Raw leads are the new, unpolished leads you obtain — you’re not sure of their potential. It’s your job to filter the list and identify the valuable ones.
Some of them can be prospects while others may not be a good fit. As much as raw leads are valuable, they can easily disappear into thin air.
How do you make sure raw leads don’t get lost? In this blog, you’ll learn what raw leads are and how to manage them effectively.
We’ll also walk you through how you can use monday sales CRM to qualify raw leads faster.
What are raw leads?
Raw leads are unqualified top-of-the-funnel leads. You may have limited information about these leads and their potential. Some of them will be perfect-fit prospects, others may require nurturing, while the rest may need to be cleaned out from the list.
Raw leads can be obtained through marketing activities such as content downloads, website visits, webinars, and tradeshows. They are easy to target and manage.
How you manage raw leads will highly influence the success of your entire sales process.
Difference between raw, warm, and hot leads
Not all leads are created equal. There are three main types of leads in the sales funnel:
Raw lead
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
Here’s how to differentiate each:
Raw Lead
A lead who has shown little to no interest in buying your product or service is termed as a raw lead. They areat the beginning of the sales funnel and need to be nurtured and qualified.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Marketing qualified leads are the leads that the marketing team identifies as having good potential; they put an emphasis on nurturing these leads. This means that the customer profile meets some pre-determined criteria like their level of interest or demographics.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A sales-qualified lead is a prospect that has been vetted by the sales team and is ready for the next stage of the sales cycle. They are more likely to do business with you. SQLs should be nurtured furthered if they don’t make a purchase after the initial contact.
The challenge is to manage raw leads by filtering the list out, identifying high-value leads, and moving them to the closed deal status.
Best practices for handling raw leads
Let’s look at five different ways your sales team can manage raw leads and make the most of them.
1. Agree on the definition of leads
Sales and marketing teams may have different definitions of what qualified and raw leads are. So, make sure you have solid criteria in place to classify leads.
One way is to provide a checklist to the marketing team based on your requirements. The criteria may differ based on your industry and organization’s specific needs. Here are some common elements to consider when defining leads:
Decision-making authority
Sense of urgency
Budget
Another best practice for setting objective criteria is lead scoring, which brings us to the next point.
2. Prioritize raw leads with lead scoring
Once you have clarity on the definition of leads, you want to accurately know when a lead has warmed up, been qualified, or moved out of the funnel. This can be done through lead scoring — a technique that helped companies generate a 138% lead gen ROI, according to a report.
Lead scoring is a process where leads are ranked based on priority or their perceived value (likelihood of converting into a customer) and assigned numerical values.
How exactly do you score leads? The most common way is to look at your current customers and lost leads. You will be able to identify a pattern or a common set of attributes that most high-quality leads possessed.
For example, let’s say most of your high-quality leads in the past were from a certain demographic. You can assign a high point to this attribute and create a score. Leads in your list with this demographic are scored higher. You can then prioritize your lead nurturing and outreach process.
With monday.com, you can create custom parameters just one time, and from there on out, your list is automatically scored. You can define these parameters based on different attributes like role, company, revenue, and the number of employees — without any coding! Each lead is weighted to determine the final score.
Lead scoring can help strengthen the relationship between sales and marketing teams and manage the raw leads obtained.
3. Give leads the option to opt-out
An essential part of effectively managing raw leads is filtering out uninterested people and unfit leads from the list.
If someone signed up to your email list and never engaged with you again, the lead is likely to be lost. Identify these leads, create a segment, and craft an email giving them an option to opt-out of the email list. Here’s an example of an email sent to dis-engaged email subscribers:
Source: Reallygoodemails
Leads who continue to ignore your emails can skew your email insights. Occasionally clean your list so that you can narrow down on warm leads.
4. Try different channels to communicate
If you start to email raw leads, high chances are you may not get a response or even open rates. They could even mark you as spam, thus damaging your sender reputation.
To solve this, try to get leads to engage with you on other, often less formal channels. Encourage them to follow you on social. You can also run paid ads for those who still visit your site but don’t open emails.
With a platform like monday.com, you can utilize our hundreds of integrations to sync all your client communication in one place. Plus, set up automated workflows to nurture raw leads.
5. Send them relevant updates
When you have raw leads in your sales CRM pipeline, it’s important to not blindly send them information. First, you have to learn about the lead — where did they come from, what problems they may face, and how they previously interacted with the company.
Sending custom-tailored content to raw leads will hit the mark and make them more interested in what you have to offer. For example, say the lead was obtained through an ebook download. Understand their interest based on this and send them related content.
On monday.com, you can easily view lead sources and check previous interactions with the company, like what emails or promotions they responded to best. This will help you in creating personalized lead-nurturing campaigns.
How monday CRM helps you manage raw leads
It’s essential to have a system where you can manage all your raw lead contacts and nurture them. This will ensure that leads don’t get lost and you reach the right prospects.
The monday sales CRM software is an easy-to-use platform where you can gain visibility into your sales pipeline, manage contacts, and boost productivity.
With monday sales CRM, you can:
Centralize contacts and communication: Log any lead or contact-related activity on one place.
Score leads: Set up automated actions like creating an activity, updating certain fields, or highlight that the lead is qualified.
Focus on leads that matter: Reduce the amount of time you spend pursuing unqualified raw leads by filtering them out automatically. This will allow you to focus on more important leads and increase your sales team’s efficiency.
Frequently asked questions
How to manage raw leads?
To manage raw leads, assign them to the right sales rep, qualify them, track progress, nurture relationships by sending personalized messages, and reach out to leads when appropriate.
How to convert raw leads to warm leads?
The first step to warm up raw leads is to reach out to them — use a personalized and friendly tone. After understanding their pain points, provide them with helpful information, offers, or free services and continue nurturing them. Keep track of their activity and engagement.
How are raw leads generated?
Raw leads are can be generated from content marketing, surveys, web analytics, social media, and industry events. Additionally, businesses can apply predictive analytics models to identify potential customers who may be interested in their products or services.
Convert raw leads with monday.com
How well you handle raw leads will determine how successful your sales process will be. Right from capturing raw leads to nurturing and closing them, a CRM system can help you set up processes in place for lead management. Try monday sales CRM to bring clarity to your sales pipeline.
Other terms from our CRM glossary: Warm leads, Hot leads
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