Three actions you can take to improve your lead to customer conversion

What do almost all struggling revenue teams have in common?

They treat their CRM and sales process as a light switch. Instead of actively improving it, it's either on or off. Nothing more, nothing less. 

High-performing sales teams do the opposite. 

They've realised that every incremental improvement, every simplification, and every edge they can get will lead to faster and more sustainable growth. 

But naturally, we need to balance the time and monetary investment with our current scale. 

More specifically, we should not go around panning for gold when big chunks of gold are lying around, ready to be picked up. 

And it's these chunks that we want to focus on. 

One of those chunks – companies sending their highest-quality leads to their most junior reps. This will have a direct impact on the time to close and close rate and, as a result, on overall revenue growth.

So what is it that they get wrong? 

They are stuck in the Inbound vs. Outbound mindset without considering intent, treating most inbound leads as one big group assigned to the same sales reps. Usually, this group consists of the junior reps (e.g., SDRs).

Some companies might argue that sales reps don't engage with inbound leads, so sending everything to an SDR who can engage with them is safer.

But no sales rep would ignore a high-quality lead if that lead was highly likely to close (if so, you have another problem). You're probably in this situation because you've cried wolf one too many times.

The reps are likely not just getting high-quality hand-raisers. They are probably bundled with marketing MQLs (lead scoring, ebooks, reading an arbitrary number of blog posts). Or at least they got a lot of those leads before.

That might be why you hired that BDR/SDR team in the first place. So you might have some work to do to...

First, start segmenting based on intent instead of treating all inbound leads the same.

This segmentation should be hand-raisers (high-intent) and non-hand-raisers (low or no intent). The high-intent leads should go to experienced sales reps who can engage with the high-value lead not as gatekeepers but as advisors.

But if you're not setting this rotation up correctly, you'll end up in the same situation—allowing spam and low-value stuff to get through, leading to them being ignored.

Second, establish clear expectations for high-intent leads. Track data specifically for these leads and set up a structured sales-to-marketing feedback loop.

If some sales reps are not engaging with those leads promptly and effectively (i.e., low conversion rate), flag the issue, and if no change in behaviour is noticed, reduce the lead flow to that rep.

The same goes for reps sitting on a large batch of current and former high-intent ICP leads without actively working with them. After all, it's not "the sales rep's lead," it's the company's.

Third, stop grouping high and low-intent data in the same reports. They are different and have little overlap. For high intent, you want to understand how well you can get people who actively reach out to you to become paying customers.

Grouping conversion and time to first contact/first meeting will corrupt your data, making it difficult to make good decisions.

For low intent, you want to understand how effectively your team converts outbound leads into customers. It doesn't matter if the leads are from marketing or sales, and the speed of the first engagement is not that important.

Reps should not be forced to follow up here, and they should not be allowed to sit on a large batch of accounts and leads forever. If they don't want to engage, leads should be rotated to someone who does (or qualified out if it doesn't fit the ICP).

We're in different times today. Companies are more strict with investments, and many deals now involve the CFOs to a higher degree (even if you might not see it, a lot happens behind closed doors).

As you're operating in a less cash-rich era with prospects doing more research and having more options, you need to maximise the conversion on your opportunities.

This way of thinking will help you navigate this transition effectively.