How to Qualify Leads with Chatbots: An Essential Guide!

Stefan van der VlagGeneral

13 MIN READ

Ever wondered how to qualify leads through chatbots? Look no further! See, it is usually hard to tell if someone has the exact needs you are trying to fulfill with your products or services. You often end up either targeting too broad an audience or not reaching everyone interested in what you have to offer. Qualifying prospects can be challenging, and it takes a lot of time. But, what if there was a way to learn more about your leads in just a few minutes? Well, there is!

Qualifying your leads with chatbots is an effective and efficient solution for this. Qualifying leads using chatbots is a lot easier than it seems. It takes the idea of chatbot marketing to a whole new level. The best part probably is that you won’t have to worry about investing heaps of time in trying to understand if your prospects are a fit, let alone wasting time selling to prospects that aren’t a fit at all. Nope. Chatbots do the qualifying for you, and they can actually take it a step further, too. You can actually have the bot make sales for you 24/7 as well.

Qualifying leads using chatbots is a fantastic way to make the sales process more efficient and timely. Qualifying prospects can be tricky; there’s no doubt about that. You are often left wondering if they have the money for your services or a need for them at all. Qualifying leads generally requires quite a bit of time and energy, but using chatbots is way easier! You’re about to find how in the section we baptized as “The Essential Guide to use Chatbots For Lead Generation.” But, before you discover the guide, let’s do a deep dive into qualifying prospects using chatbots.

A Deep Dive into Qualifying Leads & Prospects Using Chatbots

Chatbots allow you to have more control over what goes out into the world — especially when it comes to marketing. Qualifying prospects doesn’t need to be a time-consuming process anymore. And frankly, qualifying leads will no longer be a headache because chatbots can do the job for you. Qualifying prospects is about to become efficient and easy!

Qualify Leads and Prospects Using Chatbots

Using a chatbot to qualify prospects is a great way to avoid cold calling and wasting time with uninterested leads. Qualifying prospects using chatbot will help you generate more sales because you’ll reach out to the people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Chatbots can make it seem like your organization has an actual human behind the screens helping out customers. Qualifying prospects using chatbots will automatically help you create value for your business, making it easier to get more conversions in the long run. Qualifying prospects using chatbots is an excellent step towards defining who your target audience exactly is and what they might need from you. Using a chatbot to qualify prospects makes sales and prospecting more efficient and leads to the most exciting prospects.

Qualify Leads and Prospects with Chatbot Qualifiers

Chatbot Qualifiers help you gather information about your customers, prospects, or potential sales partners that will enable you to qualify them even further and point out more of their preferences. Qualifying prospects with chatbot qualifiers is not only an effective way to narrow down the list of potential clients, but it’s also a great way to do some market research. Yes sir! It will help you learn more about your target audience and understand what exactly they want from your business. Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers that have already been qualified as leads before give us a better understanding of your target audience’s needs and wants. Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers will help you gain more knowledge about your business, product/service, and overall niche.

Using chatbots with qualifiers to qualify leads is highly effective, especially when you have many different products or services. Qualifiers help you figure out if your customers prefer a specific type of product, service, payment method, or have a particular problem they want to see fixed. Overall, using a chatbot with the proper qualifiers is essential for creating a better sales process because they allow you to get to know your prospects even better.

Qualify Your Customers using Chatbots

Qualifying customers might sound a little bit too aggressive. But you need to qualify your customers if you want to know how much they are willing to spend more after becoming a customer. Plus, qualifying is an ongoing thing by knowing how much – or if they even need – your services/products. Qualifying your customers with chatbots will help you narrow down the list of potential clients that will be your best buyers; your loyal customers. It’s these types of customers you want to have because you can find more of those when you know who these are. And it will also point out their preferences that can be used for a better prospecting process. Qualifying your customers will let you learn more about them and what they might need or prefer. Qualifying customers with chatbots is one of the most critical steps in increasing your customers’ Lifetime Value (LTV). Increasing the Lifetime Value of your customers is vital because it helps to increase your ROI and get more profit.

