In the fast paced world of business-to-business (B2B) sales, creating a good b2b lead generation and qualification process is so important for the revenue growth.. Too often, sales teams are unable to get from every lead and they miss out on good potential deals.
And every sales person has an idea about spending so much time on a lead that didn’t have a result. It will cost money and time that can be used for a better course.
But with chatbots you can streamline the lead qualification process which is profitable and effective. And according to dashly 60% businesses with chatbots use them o lead qualifications. So it shows how valuable this tool is for businesses to increase their profits and save time.
So how do chatbots qualify leads? Below we talk about how chatbots qualifies leads, and how you can use a chatbot to streamline your own lead qualification process.
What is Lead Qualification
With lead qualification you can find and prioritize potential customers who are most likely to take your products or service.Its basically figuring out customers who are most likely to become business friends
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Normally sales teams of your business have to manually review and qualify each lead, then gather information to start the conversations.With these initial sales calls,they can identify the pain points and the potential of the lead to become a customer.
Processes like this take so much time and it’s more likely to have some errors such as Incorrect data recording. And also when manually qualifying leads, it’s hard to Salespeople manage a high volume of leads at one time. This kind of issues ultimately lead to missed opportunities and revenue.
What is a lead qualification chatbot?
A lead qualification chatbot is an AI-powered web chat tool that can help qualify potential leads or customers. As operators we can give it predetermined questions and criteria to work on and collect data from the potential leads.
Then it can categorize those based on likelihood of making a purchase or not.
According to outgrow 36% of companies turn to the chatbot market to improve lead generation, and business leaders claim that, on average, chatbots can increase sales by 67%.
Chatbots basically speed up the lead qualification process. So sales and marketing teams can provide more focus on leads that most likely to convert.
Additionally those chatbots are respond to customers inquiries quickly. So its make customers satisfied and make sure business will not lose a valuable lead.as a company when you generate more leads,
Chatbots have the ability to qualify large amount of leads without errors and decide which leads are the best.
How do chatbots qualify leads?
Basically chatbots qualify leads by asking predefined and strategic questions from the prospects that are written by marketing or sales teams to make a conversation which gather information for sales and marketing teams to make decisions.
This has a step by step process to qualify leads.
Make a conversation
Chatbot can start a conversation with the website visitor or respond to the inquiries of the customer.
Ask predefined questions
Chatbot asks strategic questions that are already written to gather important information about a lead, like their contact details, budget, and needs.
Confirming the response
Then chatbot validates the response for its accuracy and if some responses need clarification from the sales agent, they can flag them for review.
Analyze the response
Then the chatbot analyzes the response using natural language processing to understand the meaning of the lead’s response.
Evaluate the lead
Based on the responses some chatbots can assign a score to each lead to clarify their interest level and qualification and then categorize leads based on their score. And some chatbots provide gathered information to sales or marketing teams to evaluate and assign scores from themselves.
Storing the data
The chatbot will record and store the data in your database so sales and marketing teams can reach out to qualified leads.
How can we use a chatbot for lead qualification?
To streamline your lead qualification process,We can look into six steps to setting up a lead qualification chatbot.
Understand what is a qualifying lead
Each business has a different understanding about what is a qualifying lead according to their business process.so as first step you should outline what a qualified lead looks like.And you should determine the potential lead’s pain points, needs, budget, and other key qualification information.
So when you understand how a potential customer looks,it’s easy to design conversation flow and questions to Identify them.
Choose the right chatbot software
When you are choosing a chatbot, It’s very important to choose one that suits your business type and which is compatible with your other business tools like CRM.
And you should consider a tool that can be streamline through all of your sales and marketing process like lead nurturing and lead routing.
Create Qualifying questions
Next you should create a list of questions that help your chatbot to gather important information to determine if the lead is qualified or not.
When creating a list of questions, we can use a Framework like BANT to create questions.
B – Budget
A – Authority
N – Need
T – Timeline
Here are some question examples you can ask.
Budget: What is your budget for this type of solution?
Authority: Can you describe the role in the decision making process?
Need: What features are you looking for in this type of solution?
Timeline: How soon are you looking to address your current needs?
These questions help your chatbot to determine lead’s intentions and then your business team can focus more on potential leads.
Design a conversational flow
This flow is a guide to your chatbot to make conversation. This flow allows chatbots to engage naturally and ask important questions. These questions and responses planned previously to run the conversation smoothly and to get the important information to qualify leads.
So how can we create a conversational flow?
Create a scripted conversation
Create a chatbot script to gather essential information. When creating that, you should use logical sequence and create different paths based on common responses.
Test the conversational flow
After making the flow we can test it by using a small group of customers and users to uncover the issues and bugs to improve chatbot performance.
Making adjustments
After the testing part is completed, make the necessary changes and run the tests again to identify bugs and make it a seamless flow to guide conversations.
Integrate with other management tools
After that Integrate your chatbot with other management tools that your team use. This will help create a seamless workflow that enhances the management process .When it comes to Integrating, You should consider CRM, marketing automation tools, email marketing software that your organization uses.
Create a lead scoring Criteria
Some chatbots come up with their own scoring system but you can also establish your own lead scoring criteria.
This will benefit businesses to identify potential customers.after the chatbot collects information, it will give a score to each lead.So you can identify which leads have higher scores which have a better chance of conversion.
Benefits of Integrating Chatbots in Lead Qualification
Finding Resources to carry out marketing and sales campaigns become one of the biggest challenges that Businesses face right now. But with AI powered chatbots you can face that challenge.
Lead nurturing
Chatbots can provide leads with valuable content and information so this make them keep engaging with the process.
Lead routing
Chatbots can routing those leads to either sales or marketing team for more nurturing or make mor converting efforts.
Immediate responses
Chatbots provide immediate response unlike human agents.so as a business you will not miss any potential lead that can be a long term customer.
Cost savings
Because of these chatbots automating sales and marketing tasks, business can save on operational and labor costs .
Lead data collection
Chatbots can gather key information on leads, like their budget and preferences, so sales and marketing teams can personalize their solutions according to the lead type.
Higher-quality leads
According to drift 55% of companies that use chatbots get more high-quality leads.
They use predetermined criteria and qualifying questions to Identify the lead is a good fit or not. So according to lead scores business teams can focus more on leads that have higher potential to convert.
