Lead Qualification Processes

I built an AI agent that handles my entire inbound system. (And I used to be against automation). Here's how I did it: I used two tools: --> Make: For automation workflows --> Relevance: For AI agents Here's what my AI agent handles: When someone fills our form, it- --> Analyzes their LinkedIn profile --> Reviews their website --> Checks if they match our criteria --> Makes a decision in seconds For qualified leads: --> Sends personalized pitch deck --> Books discovery calls --> Handles initial questions For non-qualified leads: --> Sends a thoughtful rejection --> Explains why we're not the right fit --> Keeps the door open for future The best part? My team and I can focus on what matters - strategy and client success - instead of spending hours on admin work. No more: -Manual lead checking -Back-and-forth emails -Calendar scheduling headaches -Just high-quality conversations with pre-qualified founders. Want to know the biggest lesson? Automation isn't about replacing the human touch. It's about creating more time for it.

Our TAM is 20K. So why do we have 100K accounts in Salesforce? This is a common situation in B2B. But don’t blame RevOps. The traditional data providers trained everyone to “filter and flood.” Set some filters → Query their database → Pull some lists → Flood accounts into CRM → Manual review sessions → Repeat. Account selection is the starting point for ABM. But “filter and flood” is broken. Boolean filters don’t describe nuanced ICPs. One-time data dumps don’t enable continuous iteration. And don’t get me started on the data quality issues — rigid filters force you to treat estimations like hard facts. Here's another option. 1.) Define an ICP model — Analyze nuanced patterns in your best customers. — Weight different factors in a back tested model. — Go beyond size and industry, include clues about situations, problems, and priorities. — Use Keyplay AI or build DIY. Either way a dynamic model beats rigid filters. 2.) Use gradients (instead of drawing hard lines). — Transition from filters to scoring. — Decide on thresholds based on the specific segment, play, or campaign. — Have a dynamic score so that you can continually surface opportunities. 3.) Create a continuous selection process. — Make it a program, not a one-time project. — Set a cadence to find new accounts and try new ideas. Gamify it a bit. — Work in tandem with sales territory planning cycles to keep everyone coordinated. Account selection is not the most glamorous part of building ABM. But we all know it matters. Even our most brilliant account-based engagement program is doomed if we target the wrong accounts. So it’s worthwhile to get it right. #marketing #sales #ABM #ICP

It feels contradictory of me to say this: ...inbound lead gen only is not going to work in 2025. Founders, CMOs & CROs, this is what to look for👇 I've always been doing inbound work throughout my entire career. But lately, I observed something about inbound lead gen: In some months, the leads would flock in. In others? Crickets. The problem with inbound is you can create demand (and you need that). But you can't anticipate consistent volume. And the worst thing about Sales & Marketing is: keeping the approach that doesn’t give a good outcome. So we took a step back to revamp our social selling workflow. Long story short. - Revamp demand-gen content, less output, more high-quality output. - Stopped inbound only. Started a mixed approach. - Built a multi-touch prospecting system. Here’s exactly what we do: 1. Add 150-200 contacts from ICP to my LinkedIn every week First build the list with Sales Navigator. Then add them to your account via connection request. Just so you know, you can automate this step. 2. Do a few quality posts aligned with your positioning. No cliché platitude, no selfie in Bali 😂 Not 5 times or 7 times a week. We do fewer posts, but higher quality. Here’s how: - 1-2 posts (with video or infographics) on problem-solving, success stories, objection handling (what we do) - 1-2 posts (bare text or with an image) attacking industry villains or showing subject matter expertise (what we don’t do). Then repost your content after 9 hours (or next day if you don’t post anew). This is how we use content to invoke demand across timezones. 3. Prioritize inbound-led outbound. Many B2B companies invest heavy effort and money in mass low-intent cold outreach. Result: extremely low response and close rate. Instead, we prioritize the audience with an inbound signal: - Track interaction thru comments, reactions, profile visit, connections. - Start convo in DMs to drive curiosity with solution-forward questions. - Not all contacts enter the pipeline. But those do, already qualify themselves. That makes it easier to book a demo call. Plot twist, some of this can also be automated. 4. Build a multi touch-points follow-up LinkedIn or socials alone won’t cut it. B2B buyers are sophisticated and they ain’t ready to convert with 1 or 2 touch points. So we enrich contact data with tools like Clay and plan a mix of follow-up strategies with email and LinkedIn message sequences. This is how we secure a higher response rate and land 15 - 20 calls a month. — The result so far. Predictable. But it’s no instant noodle. It took a lot of experiments with different tools. A thing about this approach: You don’t wait for leads to show up. But you can lead the way for them to come in. I'm on a mission to help 2 limited founders get 10-15 sales calls a month thru Founder Brand without spending more than 45 mins a week. Sounds sexy to you? Send me a DM "Socials" and let's chat.

