What is a Hand Raiser [+How to Run One Like a Pro]

Cold outreach. Endless email blasts. Chasing unresponsive prospects. It‘s an all-too-familiar routine for salespeople everywhere. In fact, the average sales rep spends nearly 65% of their time on non-revenue generating activities like researching and prospecting.

But what if there was a better way? Enter the hand raiser.

What is a Hand Raiser?

A hand raiser is a potential customer who has proactively expressed interest in your product or service. Rather than a cold contact, they‘ve willingly "raised their hand" to start a conversation with you, typically by taking an action like:

• Filling out a form on your website
• Downloading a piece of content
• Requesting a product demo or trial
• Signing up for a webinar or event
• Engaging with your social media posts

Hand raisers are the holy grail for salespeople and marketers alike because they‘re typically much higher quality leads than those sourced through cold outreach. In fact, leads sourced through inbound marketing have a 14.6% close rate compared to just 1.7% for outbound leads.

With the majority of today‘s B2B buyers preferring to research purchase decisions independently online, having a strong pipeline of hand raisers is more critical than ever. Here‘s why:

The Benefits of Hand Raisers

1. Higher Engagement: Hand raisers have already shown interest in learning more, making them much more receptive to sales outreach. Data shows leads contacted within 5 minutes are 9x more likely to convert.

2. Better Conversations: With a baseline level of knowledge about your offering, sales reps can have more productive, tailored conversations with hand raisers out of the gate. No more "tell me what you do" discovery calls.

3. Shortened Sales Cycles: Deals initiated by hand raisers tend to close much faster. According to Forrester, the average B2B deal cycle has increased 22% to 27% in duration over the past 5 years – except for those with proactively engaged buyers.

4. Higher Win Rates: Forrester also found that opportunities sourced from inbound hand raisers are 2.4x more likely to become closed won deals than those from outbound outreach.

5. Greater Customer Lifetime Value: Because hand raisers are more bought-in from the start, they tend to become better long-term customers. HubSpot found its inbound customers have a 23% higher lifetime value over 3 years.

To sum it up, hand raisers represent your most engaged, sales-ready buyers – and focusing on them can have an outsized impact on your bottom line. In fact, a 10% increase in lead quality can translate to a 40% increase in sales productivity.

How to Attract More Hand Raisers

So how can you get more of these elusive hand raisers to, well, raise their hands? Here are five proven strategies:

1. Create Irresistible Content Offers

When it comes to lead generation, content is king. But not just any content will do. To convert visitors into hand raisers, you need a highly valuable, relevant offer that solves a real problem or need. Think:

• Ultimate guides and toolkits
• Industry research and data reports
• Interactive calculators and assessments
• Template and worksheet bundles
• Certification and training courses

The trick is to make this content "gated" behind a lead capture form. Just be sure the value justifies the ask and keep the form as short as possible. As a general rule, ask for more info for higher value offers. For example:

• Ebook/Guide: Name and email
• Webinar: Name, email, company, job title
• Demo/Free Trial: Name, email, company, job title, phone number, use case info

2. Turn Up Targeted Paid Promotion

With so much noise online, even the best content can get lost in the shuffle. That‘s where paid promotion comes in. By boosting your content offers through targeted ads, you can get them in front of the right people at the right time.

The key is matching your messaging and content to the user‘s intent. For example, you could target these offers to:

• LinkedIn Sponsored Content to reach professionals by job title, skills, industry, etc.
• Google Search Ads targeting bottom-of-funnel keywords like "X software pricing"
• Facebook Lead Ads to capture interest from custom or lookalike audiences
• Retargeting display ads to stay top of mind with website visitors

Just be sure to tailor your creative and landing pages to each specific channel and audience for maximum resonance and conversion rate. Constantly test and iterate your copy, creative, targeting, and offers.

3. Optimize for Search Intent

While paid ads can drive a surge of leads, organic search traffic is the gift that keeps on giving. By creating SEO-optimized content around the questions and pain points your target buyers are searching for, you can attract a steady stream of qualified hand raisers to your site.

The first step is keyword research to understand what your buyers are searching for at each stage of their journey. For example:

• Early Stage: "How to improve team collaboration", "Project management software"
• Middle Stage: "Best project management tools", "Asana vs Monday", "Jira pricing"
• Late Stage: "Wrike demo", "ClickUp free trial", "Smartsheet onboarding"

Incorporate these terms naturally in your blog posts, landing pages, and content offers. Consider search intent and what information the user needs at each stage.

Other SEO best practices to follow:

• Optimize page titles and meta descriptions
• Improve page load speed and responsiveness
• Earn quality inbound links to priority pages
• Build a logical site architecture and navigation
• Create a Google Business Profile for local SEO

4. Capture Leads in the Moment

Once you‘ve driven all this qualified traffic to your site, you need to strike while the iron is hot and convert them in the moment. A few tried and true tactics:

• Exit Intent Pop-Ups: Detect when a visitor is about to leave your site and fire a pop-up with a relevant offer. Tools like OptinMonster make this easy to implement.

• Scroll-Based Overlays: Trigger an overlay CTA when a user has scrolled a certain percentage down the page, indicating higher engagement. Sumo is a popular tool here.

• Sticky Bars: Keep a prominent CTA front and center as the user scrolls with a sticky header or footer bar. Just don‘t overdo it and sacrifice user experience.

• Live Chat: Prompt high-intent visitors to start a conversation with a human or chatbot in real-time. Drift and Intercom are two strong options.

