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Updated August 22, 2022You’re reading an excerpt of Founding Sales: The Early-Stage Go-To-Market Handbook, a book by Pete Kazanjy. The most in-depth, tactical handbook ever written for early-stage B2B sales, it distills early sales first principles and teaches the skills required, from being a founder selling to being an early salesperson and a sales leader. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
Ideally, because you called the inbound lead back so quickly (right?), you can get him on the phone. But although I know you’re excited about getting him on the calendar for a demo as quickly as possible, first you need to make sure he’s qualified. If you go back to your ideal customer profile, you’ll recall the demand signifiers that indicate a prospect has the pain points your solution solves. Now is the time to ensure that this inbound lead definitely has those characteristics. Of course, because you set up your inbound lead capture form in a way that captures these signifiers, this is more about verifying the information, and potentially digging in a bit more. Moreover, you need to be figuring out what other folks should be on a call. This is where size of prize comes into play—if the organization has many other potential users of your product, maybe you could get them all on a demo together? Or while you have this champion-to-be on the phone, figure out who would be involved in a purchasing decision—is he the person who would pull that trigger, or should you think about involving the boss in this case? These are all valid things to consider, which we’ll talk about more when we cover discovery in Sales Pitches for Startup Founders.
If, for whatever reason, it turns out that the individual and his organization aren’t qualified, it’s completely fine to let them know that this isn’t relevant to them. Of course, be sure to differentiate between a truly unqualified account and a qualified account for which this is simply an unqualified contact. Qualify the account, not the lead. By no means think that because someone came inbound you are obligated to do a demo for him. Rather, you are being respectful of his time and preventing him from having broken expectations at a later juncture when it finally surfaces that your solution isn’t a fit. Worst, of course, would be if he ended up buying your product under a mistaken understanding of what it does and proceeded to feel cheated, all while soaking up your support resources and complaining to his colleagues about it. Let’s avoid all that drama, okay? If you’re respectful and candid about not wasting prospects’ time, while making it clear who your solution would be relevant to, you have the chance to convert helpful brand ambassadors who will tell their colleagues about you.
exampleThis happened frequently at TalentBin, where our technical recruiting customers were so stoked on the product (and our delightfully designed swag!) that they often bragged to nontechnical recruiting colleagues about the solution—which is great. This is what you want. But those unqualified folks would then end up coming inbound as leads. As such it was very important that our inbound market development staff could qualify them. Rather than just putting a meeting on the calendar, they would pivot around the individual to figure out if she might simply be an unqualified contact at a qualified organization—and in that case, work with this contact to loop in more qualified contacts from that same organization. Or, alternatively, they would ascertain if the entire organization was unqualified. (For TalentBin, that means a company with no technical, healthcare, or finance hiring. For HIRABL, it’s a staffing agency that doesn’t do contingency recruiting. What’s your version?)
If, unfortunately, you weren’t able to connect the first time you called that inbound lead back, all is not lost. Just as with your pure outbound efforts, even inbound appointment setting takes persistence. In fact, the second thing that people screw up about inbound leads is giving up on them too soon. Again, our friends at InsideSales.com and MIT Sloan figured out that each incremental attempt you make to reach out to an inbound lead adds another 15% chance of contacting them, falling off substantially after the sixth attempt. But after six attempts, you should have had roughly an aggregate 90% chance of making contact. So don’t give up! Remember, they asked for it, so you have nothing to fear.
While you’re trying to make contact, definitely make sure to leave voice mails and use your inbound lead response-email template to let the prospect know that you’re doing your best to reach him. But while persistence is good, you do need to move on after a half-dozen attempts or so. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and we need you spending your time fishing. Along the way, just make sure to log your activity in your CRM (or, if you’re still in that Google Sheet, the new row you created for this inbound lead) to keep track of who’s in process, and how many times you’ve attempted to contact them.
Lastly, not every inbound lead needs a call. If an inbound lead comes in, and the information that is provided makes it pretty darn clear it’s unlikely to be qualified, a better approach can be to send what’s known as a “hard qualifier” email. This would include who the product is intended for, and why you think it might not be relevant for that lead, plus an ask to clarify if your thinking is wrong.