Leads Vs Opportunities – What’s The Difference?
Leads vs opportunities – what are they, and what’s the difference between both?
Getting your leads vs opportunities mixed up can be a confusing exercise and affect your sales prospecting efforts.
In this article, we’ll look at what’s the difference between leads vs opportunities, and how to approach each in their different contexts.
Leads Vs Opportunities – What’s The Difference?
Leads Vs Opportunities – Defining Leads
People can sometimes get the definition of their leads vs opportunities mixed up.
A sales lead is someone who either comes into your business via an inbound message, opt in or subscribing, or someone you may have reached out to with outbound prospecting that you haven’t qualified as yet.
A lead is a great starting point; however, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily ready to buy from you – or even fit your buyer persona or be qualified to in fact buy at all.
When you have leads, you’ll need to have a qualification process in place to ensure they are in fact someone who would benefit from your product or service and be able to afford it too.
There are a number of questions you can ask your prospective client – or in this case lead, to see if they qualify or not.
To learn how, click on the related article below for more detail.
Related article: 8 x Questions To Ask A Prospective Client
Leads Vs Opportunities – Defining Opportunities
So far when comparing the difference between your leads vs opportunities, we’ve looked at what leads mean, and what you need to do to ensure that they are qualified.
Now what are opportunities?
A sales opportunity is someone you have qualified, meaning they can in fact benefit from your product or service, and can potentially afford it too.
Once they have qualified for your product or service, the next stage is setting up a meeting with them – and then using your sales process to serve the client and win the sale.
Your sales process will generally be of one of the many sales methodologies you can learn about online.
If you want to learn about how to follow a step by step and consistent sales process, click on the relate article below for more detail.
Related article: The Sales Process – A Step By Step Guide
The Sales Process With Your Opportunities
As per the article on the sales process found here, many people follow an old sales process; generally involving prematurely presenting.
It usually goes like this:
- Book a meeting with qualified opportunity
- Pitch your product
- Ask if they have any questions
- Try and close the deal, and handle objections
Just because this process is popular – doesn’t mean it’s right, or effective at all.
Instead, this spray and pray approach is costing you sales.
To learn how to use a sales process and win more sales, we’ve created an article that explains how in more detail. Check it out below.
Related article: How To Close More Sales – A Step By Step Guide
We hope this clarifies your leads vs opportunities question.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we’ve looked at the difference between leads vs opportunities, and what you need to do when approaching or defining each.
If you want to increase your sales by consistently closing more clients, you may be interested in registering for our 7 day sales challenge.
You can do so by registering for free at the link below.
The 7 Day Sales Challenge – Register Here.
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