Low-Quality Leads: A Major Threat for Software Marketers

The debate about quality and quantity is perhaps as old as the act of debating itself.

“This holds true especially in the realm of B2B marketing, where it may even be argued that having no leads at all saves companies a far greater deal of money, time, and other intangibles than having low quality leads. Here’s why.

#1: Low Quality Sales Leads Cost Time

Let’s start with the most valuable element of all – time. You can replenish money. You can recuperate from a futile effort and come back more enthusiastic. You can even win back lost prospects. But once time is lost, it is lost forever. That’s what you lose with low quality leads. Imagine how many cold calls, follow-ups, lead qualification questions, and verifications your team has made hoping to find a gem in the rough, only to discover it isn’t even a gem in the first place?

Instead of pursuing this kind of leads, purge them from the database the moment you identify them as such and focus on those that will most likely to convert. In the software marketing industry, where companies are in a perpetual battle to be first to develop something, time is of utmost essence.

#2: Low Quality Leads are a Waste of Money

Whether you’re a startup or a well-established company, being financially sound is almost always a top priority. Still, you know better than to compromise growth by reining in the spending on lead generation, which is, unfortunately one of the most expensive parts of your sales process. If you aren’t receiving high quality leads while simultaneously absorbing all of these fixed costs, your lead generation is bleeding money. Between in-depth analytics, marketing automation software, lead databases and the cost of hiring sales personnel, your lead generation is a money hole that needs to plugged shut. How? Make sure you only have high quality leads.

If your cost of generating sales leads isn’t paying off, consider outsourcing.

#3: Low Quality Leads = Spending for Cleanup

When one of your salespeople gets off the phone with a dead-end sales lead, his or her work on that lead isn’t done – the salesperson (or another team member) still has to go into your lead database and clean out the contact’s information. Now, imagine that small expense of time and opportunity cost multiplied by hundreds or thousands of unqualified sales leads.

You can’t afford that scale of cleanup for the duration of the campaign. Or in a year. Or a decade. What you need is a lead database that’s clean and qualified at all times so your sales team is able to focus more on closing significant sales. Of course, a clean and qualified database starts with a one qualified lead at a time.

#4: Low Quality Leads May Taint the Company’s Image

When your marketer botches a sale, by say, talking to a low quality lead, it does not just reflect on him. It puts the image of the company under a magnifying lens. Sometimes, even things such as the caller’s demeanor or wrong timing will make the prospect feel harassed. As a result, the prospects’ negative association with your brand is likely to hurt your overall reputation as a company once word spreads about your ill-timed sales calls.

Besides, when your salespeople are bombarded with low-quality leads that aren’t a good fit for your product or service, they’re going to miss the chance to talk with prospects who are legitimately good sales opportunities.

#5: Low Quality Leads Deplete Confidence

Just as the best conductors live for that huge applause, a savvy salesperson lives for the close – not the initial cold call. If your team provides your sales reps low quality leads, you’re depriving the people on the frontline the chance to close a sale. Do this often and it will give them low morale. And companies know better than to underestimate the value of their employees’ confidence and morale.

They say having no leads is better than having low quality leads. It may be right, if having no leads means not having to deal with the five nightmares above. So next time you’re reviewing your lead generation efforts, remember to look first at quality before quantity.

Do you have other ideas how low quality leads can be counterproductive? Feel free to comment below.