Cold, warm, hot – prospects come in all shapes, sizes, and temperatures. We all like ‘em hot of course, but the question is, what’s the best way to get them there? There is no one-size-fits-all magic trick when it comes to sales, but there are savvy strategies and tools you can use to your advantage and heat those leads up.
What Are Warm Leads?
When we talk about the stages of the customer lifecycle, we use terms like “top of funnel” and “buying signals.” These describe how close a potential customer is to making a purchase.
Another way of saying this is to talk about cold, warm, and hot leads. A cold lead is somebody who might eventually be interested in your product, but may not know your brand or be ready to buy. They are pretty far from making a purchase decision. You can always try to convert a cold lead, but as we all know, this carries a relatively high chance of failure compared to more qualified ones.
A warm lead is a person who has shown purchase intent and has interacted in some way with your brand. They are in your neighborhood, but have yet to knock on your door. How do you identify a warm lead? Here are some of the telling signs:
- They sign up to receive emails, content, product information, etc.
- They visit your booth at a trade show
- They follow and/or mention your company on social media channels
What Is a Hot Lead?
Hot leads are people on their way to buying something, and soon.
Some leads are actively looking for a solution to a specific pain point. They have done their research, and are on the hunt for the best vendor. They also have decision-making power. Most of the “warming process” has already been done by the customer themselves, and the salesperson just needs to step in and explain why they are the top choice.
In other cases, the goal of the salesperson is to convert a warm lead to a hot one. You’ve identified a warm lead, and now it’s time to turn up the heat by leveraging your talent and product value.
What Are the Benefits of Warm Leads?
No salesperson has a 100% success rate. We’d all like to get as close to that level as possible, but the fact is that a very good closing rate is more like 20%. Because a warm lead has a good chance of conversion, it’s always a better idea to focus efforts on nurturing them rather than devoting a lot of time to cold leads (still, it’s good practice to do both). By cultivating warm leads, sales departments benefit from:
- Better sales efficiency and metrics
- Improved morale
- Faster revenue generation and shorter sales cycles
What Is the Difference Between a Warm Lead and a Hot Lead?
Aha: the million dollar question. The answer is a bit of everything: sales skills, value proposition, and timing. Not to mention luck.
There’s not much you can do about that last factor, but you can improve your chances significantly by applying basic sales concepts. Here is what we mean:
Buyers who get a fast response – especially within an hour – of contacting a vendor are much more likely to buy from that vendor. Using some kind of intent classification system to notify a sales person about a recent contact will make it possible to identify such leads immediately. But don’t count your chickens just yet.
It often takes at least five attempts to close a deal. Over those interactions, it’s vital to establish a personal connection and build trust. The former can be achieved by researching the lead thoroughly, and the second by not pushing for a deal aggressively. You are there to help them find a solution, not ram it down their throats.
As the lead learns more about your product, they will naturally want to know if there are alternatives. Beat them to the punch by understanding how you compare to competitors, and always have some great case studies and info sheets handy.
How Do You Get Warm Leads?
Just as the term suggests, “lead warming” is a series of research-based moves that qualify leads so that they have a better chance of converting.
When it comes to inbound sales, the process of lead warming is not all that complicated. The prospect has just reached out to your organization, so they are already lukewarm. Your team’s data insights should give you an idea about how to move forward.
But for outbound sales, lead warming requires more of an effort. You need a method of identifying the cold leads with the best chance of becoming warm ones, i.e., prospecting. Luckily, there are tools that enable a “warm outbound” approach. The most famous one is LinkedIn, which often includes details about a prospect’s professional background, particulars about their current role, and even personal information. But it’s far from complete. That’s why smart salespeople use an array of prospecting tools to get a more complete picture. Intent signals (like those in Lusha’s Warm Outbound Suite) can tell you which cold leads have the potential to turn hot, helping point you toward the prospects with the highest potential to buy now.
Using such tools is part of a wider range of sales skills that need to be developed. For many sales professionals, prospecting is one of the toughest parts of the job. You need detailed knowledge of your target market and ideal customer profile in order to build a qualified prospect list.
But even with great information in hand, not everybody can close deals. Knowing how to make the most of buying signals, or being skillful in both cold calling and warm calling, is something that requires practice and coaching. And don’t forget that, without high-quality leads, even the best salesperson will spin their wheels a lot of the time.
Key Takeaways
- Warm leads can be developed through a combination of prospecting tools and good sales techniques.
- A warm lead is somebody who has begun researching solutions and has some awareness of your brand, so they stand a relatively good chance of becoming a hot lead.
- A hot lead already has significant knowledge and wants to make a purchase decision soon; sales pros can encourage their choice through quick response time, persistence, and marketing collateral.
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