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Many steps must be taken before a lead is ready to buy from you. These steps are all covered in what we call “The Lead Qualification Process.” Basically, it’s a series of steps your business should take after generating a list of potentially interested leads. You know, people who might have an interest in your product or service. Some of these steps include contacting the lead and ensuring that they’re actually interested in your offer. Now, IF you get past this step, there’s still a long road ahead before you can convert a lead into a paying customer! In this article, we’re going to outline each step of the Lead Qualification Process.

The first step in the qualification process, which all businesses take after purchasing leads, is contacting them and making sure they’re interested in your offer. If they pass this first test, there are quite a few steps ahead of you before you can convert them into paying customers! In this article, you discover what leads need you and your business before pulling the trigger and buying.

Does the lead have an Interest In Your Product/Service?

The first step in the qualification process is contacting leads and making sure they’re interested in your offer. This may seem like an obvious step, but it’s actually the most important!

Before you can even think about converting your lead into a client, you need to make sure they’re interested in what you have to offer. You don’t want to waste time trying to convert people who aren’t interested in your product or service. And let’s be honest, how could someone not be interested in something good?

When contacting leads via email (or any other means), ask them specific questions that only potential clients would know or care about. This will help ensure that they are qualified and ready for your services. One of these questions might include asking them how much money is available for this purchase, their personal interests, and other similar questions. These types of questions are designed to help you narrow down your database and find qualified leads.

You can also filter your contacts based on their answers. This will ensure that only the most qualified people make it through and get in touch with you for more information, or go ahead and buy!

Now that we’ve cleared this step up a bit let’s move onto the next step in The Lead Qualification Process…

Does the lead have Money To Spend On Your Product or Service?

After qualifying the lead’s interest, you’ll need to find out how much money they have available for your product or service, what their needs are, what their interests are, and more. You need to make sure that they can afford the products or services you’re offering – or at the very least, that they’re interested in it.

Are they looking for an inexpensive product or service or a high-end one? What’s the revenue of their company like? Questions like these will help you determine whether your lead is qualified. And whether they’re interested in spending money on your business.

If you want to know how much money your leads have available, ask them about it during a conversation. Yup, ask for the budget, whether it’s in a conversation on the phone or you have a chatbot do your dirty work, simply ask.

More Qualifying Questions To Ask Your Lead

The next step includes qualifying them as a lead by asking questions about their business type (B2B or B2C), industry, size of company they work for, revenue generated from last year (if applicable), etc. This step will give you the information that you need to market and sell to your leads.

It’s important to know that not all businesses are the same – and neither should your methods of qualifying a lead be. A B2B company might want leads with more revenue, while a B2C company may care about the number of customers they have.

When figuring out this information, it’s best to ask questions rather than find it yourself (which shouldn’t be done anyway). You can also use chatbots, like those you can create with Clepher, to hold conversations with your leads. And have these little helpers ask the questions you want answers on (How cool is that?).

Some Qualifying Questions To Ask Your Lead:

• What is the size of your company?
• Are you in the B2B or in the B2C industry?
• Are you interested in purchasing this product for personal use or as a gift for someone else (B2C)?
• Is there anything I might be able to help you with today, or would you like to set up an appointment for another time (B2B)?
• What is the last year’s revenue generated from your company?
• Tell me about a project that was successfully completed in the past two years?
• How many employees does your company have currently?
• What is the best time for us to have a conversation?

Is the Lead a Good Fit?

In this step, you’ll find out if your lead is a good fit for your product or service, as well as how likely they are to buy something from you. You can use this information to determine if the lead is a good fit for your business or if you should try and sell them something different! To help you identify potential clients, ask them about their previous experiences with similar products and services. This helps narrow down which needs your product or service the most so that you don’t waste time on leads that aren’t interested in what you’re selling!

If you want to find out more about whether your lead is a good fit for your company, ask qualifying questions about their previous experiences. If they say they haven’t had any past experiences with products or services similar to yours, don’t worry! Give them some information about your business and how it might benefit them, and see if this gets their attention and makes them buy from you instead of someone else.

