It’s every marketing director’s nightmare: proudly presenting the sales team with a long list of business leads, only for barely any of them to convert into customers. You’ve let down the sales director (they won’t be able to meet their targets) and a chunk of the monthly marketing budget has gone to waste. But this scenario is very common, with 79% of marketing business leads never making it into sales, according to data from Marketing Sherpa quoted in HubSpot’s marketing statistics.
So what’s the solution? How do you keep sales happy by providing them with ripe business leads and ensuring that you only spend time cherry-picking leads that’ll actually convert? In a previous blog, we gave an overview of the BANT methodology – a system for spotting leads that’ll convert. In this blog, I’m going to talk about an alternative to this methodology devised by HubSpot, based around Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget and Authority (GPCT-BA), and how you can use it to spot business leads that’ll never convert.
Start by finding out what your business leads’ Goals and Plans are
Spotting whether a lead will convert or not is all about asking the right questions and listening to the answers: the clues about whether they’re ready to buy or not are found here. G stands for goals: start by finding out what the lead’s goals are within their business. These goals will probably have ‘making money’, ‘saving money’ or ‘trying to avoid losing money’ at their foundation. Can your product help them reach these goals? Sometimes a lead might be confused about what these goals are. This is your chance to help them: after all, you’ve got plenty of experience helping other people with similar pain points, so offer them your insights. Once you’ve got a clear idea of their goals you’ll know if your product can add value to them.
Business leads that’ll never convert will either lack clear goals, or your product simply can’t help achieve them.
Next, it’s time to dig beyond goals and ask your business leads what their plans (P) are to achieve their goals and whether the prospect has faith that their plans will be effective in reaching their goals. Again, you can help them figure out whether their plans will help them get to where they want to be based on your experience with other leads.
If you can’t spot a gap in your leads’ plans that your product can help fill, chances are that the lead won’t see value in your offering.
The next stage of the conversation is to identify your business leads’ Challenges and Timeline
If you’ve identified a fit between a lead’s goals and plans and your product, it’s time to ask them about the challenges (C) they envisage obstructing their objectives. Even though you might not think there’s an overlap so far, you might discover that your product or services can help them overcome any obstacles en route to their goals. By asking your leads the right questions about their challenges – like whether they think they have the in-house capabilities to get past these challenges – you can help them realise that they might require a bit of help overcoming them. This is your chance to show them that your product can add value to their pain points.
A lead is unlikely to convert if they don’t realise that your product can help them overcome the challenges to achieving their goals.
As in the BANT methodology, T stands for timeline and refers to how soon a business lead needs to achieve their goals, implement their plans and overcome their challenges. Asking the right questions will give you this information, after which you can get an idea about just how quickly a lead needs a solution to their challenges. Determine how soon they need to implement their plans, whether they have the right resources to do so and whether they have any other priorities.
Business leads that are unlikely to convert won’t have a sense of urgency about reaching the goals you’ve talked about, and are no use sending over to sales.
Budget and Authority are two further ways to identify whether a lead will convert or not
If you’ve made it this far in the conversation, it’s time to find out what kind of budget (B) your leads have to spend on a potential solution. Determine what they’re already spending and whether or not it’s working. This is an opportunity to find out whether you can give them a more effective solution at a lower price.
A lead that’ll never convert won’t have the budget to invest in your product, or you simply can’t compete in terms of ROI with what they’re already using.
Now you’re ready to determine what level of authority (A) your prospect has when it comes to making a buying decision. Chances are that the person you speak to during the GPCT phase won’t be the person who makes the final decision. They won’t have the authority, and many of the answers they gave you might not even be aligned with what their boss will say. This is your chance to get on the same team as your lead and find out whether they’ll be able to persuade the decision-maker to see value in your product. Find out if the goals discussed already fall in line with the decision maker’s goals, and whether these are also a priority for them.
Business leads that will never convert won’t be in a position to influence the decision-maker, or their goals, plans and priorities are not aligned with the person in authority.
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