Your sales team qualifies a significant number of leads every month, right?
And a significant number get rejected, too. Out of all the prospects who are âqualified' as buyers, some may not actually be.
Sales teams waste time and resources reaching out to potential customers who are not buyers. There is also the risk that you might waste your resources on leads that donât convert. That's why it's important to have a sales lead qualification checklist, which will help you avoid these risks.
This article will look at the best and most effective sales lead qualification checklist. You can use this list to increase your sales team's productivity while driving down the cost of sales.
Let's start with the basics.
Lead qualification is a process that involves determining whether a prospect matches the ideal customer profile you createdâand how likely it is to become an actual, paying customer (even better if thereâs a chance of becoming one who buys from you again).
You can qualify leads by gathering all the information you possibly can about them. This will help you separate promising leads from those not likely to pan out so your resources (time/money) arenât wasted on dead ends.
Prioritizing high-quality leads will maximize your conversion rate and help you establish relationships with leads eager to use your product or service.
The lead qualification has become a necessity in the digital world. Here are some of the main reasons why you should qualify leads:
When youâre focused on finding new clients, it can be easy to get distracted by all the people interested in your product or service but not likely to buy. Qualifying leads will help you eliminate those who arenât likely to convert into customers and focus on those who are.
Qualified leads are more likely to convert into paying customers as they genuinely are interested in your product or service. By focusing on qualifying leads, youâll be able to increase your conversion rates over time and grow your business more quickly.
Lead qualification can help you to segment your leads based on their needs, buying habits, and budget, allowing you to create targeted marketing campaigns that are more effective.
By focusing on the most promising leads, lead qualification can help you increase your return on investment, as you are investing your resources in the most likely to convert leads.
Lead qualification can help you personalize the relationship with your leads, ensuring that they are provided with relevant information and offers to help them in their buying journey. Once you have qualified leads, you can send them content like a personalized demo that is relevant to their needs, interests, and goals. This will help you to build a relationship with your leads and increase their trust in your brand.
Lead qualification criteria can be defined as determining whether a lead is ready to be passed on to sales. Your lead qualification criteria should be based on your goals and objectives and help you identify the leads who are most likely to convert into paying customers.
Itâs important to define what qualifies as a good lead in your industry so that your sales teams work towards the same goal.
Below are the 5 lead qualification criteria that you can consider:
BANT is a lead qualification framework for budget, authority, need, and timeline. Many sales teams use it to help them determine whether a lead is qualified for further action. BANT criteria can be used with other lead qualification criteria, such as industry or company size.
Itâs a great way to determine whether a lead should be passed on to sales, as it requires the following information:
If a lead meets all of these criteria, itâs fair to say they are qualified for sales. However, BANT can also be used as a âfilterâ on leads that donât meet all four criteria. If your lead doesnât show any signs of budgeting, authority, need, or timeline (BANT), they probably arenât ready to buy anything from you.
Pros
Cons
MEDDIC is a lead qualification framework widely used in B2B sales. The acronym stands for:
MEDDIC is a more comprehensive lead qualification framework as it helps to identify the buyer's pain points, the decision-making process, the budget, and the key players involved in the process. It allows sales teams to understand the customer's needs and tailor their sales pitch accordingly.
However, MEDDIC can be more time-consuming to implement and may require more effort to gather all the necessary information. Still, it will help improve the chances of closing a sale and increase the customer's lifetime value.
Pros
Cons
The CHAMP lead qualification framework is designed to help sales teams identify the most promising leads and focus their efforts on those most likely to make a purchase. By understanding the customer's specific challenges, decision maker, budget, priorities, and timeline, sales teams can tailor their sales pitch and approach to better align with the customer's needs.
It stands for:
CHAMP is a simple and straightforward framework, making it easy to implement and follow. Â
However, the CHAMP framework only focuses on lead qualification's basic and essential elements. It does not include understanding the decision-making process or the identification of the champions within the customer's organization. Sales teams have to consider using a more comprehensive lead qualification framework, such as MEDDIC, for a more detailed understanding of the customer's needs.
Pros
Cons
GPCTBA/C&I lead qualification framework is designed to help sales teams identify the most promising leads and focus their efforts on those most likely to make a purchase. By understanding the customer's specific goals, plans, challenges, budget, decision maker, current situation, needs, and potential impact, sales teams can tailor their sales pitch and approach to better align with the customer's needs.
This framework helps to understand the customer's current situation, which is important for positioning your product or service to meet their specific needs. However, this framework is more detailed and complex than other lead qualification frameworks like BANT, CHAMP, and MEDDIC; it may take more time to implement and follow.
Pros
Cons
FAINT lead qualification framework is designed to help sales teams identify the most promising leads by focusing on the customer's budget, decision maker, interest, needs, and timeline. By understanding the customer's budget and decision maker, sales teams can determine if the customer has the financial resources and authority to purchase.
This framework is a bit simpler than other lead qualification frameworks like GPCTBA/C&I, BANT, and MEDDIC; it can be implemented and followed more easily. It also focuses on the key elements essential for closing a sale. However, this framework doesn't include other important elements like the customer's goals, plans, challenges, current situation, and potential impact, which are considered in other frameworks.
Pros
Cons
This lead qualification checklist is a template that can be used to assess the quality of leads. It helps you qualify the leads and identify which ones are ready for a sales follow-up. This will help your team focus on only those leads with the highest probability of converting into customers.
Answering these questions will help you develop a solid lead qualification plan. This will help ensure that you are spending your time and resources on the right leads so that you can focus on converting more of them into customers.
Lead qualification is the process of identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing leads to determine their potential as customers. It is important because it helps businesses focus their resources on the most promising leads and increase the chances of closing deals.
The lead qualification process typically involves steps such as identifying leads, gathering information about the leads, evaluating leads based on pre-determined criteria, prioritizing leads based on their potential, and assigning leads to the appropriate sales team members.
The lead qualification process can be improved by creating a clear and consistent lead qualification process, implementing lead scoring and routing, regularly reviewing and refining lead qualification criteria, and training your team on effective lead qualification techniques.
If your lead knows the features of your product, you can ease the qualification process, as they will have an idea of what they are getting into. If a lead is fully aware of the benefits of your product, they will be more likely to continue down the sales funnel.
These leads are called "product-qualified leads." They are more likely to convert, meaning you can spend less time qualifying leads and more time closing deals. And you can get these leads by leveraging the power of an interactive product demo.
It helps you showcase the features and benefits of your product interactively. Itâs a great way to engage with potential customers and build trust by showing them concrete examples of how they can use your product in their daily lives.
With Storylane, you can create an interactive product demo with a no-code editor. You can share it via email, social media, and your website. Itâs an effective tool to help you promote your brand and generate leads.
Storylane comes with auto personalization and advanced analytics to give all the essential tools that help you qualify your leads and convert them into customers.
Want to know how Storylane can help you get more leads and grow your business? Schedule a free demo and see how Storylane can help you create an interactive product demo that will help you get more leads. Â