Lead Qualification Criteria For SaaS Subscription Businesses

Statista reports, Netflix caters to 207.64 million paid subscribers. But have you ever thought that how did they succeed to bring this horde of customers onboard? Why the number of subscribers to not just Netflix but many other streaming services are increasing with every passing day? The lead qualification has a significant role in attracting more customers.

To put it simply, the Lead qualification is a process to analyse whether the customer purchases from your platform or not. SaaS companies must qualify leads because:

• Lead qualification can save your time because you will not need to communicate even with those customers who are not intended to purchase your SaaS services or product.
• It keeps your sales and marketing campaigns targeted.
• Lead qualification is the key to increase the lead conversion rate so, it helps in improving your recurring revenue.

You must understand that the point when you interact with the customer for the first time is important. It decides whether the customer is going to have a long-term relationship with your company or not. SubscriptionFlow is a SaaS subscription software, and our experts are here to help you define the criteria to help you qualify the leads and make your customers stay with you longer.

But first, you need to understand some details about lead qualification.

Also Read: Subscription Software And The Scope Of Recurring Billing Management

Marketing Qualified Leads VS Sales Qualified Leads

When it comes to turning leads into recurring customers, both the sales and the marketing teams are involved. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) are the customers that the marketing team deem would come to the sales funnel. These leads are qualified as per the marketing perspective. However, Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are the customers that come up to the criteria set by the sales team.

Now, you would probably be thinking about whether you need to have MQL or SQL.

You need them both!

Your sales and marketing teams play equal roles in defining the lead qualification criteria.

How to Set Lead Qualification Criteria?

By now, you will be interested to know the ways that can help you in setting the right lead qualification criteria for your SaaS subscription business. Following are some of the essential elements that you need to pay attention to qualify leads.

Also Read: The Definitive Guide to Improving Customer Retention for Your Business

Relevant Questions

You have to communicate with the customers to finally bring them to the sales funnel. To qualify leads, you need to keep this communication formal and to the point. Your tone, your questions, and your response time can turn a visitor into a loyal customer. This communication helps you collect data that can be very helpful in defining the lead qualification criteria. It provides you with customer demographics and behavioural attributes. It is better to plan your communication. Many SaaS companies use Chatbots to communicate with visitors formally and properly. Automated subscription management software can be used to automate communication with visitors.

Some SaaS companies ask visitors to their website to answer simple and short questions that help them qualify leads. For instance, some websites ask visitors about the source that led them to that specific website. You need to keep these questions that you ask to qualify a lead precise and to the point. Try to formulate these questions in a way that you get a one-word answer. These questions will not only be easy to manage but visitors also happily answer them.

KPI-Driven Approach

You need to monitor some specific KPIs to qualify leads. First, the lead conversion rate shows it clearly if you are successful in qualifying leads or not. If the lead conversion rate is improving, then your lead qualification criteria is producing the expected results. Other than that bounce rate, exit rate, and average session duration are important to monitor to qualify leads.

If you are using an AI-based SaaS subscription management platform, it will not be difficult to keep your sales and marketing teams updates about the performance of certain KPIs. These platforms allow you to monitor different KPIs effectively.

Buyer Personas

Do you think, you can succeed in targeting the customers if you are unaware of whom you need to bring onboard? Buyer personas are the models that define the ideal customers for a SaaS company. These models help marketing teams to keep their marketing campaigns targeted.

A buyer persona is the semi-functional representation of an ideal customer.

So, with your buyer persona, you can test and try various things to know the best criteria to qualify leads. Working on buyer personas is more like running a pilot project before you finally implement the lead qualification criteria.

Also Read: Subscription Retention Begins With Customer Experience Elevation—Predictions and Actions for 2021

Lead Scoring Method

You should not confuse lead scoring with lead qualification. In the case of lead scoring, you can score the lead against specific points. For instance, you have sent an email to a visitor. Now, give this lead some points if he opens up the email. You increase his score if he opens the link that you have given in the email. You further increase his score if he responds to the email.

That’s how you give him points and the score of the lead can be used as one of the criteria to see if the lead qualifies or not. However, you can define the lead scoring method depending on your business niche.

How to Know If You Are Qualifying Leads Rightly?

If you have set the criteria to qualify leads, it is important to keep analysing it to know if it is working as per the plan. And to test if it is working rightly, you will again need to monitor the KPIs.

• Lead conversion rate
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer retention rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Net promoter score

Are some of the KPIs that one must observe to monitor the lead qualification criteria. It is not just the process of monitoring but it is also required to improvise the qualification criteria with time. Business insights that you get from KPI monitoring will make your predictions accurate and bring more leads into the sales funnel.

Also Read: Learn How the Best Recurring Billing System are Helping SaaS companies Track these SaaS KPIs and Metrics

Lead qualification is not only associated with increasing subscribers for the SaaS product or services but with many other business processes. Lead qualification is the key to onboard customers, retain these customers, increase MRR, and ARR etc.

If you want to set lead qualification criteria for your SaaS business, then you can contact SubscriptionFlow experts. It is not just a SaaS subscription billing management platform but here you can also get consultancy regarding subscription business queries as well.