Warm leads = better B2B prospecting workflows

Warm leads make closing deals easier

These days, getting new leads can be challenging. In the past, many businesses relied on cold calling until they got a few hits. Even though this type of selling has its place, it is not the best way to generate new leads in this modern era of caller IDs.  Nowadays, most people will not answer their phones if they do not know who is calling. So you need a different way of reaching out to people to generate sales. That is where finding a warm lead can be helpful.

What’s a warm lead?

A warm lead is someone already interested in purchasing your product or service. This warm lead is a viable sales opportunity for your team. It means a person is actively seeking more information about your product or service. 

This is different from cold leads—people not interested in your products or services. In some cases, you can warm up a cold lead. In other cases, a cold lead may never be interested in your product or service.

Should you buy warm leads?

We know you want as many warm leads as possible to increase your chances of conversion. One option could be to buy them. If you’re thinking about buying leads you should know that it's not a good tactic for sales. Though you will get new prospects when you buy warm leads, not all of them will be qualified for your specific business.

Avoid purchasing leads, irrespective of whether they are hot, warm, or cold prospects. Instead, apply genuine marketing strategies to solve your prospects' pain points.

How to determine if a lead is warm

If you already have leads, it is essential to grade them appropriately. To grade your existing leads, you need CRM software and a solid understanding of your target market. These will help you discover how warm they might be. A lead qualification tool like UserGems can help you figure out whom you should prioritize next.

Why it’s important to collect data about your leads

Are you having trouble getting people to pick up the phone? There are lots of good software that can help you prospect new leads, such as ZoomInfo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. However, you may not know whether these leads are warm, qualified, or cold. To discover whether your leads are qualified, you need to learn more about them. You need to know how active they are, collect data on their activities, and figure out how you can move them down a sales funnel. If you learn about their activity, you can measure how qualified they are. 

Example questions to ask include:

• Are they actively reaching out to learn more about your product or service? 
• Have they shown interest in learning more about their available options? 

To determine if a lead is warm, you need a deeper understanding of the market. First, you must understand how people act before they make a purchase. That way, you can figure out if they are interested in your products or services. In some cases, they may be asking for more information. But, this may not necessarily indicate whether they will purchase something soon.

Customize your warm lead email template

So now that you’ve done successful sales prospecting, you have a bunch of leads and are looking for ways to warm them up. How do you do that? Of course, you don't want to abandon those leads, nor do you want to overwhelm them with too much information. How can you share important information with your prospects without appearing invasive? That is where a warm lead email template can be helpful. 

Email is one of the most important tactics you have at your disposal. You can use it to communicate with a warm lead effectively. Email is a great way to collect more information on the prospect and vet if they are a good fit for your product or service.

Make sure you have multiple email templates at your disposal. For example, your warm lead email template will be different from your B2B cold email templates. It can be difficult to convince someone at the top of your sales funnel to purchase something immediately. So, you will need some time to warm them up.

That is why you need an effective lead qualification system to help you prioritize leads for your sales team. That way, your sales team will not waste valuable time on people who have no chance of converting. For example, you may need to warm up a window shopper before your sales team tries to close the deal. But, your sales team needs to immediately close someone genuinely interested in purchasing your product or service before that person ends up buying from somewhere else.  

How to prioritize your warm leads

There are many ways to generate warm leads. It’s one thing to generate net new leads, and another thing entirely to understand which leads are warm and will actually convert for your business. Using a sales intelligence tool can help determine what leads to prioritize. 

Software like UserGems can supplement these efforts. UserGems enables teams to make the most of the contacts you already know to be the best fit; the ones that have already purchased. Our system integrates directly to your CRM and can tell when your existing customers have switched to new companies, thus providing your organization with another opportunity for a possible sale. UserGems is the ultimate sales enablement tool to get find leads that are white-hot!