The Quintessential Guide to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation

A survey on 800 companies found that 28% of top-performing companies use a chatbot, or a form of AI, to capture leads leading to a direct impact on sales and lead generation. This means that today, chatbots should be considered an essential lead generation tool for marketers. Moreover, qualifying prospects using chatbots should be a top priority for every company taking their time to understand how qualifiers can help them find and qualify more leads. Before we jump into the section, let’s elaborate a bit more on a few aspects.

Why are Chatbots Important For Lead Generation?

Chatbots are essential for lead generation because they are cost-effective. Qualifying prospects using chatbots is a fantastic way to save time and money. It will help you avoid cold calling and wasting your time on uninterested leads. Chatbots can give you access to more people in less time, which means that they will save your team time and money if you use Qualifiers correctly. Qualifiers will help you save time by helping your team know what kind of prospects they’re dealing with (e.g., is the customer a decision-maker or not).

Qualifying prospects using Qualifiers will allow you to generate more sales in less time which means that Qualifiers are essential for your business’ growth! Having access to Qualifiers will help your team understand what qualifier works best for your particular business needs. Qualifying prospects using Qualifiers gives you the power to decide how many Qualifiers are necessary to generate more sales.

One of the main reasons why Qualifiers are so important is because Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers helps you have better conversion rates. Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers will help you learn more about your target audience and make it easier to figure out what Qualifiers better suit your customers’ needs. Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers enables you to transform unqualified leads into sales.

Automate Sales Conversations & Boost Conversions

You can use chatbots to prequalify leads through conversations. And as a result, boost conversion! See, by asking specific questions and directing them to the right team based on their response, you can instantly engage prospective customers at the level they are at. Whether that’s unaware of the problem or already primed to buy your product, it doesn’t matter. The fact you qualified them means you know how you need to approach them, which is all you need for sales. This feat, this particular nugget, will allow for an increase in sales and conversion rates.

Better Return On Investment (ROI)

Qualifying prospects with Qualifiers is a great way to increase your ROI. With qualifiers, you get qualified prospects faster and easier. This basically means that qualifiers should be used as an effective marketing strategy for your business’ growth. Qualifying prospects using Qualifiers lets you gain more knowledge about what qualifier works best for your business.

Bots Are Always On!

Bots are active 24/7. Yup, chatbots never sleep! Chatbots can provide immediate answers and can help with lead generation by qualifying prospects. The chatbot’s “secret sauce” will know where to go depending on what the prospect said. The chatbot will provide the answer instantly and continue to guide the lead into whatever the outcome is. With chatbots related to qualifying leads, your team will have an easier time qualifying prospects because it’s always on! Qualifying prospects with chatbots will be less stressful because it is explicitly made for sales agents to qualify leads within seconds using pre-programmed questions.

If you need to ask, “Can chatbots generate leads?” the answer is a big YES! Chatbots can help your team qualify prospects effectively and save your time and money. Let’s dig in a bit deeper and look at how it’s done precisely.

How to use Chatbots for Lead generation? 

Qualifying prospects with qualifiers will help you gain more knowledge about your business, product/service, and overall niche. Using a set of qualifiers, you can determine whether a prospect is suitable for your business or not. A Qualifier is nothing more than a piece of information that will help you determine whether a prospect is a fit. Qualifiers are extremely helpful if you want to automate sales conversations; let’s take a look at some of these Qualifiers first before continuing:

A Small List Containing Qualifiers, You can Qualify:

  • The deal
  • Budget
  • Authority
  • The time frame
  • Product fit
  • Need
  • The location
  • The competition
  • Company size
  • Urgency

As you can see, this is just a small list. But these should get you on going on creating your own list of qualifiers. Basically, qualifiers are different for each business. Simply because each company is selling different products and services, and each business is valuing other things. So, ask yourself the question; “Which qualifiers would help me understand my prospects and leads better?

