The Importance of Lead Qualification

The Importance of Lead Qualification and Discovery 

I feel very strongly about this subject and there is no hiding from this fact.

For me this is a massively important part of the sales cycle and not only do I believe that proper lead qualification is important but that it must be done very early in the sales cycle.

In brief, here is why proper and full lead qualification & discovery at the beginning of the sales process is vital:

1)  NEXT!

Mike Brooks, Mr Inside Sales, has many podcasts. I have listened to most of them. They are great and I recommend them to you all.

One of my absolute favorite ones is all about learning to say “NEXT”. It is about learning when to move on and realize that your time can and should be spent in a better manner with a different lead.

The concept here is that many sales reps spend too long with prospects only to find out at a late stage that it is not a good fit for whatever reason. This should have been something they knew about from the start!

I personally still hear far too many stories about people giving demos to prospects before even asking them what their need is, or stories of sales reps spending months or even years trying to close a deal only to find out at the end that they are dealing with the wrong person.

2) Keeping the Sales team focused on what they do best

This point is very similar to the one above, but I am looking at it from the point of view of those companies that split the lead qualification process separately from the deal closing section of the sales cycle. (as mentioned in my first blog “Sales Development & Inside Sales Definitions”).

The main benefit of using this ‘slice & dice’ model is to allow the more experienced Sales team to focus on good quality leads that are ready to enter into the sales cycle proper. It would be a complete shame if they are wasting too much time prospecting, chasing shadows and qualifying inbound & outbound leads instead of focusing their energies on closing the deals that are already in their sales pipeline.

3)    Prepare for Value Alignment and Objection Handling stages in Sales Cycle

The great thing about qualifying a lead thoroughly and correctly is that it allows you to fully prepare for all the future sections of the Sales Cycle and Sales process. By learning about the prospect's pains we can fully align the Value Proposition in future conversations. By learning about the Decision Making Process and their needs & requirements, we can prevent future objections. 

The aim is to make later life easier for yourself, and for the closer, by gathering all the necessary information at this qualification and discovery stage.  

4)  Feedback

I manage a Sales Development team and we are mainly judged by our bottom line numbers. That’s just the way sales teams are judged.

However, one of the other main benefits we bring to the table is that we can give feedback to other departments. (I will hopefully write a full blog just on this subject in the near future)

a.       Sales: By fully qualifying the lead and finding out exactly what their requirements are, what is their timing and who the real decision maker is, the sales team (whether that is the same rep or handed over to a different rep) will be able to direct the conversation correctly and focus his pitch in the on the right subjects and in the best way.

b.      Marketing: By fully qualifying leads the marketing department can learn more about the leads they are generating and thus improve the quality of their lead generation campaigns. Also during these conversations, frequently asked questions or industry specific jargon may be used at this stage of the process that can help the Marketing team with the messaging they use on their website or in their nurturing collateral.

c.       Product Management: When a lead tells us what their exact requirements & needs are, we can give this feedback to the Product team, thus helping them with future versions or feature requests. This is especially true for the unqualified leads (which, in reality, are usually the majority of leads) as maybe they are unqualified because they are looking for a solution that is not yours. The Product team can then decide whether or not there is something that can be engineered to provide a solution for all these people. 

In future blogs I will discuss in more detail how to qualify leads thoroughly and what criteria to use.