How to Triage a Waiting Room Full of B2B Sales Inquiries

Just as doctors have to sort through the waiting area for the patients who are in the most dire need of treatment, someone needs to triage the lead pile to identify those that require the immediate attention of the sales team.

The patient suffering from major trauma goes to the head of the line. All other patients have to tell the doctors their problems so their treatment can be prioritized. Like lead generation, only a fraction of the patients will require immediate attention.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to triage sales leads. And if the sales team is overwhelmed with inquiries, the sales reps will try to optically prioritize leads by contact name, title and company. This is especially true of inquiries that have been driven by offers of free white papers, webinars and other outreach programs.

Since the sales team can't process the inquiries quickly enough, and they also have to deal with their current prospects in real time, these inquiries pile up in the waiting room, waiting to be treated.

That's where our Lead Triage service comes into play. We talk to each and every "patient" and determine their treatment. The inquiries that are from contacts who are in the market for our clients' service go to the head of the line--directly to sales. All others are prioritized according to their symptoms: "just looking", "I'm not really the right person", "My boss asked me to contact you", "I'm just collecting information".

Sales only deals with the ones that require immediate attention. Marketing continues to nurture the ones that are in the early stages of the buying process.

If our clients chooses to leave us in place, they can confidently generate as many inquiries as needed, confident that each will be dealt with, and sales should have no problem managing the inflow of qualified, sales ready leads.