Sales

Steps to Launching a Lead Qualification Team

December 31, 2012

What does it take to launch an effective lead qualification team? OpenView’s Director of Sales and Marketing Support Devon McDonald reveals that much of your team’s success lies in laying the groundwork with proper preparation.

In the videos below she covers the six questions every company should be able to answer before putting a lead qual team together, and discusses the importance of setting up your CRM to track and coordinate your data.

From there she turns to four industry experts to highlight the additional key elements you need to have in place to make the most out of your investment.

Questions to Answer Before You Begin

Only a detail-oriented planning process will result in a lead qualification team that your company can be proud of. And that requires you to ask the right questions, which McDonald highlights in this video.

  • First and foremost, do you understand your target segments?
  • Do you have the right tools and assets required to launch the team? This includes email templates, conversation guides, object responses, FAQs, and persona descriptions, just to name a few.
  • Have you considered everything it takes to build the team? For starters, you will need a manager comfortable setting up and running a CRM. Will you be taking on hiring responsibilities for the manager as well as the rest of the team, or will you be using a recruiter?

For more questions you need to answer, watch the full video.

Setting Up a CRM

Without a fully built-out CRM, lead qualification can be a nightmare. Companies launching a lead qualification team or a CRM for the lead qualification team need to keep their operation organized.

Most CRMs are setup for in-the-field salespeople. And this can be a significant hurdle for organizations looking to bring a lead qualification team into the CRM mix.

“When a company gets to a point where they determine that launching a lead qualification team is really important to [the] organization…it’s really important to make sure that the CRM is setup for that front end,” McDonald explains.

Additional Key Elements to Have in Place

In conjunction with a workshop OpenView hosted on lead qualification management, McDonald asked a panel of industry experts what elements they believed were absolutely crucial to have in place before launching a lead qual team.

  • Aaron Ross, creator of salesforce.com’s outbound prospecting team and co-author of Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com listed executive commitment, entrepreneurial reps who have the ability to experiment and lead the way, a decent starter list of prospects, and — above all — patience.

    “Starting a lead qual team is easy, developing it into a team of experts who consistently generate high-quality results takes time,” Ross says.

  • Mike Volpe, CMO Inbound Marketing at HubSpot, reiterated the need for a solid CRM as well as solid alignment and a closed-loop system between sales and marketing.
  • John Barrows, Co-owner and Managing Partner of Kensei Partners, encouraged managers to make absolutely sure they have a clear understanding of their target market, the key metrics they’ll be monitoring, and an agreement over what a “qualified lead” is.
  • Matt Bertuzzi, B2B Marketing Consultant at The Bridge Group, meanwhile, argued that everything — your goals for the team, your strategy, and your tactics — should be guided by knowing your type of sale.

Now that you know what you need to get a lead qualification team successfully launched, come back tomorrow when we’ll share the keys to effectively managing and getting the best performance out of your reps.

In the meantime, don’t miss our Labcast with Kevin Gaither, Vice President of Inside Sales at uSamp, on The Secrets to Finding and Hiring the Best Talent for Your Lead Qualification Team. Discover what a top lead qual candidate looks like, the best questions to ask during your interviews, and more.

Photo by: Philipp Ledényi