A 15-rep fintech team. New VP of Sales. Six months in. He pulled up the last 30 closed deals. Average size: $32K. The ICP doc on the wall said $100K plus. The reps were closing deals 70% smaller than the company they were built to sell to. Pipeline looked healthy. Forecast looked clean. Quota was hitting. Revenue was 35% below where the same team should be producing. We pulled the qualification criteria the reps were actually using. Not the one on the wall. The one in the CRM. The one in their actual conversations. Reps were qualifying on company size only. Anyone with the right headcount could be an opportunity. Nobody was checking revenue band. Nobody was checking buyer authority. Nobody was checking budget signal. The 30 closed deals fell into two buckets. Sub-$50M revenue companies that bought the entry tier and never expanded. The $30K deals. $50M-plus revenue companies where the rep happened to land on a real buying committee. The $100K-plus deals. Same effort. Same product. Triple the ACV when the qualification was tight. Here is the fix we shipped. Three qualification gates. All required before stage 2. One. Revenue band confirmed by public source or asked directly. Two. Buyer authority named. If we don't have the title we sell to in the next two meetings, the deal pauses. Three. Budget signal. A line in the next-year plan, a recent investment in a similar tool, or a leadership ask. One of three. Eleven months later, win rate moved from 28% to 42%. Average deal size moved from $32K to $87K. That team added $1.4M in new revenue on the same number of reps, the same product, the same total leads. The qualification you skip is the ACV you lose. The ICP on the wall is decoration if the gates in the CRM are softer.

"We tried Cold Email, but didn't see results." Has to be one of the most common challenges I hear. Let me explain. Over the course of 2024, I’ve spoken with many B2B SaaS Founders, Marketing Directors, Sales Directors, and GTM Leaders. They all share one problem in common: They’ve tried Cold Outreach, but they don’t get any results. So naturally, I start asking questions and offer to have a look at what they’re doing. When I review their campaigns, one thing becomes crystal clear: They understand how to build prospect lists, but there's little to no split testing happening. Here’s the reality: If you’re only sending 100-200 emails without testing different angles, you’re gambling on the success of your campaign, and in most cases, that gamble doesn’t pay off. Let’s break this down. There are two types of companies: 1️⃣ The 1% that doesn’t need to split test (they already know their ICP and what works for them). 2️⃣ The 99% that absolutely MUST split test to find what works best. If you’re part of the 99% (and most of us are), here’s how to do it effectively: Step 1: Test Pain Points Start by identifying the key problems your target audience is facing. Let’s say you’re an agency targeting e-commerce brands. You could test angles like: → High customer acquisition costs → Low lifetime value → Low return on ad spend Each email script stays consistent, only the pain point changes. 💡 Example: If you’re targeting a Sales Director, one angle might focus on the challenge of getting unqualified leads filling up their pipeline, while another might highlight how their team spends too much time on lead nurturing rather than closing. Allocate a set number of leads to each angle (e.g., 1,000 leads per angle) and track results. Step 2: Analyze & Scale Winners Once you’ve sent out the emails, review your data. Ask yourself: → Which angle is getting the most positive replies? → Are certain pain points resonating more than others? If one angle shows promise, double down. If another flops, drop it. Step 3: Test Offers After narrowing down the best angles, shift your focus to your offer. Split test variations of your offer to see which drives the most engagement and demo bookings. Forget vanity metrics like open rates (for now). Instead, track the ratio of PRRs. Many B2B companies: ❌ Send a small volume of Cold Emails (100-200) and expect big results. ❌ Focus too much on minor variables like subject lines before testing major factors like pain points or offers. ❌ Don’t analyze campaign performance enough to refine their approach. 💡 Pro tip in the PDF below👇 💬 Drop a comment below, or DM me for a free campaign audit.

