Often Sales qualification is looked at as just another elimination stage of the sales process.
However, the sales qualification decision is the most vital step and can be pretty tricky too. While deciding whether the potential lead is a good fit for your product/ service feels like a simple step, completing that requires sales qualification.
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Asking the right questions to understand the lead’s requirements better is helpful to determine the appropriate next step. Now that we know the importance of sales qualification, we can discuss the fundamentals, framework, and pointers that enable the sales team to disqualify the potential lead.
Sales qualification
An effective sales process helps determine the fitment of the leads/ prospects at a much earlier stage and avoids any issues that may lead to the failure of the sales process.
It is critical to ascertain the interest level of the prospective customer and their fitment with the product/ service. Failing to follow the sales qualification process leads to the team talking to hundreds of prospects with a single digit to zero conversion.
Importance of sales qualification
Sales qualification helps teams determine whether it is worth pursuing the lead and spending time on it. The lack of it leads to spending a humongous amount of time on a prospect who may not be an excellent fit for the product/ service offered due to various factors ranging from budgetary constraints to organizational challenges.
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The Sales qualification process helps identify the interest level and other helpful information about the prospective lead, thereby saving time and effort for the sales team.
- Sales qualification helps to determine
- When to part ways with the potential lead
- Use segmentation to focus on qualified leads
- Enables to offer a personalized experience.
- A better understanding of the buyer’s needs.
- Better conversion rate
While lack of conversion is the first and foremost reason sales qualification is essential, it also helps offer a customized solution and avoid challenges like cancellations, refunds, and negative feedback on social media channels.
Lead Qualification Process
Lead generation usually depends on the size and nature of the business. While some companies have marketing, acquisition, and a few other specific teams that churn out the pool of leads, smaller businesses depend on website form submissions for the lead pool.
Types of leads
- Leads that lack nurturing cannot move to the sales team and will become unqualified leads.
- Leads qualified to receive the marketing communication through content offers and email campaigns are termed as Marketing Qualified Leads.
- The sales-qualified leads are those that are ready for the next steps of the sales process.
- Leads that sign up for a free trial or have begun the freemium subscription for the product/ service are termed Product Qualified leads.
- Prospective leads that have submitted a form or clicked on the call button are termed Conversion Qualified Leads.
- All these types of leads undergo a set of questions to determine whether the sales team is a good fit for the product/ service offered. Then, while the qualified leads move to the next steps in the sales process, the disqualified leads are transferred to a nurturing round, enabling the prospect to warm up to the idea of the product (this may or may not result in purchases).
- Qualifying questions, prospects, and frameworks that are helpful to qualify leads.
Qualified prospect
A prospect, once qualified by the sales team, successfully moves through the sales pipeline. While all sales calls include the qualification process, there is no specific start/end time. Evaluation of the prospects happens at every step of the sales process, beginning from the discovery call.
Sales representatives qualify prospects at the organizational, opportunity, and stakeholder levels. The organization-level of prospect qualification is the first and foremost level. Organizations tend to design a prerequisite list, making it easy for the sales team to reference them and match the buyer persona before making the qualifying call.
Demographic-based questions like industry, territory, company size, and buyer persona are a few factors to consider before deciding.
Opportunity-Level Qualification
At this level, the sales representative tries to understand whether the prospect has a need/ challenge that the product/ service can help address. To determine whether the product offered would be helpful to the potential or not, the sales reps are required to ask questions like :
Whether the prospect is familiar with the product
Does the product help to solve their challenges
Is there a team or an individual that would be using the product?
Stakeholder-Level Qualification
Most often than not, sales reps miss this critical area of scrutiny. The point of contact interacting may or may not be the decision-maker. While this is not a deal-breaker, It helps to ascertain the information through questions like :
- Is it within the budget?
- Who is the key decision-maker?
- What are the criteria for the purchase decision?
Disqualifying prospects
Sales reps must keep a close eye on the buyer persona and its fitment with the organization’s requirements. The budget and decision-making capabilities of the point of contact are also a few other pointers that help disqualify the prospects.
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Interacting with an executive who cannot make the buying decision, spending time on a prospect you do not yet serve, and convincing a prospective lead who cannot afford the product is a mere waste of time and results in a trickling sales pipeline.
Therefore, it is best to eliminate/disqualify prospects based on these pointers and not waste both parties’ time and efforts.
Identifying the good signs and red flags through sales qualification
While qualifying/disqualifying potential leads is essential for successful closure, it is equally vital to design a framework that enables the sales representatives to decide.
Businesses of all types and sizes use the BANT framework to qualify/ disqualify prospects efficiently.
Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline are a few areas based on which every sales rep must qualify/ disqualify the prospect.
Budget – Can the prospect afford to buy the product/ service
Authority – Is the point of contact the key decision-maker in the buyer decision.
Need – Does the prospect/prospect’s company need the product to address their problem.
Timeline: What is the timeline that the prospect is looking to buy the product?
Conclusion
A study suggests that a B2B buying process involves up to seven decision-makers, and 90% of the buyer journey takes place before the buyer and the sales rep interact.
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While this may vary from business to business, it is vital to empower the sales reps with the correct data and a predefined framework to make the right decision of qualifying/ disqualifying leads accordingly.
Designing the sales qualification framework based on factors like the budget, timeline, key decision-maker, and need of the potential customer enables the sales reps to eliminate efficiently. It helps to develop a healthy sales pipeline and ensures an excellent conversion rate.
Whatever the design of the process, eliminating the unsuitable prospects at every step helps build a solid sales pipeline and avoid any negative remarks on the social media channels, thereby enabling a trustworthy brand.
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