How to Qualify Sales Leads & Prospects

Qualifying leads and prospects is an important first step for anyone's sales process. To be effective in selling you must have a good start and become as productive as possible in identifying qualified leads. This article will lead you through a step-by-step process of where to go for leads, how to get them, and finally, how to get them to buy.

Why You Need to Qualify Sales Leads and Prospects

Qualifying leads and prospects plays a very significant role in selling. Without a solid prospect list, it will be difficult to build a sales territory. Finding potential prospects is one of the most critical phases of a salesperson's work. If a salesperson is not vigilant, they will lose the potential customers to aggressive competitors.

Sales prospecting has been compared to panning for gold. Just as a prospector digs for the gold, using their pick and pan, the sales prospector must also look for qualified prospects using their sales tools.

How do you find prospects who are qualified to purchase and have an immediate need to buy? That is how the sales process starts.

Here are two examples of how this works to your advantage.

Being Relevant

A salesperson worked for a business magazine in a major city. Each week the editorial staff covered a specific market segment in their Sunday edition; that is, one week they focused on insurance companies; next week they covered banks; the third week they would cover the computer industry, etc.

The salesperson, knowing the editorial schedule, contacted all local computer-related organizations two months before the start of that last editorial segment and sold the advantages of paid advertising in the computer edition of the magazine.

The magazine, in a way, did the prospecting for them. However, it was the salesperson who went out to qualify those leads and found out who in the computer market was interested in advertising in the magazine.

Being First

Another effective prospector was the printing salesperson who sold customized letterheads, business cards, pads, catalogues, and brochures. They offered good printing capabilities at competitive prices. They quickly found out that they had a tough competition with other printing organizations, some of which had been in the marketplace for a long time and were quite reputed.

Undaunted, they decided to identify new businesses since those businesses would have the need for the salesperson's services, and they would be able to avoid the competition. For their prospect list, they checked the local chamber of commerce office and sought out the listing of new businesses that had recently been registered.

In this way, they made sure to be the first salesperson to contact them. And the salesperson brought many suggestions on how they could get quality printing at competitive rates.

Every single prospect became a strong potential customer for them. With their innovative prospecting method, they found out a lot of new potential buyers and six out of ten bought their printing services.

You Need a Plan to Find Qualified Sales Leads

To be successful in sales, you must have a plan to reach those prospects who are qualified to buy from you. This plan includes these important steps:

1. Finding the buyers
2. Qualifying the prospects
3. Finding the leads
4. Qualifying leads as buyers

Let's get into detail.

1. Finding the Buyers

Finding the right prospects is the key to successful selling. There are a few ways to get the required leads. The following techniques have been tested and proven by a lot of salespeople:

Referrals

Successful salespeople know the value of a prospect referred by an existing client satisfied with your products or services. This prospect is easier to sell to than a new lead who knows little about your organization. Qualifying them should be easier than qualifying a sales lead from a cold call.

Obtaining a referral needs skill. Simply asking, ‘Do you know anyone who can use my product/service?’ won't always work. With this question, you ask your client to judge whether someone they know is ready to buy your product or service. In many cases, they simply won't know.

A better way of getting new prospects is asking whether they belong to any professional organizations, social clubs, community associations etc. If the client's building has other offices, ask if they know anyone else there. The logic behind this is simple. Most of us surround ourselves with people with similar interests, needs, preferences and pastimes. By asking for referrals in this way, your client only has to give you names and not make any judgment calls.

The best time to ask for referrals is immediately after the sale. At this point the customer's enthusiasm, satisfaction, and confidence in you is at its maximum. Still, because referrals are so important in selling, stay in contact with old clients. Call them from time to time to see how they are doing; stop in to see them occasionally; send them birthday or seasonal greeting card and let them know you always remember them.

Networking

This is a method whereby you become your own center of influence. You ask your friends, relatives, neighbors, associates, lawyers, auto mechanic, religious leaders, athletes, influential personalities etc., and get from them names of the potential buyers for your product or services. You never know where the next lead or prospect will come from.

Smart salespeople maximize their contacts through networking by joining social organizations that bring them in close contacts with the potential buyers. These salespeople increase their exposure in these organizations by becoming active members. Whatever you do, wherever you go, be sure your business cards are readily available.

Trading Leads

An excellent method of prospecting is to set up a system whereby you can trade sales leads with other salespeople who sell in the same market as you do. Perhaps a printing salesperson who sees thirty people a week might be an excellent source for getting new prospects.

Another example would be the person who sells vacuum cleaners. They might be a valuable source of leads for salespersons who sell appliances. By analyzing who your prospects are, you can list all the other products or services they might need. After this list is complete, you can then try to set up a trading network between you and other salespeople.

