A demand gen opportunity is a pre-qualified, qualified and post qualified lead. The same work of setting an appointment goes into this opportunity except the met date and time are not set. It consists of three critical business development advancement stages. Here are the stages:

1) Entry through barrier (pre-qualification) – this is where the lead is created for a data management system (CRMs, contact manager, databases, etc.) and it still is considered to be a raw lead. All data is divided in various survey mechanisms and analyzed further. For it to move to the next stage, it has to have a certain quality threshold at a conversion rate of 75% or higher. So de-duplication, verification of information, demographic qualification and criteria check all occur in this stage. At the end of this stage, the lead and all its components verified by our market research is funneled to the next stage.

2) Awareness and Engagement (qualification) – as this funnel becomes narrower, the lead is now surveyed and scheduled for initial contact from one of our experienced business developers (BDs). While this initial contact is solely to expand awareness of the brand, the BD is specifically trained to gauge the intent and further analyze every output of the conversation. The same BDA begins to outline these outputs into beginning workings of a situational need, all the while keeping the process active to be analyzed by a campaign’s specific qualification and criteria. At the end of this stage, the need is outlined to align with solutions offering and product / service match begins to form.

3) Development (qualification and post-qualification) - As the funnel starts to shape the lead into an opportunity, the two previous stages begin to form into a more structured and solid opportunity, while getting a clear sight of the need and the interest. Different businesses have a different viewpoint on what a ‘need’ is. To understand it further, the need is either a preventative measure or proactive measure in any business. The preventative is from a mindset that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and when there will be a fire we’ll worry about it then on how to fix it. The proactive mindset is to be calculative and measure the risks if the inevitable happens, and how to be prepared. The business development specialist, or the business developer, is able to recognize the type of need and document it for the sales representative. Interest could come before or after need. It is general assumption that interest has to come after need and in that order but sometimes that is not the case. Similar to the mindsets mentioned above, interest can come from many different rationales and it’s important for business developers, sales and marketing folks to understand that it could be generated even by shear emotion at times. What is more important is to gauge motives and the vision of the officers involved in the collaborative interest and to capture an idea on how they are running the company, with a preventative or proactive mindset. So the expert business developer is able to pinpoint clear need and all variations of interest which results in a concise and a qualified opportunity for sales or marketing to take next.

Jameel Saqib Co-Founder,
McCord Solutions – June 17, 2015