Chasing unqualified leads can be scary. No one wants to spend hours following up only to realize the prospect wasn’t going to buy in the first place. Maybe they didn’t have the budget or the urgency, or maybe they simply weren’t the right fit for your promo offering. Whatever the case, unqualified leads often end up haunting your pipeline and wasting your time.

It’s important to note, though, that unqualified leads aren’t the same as disqualified leads. A post on the Verse blog explains that disqualified leads don’t meet your qualification criteria at all and won’t meet them for the foreseeable future. However, unqualified leads don’t meet your qualification criteria now but could in the future.

So, what should you do with unqualified leads? According to the Verse post, you should avoid making 6 common mistakes. We share the missteps to watch for in this issue of PromoPro Daily.

  1. Giving up after 1 attempt. Remember, it can take multiple attempts to reach a lead. The post recommends continual, multi-touch outreach over time to connect with and qualify leads that otherwise would have been unqualified. Aim for at least 5 touches.

  2. Passing to sales too soon. When unqualified leads get pushed to sales too soon, they may receive messaging they’re not ready for and sales reps may become frustrated with leads that aren’t ready. Instead, the Verse post recommends screening leads before they go to sales.

  3. Using generic messaging for unqualified leads. Not all unqualified leads are the same. Even if they’re not ready to buy, the post says each lead is at their own stage in the buyer’s journey. This is why using the same generic messaging for every unqualified lead is a mistake. A better approach, according to the post, is to segment leads and use personalized outreach tailored to their stage in the journey or specific pain point.

  4. Not segmenting unqualified leads in your CRM. Make sure you’re correctly tagging unqualified leads. You might segment them by things like lead score, pain point or stage in the buyer’s journey. If you’re not doing this, the post says it’s nearly impossible to know who to reach out to, when and with what messaging.

  5. Only using email for lead nurture. Email is convenient, but omnichannel outreach can lead to much higher conversion rates. The Verse post recommends personalizing outreach as much as possible and using text for authentic, personalized conversations.

  6. Never re-engaging unqualified leads. According to the Verse post, re-engagement is a cornerstone of the most effective lead generation strategies because it helps you make the most of leads previously generated. By reaching out later, you can reactivate unqualified leads and filter out ready leads to pass to your sales team.

Not all unqualified leads are dead and buried. Rather than writing them off, play the long game. Check in, tailor your message and warm them up. With a little patience and some clever nurturing, you might be able to reawaken their potential.

Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: A blog post from Verse.ai, a conversational AI platform that manages and converts leads through automated text messaging.