8 MIN READ

Ever thought of applying lead qualification frameworks through a chatbot in your market? If you didn’t yet, you should. See, if you’re tired of spending hours on a sales call… only to find the person on the other end isn’t the one who decides to buy products… Or that your service is way outside their budget, and they only wanted free consultation… Then, you need a lead qualification process in place. Such a process will help determine if your prospects are a good fit for your business or not. Sometimes a client can make a decision quickly, and you make the sale. At other times you need to nurture a relationship with your future prospect and qualify the purchase.

Here are the 5 Most Known Lead Qualification Frameworks

Don’t worry, we’re going to help you choose the right lead qualification process for your business. And we help you determine the right questions to ask to lead your prospect along their buyer’s journey… helping them make the final purchasing decision.

BANT

One of the most timeless sales qualification methods is called BANT. It was created by IBM in the 1950s and still stands true as a way to measure whether your prospect is a qualified lead. Before you meet with each lead, you will want to know this information and have addressed it in some way.

• Budget
• Authority
• Need
• Timing

By looking at these 4 metrics ahead of time, you will know if your prospect has the money to buy your product or service. Plus, you’ll also see if prospects have the authority to make the purchasing decision. 2 very useful metrics that could save you a ton of time and energy! And if you, at the end of your sales pitch, get informed they need to go back to the office first… to discuss it with the office manager… It means, they have the budget, you spoke to a decision-maker, but the timing… wasn’t right. 

The more you can schedule your sales calls with the person who makes the purchasing decision… the higher your conversion rates will be. You also want to make sure there is a need for what you’re selling! Plus, you need to figure out if it’s the right time for them to buy your product or service. By qualifying these 4 things with the BANT lead qualification framework, you will see an increase in your sales and conversion rates.

MEDDICC

If you’re working in a complex sales environment, you might be better suited using the MEDDICC acronym to qualify your potential leads. Before you meet with a future client for a sales or discovery call, be sure to identify: 

• Metrics
• Economic buyer
• Decision process
• Decision criteria
• Identify the pain point
• Champion
• Competition

When you know this info, you can understand with very pinpoint accuracy just what your sales will be month in and month out. Using big data in your metrics can help you qualify your leads when they are more complex. When you can pinpoint your sales accurately, you can then begin to grow and scale your business. 

FAINT

This lead qualification process is like BANT. It’s similar in the sense it’s changing up the names in the acronym and adding Interest. This process also puts the buyer’s budget sales process at the top of the qualification funnel. This, to filter out those whose funds are an issue.

• Funds
• Authority
• Interest
• Need
• Timing

With this method, the salesperson will focus on the buyer’s interest level. They will educate through free material… and use that to guide the buyer and gauge their interest in the solution to their problem. 

ANUM

When you are marketing to big companies with deep layers of authority and decision-makers… you might need to use the ANUM method. This lead qualification process puts authority at the forefront of your questions. This to ensure you’re talking with the person who can make the final decision whether to buy or not.

• Authority
• Need
• Urgency
• Money

You want to funnel your qualified leads for the best chance of attaining ‘selling success’. And using a process such as ANUM can help you do that for your business. 

CHAMP

In this lead qualification process, you put the buyer’s challenge ahead of the budget and buying authority. In this sales qualification method type, the seller is focused on showing the buyer how their product (or service) can solve the buyer’s problem.

• Challenges
• Authority
• Money 
• Prioritization

As you begin to qualify a lead for your product or service, you might ask questions such as… “What is your biggest challenge in completing your company’s goals?” Or, if they are a small business owner, you might ask, “If you could wave a magic wand, what 1 thing would you do in your company?” Now you know what their challenges are, and you can show them how your product or service can solve this pain point. You can’t move on to buying authority or budget until you can show how your product can solve their problem.

