The Process of Qualifying Leads

Every organization creates its own individual and unique environment that reflects its culture and priorities. Within a selling organization, there are few things more impressive than a consistently successful sales person. No doubt, the characteristics that differentiate top performers from their colleagues include natural talent and the ability to connect with their prospects. But in the world of complex, high-value B2B sales, there’s another factor that consistently contributes to these individuals’ successful careers:

They qualify their leads better than the rest

Qualifying techniques are the methods that your organization and sales team members use to determine who to sell to. Who qualifies for the expenditure of both the sales and support teams’ most precious resource - their time. For an organization, the best sales qualifying techniques include:

• Have a clearly defined profile of your ideal customer.
• Have a set of criteria that prospective customers must meet before you allocate resources. 
• Have a sales system or process to evaluate how customer's measure up.

When a sales organization qualifies prospects using an ideal customer profile, they are more likely to zero in on prospects with the best success opportunities and win the kind of customers’ business they most want. A set of criteria to sell to will help establish if a prospective opportunity deserves the salesperson’s and organization’s time and resources. And a sales system will enable a rapid qualifying of customers in or out of the sales pipeline. An organization that sets itself up with these qualifying techniques will sell more with less effort.

Qualifying is not just an event, it’s a process

Emerging salespeople typically believe that all business is good business and to an extent, that’s understandable. If you are trying to make a name for yourself and  being put under pressure by your sales manager to “make your numbers”, it is difficult to walk away from any opportunity if you believe you have the slightest chance of winning it. However, more seasoned professionals fully understand both the value and importance of rigorous objective qualification, not just at the front end but right through the sales cycle.

Qualification is a process, not a single event. Even internal and reactive salespeople should be fully skilled in asking a small number of basic questions regarding precise requirements, time scales, budget, competition etc before they are prepared to reveal their price and proposal. As the value of the product, service or solution increases, the depth of the qualification should increase proportionally.

But here’s some good news:  

In contrast to some of the other innate skills that set top sales performers apart, qualification can be taught. One could make a case that poor qualifications of leads is a sales management issue, rather than a selling skills shortfall. Top sales performers are effective because they ruthlessly refuse to waste their time on poorly qualified opportunities. How much more effective might your sales team be if you made it harder for them to waste your organization’s resources on deals that may never close, they can never win, or which simply aren’t worth the effort?

Some suggest only three factors matter...

When it comes to qualification, some experts suggest that only three things matter:

• Are they really likely to buy?
• Are you really likely to win?
• Is it really worth the effort?

Effectively Qualifying a Prospect

One way to approach qualifying prospects is to use a two-step process:

Step 1 – Initial Qualifying

Initial communications with a prospect may occur over a cold call, at a networking event, a call back from an inbound web lead, etc. Initial qualifying refers to the asking of questions to determine if it makes sense to keep talking or to meet at all. The key areas to focus on include: 

• Current Program: What are the current processes, systems, and vendors?
• Current Status: How are things going? Good, OK, or could be better?
• Organizational Roles: Is this the right person for us to talk to? If not, can the doors to the decision makers be opened?

Step 2 – Advanced Qualifying

Assuming the opportunity progresses to a meeting, advanced qualifying techniques are used to determine if this is a real deal and if a case can be made to move forward. To measure how qualified the prospect is and how high the probability is that they will purchase, questions in the following categories speak volumes to an opportunity’s appeal:

Why are you looking to make a change? Ask them to tell you why they are looking to change. The answer will tell you a lot in terms of the quality of the opportunity.

What is the impact of doing nothing? If the answer is that there is not a huge impact from maintaining status quo, then the quality of the opportunity is less as there is not enough pain and pain is a key motivator for change.

Is there an event that is dependent on this happening? Learn if there is some "compelling event" – a contract expiring, a current system being discontinued, an organizational change, etc.  

Who else are you looking at? It is valuable to inquire about other options and vendors the prospect is looking at.  

How do you feel about your other options? Explore to identify their level of interest in your competition.

What is the decision-making process? Find out if there is a path to quickly earn the sponsorship of the ultimate decision maker(s). The more power your contact has, the more qualified the opportunity is. With no direct path to the decision maker(s), there is no reason to proceed.

What evaluation criteria will determine the winning contractor? Learn if their goals and expectations congruent with your organization's strengths and “ideal customer” profile.

Ask the Right Questions of Your Sales Prospect

Many sales professionals say they still stick to the old IBM-pioneered approach to sales qualification known as BANT, which stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. It means you should feel out the sales prospect to see if your product or service is affordable to them, fits a need they have, can be delivered in a timeline that works for both parties, and that the person you're pitching to actually has the authority to make purchasing decisions. You want to make sure you're talking to the right person. 

The optimum approach to use the BANT standard is to make sure you're controlling the sales meeting and asking targeted questions. Experts say to avoid jumping in right away with your pitch and talking about how wonderful your company is; instead, sit back and ask some probing questions. Dropping your pitch too early is like turning the meeting over to the prospect, who then starts asking you the questions, potentially putting you on the defensive. A 2003 Gallup study showed people were 12 percent more likely to buy from someone who can create an emotional connection, which you can start doing from the first meeting.

Per one industry expert "It's really being able to tap into somebody's ego, their emotions, frustrations and concerns," he says. "I think most customers and prospects do want to talk if you ask them the right questions. When you start to talk about (your company’s) features and benefits, the prospect just tunes out." He suggests a three-tiered approach: he first asks about their decision-making process to find out who in the company makes the purchasing calls and its overall goals; then he asks about decision-making criteria, which helps weed out less serious prospects. Next, he asks about the criteria for the vendor they're looking for, which helps determine whether it's a high-value lead.

"The whole purpose is asking good questions so you take what might be a five or 10-minute conversation and expand it into 20 minutes or more," he says. “At the same time, you don't want to overwhelm the prospect with questions, because too many will turn them off.”

In Summary

Qualification of sales leads is a core competency that every professional salesperson should take on board as quickly as possible. Working to the maxim that “All business is good business” is unrealistic and beyond the pale in terms of cost ineffectiveness and misutilization of limited resources.

At the very highest selling levels i.e. strategic “big-ticket” selling and marketing, clearly the sales cycle is much more protracted, complex and typically moves through four stages:

1. Rigorous opportunity assessment
2. Development of an integrated, comprehensive strategy
3. Presentation of the solution and re-assessment of the opportunity
4. Award of the formal commitment 

Be it “big-ticket” opportunities or less complex, more basic opportunities pursuits, it takes just as long to work an unprofitable opportunity through the pipeline only to lose it at the end, as it does a profitable one; the ability to determine which is which, can have a huge impact on an organization’s success and a sales person’s ultimate effectiveness and contributions.