𝗜 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝟭𝟮 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿. 𝗢𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝟭 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀. Our B2B manufacturing client was celebrating: → 15,000 whitepaper downloads → 67% email open rates → "Highest engagement ever!" But 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱: "These leads aren't buying anything." 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺? We were attracting researchers, not buyers. Here's what the 11 failed lead magnets were doing: • Industry reports - Downloaded by competitors and students • Best practices guides - Attracted DIY-ers who'd never buy • Trend analysis - Read by analysts, not decision makers • Templates - Used by junior staff with zero budget authority Lead magnet graveyard stats: • Average download-to-customer rate: 0.4% • 89% of downloads came from non-target personas • Sales qualified leads: 3% of total downloads • Revenue attribution: Nearly zero The 1 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗻𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱: "ROI Calculator: Exact Savings from Switching Manufacturing Systems" Why it worked: • Self-qualifying - Only people considering a switch would use it • Buyer-focused - Addressed CFO concerns, not engineer curiosity • Action-oriented - Required them to input their current costs • Decision-ready - Generated immediate budget conversations Results from the winning lead magnet: • Downloads: 847 (vs 15,000 from failed ones) • Qualified prospects: 312 (37% qualification rate) • Sales meetings booked: 89 • Closed deals: 23 (2.7% download-to-customer rate) The insight: 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀. Your lead magnet test: Ask yourself: "Would my ideal customer's boss approve them downloading this?" If not, you're attracting the wrong people. What's your best-performing lead magnet? Drop the topic below - curious to see what actually drives sales vs just downloads. #LeadGeneration #LeadMagnets #B2BMarketing #QualificationStrategy #SalesEnablement #GTM_Gyan

Cold email is dead. Just kidding, but I’ve been thinking a lot about where this space is going. With the right offer in the right industry, email is still a potent way to book qualified meetings. But from overseeing millions of emails sent over the last year. Most won’t admit how much harder it has gotten. Spam filters, cutting through the noise, establishing trust. But there is one strategy that still works insanely well. That's using both cold and warm email outreach systems in a complete GTM flywheel. For our ColdIQ campaigns, the goal is to simply generate qualified traffic. We don’t really ask for meetings in our CTAs. We just offer content that we presume matters to the prospect. High-quality videos, guides, and resources. And this is where the GTM flywheel starts to shape up. The same effort we put into generating worthwhile organic LI content. We weave into our cold emails, paid marketing, SEO articles, newsletter, and other media channels. Interested prospects then react in one of four meaningful ways: 1️⃣ Visiting our LI company page. 2️⃣ Visiting one of our LI profiles. 3️⃣ Visiting our website. 4️⃣ Or filling in a form to receive a resource or book a meeting. We’re then leveraging modern sales tech to extract and enrich this data. To funnel leads in the appropriate downstream flow. Whether that be manual SDR activities, automated outreach sequences, or marketing flows. So again utilizing email outreach, but this time for warmer leads. Want this set up for your business? DM me and let's talk. Tools mentioned for: Company page followers: Sales Nav, PhantomBuster, Captain Data LI Connections: LinkedIn Platform, PhantomBuster, Bardeen (CRM integration) Profile viewers: Teamfluence™, PhantomBuster, Sales Nav Post engagers: Common Room, Trigify.io, Teamfluence™ Managing DMs: Hublead, Breakcold, folk US website visitors (person-level): RB2B, Common Room, Instantly.ai EU website visitors (account-level): Common Room, Albacross, Snitcher Newsletter subs: beehiiv, Zapier, Make Demo bookings: Default, HubSpot, Clay Resource signup: Distribute, Tally, Default Data routing/management: Clay & HubSpot Automated outreach: Instantly.ai, lemlist, HeyReach, Smartlead Marketing: LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, HubSpot, Customer.io

Myth: You need 1000s of followers to get inbound leads Reality: You need the right lead magnets and can get inbound leads even with 1000 followers Some of my best leads on LinkedIn did not come from viral posts but from posts that solved a specific problem for a specific audience. Here are the lead magnets that can work for any niche: 📍Audits People love knowing what they are doing wrong. Whether it is a profile audit, website audit, content audit, or landing page audit, they work because they create immediate value and highlight positioning gaps. 📍Templates People do not want more information. They want shortcuts. Templates, frameworks, SOPs, outreach scripts, and swipe files save people time, which makes them highly shareable and valuable. 📍Checklists A checklist with a set of quantified, hyper-specific pointers helps people self-diagnose their gaps and quickly identify pain points without feeling overwhelmed. 📍Case Studies Nothing builds trust faster than showing what has already worked. Break down a campaign, client result, or growth story and explain the transformation and KPIs achieved. 📍Industry Reports and Insights Most people do not have the time to research. If you can collect data, trends, observations, and insights in one place, you become the person people look to for answers. 📍Personalized Recommendations Instead of sending a generic message, share a few tailored suggestions for their business or profile. This instantly builds credibility. The goal here is to solve a problem so effectively that the prospect naturally starts considering how you can help shape their business. Because at the end of the day, followers create reach, but lead magnets bring opportunities and qualified leads. What is a format that you vouch for?

