Let’s talk about the qualifying process. Qualifying prospects is an essential part of a fluid sales process for a couple of reasons. One, we don’t want to spend too much time on unqualified leads or tire-kickers. Two, we don’t want inflated pipelines, full of leads that aren’t actually going anywhere.
Costs of a Crappy Qualifying Process
Organizations have endless ways to collect leads in 2024 – social media, website forms, trade shows. For some, leads can be pouring in from every direction. More leads looks great on paper.
But, not everyone who stumbles across your site or booth is anywhere close to buying. Some are just window shopping, others won’t have a problem that your product can solve. Hell, some “leads” are just another seller using your forms to get a hold of you. If you’re one of them, stop now, it’s incredibly annoying.
Sales teams cannot chase every lead. That’s just setting fire to their time and their time is literally money. Every hour a seller spends chasing a poor lead is an hour they could’ve spent working on a deal that could actually close.
As a leader, I can promise you, nothing sucks the life out of a sales team faster than being forced to chase a dead end. A sloppy qualification process is annoying and expensive. Organizations will bleed money, run their best sellers into the ground, and miss out on legitimate revenue without a solid framework to qualify.
Qualification Frameworks
Ask 100 sellers for their qualification framework of choice and you’ll probably get 100 different answers. Some swear by BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing), others prefer MEDDIC or MEDDPICC, and then you’ve got the folks who have built their own.
The problem with these approaches? They’re overkill and often ignore the core elements that make a lead worth pursuing.
What makes a lead actually qualified? First, engagement. A qualified lead must be engaged with you. They have to be willing to peel back the curtains, roll up their sleeves, and dive into the discovery journey with you.
Tire-kickers won’t give you this level of commitment, take them out of the rotation immediately. Prospects who are willing to put in the time to explore your offering are the leads you should spend your time with.
The alphabet soup I mentioned earlier, they don’t measure engagement. You could check each of their boxes and still have an unqualified lead plugging the pipeline because they refuse to engage with you in a meaningful way.
Qualifying Leads the Simple Way
It boils down to four simple questions:
1. Is there a problem?
2. Does the customer acknowledge that the problem exists?
3. Can our product or service fix the problem?
4. Is the prospect willing to work with you to solve it.
That’s it. But, you need all four.
Unfortunately, sometimes you’ll tick each of these boxes, the customer seems interested, but there’s still something off. Maybe the gap between where they are and where they want to be isn’t quite big enough. That’s when you need to have the awareness and confidence to walk away.
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