Lists and Directories

• Lists. Smart salespeople know the value of lists of businesses and people in their day-to-day prospecting. These lists are readily available through US sources such as local Chambers of Commerce, newspapers, professional organizations, trade associations and social clubs.

• Business Directories. There are certain directories that list businesses and even individuals by industry. While you can promote your own business with them, they are also excellent sources. Take time to learn how to effectively use directories, and it will pay great dividends for you in time and money. You can also use DirJournal's curated US business directory to identify prospects by industry and location.

There are two types of business directories that are useful as sources of prospects:

Trade Directories allow you to prospect in a specific industry. These trade-wise directories list all the important details about a particular organization. They can include company size, type of business, location and contact details. Thomasnet is an excellent example of a trade-wise directory.

Specialized Directories list individuals according to profession. For example, the State Bar of California's Attorney Search lists attorneys; the Medical Board of California's license lookup lists doctors in California.

It would be virtually impossible to list all of the sources that you can go to. There is an enormous amount of source material available that can be invaluable to the salesperson who is willing to seek it out. Business and Industrial directories can guide you in finding prospects.

Prospecting by Telephone

The telephone is a very helpful sales tool. A lot of salespeople do not take advantage of the telephone. Successful salespeople know that telephone is an effective tool in seeking and reaching prospects.

Before cold calling consumers, check the National Do Not Call Registry and the FTC's and FCC's rules, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

There are some basics in using the telephone as a sales lead generator. When using the telephone, be conscious of how you sound and the words that you use. A prospect you are calling for the first time only has your voice and does not have the advantage of seeing you, your product, brochures or other sales aids. So, if they hear a voice that is low, boring, monotonous, or has poor diction, they most likely will cut the conversation short.

Tips for Prospecting by Telephone

Sound enthusiastic when speaking to a prospect. Enunciate clearly and choose your words carefully. Try to paint a clear mental picture of opportunity to your prospect. This is a time for you to get to know the prospect; therefore, make sure to keep their interest on the telephone.

For telephone prospecting to be effective, you must have a set time each day when you will make your calls. If you are not disciplined in your telemarketing, it will become a hit-or-miss situation for you and will be a waste of time for you.

The important thing is to get the name of the right person for you to contact. Introduce yourself and explain the purpose of your call honestly. For example, ‘Hello Alex, this is Taylor from Brightline Printing. I'm calling about your upcoming office move and the printed materials you'll need. Could you put me through to Jordan Lee?’ If Jordan is unavailable, ask for a suitable time to call back.

Canvassing

Canvassing can be an effective tool in prospecting for leads. This technique is best used when you are finished with a sales call and you are in an office building with time before your next scheduled appointment. Many office buildings restrict soliciting, so call ahead or meet prospects at events and coworking spaces where networking is welcome.

Walk into other offices that you think can use what you are selling and introduce yourself. You might get an opportunity to speak with a prospect. At least, you can find out who the prospect is, leave your business card and let them know that you will follow up with a telephone call.

Direct Mail

Another way of getting and qualifying sales leads is to use the mail for sending brochures, letters or samples with a note attached stating that you will be calling for an appointment. The negative side to this approach is that people in business often call it ‘junk mail.’ However, here is how you can make yourself different from others:

Hand-write the name and address of the prospect on the envelope. Successful salespeople often hand write a personal letter on plain paper without a letterhead. This method will at least get the prospect to read the first few lines to find out who you are. If you are smart in your approach, you will get them to read the entire letter and not dismiss it as another piece of junk mail.

To be successful, you must follow-up your direct mail campaign with a phone call. This will increase your chances of getting an appointment and will serve as a vital part of your prospect qualification process. If you get the appointment, there may be a need for your product. Remember that direct mail should be used to supplement your prospecting method and should never be used as a standalone method to gain new prospects and sales leads. The same targeting and relevance principles apply to cold email, which must also comply with CAN-SPAM.

Shows and Exhibitions

A good place to get prospects is at trade shows and exhibitions. These are usually industry-sponsored and potential prospects attend them. They give you excellent opportunities to follow-up the prospects you meet face-to-face at the show.

Consumer shows are different. These are not usually industry-sponsored and are usually open to the public. They can be auto shows, home-improvement shows, book fairs etc. However, if you are selling a product or service that is consumer-oriented, these shows will be a good place to meet prospects.

Either type of show draws a lot of people and where there are people, there are prospects. Pick the ones that will benefit you most.

Newspapers

The news can also be used for prospecting. They give you very valuable information about people and their companies.

They report on who has been hired, promoted and who is moving into the area. Employment ads in them might mean the company - or a specific department of it - is expanding. Also follow job-change alerts through LinkedIn Sales Navigator, set up Google Alerts for target companies, and watch company press releases and funding announcements. These can help you spot new decision-makers or plans for expansion.

