Last updated: I’ve got the golden ticket: Discovering qualified leads

I’ve got the golden ticket: Discovering qualified leads

5 shares

Listen to article

Download audio as MP3

Do you remember the beloved young boy named Charlie Bucket from the classic film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?

Charlie buys just two candy bars, one for himself and one for his Grandpa Joe. As he opens the 2nd Wonka bar, his eye’s bulge out with glee and excitement as he found the highly sought-after 5th and final golden ticket

He runs home and shares the new with his Grandpa Joe, “I’ve got the golden ticket!”

How many of you in sales have felt like Charlie did when you finally discover a truly qualified lead?

Discovering qualified leads is a much larger feat than most realize. Additionally, it requires a significant amount of strategy, time, execution, and constant refinement.

Not to mention, recent regulations around GDPR, CASL, PII, and CAN-SPAM have further complicated the process used to uncover qualified leads.

The day of the “mass emails blast” is now considered a practice as old as the 1971 Willy Wonka movie. In addition, you are simply left with high volumes of opt-out requests and annoyed customers and prospects. And worst of all no “Golden Tickets!”

The 5-Step Guide to discovering qualified leads

Create a Dynamic Target List –Anyone can quickly create a static target list with no segmentation but what does that do for you? Target lists with the power of AI, can be dynamic and powerful. Using tools that will help you identify key sub-segments, predictive scores, real-time intent drivers and historical insights, all help you drive to the end result. Identifying those A, B and C accounts with predictive analytics at its core is the first step to locating that “Golden Ticket.”

Persona Based Contact Lists – Anyone can send off a batch of emails to a purchased contact list but how does that help anyone? The communication should apply to the personas job function. The interest of the CIO will be very different from the Director of Data Compliance, who may both reside in the IT department. This is where your reps need to spend their time. I find a highly targeted persona list of 20 tends to be more effective than a mass list of 2000. You may recall, Charlie didn’t search through hundreds of candy bars, he only bought 2. One for himself and one for Grandpa Joe.

Sales Automation Solution –There are a number of powerful sales automation solutions that offer integrations to sales cloud tools, predictive tools and contact databases that can help organize, automate and track the progress of your sales automation programs. Sales automation requires a multi-touch process across multiple channels from email, phone, social, text, etc. Taking time to build out this process correctly will surely get you some time with Willy Wonka himself.

Creative Content & Change it Up – No marketing fluff, bullet points or long emails unless you want a DELETE response. The message should fit on a mobile device. Incorporate video, images, short one-liners. The point is be creative including the subject line and call to action. Testing content in a small segment before deploying into the sales automation solution for the entire team’s consumption has helped to ensure the team is working with content that performs. Finding the “Golden Ticket” requires outside of the box thinking but you will find that when people are fast at work, they still enjoy a bit of comedy or a virtual Wonka bar!

Review & Report – Its key to review all of these steps at the onset, during and at the end of each program. The goal is to ensure that each rep uncovers mountains of “Golden Tickets” each week. The data insights will help you understand how to adjust the programs as you go. Each week you will find that your process, content and programming evolve, becoming more efficient and predictable. You should find you can level set the performance of each of your reps to create a level of consistency and expectation across the team. It’s time to turn all your reps into Charlie Bucket!

Now, go and get some golden tickets, and maybe send a chocolate bar or two my way!

Ready to grab your golden ticket? Download the best resources for free here

Share this article

5 shares

Search by Topic beginning with