How to Qualify Your Sales Leads and Prospects Early in the Game

Does your prospect need your product?

Can they afford it?

Do they have the authority to purchase it?

And when are they looking to buy?

Qualifying sales leads and prospects by getting the answers to these questions up front can help you close more sales and keep you from wasting valuable time.

Prospect or window shopper?

How many of us have looked at vacations we can’t afford, ogled over cars we’ll never buy or tried on the expensive Louboutin pumps just because we’re curious?

We all do it. Window shopping is fun.

But if you’re the salesperson, it’s easy to get excited when someone “shows interest” … only to be disappointed later when you find out you’ve spent a lot of time “selling” someone who either doesn’t have the authority, isn’t really interested (at least not anytime soon), or can’t afford your product or service.

The process of qualifying your sales leads can feel awkward if you’re new to the sales game. But it’s critical in helping you decide where to spend your time and effort.

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Here are several ways to help you qualify prospects:

1. Asking a few very basic qualifying questions early in your conversations with prospects can help weed out low-potential or no-potential sales prospects.  If you’re on the phone with a prospect who’s shown interest by agreeing to an appointment, one way to ensure you're dealing with a decision maker is to simply tell the prospect that you’ll be following up with an email confirming the appointment, and asking: “Are there other individuals you would want to include in this meeting who might be involved in a decision like this?” You can also allude to the price by saying: “We have a number of different options in the range of x and y amount, is there a specific budget you’re working with for this?”
2. Checking out the company or your prospect’s online profile is another quick way to identify if you’ve got a decision maker on the line. Finding your prospect on LinkedIn will help give you information about his or her title, place of employment, etc. Spending a little upfront time exploring an organization’s website can help you determine if your service or product is a fit.
3. Creating a website application or quiz could also help you qualify leads, suggests Laura Farkas for socialmediaexaminer.com. The first question in the quiz could be: “What attracted you to our site?” with answer options being: A - Just looking for free information;  B – Curious about ____ ; or C – Ready to start something new. The quiz could include conditional branching questions that help qualify prospects or lead them to better information if they’re simply window shopping.

For your specific product or service, there may be other information to gather that will help you determine a quality prospect. Number of employees, location, turnover figure, annual revenue, etc., could be factors in whether your product is a good fit. You’ll need to ask a few questions in a curious kind of way. It’s not an interrogation. So simply frame these questions as fact finding, so you can come to a meeting prepared. Save the full needs assessment for that meeting.