How To Qualify Leads For A Higher Win Rate: Key Lab Takeaways

  Ross Palley

We invited three B2B tech startups in the Venture Lane community to participate in our Lead Qualification Lab. Participants worked directly with a Mentor Committee of seasoned sales leaders in Boston tech to optimize their lead qualification methodology for a higher win rate.

On the Committee, we had Cindy Brown (Chief Revenue Officer @ ViralGains) and Peter von Burchard (Vice President of Sales @ Wistia). Check out their key takeaways below!

How to segment your go-to-market strategy by industry…

• Build flywheels in one industry at a time. If your pilots or early customers cover multiple industries, choose the one where you can prove out the most convincing ROI.

• Move upstream in subsequent industries. As you move into adjacent industries, test your messaging and build proof of ROI with smaller accounts first. Then move onto enterprise accounts in that industry with polished messaging and ROI figures to back your claims.

• Optimize industry related content for quality over quantity. Talking about how broken an industry is will generate a lot of top-of-funnel leads with a low likelihood of conversion. Tailor industry content to economic buyer personas at prospective customers to ensure quality.

How to increase win rate for enterprise sales…

• Get to the economic buyer. Ask your champion outright if they are the economic buyer and decision maker. If not, learn from your champion who the economic buyer is and approach that person together. The more budget your prospect needs to make the purchase, the higher up that person is likely to be on the org chart.

• Talk about ROI before price. Gather all the metrics you need from a prospect during the qualification process to model ROI for them. If the figures show that your product will provide great ROI, then you already know the price is justified and can cover pricing towards the end of the sales process.

• Nurture highly qualified leads. If a prospect checks the box on all of your qualification points except readiness to buy, make sure that you are nurturing that prospect over time with content that is short, sweet, and tailored. You want to be top of mind when they are ready to buy.

How to beat incumbents in your market…

• Use incumbents to power up marketing reach. If an incumbent has 20-30% market share and your product is 10x better, put a battle card together that compares the two offerings. The incumbent’s brand recognition will expand the reach of this marketing material.

• Don’t challenge large incumbents on RFPs. If the incumbents in your space are large enterprises, don’t try to compete on Requests for Proposals. RFPs are risk assessments rather than determinants of value add, so large enterprises will have the edge.

• Go bottoms up if market timing is acute. If you’re in a race with competitors to drive product adoption, using a bottoms up sales motion to acquire end users can be more frictionless and less time consuming than a top down sales motion with economic buyers at a large prospect.

Want to take part in one of our upcoming Labs and get 1:1 time with Boston's best operators? Check out our Labs and other membership benefits below!