Your best leads already said yes once

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Monday - and that means it’s time for your CRM Dispatch - an issue where we talk about the uncomfortable reality of your CRM, including all of those fields you should be filling in but aren’t.

This week, I want to focus on signals in your CRM. This past week, I had a really good win with a client, where I brought forward a subscriber who had started to explore the website and showing signs of intent through research. He called the subscriber and emailed me after and said, “This was phenomenal. This one could be HUGE.”

I’ll share that story on Friday in the Revenue Play issue!

And that made me think - hmm, this lead already said “yes” once by signing up. So, let’s dig into how you can start seeing these signals too.

Let’s dive in.

Here’s a common thing that happens in a CRM setup. All net new leads are loaded into the system and if sales can’t convert them right away, two things happen.

Either the contacts sit as MQL/SQL and it becomes a waiting game to see if they come back, or sales moves the opportunity to closed won.

And then nothing happens. In fact, roughly 80% of B2B deals end without a sale. That means your CRM is mostly a record of everyone who almost bought from you.

But here’s the truth - they are still very much “alive” and very much doing research. This is why your CRM needs to be set up to track these signals.

Here’s the thin - reactivating a dormant contact costs roughly five times less than acquiring a new one. But most in-house teams never go back. While the teams argue that they need new leads, most ignore the ones that are sitting right in their CRM because they aren’t “easy” to work with.

We’ve talked about the “not right now” approach, but your CRM is actually capable of setting up little intent signals, such as website visits, email clicks, and more to track when someone starts doing research again, despite being a dormant subscriber for 6 months.

Yes, a CRM is indeed a contact rolodex and a sales pipeline. That’s standard out-of-the-box.

But setting up proper tracking, including website activities, email marketing activities, and more help you pick those signals more intently than just a call or email from the prospect when they are ready.

Yes, some of those people will never convert. That’s part of the game. But a lot of them could.

Prospect indecision accounts for 61% of lost deals, not a competitor win - surprisingly. Budget froze. The champion left. The project got deprioritized. But it just takes one internal conversation to turn that around.

The problem is that most CRMs can't tell the difference between "lost forever" and "lost for now" because the data was never structured to be read that way.

But it can be!

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Most AI tools tend to create what we call "AI slop": repetitions of the same colors, layouts and fonts. And when you try to fix it, you get stuck in a loop of re-prompting.

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This week, I want you to go into your CRM, and create a segment that filters anyone who is in MQL, SQL, and opportunity status. Layer in activities that do not require a person, such as website views, video plays, etc.

If you can put a timeframe on it, great!

Those small little research or discovery moments can be escalated to a sales person to “touch base” if they suddenly start show interest.

If this is the conversation you have been putting off, 44fjord works with teams to build the foundation that makes these numbers trustworthy. If you want to talk about what a partnership could look like, reach out to the team using the contact form on 44fjord.com/contact

In case you missed our Q1 Signals Report, you can grab it here.

There’s a reason why that report is called signals…

TL;DR

Just because a lead is sitting in MQL, SQL or opportunities does not mean it’s a dead end. In fact, they are most likely still warm in some capacity but your CRM is just not set up to capture those signals.

The fix starts with classification, identification and analysis - not outreach.