Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (2024)

The difference between leads is pretty straightforward. Hot leads are businesses and their decision-makers who are willing to make a purchase right away. Cold leads are people who may know about the product but have no interest in it. And in the middle, between these two opposites, are those who either can’t buy from you right now or have no desire to do so for some reason, hence their name warm leads.

Let’s beef up that skimpy understanding of ours with more information drawn from Belkins’ hands-on experience as a lead management agency.

In this article you discover:

  • What are the cold, warm, and hot leads?
  • Where to get cold leads;
  • Tips for warm leads nurturing;
  • Ways to generate hot leads;
  • How to make your lead generation strategy flawless.

Key Factors that Determine Lead Types

What does an individual (usually representing a company) need to qualify as a hot prospect? Money to buy your product? Interest in engaging with your salespeople? Yes and no. In B2B marketing, only an ideal customer profile (ICP) resolves the cold leads vs. warm leads struggle.

B2B sales and marketing teams frame their interactions with sales leads through the lens of an ideal customer profile. A lead is hot and willing to buy the product when there’s a clear understanding that addresses their pain points and makes their workflow easier. How can you know it right away? By seeing if the lead aligns with your ICP.

If a lead hasn’t revealed interest in the product but meets almost all the criteria of your ICP, the odds are higher that you can nurture that lead into sales quicker than those who express interest but are off your profile. However, interest also plays an important role.

Marketing and sales teams classify leads based on their interest in a product or service, the amount of communication they’ve had with sales representatives, and how lead research data compares against the company’s previous successful deals (essentially an ICP).

So let’s keep both factors in mind when discussing different types of sales leads: if they are interested in the product and fit an ICP.

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (1)

What’s Considered a “Cold,” “Warm,” and “Hot” Lead in Sales

What are cold leads?

Cold leads are businesses (or individuals) that have very little interest in your product or don’t have it yet. Such leads may not even be aware of your product and its value, so contractors should reach out to them directly or build their lead generation strategy that way to attract them organically.

Here’s a brief example. Suppose your ICP includes small-sized non-profits with workforce training programs, a team size of 10 to 50 people based in Northern Europe, and making $100K to $500K in revenue. Now, a lead falls into your lap — you can get their email address from:

  1. An onsite form;
  2. A sign-up for a webinar or newsletter;
  3. A comment on one of your recent LinkedIn posts;
  4. A comment on a LinkedIn post by an industry leader;
  5. A referral from any of your existing customers.

Now you see that lead works at a non-profit as a CEO or CIO and matches your ideal customer profile to a tee. Expressing minimal interest in your company or product and matching your ICP qualifies them as a cold lead.

At that point, cold leads enter your company’s sales funnel, and lead nurturing through sales outreach begins.

Relevant reading: How to build a lead generation funnel?

In a recently-published case study, the Belkins SDR and AM team prove the value of ICP for cold outreach in practice. As a result, the client has got 1,000+ leads added to their pipeline and 120 new appointments. Find out more here ↓

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (2)

What are warm leads?

If an individual starts responding to the company’s newsletters or your nurturing emails, it makes them a warm lead. If a company’s decision-maker who fits your ICP reaches out to you to ask questions about the product, it’s also a warm lead. And the lead is most likely warm if you see a certain email address on sign-ups for the company’s live streams, webinars, or trade shows.

At this point, such leads keep moving through the sales funnel, and as a salesperson, you need to nurture them with highly personalized emailsand phone calls.

What are hot leads?

You say a lead is hot when the decision-maker is on the verge of buying the product or service, and they:

  • Discuss the price;
  • Agree to book a meeting;
  • Request a demo;
  • Research the product.

At this point, hot leads most likely need salespeople to address their objections or figure out relevant details like payment conditions, terms of use, and compatibility with existing software.

How Do You Acquire and Treat Different Types of Leads?

A relationship can blossom when each party is attracted to the other and shows they are interested in pursuing a connection. A company will ensure leads are interested before initiating any contact, while leads only respond to personalized content highlighting their pain points and offering solutions.

How do I get cold leads?

Considering the cold leads specifics, the right question would be, “How to target them?” Basically, you need to collect a list of leads based on your ICP and current marketing goals and present them with your unique value proposition (UVP). Here are some proven methods.