What This Means for Your Business

With the BANT model, IBM was assuming that they were selling thousands of dollars to a corporation. So the “Budget” qualifier needed to be the beginning metric followed. But, in today’s digital climate, this is not always the case. Take the familiar and growing segment of Software as a Service (SaaS) model. You’re no longer selling the expensive software as a one-time up-front cost. In fact, you’re often giving away the software for free and allowing your customers to use it without charge in the beginning. Then your goal becomes converting the free users into paid monthly subscribers. One of the ways you could do this is by offering more features in the paid model. 

Look, if you’ve been in sales longer than a few minutes, you’ve probably heard the term “qualify your sales.” And to be frank, you know as well as I do… There’s no point in spending an hour pitching Butcher Box to a vegan… or trying to sell ice to an Eskimo for that matter. You need to qualify your leads, which increases your conversion rates, and you make more sales. As a result, you can be a better judge on what your monthly revenue will be. Because, when it comes to growth, cash flow is definitely a king (if not the king). 

The New Way of implementing these Lead Qualification Frameworks:

Can you imagine how your sales conversions could soar if your sales team could answer every door knocker which comes browsing on your website? And to take it to the next level, what if you could respond to every inquiry within mere seconds?

Well, it’s possible. See, the good news is you can respond to every lead within mere seconds. And you can then guide your prospect through the qualification process automatically. Helping them to see where they are in the buying process, like… what their budget is, and if they’re in a position to make a decision quickly. And by using the right lead qualification framework, you filter out the tire kickers upfront… Helping you and your team focus energy on the people that are already primed to buy your product or service! But, what kind of software, or app… can possibly take out all the hard work that is qualifying the lead, the grunt work, out of the equation?

The answer is chatbots. But let’s back up a little bit…

How Chatbots Can Help With Lead Qualification?

We’ve given you an extensive background in the reason and method of lead qualification. But, how can a chatbot help you with this process? More importantly, how can you fully use chatbots to automate the process and scale your sales process? It’s simple, you just have the chatbot ask the right questions to your prospects… And they automatically segment themselves!

Here are 2 Simple Chatbot Lead Qualification Framework Tips:

• When it comes to chatbots on Messenger, see if you can skip certain questions so the path of least resistance is maintained. You’re not going to ask a chatbot if your prospect can afford your product or service. You can! But why would if there’s a way you filter/segment upfront. I.E., with the incredibly accurate audience demographics, the Facebook Ad service allows you to tap into… you can ensure your ads are only seen by certain business owners with certain sized businesses. What you can ask, though, is “How willing they are to invest…”. This will help you narrow down your prospects so you know those people signing up for your freebie through your ads are qualified as they are your target market. 
• With the automated chatbot asking questions you can identify if they’re the decision-maker. Simply ask what position they hold in their company. You can always ask if they are a decision-maker… But, if they answer the are an executive or marketing director… You know you’re talking to the right person.  Add other needed criteria you deem worthy to add by asking for the right information… And, as if by magic, your prospects weed themselves out of your (sales) funnel.

That said here’s a little bonus… Today’s buyers are savvy shoppers, and they will do their homework. By providing the information they need through your free content… Basically, value first… you can use your automated sales funnel to drive only the interested leads to sign up for your trials or discovery calls. Giving value first is always a plus as it helps add to the Know, Like & Trust factor.

Improve Your Conversion & Increase Sales With Chatbot Lead Qualification

As a salesperson, you don’t want to spend your valuable time chasing down every lead possible. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin so that you don’t’ have the time to properly close the good leads, right? Well, by whittling down your prospect list to only your warm qualified leads… you can give them all the attention they deserve – and close much faster! Sure, you will need to disqualify many leads in this process. But, in doing so, you’re working smarter instead of working harder. 

With that, we’re planning to do a more detailed write up on each lead qualification framework. And as a special bonus to you, our dear reader, subscriber, and customer… Each lead qualifying framework will come with a Chatbot Flow! You can install this Flow on your chatbot for free by just clicking a few buttons… We will also show you, in either in some screenshots, or video, how this all works inside Clepher.

So, if you’re interested already in seeing how a chatbot can help your business… Or how it can help you in this lead qualification process… Then try Clepher for free right now. Do it now! And see how we can help you increase your sales through direct messaging. 

---

 

Related Posts