Employee Turnover

If a salesperson leaves your company, the lists of prospects and sales leads they leave behind might be a helpful tool for your own prospecting efforts. Ask the sales manager if you can go through the list and contact those prospects who may be helpful to you.

If the prospect you call from this list tells you that they were not happy with the company, product or service, you can tell them that is the reason you have been given the account so that you could provide them with the best service possible.

Old Customers

Most product and services have a life cycle and it is your job to determine when your prospect will be in the market again. If you sell products with a predictable life cycle such as automobiles or air travel, you can build up an active client base and periodically you have another group of prospects.

If the product or service you sell has a long life cycle or is one-time sale, you can become the client's sole supplier by keeping in touch with them. When other people ask them where they can get a particular item or service, it will be you they remember - and refer prospects to you.

If there have been any improvements on the product or service, inform your customers. You might get them to upgrade. They are already qualified buyers and it is human nature to want the newest and the best, especially if the new product can save them money and time.

Testimonials

Testimonials can benefit many promotional activities including the use of brochures, direct mail, ads, or press releases. A testimonial is a statement by a satisfied client appreciating you and your services.

A typical testimonial might state: ‘Thanks for the excellent job you did on our sales training program. It was creatively executed and after just one month, we have realized an 18% increase in sales across the board. I thank you, my sales people and our president thanks you.’

Some people believe that the best testimonial is one that has not been solicited. This occurs when a satisfied client writes a letter thanking you for a job well done, with no prompting on your part.

Modern Prospecting Channels

LinkedIn gives you another way to research companies and the people who make buying decisions. Sales Navigator adds search filters, saved lead lists and alerts about changes such as a contact moving to a new job. Use that information to make your approach relevant to the person's responsibilities.

A customer relationship management system, or CRM, helps you keep track of those contacts. Lead scoring lets you prioritize prospects by combining how well they fit your target customer profile with their actions, such as visiting your website or requesting a meeting. Treat the score as a starting point for qualification.

Useful articles, guides and webinars can also bring interested people to you. A marketing-qualified lead, or MQL, has met your marketing team's criteria for passing to sales. A sales-qualified lead, or SQL, has been reviewed by sales and identified as a potential customer. A download alone does not establish that someone is ready to buy.

Virtual events offer another place to meet prospects. Use registration details and questions raised during the session to plan a useful follow-up and agree on the next step.

2. Qualifying Your Prospects

To be successful in prospecting you must first identify, then qualify your prospects. One way is to ask yourself where you can find the maximum number of qualified prospects in the minimum period of time.

Your answer should guide you to the right direction. For example, the person who must use a cleaning product for dentures is someone who wears dentures. One obvious source for this market would be the dentists in your area.

If you are interested in brand loyalty, give samples of your product to the dentists who in turn will give them to their patients who are your prospects. The fact that the dentist is giving the samples out adds to the credibility of your product. Detail salespeople for pharmaceutical firms have been doing this for years.

To be successful in qualifying prospects, you have to ask yourself a number of questions. The salesperson who asks enough right questions of the right people in the right places will always have plenty of qualified prospects.

• ‘Who, where and why?’ are first three qualifying questions. They'll show you how to find quality prospects.
• ‘What?’ is designed to help you target your presentation.
• ‘When?’ can save you time and maximize your energies in the qualification process.
• ‘How?’ questions, finally are perhaps the most crucial of all the questions. Many of their answers will evolve from the other five questions. Here are the questions in more detail.

Who?

A few excellent ‘who’ questions you might consider using in order to convert ‘suspects’ into highly qualified prospects are:

• Need. Who has the most obvious need for your products or services?
• Description. Who are the ideal prospects? Don't limit yourself to existing customers. Describe in detail on a piece of paper who your ideal prospects are.
• Money. Who has the money to buy your products or services immediately?
• Urgency. Who has the most urgent need to buy your products?
• Influence. Who has influence on the prospects you are able to identify?

Where?

By asking enough ‘where’ questions, you should be able to qualify prospects beyond your current client list.

• Location. Where do your ideal prospects live, work, socialize, worship or play?
• Lists. Where can you find useful mailing lists of people who fit your ideal prospect profile?
• Directories. Where can you find directories from which you can form your own lists?
• Places. Where could you go to contact new prospects?

Why?

By using ‘why’ questions, you can set up priorities so as not to waste your time in qualifying prospects.

• Reasons. Why would the prospect be likely to buy your product or service?
• Resistance. Why would the prospect resist buying your product or service?
• Timing. Why might this be a good (or bad) time to approach the prospect?
• Motivation. Why would this person be likely to set up an appointment with you?

What?

These questions, if properly used, can boost your qualifying average.

