Lead vs. Contact vs. Opportunity: Oh My!

BANT Doesn’t Always Apply

You might think that a lead becomes an opportunity when you qualify based on budget, authority, needs, and timeline (BANT). However, this isn’t always the case. 

You shouldn’t need to know a contact’s budget, timeline, or authority right at the beginning. In fact, this often isn’t feasible anyway because each contact might not be willing to share this information. 

So, instead, you should look at three key characteristics: pain, interest, and fit.

Pain

If you want to convert a lead into an opportunity, you must ensure that they’re dealing with a pain or problem. Why? Because a potential customer facing a problem is what drives them to look for a solution. 

So, if there isn’t pain, then chances are, you won’t be getting a sale. Sales reps are responsible for finding a contact’s pain points and suggesting possible solutions to their problems. They need to correctly qualify a lead’s pain and dig deeper into what the lead wants and needs by asking specific questions.

Interest

Another key trait you want to look for is interest. Just because a lead might have a pain doesn’t mean they’re interested in addressing it. 

If they’ve been dealing with the same problem for years, why would they care to solve it right now, just because your solution is available? 

Chances are, they already had contact with another company with a solution similar to yours, but still didn’t convert. So, when qualifying leads, make sure they’re showing interest in your product.

Fit

So, your prospect has a difficult problem and they’re desperate to solve it. Does that automatically mean they’re ready to move to a purchase decision? Of course not. 

The thing that could be standing in the way of converting a lead into an opportunity could be as simple as your solution’s fit. If the company you’re selling to only has three people but your product is best for businesses with over 100 employees, it’s not a good fit. 

So, after carefully considering your solution, the lead likely won’t go through with the sale. And this means that you’ve wasted valuable time and resources on a lead that wasn’t a good fit.

What is a Lead?

A lead is someone who has expressed interest in your company or product. They might visit your website, attend one of your tradeshows or events, or fill out a form on your site to get more information about the products or services you offer. 

Leads often come from a variety of sources and may come in different forms: 

• Names from a list, whether you’ve created it yourself through research or purchased from a third-party
• Referrals from colleagues or current clients
• People who’ve made contact with your business by responding to a cold email or call
• Inbound marketing/advertising, meaning the lead was actively seeking a solution, and has stumbled upon yours

There are three different types of leads: 

• • Information qualified leads (IQLs): People who have visited your website or downloaded a lead magnet on your site (i.e. ebook, guide, whitepaper, etc.). To qualify IQLs, they need additional nurturing and contact. While they’re aware they have a problem, they haven’t seriously considered your offering as a solution.
  • Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Leads that you generate from your marketing efforts, such as ads, content marketing, social media marketing, and other lead generation activities. When an IQL requests information about your business, they become an MQL. Even though MQLs aren’t yet sure your solution is the best one for them, they’re more likely to be receptive to a sales pitch compared to an IQL.
  • Sales qualified leads (SQLs): Leads that are interested in purchasing your product or service. This might involve them signing up for a free trial of your service or requesting a demo. While SQLs need nurturing, they have a high chance of turning into customers.
    

What is a Contact?

A contact, or prospect, is a lead who has been qualified as an ideal customer who would consider buying your solution. If your marketing strategies are effective, some of your leads might become contacts. 

They know a bit about your product or solution and they’re likely to be a good fit as a customer. When they reach out to you with questions or concerns about your product, they’ve graduated into a contact.

What is a Sales Opportunity?

Once a contact has agreed to consider your solution, and you’ve identified them as a potential customer, they finally become an opportunity. 

A sales opportunity is a qualified prospect who has a strong chance of becoming a customer. This is often the last step before “customer” in the sales funnel or customer journey. And at this point, they’re often ready for a sales call or meeting.

Leads vs. Contact vs. Opportunity: Putting it All Together

So, now that you have a general idea of what a lead, contact, and opportunity is, the next step is to differentiate the three from each other. What constitutes a lead, contact, or opportunity? What are the criteria?

This section will help answer those questions.

Lead vs. Contact

Sometimes, it can be easy to confuse a lead with a contact. An easy way to understand what a lead is, is to remember that of all the terms, a lead is at the most preliminary stages of the sales process.

A lead is someone who has shown interest in your products or services. Yet, they’re not qualified to take the next step towards a conversion. This might include filling out a form on your website or signing up for a newsletter.

What to Do with Leads

Be sure to nurture your leads as much as possible. Give them plenty of information to pique their interest. Also, learn more about them through how they interact with your website, emails, social media, or marketing materials. 

