Qualified vs. LeanData: Why You Need Both

If you’re comparing features of Qualified vs. LeanData, you may be surprised to know:

We are customers of each other.

That’s right. In 2023, Qualified bought LeanData and LeanData bought Qualified. As shared in Qualified’s OpsStars 2023 session, Qualified and LeanData both solve pain points around lead leakage, but we do this in markedly different ways.

What we’ve discovered is Qualified and LeanData are extremely complementary and really are better together.

So rather than simply comparing features, we’re going to explain why you need both platforms to achieve a seamless buyer experience.

 

Qualified vs. LeanData: Similarities and Differences

Let’s get straight to the point. What you need to understand is what Qualified and LeanData actually do, their similarities and differences, and where their products overlap.

What Does Qualified Do?

Qualified is the leading AI-powered pipeline generation platform for Salesforce customers, offering an all-in-one solution that includes live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, marketing offers, and intent data. Qualified can instantly identify, segment, and engage valuable website visitors to maximize conversions from the B2B website.

However, Qualified’s tools are not limited to organic search interactions. For example, if a prospect clicks through an email to a company website, Qualified will initiate a live chat, with personalization, the moment the prospect lands on the site. Further, Qualified will track which marketing campaigns are most effective in driving website traffic.

With its roots in website conversations, Qualified capitalizes on website traffic by offering different ways that buyers can interact with a brand. Sales reps can reach out to people browsing on a website and attempt to get a meeting while the buyer is at peak interest.

What Does LeanData Do?

LeanData is also a native Salesforce application and provides revenue orchestration in the form of lead-to-account matching and routing, data management, lead distribution, territory management, automated alerts, and appointment scheduling tools.  

LeanData’s no-code FlowBuilder helps operations teams bring complex routing flows to life, building flexibility to ever-changing go-to-market (GTM) processes. LeanData can route Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, Cases and any other Salesforce object. 

It’s difficult to list everything LeanData can do because frankly, the possibilities are endless. No two LeanData customers use our platform exactly the same. On a very basic level, LeanData takes buyer signals, orchestrates them into revenue plays, and alerts all relevant people.

LeanData customers often describe our platform as the “connective tissue” or the quarterback of their tech stack. 

Where Do Qualified and LeanData Overlap?

Overall, both Qualified and LeanData support a seamless customer experience, but they accomplish this task differently. 

From a tools perspective, Qualified and LeanData overlap somewhat on meeting scheduling. Further, both platforms have routing capabilities. However, Qualified is routing website visitors for the purpose of sales conversations. LeanData is routing for the purpose of a larger workflow including deduping, matching, lead scoring, data management, and assignment.

In effect, LeanData is not a website conversation tool and Qualified is not a revenue orchestration platform. People buy Qualified and LeanData for different purposes.

That is why we bought each other.

Why Qualified Bought LeanData & Vice Versa

As you’ll see below, Qualified and LeanData bought each other’s platforms to solve different pain points.

Why Qualified Bought LeanData

First, Qualified purchased LeanData to save time. Qualified participates in 30 to 50 events per year. With this high volume, Qualified found that getting event leads into the Sales team’s hands was very difficult. Loading leads into the right campaign, managing attribution, and routing could take one to six hours per event list. 

Next, Qualified wanted to automate more processes, accelerate time to revenue and scale. With more automation, Qualified could streamline operations with control and visibility into every automated step. Since Qualified uses an account-based motion, it’s important that all Contacts stay aligned to Accounts, making data management essential. Overall, Qualified wanted to increase sales productivity and close more deals.

Why LeanData Bought Qualified

The LeanData Sales and Marketing teams noticed that the chatbot on the LeanData website was largely ineffective. So, we began our discovery process for a new solution.

After doing some research, Qualified was the clear winner for the following reasons:

1. Qualified is best in class for conversational marketing software.
   
2. As a Salesforce-native application, Qualified integrates easily into the LeanData tech stack.
   
3. Because of Qualified’s integration with Salesforce, we can easily see what we know about our prospects and customers from their platform.
   
4. Qualified gives us deeper insights into website visitor activities. We know where visitors have been on our site and what they view.
   
5. Qualified provides LeanData with a greater ability for personalization. We know what channel our website visitors come from and the campaigns they’re enrolled in.
   
   

How Does Qualified Use LeanData?

When a prospect comes to the Qualified website, a conversational messenger pops up on the bottom right of the home page. 

Then, Qualified tools quickly work to identify the prospect and offer personalized content. In addition, Qualified routing will find the right sales rep and offer to chat in real time. If the prospect asks questions or accepts the offer to chat, Qualified technology will connect to the appropriate sales rep. 

When a prospect engages with the instant messenger, Qualified immediately creates a Lead in Salesforce. This action triggers LeanData routing. LeanData will check for ownership, duplicates, and update UTM tracking. Depending on the Lead’s characteristics, it may or may not route to a round robin pool for assignment. 

Behind the scenes, Qualified implemented LeanData against three different objects in their Salesforce instance:

• Leads: LeanData helps with routing, ownership, deduplication and merging.
  
• Contacts: LeanData keeps the data clean and contacts aligned to Accounts.
  
• Accounts: Qualified is a 6sense user. When an Account shows intent, LeanData round robins the Account to a sales rep.
  
  

Benefits & ROI of LeanData

Qualified reports that LeanData has been a worthwhile investment because of the massive time savings and drastic improvements to their GTM processes. 

The biggest benefits of LeanData are felt by the Operations team. Because of LeanData automation, they’ve saved an estimated 150 hours per year.

Other teams at Qualified report the following benefits:

• Qualified’s Marketing team sleeps better at night knowing that lead management processes are working. They know the right lead is in the right hands in real time.

• Qualified’s Sales team now has a dynamic territory process. In the past, territory adjustments were made quarterly from a spreadsheet. With LeanData, unowned accounts are now quickly assigned and routed directly to Sales.

• Qualified’s Customer Success team reports that with LeanData, Contacts and Accounts are more organized.
  
  

Qualified & LeanData, Better Together

It’s clear that Qualified and LeanData address different pain points along the customer journey. Qualified excels in driving website conversations and leveraging buyer interactions. LeanData thrives behind the scenes, orchestrating revenue plays and creating efficiency. 

By using each other’s platforms, we acknowledge the value each brings to the table. Together, we provide a solution that not only supports a fantastic customer experience, but helps organizations optimize and scale processes.

We’re like

coffee and a good book

movies and popcorn

music and road trips

Frodo and Sam

Better together.