• Biggest plus. What will the prospect find most beneficial about your product or service?
• Biggest problem. What is the single biggest problem the prospect has?
• Data. What information could you present?
• Questions. What questions could you ask to get the prospect to talk about their needs?
• Missing info. What more do you need to know about the prospect?
• Before meeting. What information should you gather about the prospect before you meet with them?

When?

This question is about timing. Do not try to set up an appointment for your own convenience.

• Busy times. When is the best time to contact a prospect? An important hint: If they are a busy executive, it's never on a Monday morning!
• Lows. When is the least productive time from the prospect's viewpoint?
• Availability. When is the prospect most likely to give you the time you need?
• Follow-up. When should you contact the prospect again if your first efforts were not successful?

How?

You will not be able to ask many meaningful ‘how’ questions if you have not fully explored the other five.

• Follow-up. How can you be sure that you are doing a good enough job of follow-up prospecting? (Look at the ‘who’ questions again.)
• Productivity. How can you use your prospecting time more productively? (The ‘where’ questions can help you here.)
• Skills and pitches. How can you sharpen your prospecting and qualifying skills? (Hint: Search for creative ways to put your products and services to good use. Look at the ‘why’ questions.)
• Approaching prospects. How can you best approach your prospects? (Think about the ‘what’ questions - What will they want to hear?)
• Make time. How can you make more time for meaningful prospecting and qualifying the sales leads you generate? (The ‘when’ questions will give you a good indication of effective time management.)

3. Finding Sales Leads

A salesperson without leads to talk to is like a fish out of water. Neither can survive long. Yet, a common problem among salespeople is a lack of leads. The million-dollar question in selling is ‘where do the leads come from?’ There are four common ways to get sales leads.

Sells itself. Although rare, your product or service virtually sells itself. This can happen when your company sells a one-of-a-kind product that becomes popular, making your job of getting prospects easier.

Advertising. The company you work for has a program to produce leads through media, direct mail or print advertising. (HubSpot, for example, offers a free lead-generation guide in exchange for visitors' contact information, which it uses for relevant information and marketing communications.) The salesperson still has to qualify the buyers, but the leads are there.

Networking. A third source of leads is your network of friends and colleagues. Some industries base a portion of their sales projections on the tendency that new salespeople will sell to people they know. These companies constantly hire based on this trend. They also know that many salespeople will fail once they exhaust the sales leads in their circle.

Prospecting. The last way is getting leads on your own. This separates the achievers from the under-achievers. Street-smart salespeople don't count on the first three sources of acquiring leads. They know that they are their own greatest source of leads. See Section 1, Finding the Buyers, for where to look to find your own leads.

4. Qualifying Sales Leads as Buyers

After you find people who need or want to buy your product or service, then you must establish that the prospect has both the authority to buy and the ability to pay. This is possibly the most important point in prospecting and qualifying, and it cannot be stressed enough.

Need, ability to pay and authority cover three parts of the classic BANT framework: Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline, so ask about timing too. For more complex B2B sales, teams also use MEDDIC: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion.

It makes no sense at all to waste time on anyone who might want what you are selling but has neither the authority to buy nor the money to pay for what you are selling. So, the four steps in qualifying a sales lead or prospect are:

• Find the people who need or want your product or service.
• Establish that the prospect has the ability to pay for your product or service.
• Make sure that the prospect has the authority to make the purchase.
• Determine approachability. In order for a prospect to buy from you, they must be accessible to you. For example, a Fortune 500 CEO might be a good prospect for a new line of health-care products - but if you cannot reach them, you cannot sell to them.

The End Result

The goal for any salesperson is getting the prospect to buy what is being sold. If the prospect has the need, the authority to buy and the money to do so, they are good prospects. You can find good prospects in many of the ways outlined in this article. However, it will take the time and effort on your part to be successful.

Don't cut down on your chances by relying on one method of prospecting. Go out and make it happen for yourself by employing every method possible.

Also, be creative and perfect your own method of prospecting. A salesperson who was selling vacation property once set up a booth at a flea market. The booth had photographs of vacant land and on the counter of the booth they had a pile of dirt with a small ‘For Sale’ sign in the dirt. Their colleagues thought they were crazy. But when the salesperson started to sell vacation lots at a very brisk rate, their colleagues soon followed suit and set up booths of their own at other flea markets.

Self-Evaluation

The following questions are designed to stimulate your thinking as an effective prospector. Read these questions and answer them sincerely. Study your answers and improve your success in sales:

1. How much of your day is devoted to prospecting?
2. What methods do you use to prospect for new customers?
3. What method or methods generate the most prospects for you?
4. Do you depend on one method only? If yes, Why?
5. What method do you think could be more effective with your product or service?
6. What is the life cycle of your product or service?
7. Have you been successful in getting prospects from your clients? If not, why not?
8. Have you developed a well-scripted telephone presentation? If not, why not?