Then, work on getting their contact information using gated content like ebooks, how-to guides, templates, case studies, whitepapers, and other valuable content.

What to Do with Contacts

A contact is a lead that you’ve qualified already. You’ve likely gathered enough information about them to know that they’re more likely to convert into a sales opportunity. Also, there’s likely to have been two-way communication between your business and the contact. 

While a contact needs more information before they’re ready for sales conversations, you nurture them by sending email blasts and creating email campaigns with workflow triggers. These efforts are what help marketers and sellers convert leads into contacts and prepare them for sales conversations. 

The advantage of having your contacts’ email addresses and other information allows you to track their interactions with your brand properties within your CRM. This will help you build a lead score based on these actions.

Lead vs. Opportunity

When a contact starts considering your product or service and moving closer and closer to a purchase decision, they become an opportunity. Unlike leads that you need to process and identify in order to score them, an opportunity is often ready for the last step in the buyer’s journey. 

So, remember that a sales opportunity is even further along in the sales process and has the highest potential of converting into a customer. So, in other words, a sales opportunity is a further qualified contact.

What to Do with Opportunities

You can convert a sales opportunity into a customer with: 

• One-to-one telephone calls and emails
• Case studies
• Trials and demos
• Data sheets
• Special deals and discounts

How to Upgrade One to Another

If you want to convert leads into contacts, and then into opportunities, you must qualify and score them. This involves categorizing and prioritizing them based on how likely it is for them to move to the next step in the funnel. 

But there’s more to upgrading leads into contacts and opportunities than qualifying them. You also need to nurture them and serve them relevant content at the right time. 

The two keys to moving leads from one stage to another are lead qualification and lead nurturing.

Qualify Your Leads

Earlier, we mentioned that asking leads the right questions is key in the lead qualification process. Doing so will essentially help you get in their heads and see what’s giving them problems so that you can better help them address those issues. 

This will also help you separate the likely leads from the unlikely ones. As a result, you’ll have a better idea of which ones are worth pursuing. That way, you’ll know how much time and energy you should spend on each lead to convert them into customers.

Here are some general best practices for qualifying leads:

Start Lead Scoring

Use a lead scoring model to get some information without having to ask the prospect directly. Then, score leads based on certain behaviors and actions they take. For example, the more a lead engages with your website, content, and marketing communications, the higher their score should be. 

Then, once they reach a certain number, they’re ready for contact. Lead scoring helps you focus on leads that are more likely to result in a sale. That’s because it tells you which ones have the highest potential to convert into an opportunity and then, into a customer.

Do Your Homework

Learning more about your leads before you have a conversation can aid the qualification process and prevent you from wasting valuable time on leads that aren’t viable. 

For example, you can look at a lead’s LinkedIn profile to find out about their current role and business. This can also help you gain insights into what topics interest them and any concerns or issues they might have. 

This will not only help you gather valuable information, but it’ll also help you ask important qualifying questions when it comes time to contact your leads.

Get in Contact

Ask the prospect about their current situation. That way, you’ll gain a better understanding of what they need so that you can tailor your offering to those needs. 

Also, ask them questions to help them understand their business has a problem and highlight the potential impact that problem can have on their organization. Then, frame your questions in a way that underscores the value a solution like yours can bring to their business.

Nurture Your Leads

So you’ve got a lead’s attention. But to prevent them from going cold, you need to nurture them. Here are a few strategies you can adopt for effective lead nurturing: 

• Use targeted content. Tailor your content to each of your unique buyer personas based on their interests, goals, objectives, and marketing triggers. You should also consider using a marketing automation platform to help you identify, segment, and effectively target prospects.
• Follow up. It can be challenging to convert a lead into a contact or opportunity if you don’t follow up. So, send follow up emails or make follow up calls to convert inbound leads into sales opportunities. And do so in a timely manner to keep the lead engaged and your business top of mind.
• Send personalized emails. Another way to nurture leads is to automate email workflows. You can set up certain triggers that allow you to automatically send the right emails at the right time. For example, if a lead visits certain pages on your website or downloads your gated content, you can send personalized emails that correspond to each action.
  

Conclusion

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to qualifying, targeting, and nurturing leads. That’s because they’re all different. And knowing the difference between a lead, contact, and opportunity can help you segment potential customers based on where they are in the buyer’s journey.

As a result, you can build a strategy for targeting leads and know when to move forward. That way, you can make better use of your resources for a better ROI.