets a boost and they put their best work forward.
If you want to know more about how automation can specifically help your business thrive, book a consultation with us.
Instead of reigning in your ads budget just yet, think of how much your business can save through automating processes. Maybe your self-assessment of automated task vs. human performance showed a substantial loss of time responding to initial inquiry emails.
It may be that you have brought in a contractor to help with the influx of inquiries during the holiday season. Your breakdown of time spent may mean that your team can integrate a platform to handle autoresponder emails. The cost per month for the platform almost always much lower than the salary paid to the temp contractor. We’re not saying to replace entire departments with AI or to overhaul your entire company’s infrastructure for the sake of automation. After all, automation can simplify your whole business, even if you just use it in a few select areas.
We’re glad that you’ve made it this far because this is where the magic happens. Our Woggle team has seen automation in action, and it’s transforming businesses by increasing lead generation, improving the client experience, and helping their content be seen by their ideal customer/client.
Zoho One is a robust suite of software that can help you automate anything from task delegation with your team to email campaigns. Oh, and loads of impressive stuff in between. We’ve watched Zoho One make such tangible differences for businesses that we dedicated a whole blog post to it. Check it out here.
We mentioned in the beginning that we see where you are. Automation is such a buzzword these days that you probably know it’s the next best move for your business but aren’t sure where to start. The loads of information out there on automation is overwhelming, but we are here to do what automation can’t--talk you through your current hesitations, and your business goals. Together we'll find the perfect fit for you. We do the full implementation, too!
Woggle is a huge fan of making business simple, and we’re equally as passionate about seeing your business grow! Reach out today, together we'll get everything sorted!
-Off you go! Your horizon awaits.
We’ve known that remote work has been on the horizon for a while, but the COVID-19 pandemic gave everyone a hard shove into the work-from-home lifestyle. Now that we’re starting to recover a bit, it’s clear that many employees want to stay home, and businesses want to avoid the hefty costs of keeping offices open.
Even if moving your staff to full-time remote work isn’t on the table, having a remote work software suite can deliver massive payoffs. Take a second and think of the companies that were “remote ready" in March 2020. Some companies only had to flip the metaphorical switch and send out a mass email telling staff to stay home.
Remote work offers a unique combination of benefits including raised morale and higher retention rates. So why didn't we all welcome remote work sooner? Companies reasonably were worried that working from home would come with security issues, kill collaboration, and cause communication struggles. In comes tech to solve the working world’s problems.
Now, there’s the issue of being overwhelmed with different tech tools and software that claim to be the key to making remote work, well, work. There cannot be one solution. But there are software suites that offer an array of tools and systems to keep your teams running.
We’re pretty lucky that Zoho has an entirely cloud-based remote system that ensures your team can always access the information and systems they need to get things done. You know, as long as they have internet access.
Zoho knows that you have concerns too. Yeah, your employees can get the information they need, but are they really going to work? Seamless reporting helps leaders know that teams are on track with sales goals and other performance metrics.
Worried about choosing the right combination of Zoho systems? Take a breath because Zoho already solved that problem. Zoho Remotely allows your office to function from anywhere with a winning combination of their best remote work apps.
Zoho keeps going. They connect with nearly all the other apps you need to keep your team working, such as:
If you have apps that you already love, chances are you can integrate them with Zoho while cleaning out the apps and processes that are weighing you down.
Because of built-in analytics, Zoho CRM can measure and manage metrics across all of your business operations. Give your sales team powerful tools with one clear path for customer handling in the CRM. Automate escalations to protect customers and support staff while standardizing approval systems to reduce bottlenecks.
Meanwhile, leaders can use customizable dashboards to track team progress, who is landing the most sales, and which campaigns have the most leads.
Remote work software solutions often focus on the CRM to protect the customers' best interest. But, what about everyone else? Don't worry. Zoho has over 45 applications in their suite, and unlike other unnamed software providers, these applications actually integrate beautifully. It's the software suite with apps that know how to work as a team.
So, what do you need to know about Zoho and its many apps?
It doesn't matter if your top talent wants to move across the country or if you need to work while you're on the go. Leaders and staff can collaborate and crush it without being in the same physical space.
Interested in setting up your company for remote working? We'd love to chat with you.
Schedule a Free Consultation today!
-Off you go! Your horizon awaits.
On our road to becoming Zoho Advanced Partners, we at Woggle Consulting have completed projects of all shapes and sizes. We take the time to learn about you and your business. We work with you to understand what drives you to do what you do and we take the care and compassion you have for your customers to heart. Together we go through your current systems and help you find areas where automation and process management tools can help streamline the needs of your business while focusing on the needs of your customers. We help you to gather all of the varying pieces of your business like leads, making sales, sending invoices, keeping books, managing your employees and supporting your customers, and intertwine them into a seamless system. Once done, you will know where you business is and where it is headed.
A woggle, or sailor's knot, is a decorative knot made up of a number of interwoven strands forming a closed loop. It is usually made around a cylinder and primarily used to tighten up any underlying material.
It was also traditionally tied to the king spoke of a ship's wheel. The king spoke is upright when the rudder is in the central position. Knowing where the king spoke is at any given time is essential to making sure that the ship is steering the correct way.
This is much like running a business. You have dry erase boards, spreadsheets, notepads, and sticky notes holding your company together. It can feel like a huge jumble of rope all tangled up with no hope of organization in sight. We take all of those loose strands and help you to weave them into a beautiful knot that keeps the core of your business exactly where you want it, on a steady course to success.