  1. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This is one of the most popular and easy-to-use tools allowing you to browse LinkedIn users and reach out to those from your target audience. With its advanced research, you can filter leads according to their titles, industries, company size, departments, group membership, and dozens of other features.
  2. Buy leads (but be very cautious). Disclaimer: this method is only effective when you opt for legitimate, transparent, trustworthy resources! Furthermore, you need to be 100% sure of your ICP to avoid buying irrelevant leads. In general, we don’t recommend doing it because hand-picked leads you’ve selected by yourself are more likely to convert. If you’re sure about the quality of the leads-buying platform, you may try it. But the best option will be sticking to the next method.
  3. Opt for a professional lead gen agency. You would want to delegate lead gen to specialized companies for many reasons. First, with agencies like Belkins, you can start the launch process immediately – their team will seamlessly integrate into your in-house department. Second, such companies always know what they’re doing since they possess deep knowledge of many industries. Finally, it’s one of the most ROI-friendly methods – agencies focus on your KPIs, bringing you the highest quality of selected leads.

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (3)

Do I really need cold leads?

There’s a widespread notion that a cold lead is a dead end, and you shouldn’t waste your time trying to revive their interest in the product. That approach rings common sense, but it’s mainly up to you to decide if you should stop bothering a lead with your highly-personalized emails after 5-8 touches or after several multi-wave campaigns.

However, there are no clear-cut answers to this question. You’ll have to decide on a case-by-case basis.

And remember, you can’t easily let go of any high-value lead. The larger the sale, the more persistent you should be in your attempts to engage the prospect. Even when you come across non-responsive candidates who ignore all your personalized emails, give them some time to mature and come back to nurturing them again.

How to nurture warm leads?

As you already know, leads which come to your website to download an eBook or sign up for a webinar are warm enough to start moving along the sales funnel. They are responsive, show a strong interest in your company or product, and easily engage in conversations with your sales team. However, warm leads are not ready to buy from you yet. What can you do to heat them up and close a deal quicker?

1) Create compelling pop-ups.Pop-ups are great for bringing more leads because they can be so targeted and specific — for example, you could show a pop-up only on the pages where people spend most of their time looking at products or reading reviews. This makes them more likely to be engaged than a generic “Subscribe now!” call-to-action (CTA).

But this instrument requires a wise approach to its implementation. To make the best out of pop-ups on your site, follow these 2 rules:

  • Select proper timing. The best way to use pop-ups is when someone has been on your website for a while and isn’t making any progress with their purchase. The longer they stay on your site without buying anything, the less likely they will do it. So if you can get in front of them at the right time (when they’re ready to give up), you’ll have a much higher chance of converting that lead into a sale.
  • Make sure your pop-up is well-designed. The pop-up must catch your viewer’s attention, be something that is hard to refuse. To achieve this, streamline the work of marketers and designers, and don’t forget to launch A/B testing to find the most effective CTA.

The average conversion rate for popups is 11%. However, this percentage can increase up to 40%, but only if the popups are high-performing. Examples of top popups are here – 38 Best Pop UpExamples For Your Inspiration [Explained]

2) Use content marketing to educate your audience. Suppose you sell B2B products, and pop-ups won’t work for you. Then try improving your content marketing. Educate your target audience about your product and how they can benefit from it.

Focus on posting high-quality content: newsletters, op-eds, infographics, long-form articles, how-to pieces, and case studies. Always providing valuable tidbits will teach your audience to come to you for the right information. Once they associate you with value, they will be more engaged and ready to buy.

How to generate hot leads

If your ideal customer profile is well-defined and accurate, that’s the best recipe for closing deals fast and often. But what else can you do to ensure your lead generation channels run at full speed?

1) Partner with a sales acquisition agency. Hiring a sales acquisition agency is a wise long-term investment for any business. It allows you to focus on the sale and not on sourcing, validating, or nurturing prospects. The best B2B sales serviceswill provide you with the most effective sales tactics and helpful information and will transform warm leads into qualified B2B appointments.

2) Use the correct lead generator tools. If you opt to reach out to your leads via email – which remains one of the most effective B2B strategies – you can’t do without proper sales instruments.

With the help of lead generation software, you can:

  • Optimize your team’s time resources by automating responses;
  • Boost customer retention;
  • Enhance email marketing by improving deliverability rate;
  • Maintain domain reputation by collecting valid email addresses of potential customers.

3) Use paid advertising. Paid advertising campaigns are a great way to make warm leads hotter. You can use search engines and social media ads to ensure your ads are seen specifically by your target audience.

For example, you can narrowly target audiences based on the company’s name, revenue, and shared interests. Besides, placing ads on websites that cater specifically to your audience means that you’ll reach prospects who are actively looking to buy.

How to Make Your Lead Generation Strategy Flawless

Here’s what you can do to ensure the best-quality leads.

1 - Adjust the ideal customer profile

Whatever your product is, you can’t sell it to everyone. ICPs are necessary to narrow your search. Each lead should match your ICP, and each piece of content must appeal to a specific buyer persona.

You can attract drones of leads with deals and discounts, but they won’t be interested in your product or service. So if you want top-quality leads, work on attracting those who fit the profile the most.