The key is to have multiple conversion points across your site and craft a compelling hook that aligns with the page context and user intent. Always be testing!

5. Drive Registration with Virtual Events

Webinars, demos, and virtual events are a fantastic way to attract hand raisers and accelerate the sales cycle. Livestorm found 73% of B2B marketers say webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads. To maximize attendance:

• Partner with influencers or brands with a relevant audience to expand your reach
• Offer both live and on-demand viewing options for flexibility
• Require registration but keep the form short and simple
• Send frequent reminders leading up to the event to limit no-shows
• Follow up afterwards with the recording and next steps while it‘s top of mind

Of course, the content itself has to deliver real value to keep your new hand raisers engaged. Collect feedback afterwards and act on it to optimize future events.

How to Convert Hand Raisers into Customers

You‘ve done the hard work to attract a steady stream of hand raisers – now it‘s time to engage and qualify them. Some best practices:

1. Follow Up Fast

Timing is everything when it comes to engaging inbound leads. Research from LeadResponseManagement.org found:

• Calling a lead within 5 minutes boosts conversion odds by 9x
• Waiting just 10 minutes drops conversion odds by 400%
• The average lead response time? Over 12 hours

To follow up faster, consider implementing:

• Automated lead routing and notifications to reps
• A standalone chat or messaging tool for your site
• Guidelines for response times by lead type and source
• Lead recycling to ensure no hand raiser goes untouched

2. Personalize Outreach

Nothing turns a hand raiser off more than getting a generic sales pitch that doesn‘t relate to their unique situation. Instead, leverage what you know about how they found you, what actions they‘ve taken, and any other context to tailor your messaging.

For example, reference the specific content offer they downloaded or the web pages they viewed. Ask about goals or challenges relating to that topic. Mention common connections or things you have in common based on their LinkedIn profile.

3. Respect the Research Process

Just because a hand raiser downloaded an ebook doesn‘t mean they‘re ready for a high-pressure sales conversation. Gartner found B2B buyers only spend 17% of their time actually talking to vendors when considering a purchase.

Instead, focus your initial outreach on starting a dialogue and gathering info. Ask open-ended questions to identify their largest priorities and where they‘re at in the evaluation process. Provide relevant info and resources, but hold off on a full demo or proposal until you‘ve determined they‘re a qualified opportunity.

4. Implement a Lead Scoring Model

Not all hand raisers are created equal. Lead scoring helps you prioritize who to contact first based on their likelihood to buy. Assign points to each lead based on attributes (title, company size, industry, etc.) and behaviors (content downloads, page visits, email clicks, etc.)

For example, you might assign points like:

• +10 for visiting a product or pricing page
• +5 for downloading a middle or bottom funnel offer
• +20 for viewing multiple pieces of product-specific content
• +30 for requesting a demo or free trial
• +50 for having a target job title or role

Set a threshold (e.g. 100 points) for a hand raiser to become sales qualified and get passed to your reps. Revisit your scoring criteria quarterly based on feedback and results.

5. Create a Sales and Marketing SLA

To make your hand raiser strategy really hum, sales and marketing must be lock-step. 60-70% of B2B content goes unused and 79% of leads never convert due to issues like poor lead quality and lack of sales follow-up.

Put a Service Level Agreement in place to outline things like:

• What defines a sales qualified hand raiser (lead scoring)
• How and when should leads get routed to reps
• Follow up SLAs for reps (e.g. all leads contacted in 24 hours)
• How disqualified leads will get recycled back to marketing
• What info should get passed back and forth in the CRM

Meet at least monthly to review performance against SLA metrics, optimize your lead management process, and drive accountability on both sides.

6. A/B Test and Track Everything

Taking a data-driven approach to converting hand raisers can have a big impact on results. A/B test things like your subject lines, messaging, and content offers. Track KPIs like:

• Click through and conversion rates on content offers
• Email open and response rates on outreach
• Call and meeting booking rates
• Opportunity creation rate from hand raisers
• Average days to conversion from first touch
• Hand raiser win and retention rates

Based on these results, double down on what‘s working and scrap or optimize what‘s not. Just be sure you have statistical significance before making a call.

Hand Raiser Success Stories

Many of today‘s leading B2B brands are leveraging hand raisers to drive greater sales efficiency and impact. Here are a few examples:

Okta

The enterprise identity provider generates 35% of closed deals from hand raisers attracted through personalized display ads. Okta targets key accounts with tailored messaging and content served up at the right time. The result? 5x higher engagement, 50% better CTRs, and a higher ROI than other channels.

DemandBase

The B2B marketing powerhouse drove 83,000 net new leads and $1M in new pipeline in just 12 months using its own account-based advertising platform. By promoting highly relevant content to target accounts across the web, they increased CTRs by 50% and reduced cost-per-lead by 75%.

DocuSign

The e-signature leader tripled its lead-to-opportunity conversion rate by leveraging LinkedIn‘s targeting capabilities to put content offers and webinar invites in front of the right decision-makers. DocuSign also tapped employees to share offers with their networks, driving 38% more company page views.

Conclusion

In a world where buyer attention is scarce and budgets are tight, hand raisers offer an efficient path to sales and marketing success. By attracting, engaging, and converting these proactive prospects, you can boost lead quality, shorten sales cycles, and drive greater ROI from your demand gen efforts.

Of course, it requires a strategic approach, strong execution, and tight alignment between marketing and sales to get it right. But the juice is more than worth the squeeze.

So go on, extend that (virtual) hand and start engaging those ready-to-buy prospects. Your quota will thank you.