Unqualified Leads Are Good Too

Your online form (where you capture prospect contact details) should be as brief as possible. Three or four fields is ideal - name, email, phone and possibly company name. The reason is simple: the less fields you request, the more likely the prospect is to fork over their information.

Every week I get a few vendors that question that logic, citing that the reason they request quite a few fields is that it further qualifies the prospect. While this may be true, the question one has to ask is, "at what cost?" Sure, if you request 15 fields, the prospects that complete the form will, on average, be a little more qualified than if you request 4 fields. But how many leads do you miss out on in the process?

Let's assume that Software Company XYZ has their site perfectly optimized to convert visitors to leads and they receive 50 leads per month in this manner. Then they reduce the number of required fields from 15 to 4 and their number of leads increases from 50 to 150.

While all 150 may not be as good as the original 50, so what?

1) They still receive the contact details for all 50 original leads.

2) Some of the additional 100 leads will be just as good as the original 50. These represent the prospects who were in a similar part of the buying process but would not have wanted to complete such a long form.

3) The remaining leads will not be as good (yet) but they can be cultivated via an email marketing campaign and some of them will eventually become good leads.

The process of qualifying leads should not be performed on the website at the expense of turning away less qualified leads. Once a visitor thinks your form is too long to bother, the click that you paid for is lost. Wouldn't you rather get their email address first?

So remember, get their contact details, and then qualify.