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (4)

2 - Personalize your outreach campaigns

With an ICP, you can personalize your cold outreach campaigns to the selected best-matching leads. Automation sales tools collect leads’ contact information so that sales development representatives (SDRs) can tweak their messages depending on leads’ job titles, company sizes, and other firmographic data.

But social media feeds and comments can reveal shared interests. For example, you and a lead share a love for a certain opinion leader or media, and you can weave it nicely into your personalized drip campaigns.

3- Launch smart lead nurturing

It is a lead-up to the sale that consists of multiple touches to keep the interest level high. It requires a delicate touch — you can’t be too pushy because it’ll turn them off, but you also can’t let them forget about you.

Marketing and sales want to orchestrate their efforts so that leads view the company’s product mentioned on social media, hear about it from friends, or get a personalized email from someone at the company before they make a purchase.

That’s It!

Now you know how to tell one lead from the other and know that you need to treat them differently. Both hot and warm leads can benefit from nurturing, but the hot ones are those most likely to convert into a sale.

In the end, your lead qualification process should help you reach more hot prospects and help them convert into customers.

You also must take some time to analyze how well your leads turn out in the long run. You might be surprised with the results and discover a way to improve your lead generation technique and overall sales rates. To do so, check out Belkins’s B2B blog regularly and apply the insights to your lead generation practices.

Have troubles with lead generation? The Belkins team has already generated almost 5,000,000 high-quality leads for their clients.Book a call with our expert and we can help you with that too.

As an expert in lead management and generation, I have extensive hands-on experience in the field, drawing insights from practical applications and successful strategies. Belkins, the lead management agency mentioned in the article, is a reputable source that has demonstrated expertise in generating leads for businesses. The article delves into the nuances of leads categorization, offering valuable information on cold, warm, and hot leads, along with tips for lead nurturing and effective lead generation strategies.

Key Concepts in the Article:

  1. Types of Leads:

    • Cold Leads: These are businesses or individuals with little or no interest in the product. They may not be aware of the product's value and require direct outreach or an organic lead generation strategy.
    • Warm Leads: Individuals who respond to newsletters, nurturing emails, or engage in activities like signing up for webinars. They show interest but are not yet ready to make a purchase.
    • Hot Leads: Decision-makers on the verge of buying, discussing pricing, booking meetings, requesting demos, or researching the product extensively.
  2. Lead Qualification Factors:

    • In B2B marketing, the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) plays a crucial role in determining lead types.
    • Hot leads align with the ICP and express interest in the product, making them more likely to convert.
  3. Acquiring Different Types of Leads:

    • Cold Leads:

      • Obtain leads matching the ICP through LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
      • Exercise caution if buying leads and consider opting for professional lead generation agencies like Belkins for higher conversion rates.
    • Warm Leads:

      • Nurture warm leads with personalized emails and phone calls.
      • Use compelling pop-ups and content marketing to engage and educate the audience.
    • Hot Leads:

      • Partner with a sales acquisition agency for effective sales tactics.
      • Utilize lead generation tools for email optimization.
      • Leverage paid advertising to target specific audiences.
  4. Flawless Lead Generation Strategy:

    • Define and adjust the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to attract quality leads.
    • Personalize outreach campaigns based on job titles, company sizes, and shared interests.
    • Implement smart lead nurturing with multiple touches to maintain interest.

In conclusion, the article provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and effectively managing different types of leads, emphasizing the importance of aligning with the Ideal Customer Profile for successful B2B marketing. The insights offered by Belkins' practical experience enhance the credibility and applicability of the information provided in the article.

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them (2024)

FAQs

Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads: How to Correctly Classify Them? ›

Leads can be classified into hot leads, warm leads, and cold leads based on their level of activity and interest in a product or service. Hot leads are the most valuable as they are highly likely to convert into customers. Warm leads have shown some interest, while cold leads have minimal engagement.

How do you define hot warm cold leads? ›

These pieces come in three distinct categories for your business: cold, warm, and hot leads.
  1. Hot leads are ready to buy immediately.
  2. Cold leads may know about your product but aren't interested.
  3. Warm leads fall in between - not ready to buy now but showing interest.
Sep 28, 2023

How do you categorize sales leads? ›

  1. Cold leads. Cold leads are a type of lead that fits your customer profile but hasn't yet had any interaction with your company. ...
  2. Warm leads. ...
  3. Hot leads. ...
  4. Information qualified leads (IQLs) ...
  5. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) ...
  6. Product qualified leads (PQLs) ...
  7. Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

What should firms classify their leads based on? ›

Lead qualification criteria are characteristics that help to classify a lead by the degree of its willingness and readiness to buy. As a result of this qualification, one can distinguish, in terms of making a purchase, the leads with the most and least potential: hot, warm, and cold.