To determine whether your leads are a good fit for your company or product, simply ask qualifying questions about their previous experiences. If they have had any past experiences with products or services similar to yours, don’t worry! Give them some information about your business and how it might benefit them, and see if this gets their attention and makes them buy from you instead of someone else.

You want people who will be loyal customers and stick with your company for many years to come. So all of these steps have led up to this one. And that is determining how likely it is that the lead will actually buy something from you! If they’re not ready to buy, or don’t think that your product or service will help them, then it’s time to move on.

Is The Lead Qualified (Or Disqualified?)

If you’ve made it this far, your lead has gone through all of the preceding steps. Congratulations! It wasn’t easy, but now that they’re qualified or disqualified, you now know exactly which leads you should focus on to bring home the bacon fast and easy. Of course, you can’t deposit leads. You still need to convert the qualified leads into buyers. 

That’s why this final step in the qualification process contains developing an effective strategy for converting potential clients into customers! This is the part where you actually convert each lead into a client or customer by generating revenue via either leads/leads database opt-ins. Strategies can include content marketing (blog posts), advertising on social media networks, sending out sales emails, attending networking events, and more. It’s up to you to decide what method is best for your business!

What do you do with the Disqualified Leads?

So, once you’ve found a lead and contacted them to make sure they’re a good fit, what do you do with those who don’t pass the qualifications?

Well, it may be tough to get this information from them, but if the lead was at least remotely interested in your offer when you were just chatting, then follow up if they’re still keen on what you have going on, then find out which package they want and contact them! If not, bid farewell and move onto another. It’s worth following up because sometimes people change their minds. Just think of all of the potentials that went down the drain just because we couldn’t help show more than one interest in our product.

It might be a good idea to put people in an autoresponder that sends them emails, chatbot messages, or text messages about your service… Perhaps the time was simply not right for them to try your product or service? Sometimes it can take people months before actually making the plunge. And that’s why you want to be in the back of their mind once they are ready, so keep sending them messages with value.

Mix & Match The Lead Qualification Process

Although we’ve chosen a specific order of steps, you’re not bound by this order! You can actually mix and match these 6 steps, so they fit your sales process better. You can also skip some of them if you don’t think it’s relevant to your business (but you might have a tough time getting people to buy from you!). That’s right, there are millions of companies out there, but not all of them follow the same Lead Qualification process. Some might have a different order to their lead qualification process; some drop specific steps entirely.

Use Chatbots when Qualifying a Lead

It is essential to determine what stage of the qualification process you are currently in before deciding on a course of action. With the help of chatbots, you will find that it is much easier to engage with potential clients more efficiently by narrowing their specific needs. That being said, you should not be shy about qualifying your leads upfront with a chatbot so that you can gauge their level of interest and budget to make your dealings with them as straightforward as possible.

By having a chatbot ask qualifying questions, you easily filter the bad apples from the good ones in a matter of minutes! To measure the performance of your lead-qualifying strategy, you will need to track how many preliminary conversations you have with prospects. Keep records on how many people expressed interest and whether they went ahead or not.

You can also use chatbots for this initial round of qualifying by asking questions about budget, business size, etc. By doing so, you leave no room for ambiguity, which means that all the information is in writing – and more often than not, saving time is essential when trying to qualify a lead!

Then, when a lead enters the qualification stage, they should’ve already been identified as a lead who has an interest in having your product or service and as a lead that can actually afford it.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it – that’s the whole Lead Qualification Process from start to finish. Now that you know exactly how many leads you need and can afford, this system will help really put all of your efforts into good use so that only the most qualified people become customers! With this system, you can use the same automation in your sales funnel to send messages, emails, and texts at certain stages of the qualification process.

If you need more information or help qualifying leads, feel free to check out our other blogs!

That said, you are looking to try out lead qualifications with chatbots, we’d suggest using something like Facebook Messenger. With Clepher, you can actually create these qualifying chatbots yourself in just mere minutes by leveraging our templates.

Get Started with Clepher & try lead qualification for yourself!

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