ABM doesn’t work if the primary metric for marketing is leads. I've seen 100's of the best GTM teams in SaaS move from MQLs to MQAs (Marketing Qualified Accounts). Here are the 4 biggest mistakes they make along the way: Buying behavior has changed, and we all know it. More research is done before reaching out to the vendor, less people fill out forms, there’s more people and complexity in every buying decision. All of this means that an MQL usually comes late, from someone with little authority, and often from an account that can’t buy your solution. MQAs help to overcome these problems. By scoring at the account level, capturing broader buying signals, and factoring in interest from multiple stakeholders you are able to focus your Demand Generation on a metric that ties more closely to revenue generation. But MQAs are still misunderstood and rarely used to their potential. Here’s where companies go wrong when transitioning from MQLs to MQAs: 1. No Sales buy-in The core challenge is that Sales gravitates towards an assembly approach and MQAs are non-linear and nuanced. They’re pieced together from multiple signals over time, there’s no exact path any given MQA follows. Success requires a different mindset in Sales to adapt to the way accounts buy, requiring more creativity and strategy. The most important items to enable are: (1) MQA’s are more likely precursors to revenue than MQL’s and (2) MQA’s need to be cultivated by identifying what product/service they are interested in and by determining the buying group for that product. 2. Thresholds to qualify are too low In order for MQAs to be powerful signals of revenue, thresholds need to be higher than they often are. Conversely, when thresholds are too low, credibility across Sales is quickly lost. There’s no hard and fast rule for all businesses, but generally a combination of being in your ICP, web site engagement, showing of intent, and activity from 2-5 different people with the account is important. 3. No point of entry for the account Nothing is more frustrating for an SDR or salesperson than an MQA without a person to reach out to. Ideally, there’s at least one known contact that has shown interest to attach to the MQA. If not, there needs to be a set of recommended contacts based on the intent of the account and your known contact data. 4. Lack of visibility and reporting MQAs become an afterthought if they are not exposed across multiple levels of the organization and reported on with expected conversion rates. They need to be a key component of developing demand gen assumptions for a year, discussed in pipeline working groups, and reported on to execs as precursors to pipeline. Without this consistency the pull back to MQLs will be too strong. If you find your team stuck focused on leads, hopefully these tips help accelerate your move to an account-based GTM. P.S. I’ve included 3 tactics we use at Demandbase to get Sales thinking more strategically about MQAs below 👇

I stopped pitching in the DMs, and this is what happened: My old process was simple: → Find someone with a cool title. → Send a connection request. → Pitch them my services. It was a complete numbers game, and I was losing. Then it hit me: High-ticket clients aren't waiting for a sales pitch in their DMs. They're looking for experts who can solve their problems. So I flipped my strategy from chasing to attracting. Here’s my 3-step playbook to get high-quality leads on LinkedIn: 𝟭. 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗬𝗼𝘂 Your profile is your landing page. It should speak directly to your ideal client. → 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: Don't just put your job title. Describe the outcome you deliver. 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 "𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳," 𝘵𝘳𝘺 "𝘐 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘚𝘢𝘢𝘚 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵." → 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Outline the problems you solve. Make it clear how you help them win. 𝟮. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 Shift your content from "buy my stuff" to "let me help you with that." → Share insights about their industry. → Talk about common mistakes and how to avoid them. → When you comment, add value. Go beyond "Great post!" 𝟯. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 When someone engages with your content, don't rush to the pitch. → 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵: "Thanks for the like. Are you interested in my services? Here’s a link to book a call." → 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵: "Hey John, thanks for engaging with my post on lead generation. I'm curious, what's your biggest challenge with it right now?" This builds trust and positions you as the go-to expert. When they trust you, they'll come to you when they're ready to buy. What are you focusing on more right now: optimizing your profile or creating valuable content? Let me know in the comments! #LinkedInStrategy #LeadGeneration #ContentMarketing #SocialSelling