What is the difference between warm leads and cold calls? ›

Warm calling is when you call a sales lead who has already expressed interested in your product or service. Unlike a cold call, where you have no proof they're interested, with a warm call, you do have that proof of interest. Warm calling is the perfect way to improve the success rate of your sales calls.

How do you identify warm leads? ›

Content marketing, social media, email marketing, lead magnets, and CRM systems are all effective methods for finding warm leads. Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable and relevant content, such as blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, infographics, videos, podcasts, and webinars.

How do you identify hot leads? ›

A hot lead is similar to a well-prepared and passionate buyer who is ready to close the purchase. They've done their research, looked at options, and are confident that the product or service meets all of their needs.

What are the 3 different groups of leads? ›

3 Main Types of Leads
  • Information Qualified Lead (IQL) – Cold Lead. In the early stages of interacting with your customers, companies are often given contact information in exchange for freebies, promotional offers, or relevant information. ...
  • Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – Warm Lead. ...
  • Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – Hot Lead.
Oct 9, 2020

What are the 4 types of leads in writing? ›

Different Types of Leads
  • Summary Lead. A summary lead is the most common and traditional lead in journalism. ...
  • Single-Item Lead. This lead focuses on just one or two elements of a summary lead. ...
  • Delayed Identification Lead. ...
  • Creative Lead. ...
  • Short Sentence Lead. ...
  • Analogy Lead.

What are leads groups? ›

Leads groups are typically 20-30 chamber members who meet weekly to promote each other's businesses. They share sales leads, make introductions, offer advice, assist with online promotion, and talk up other members of the group to their own networks. It's like having your own sales team!

What is a cold lead? ›

Cold leads are prospects who have shown little to no interest in your brand. They may need your service and are your ideal customer but are unaware of you or the difference between you and your competitors. They aren't interested in your products or services – yet. It's up to you to warm them up for a future sale.

How do you identify and qualify leads? ›

How do you find qualified leads?
  1. Define your ideal customer profile.
  2. Use multiple lead generation channels.
  3. Qualify your leads with lead scoring.
  4. Nurture your leads with email marketing.
  5. Follow up with your leads promptly.
  6. Track and analyze your lead generation results.
  7. Here's what else to consider.
Jul 5, 2023

What is warm lead? ›

A warm lead is a type of marketing lead that expresses interest in a brand but isn't ready to buy yet. These leads might have visited your website, subscribed to an email newsletter, followed you on social media, or submitted their contact information.

How do you approach cold leads? ›

Ten tips for approaching cold leads
  1. Find good leads. ...
  2. Stay within the law. ...
  3. Have a clear aim. ...
  4. Know your message. ...
  5. Train staff. ...
  6. Start off on the right foot. ...
  7. Concentrate on the customer. ...
  8. Use different sales channels.

How do you convert cold leads to hot leads? ›

Listed below is a guide that goes in-depth about how to do so.
  1. Fully Understand Your Audience. ...
  2. Offer Something of Value. ...
  3. Be Accessible. ...
  4. Don't Move Too Quickly. ...
  5. Offer the Opportunity to Opt-Out. ...
  6. Establish Authority. ...
  7. Converting Cold Leads Into Warm Leads Might Seem Complicated.
Aug 18, 2023

How do you target warm leads? ›

To keep warm leads from growing cold, you need to actively interact with them on social media. Social media is one such tool where you can be in touch with them at their comfort. This is the area where you can easily tap and increase your presence. You need to take out multiple ways to interact on a regular basis.

What is an example of a warm lead? ›

For example, a prospect who has visited your site through the search engine is warmer than a lead who has received your email campaign because, in the first case, that was their desire to check out your website. So you can assign 10 points to those warm leads and give 5 points to those who received your email.

What is an example of a hot lead? ›

These buyers know what you're selling, and they're very, very interested. Maybe you've put them through a nurture, or a friend has referred them. A hot lead might even have followed your company for some time and identified you as the best solution to fulfil their needs.

How do you turn a cold lead into a warm lead? ›

6 Tips for Turning Cold Leads into Warm Leads
  1. Fully Understand Your Audience. ...
  2. Offer Something of Value. ...
  3. Be Accessible. ...
  4. Don't Move Too Quickly. ...
  5. Offer the Opportunity to Opt-Out. ...
  6. Establish Authority.
Aug 18, 2023

How do you convert warm leads to hot leads? ›

Establish Trust

Most hot leads come from warm leads that have journeyed with you down the funnel. And this journey has helped build a relationship and establish trust with your prospect. Gaining a new hot lead's trust will require the same dedication in a shorter amount of time.

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