How to Prioritize Business Leads

When you own a small business, there are never enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do. That's why prioritizing what you spend time on is so important. Prioritizing your daily tasks helps ensure that what really matters gets done. In the same way, prioritizing business leads ensures you focus on those that are most valuable.

But how do you know which leads to act on first?  If you're not sure where to start, and worried about making mistakes that can cost you potentially profitable leads, here are some tips to help.

Manage business leads better with lead scoring

Tapping into available data about your leads can guide your priorities. One good way to do this is by using "lead scoring,” which ranks prospects on a numerical scale based on their potential value.

How do you determine which leads have the most value to your business and the most potential to become actual sales opportunities? There are a few factors you need to take into account.

• Demographic information: Does the prospect’s demographic profile match that of your ideal customer? If you sell B2B solutions to enterprise customers, for example, a leader who owns a very small business probably would not be a high priority.
• Marketing channel: What percentage of leads that convert come from each marketing channel you use? If most of them come from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you'll want to prioritize leads that come through that channel. On the other hand, if most of them come from your website, you should focus on those leads first. Monitor the percentage of conversions by lead source and use that ranking to prioritize business leads.
• Lead activity: How has the lead interacted with your business so far? Tracking the pages on your website that the lead has visited, how long they stay and how frequently will help determine what stage of decision-making they are in and how to prioritize them.

Based on this information, you should be able to create your own system for identifying 1) which leads you should prioritize with additional marketing outreach and 2) which leads have become MQLs (marketing qualified leads) that are ready to get passed on to your sales team.

Get better information about business leads

You'll prioritize business leads more accurately if you get adequate information about the leads at the time you obtain them. There’s a fine line between asking for too much information (and scaring leads away) and not asking for enough. To increase your odds of getting the information you want, create content that offers value.

According to Demand Gen Report, B2B buyers are most willing to register for and share information in exchange for webinars (79 percent), white papers (76 percent), eBooks (63 percent) and case studies (57 percent). The more high-value content you can create for different personas in your target market, the more successful you will be at not only generating business leads, but also extracting valuable information about those leads.

Marketing solutions to prioritize leads

If prioritizing leads sounds complex, that's because it can be. Fortunately, marketing automation tools can help take the grunt work out of prioritizing leads. Did you know eight out of 10 companies that use marketing automation software generate more leads, and 77 percent of those companies convert more of those leads? Lead Stream streamlines lead management so nothing falls through the cracks.

Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash

Author information

Rieva Lesonsky

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. 

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