Qualifying Sales Leads Questions to Save Time and Convert Better

When I discussed the 7 characteristics of a successful salesperson, one of the traits I highlighted was that of being lazily energetic. The salesperson with this ability is efficient with his or her time, and often astounds colleagues with a higher than average cold call success.

In truth, this success is more reliant on their ability to ask qualifying questions of their sales leads rather than pure natural talent. Ensuring that these questions are considered early in the cold calling process will increase the success of your whole team and ignite sales.

Qualify your leads in five areas as early as possible

Inexperienced salespeople falsely believe that making sales requires a full sales call every time. The lazily energetic salesperson would never work this way. He or she knows that there is a far better way of approaching cold calling. He or she instead uses qualifying sales leads questions to sieve out the poor leads early in the sales process.

By asking the following five questions early, underachieving salespeople will see their cold calling results transformed:

Question 1: Does the lead have a need?

The best salespeople will identify the challenges faced by a customer and present a solution that helps the customer conquer those challenges. The salesperson must therefore be aware of the most pressing challenges the customer faces, and pitch a product or service that offers the solution. If the customer doesn’t have a need for the product or service being sold, there is no point in continuing and wasting valuable time.

Question 2: Is the solution a unique one?

It is not enough to have a solution, it must be the solution. Ensure that the lead is not already using an alternative product or service to help solve their challenges.

Question 3: Does the lead have the budget in place to make a deal?

Some targets will continue as long as possible with a cold call in order to pick brains or garner free information. Find out if there is an allocated budget, when the budget year starts, and if there would be the finances available for a viable solution.

Question 4: Is the sales lead in a position to influence a buying decision?

The salesperson needs to speak to the person who holds the purse strings or can influence spending decisions. There may be other people that need to be involved in the conversations, too, and this should be established early on. (Doing so allows the salesperson to create a strategy to draw these people into the process.)

Question 5: What timeline is the lead working to?

Providing the salesperson is talking to the decision maker, with the budget available, and a unique solution has been offered to a challenge that needs solving, then understanding the lead’s timeline is the last of the qualifying sales leads questions that needs answering.

A lead that has recently signed a deal with a competitor becomes very cold very quickly, though may be worth a call in the future. However, if the lead then says the solution is urgently required, the sale is almost ready to be signed.

Igniting the ROI of cold calling

These five qualifying sales leads questions, once practiced and perfected, can be executed quickly (and usually on the first call). Time and resources are saved, and the increase in sales rates leads to greater revenues, lower costs, improved margins, and a happier sales team.

Once the sales lead has been qualified, the salesperson will be ideally placed to move onto making the proposal and closing.

Our integrity selling course will help your sales team onboard new skills and hone those skills to perfection. The result will be a high impact sales team on an exponential sales curve. Contact us today to discuss how to propel your sales team to qualified success.