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How to be highly effective with cold calling and inside sales?

How qualified should a lead be for an outbound cold calling agent to pass it on to an inside sales rep?

  • Answer:

    Interested in your solution and willing to have a conversation. That's it. There are many schools of thought on this, including that you should qualify according to common criteria such as BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Time to make a decision). Full "BANT" qualification would make sense if you are in a market with many players and people are seeking out a specific solution. If you are in a new category that buyers are still learning about and trying to understand, it's very much an educational sale first. So the outbound rep can evangelize the idea to get someone interested to learn more, and then pass it over to your sales rep to learn more about their business, determine if there is a good fit, and move to the close. Lead gen team casts and finds a nibble. Sales team reels it in.

Bob Marsh at Quora Visit the source

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Warm. Agree with Bob, as long as they are interested and are willing to learn about the solution. There are somethings that the sales are better explaining. Outbound agents are there to warm up those leads for sales.

Amber King

Agree with the 2 other answers: the lead should be passed on to sales when the outbound agent can't provide any more sensible advice to the prospect. Good agents, however, will do better than that: they will ask questions to build rapport and to understand where the prospect is in the buying process. So he or she should judge how 'hot' the prospect is. Will they buy in 3monhts? 12 months? never? If there's no answer to the question, don't pass on the lead. If you have an inbound marketing tool and good (popular) and fresh (updated weekly) content, then combine the judgment of the calling agent with any activity of this prospect (or others at this company). No activity from the prospect or his company? Don't pass on the lead. Don

Don Rekko

BANT only scratches the surface. The TeleSmart Qualification Criteria that is included in both my Smart Selling books includes the following: Current Environment- what is their technical infrastructure Business Need- what pain are they experiencing Decision-Making Process- who are the key players Decision-Making Criteria- what will they base their decision on Competition- who else are they considering Timeframe- how long will it be from research to implementation Budget- how much have they allocated Next Steps- what do they need to move forward

Josiane Feigon

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