It’s natural to want to pursue all of the leads that contact your business. After all, we’re taught that every lead is an opportunity. While every lead might bring some sort of opportunity to your business, not all opportunities are created equal nor are they all worth your while. Instead, have you ever considered reorganizing your sales strategy to focus on the leads that will drive the most profit for your business?

Running every inbound lead that contacts your business might seem like the right thing to do, except you’re ignoring something critical to your sales strategy: lead quality. Pursuing leads without considering their quality will ultimately slow your business’s growth.

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Run All Inbound Leads:

Your Resources. You spend time and money sending a sales rep out to a potential customer’s home. If those appointments do not result in a sale because the buyer is unqualified, that’s a lot of money you’re spending for no return on your investment. Think of it as a “Sales Opportunity Cost.” Could your sales manager have spent your time and money in a more productive way?

Your Sales Staff. If you’re having your sales reps consistently pursue bad leads, you’re going to greatly decrease productivity. After a while, that losing streak will have an effect on the sales rep’s attitude and psyche.

Your Bottom Line. Your business is dependent on net revenue, not gross revenue. It might seem great on paper to have 100 leads to pursue, but if 40 of those leads are unfit buyers, it’s not worth it to your bottom line!

How Can You Be More Effective?

Focusing on lead quality means developing a system to evaluate leads before you send a sales rep to an appointment. By implementing a scoring system based on a lead’s propensity to purchase, you’re analyzing the cost vs. value of this lead.

Use information like a lead’s income, home age, and financial history to determine lead quality. Then, prioritize your sales strategy based on those results. If you’re pursuing the leads that best fit your business’s needs, you’ll find that you’ll have better day-to-day operations, a happier and more productive sales team, and an overall increase in your bottom line.

Download our case study to see how using a scoring system changed the way a company approached their leads.