Chatbots for Sales Lead Qualification

Most business owners and just about every sales and marketing professional is familiar with the term “sales lead qualification”, which describes the process of determining the quality of any individual sales opportunity that your company might come across.

The sales lead qualification process calls for matching sales leads against a set of criteria that will help your sales team determine, for each lead, the level of willingness, readiness, and ability to make a purchase. The outcome from this evaluation will enable you to categorize your leads to determine the level of time and effort that should be spent on each.

The Sales Lead Qualification Challenge

While idea of qualifying leads sounds simple, there are several challenges to this process:

• Defining and adhering to a strict set of criteria to determine the quality of each lead

• Efficiently and cost-effectively allocating the manpower required to manage this process Creating seamless handoffs to qualified sales representatives once the level of quality has been determined

• Tracking all of the pertinent data from the qualification process that the sales representative will need once the lead is turned over

For organizations that include online sales and lead generation as part of their sales and marketing strategy, the lead qualification process can be especially tedious as vast numbers of online visitors might present themselves as potential buyers, even though many will be deemed unqualified.

What Are Chatbots and How Can They Assist the Lead Qualification Process?

Chatbots are software programs that are developed to initiate and manage online conversations with customers and prospective buyers through chat interactions. A well-designed chatbot can be programmed to engage the visitor and take them through a number of questions that are designed to determine the quality of the lead.

Some of the benefits of deploying chatbots for sales lead qualification include:

Always Available

Today’s sales prospect expects to get the answers they need, when they need them- even after business hours. Chatbots are available on a 24/7 basis to engage prospects and manage the qualification process.

Immediate Access

Prospects also expect the brands they work with to be able to assist them right away, without putting them in a queue. A single chatbot can handle multiple interactions simultaneously, thus eliminating the need to wait for a (human) agent.

Data Collection

Because each interaction is tracked by the chatbot, your company will have the data it needs to pass to the sales agent as they look to close the sales opportunity. This data can also be aggregated and analyzed as your company evaluates future sales and marketing programs.

Decreased Labor Costs

With chatbots, the need to heavily staff your sales team with agents to qualify sales lead is minimized. Chatbots can handle the vast majority of the sales qualification process and bring in a (human) sales agent only if and when the lead is deemed qualified, according to your own lead qualification criteria.

Contact us to learn more about chatbots for sales lead qualification.