Understand the target audience better

Qualifying new leads is a great way to understand your target audience better because the Qualifiers you use will help you determine whether or not your target audience is interested in your product/service. Qualifiers are beneficial for your business’ growth because they help you reach out to new clients and expand your customer base. Qualifying leads and using Qualifiers are a great way to gain more knowledge about your niche; this makes lead generation a lot easier (especially if you’re going to use it in the future). It will give your business an advantage over its competitors because it’ll make it easier for you to sell something that your target audience wants. KA-CHING!

Segment your Leads, Prospects & Customers

You should try segmenting your leads, prospects, and customers. Qualifiers can help you divide your customers into different segments, groups if you will. Essentially, it allows you to hone in your message to your prospect’s needs and desires. And, when done correctly, you can use the segments you created to personalize the prospect’s experience. This is HUGE! This will lead you to make much more sales and providing good services. Plus, personalization not only lets you convert these leads into actual customers, but they can turn into loyal recurring customers as well. And as we all know, that’s where the money is!

Auto Qualify Leads with a Chatbot

Chatbots help you qualify leads automatically. A chatbot does this by controlling the discussions that happen with the leads, which allows you to discuss your product/service and gather information on whether or not they’re going to buy it. How this works is simple; all a chatbot needs to do to qualify a lead is ask pre-programmed questions, and the chatbot will use these answers to qualify the lead. This makes it simpler for you to get leads and scale up your business significantly because a chatbot will be able to work around the clock for you, 24/7!

Replace Classic Forms with Lead Generating Chatbots

Once you’ve created a bot, why not use it to replace forms? What makes chatbots so great is that they can easily be used as replacements for lead generation forms. Instead of a prospect having to fill out a form and submit it via email or the website’s contact form, you can have them talk with your bot instead! This is great because it allows you to collect information about your prospect and qualify them immediately. If they do not seem like a good fit, the chatbot will cut off communication with them. Puts them in a separate segment or bucket, so you can check back later to see if their situation has changed. Simple as that!

Schedule Lead Qualification Appointments 24×7 with Chatbots.

Another excellent application for bots is to be used as appointments schedulers. The best part about scheduling lead qualification appointments with a chatbot is that you don’t have to do it physically and manually. You can easily program the chatbot to take care of this for you. A chatbot will allow you to scale your business faster and more efficiently by making it possible for you to sell your products/services at all hours. This because the chatbot can work for you, even when you’re not physically there or awake!

Educate your Audience Through Chatbots

If you don’t have a product/service backed by education, you can use chatbots to educate your audience. Educating your prospect will give them a better understanding of what you’re selling and the value that it has to offer. What’s even better about this is telling people exactly what they want to know! The main selling point of a product/service is the benefits it has to offer. And once your chatbot knows what the problem of the prospect is, it can sway the answers to features and benefits in your product that solve their problem. And so, you get your audience excited about what it is that you’re selling!

Use Live Chat Human Handover For Complicated Sales Conversations

Of course, sometimes you’ll be talking to prospects who need a little bit more than just a chatbot can do. So, how do you get out of this situation without losing the sale? Easy! You use your human sales team as a backup for complicated conversations with leads. By building in a human escalation path, you can easily transition, bypassing the lead off to your human sales team. Once they’re done, your chatbot can pick up right where the live chat left off and hopefully close out with a sale! And building in such a path is not complex either; it can be as simple as a persistent button that prospects can click. On clicking the button, you can have the chatbot notify that there’s someone in need of human attention. This is how we do it over at Clepher, and it’s working fantastically!

Build Stronger Relationships with your Customers 

One of the main features of chatbots is that they can facilitate talking between you and your customers. How cool is that? Having a platform for communicating with your customers will strengthen your relationship and improve their overall experience. You’ll be able to get feedback from them to act accordingly on what you need to improve on. Not to mention, you can also promote new products/services and make your service more proactive! With tools like Clepher, you’ll have the ability to talk with people before they even ask their questions, so you can have your chatbot guide them to the correct section fast and efficiently.

Engage Visitors Who Intend To Bounce

Your website visitors are precious, especially the ones who intend to bounce off your page. This is a waste of chances for you because they were interested in what it was that you were selling. By having a chatbot integrated on your website when prospects absolutely need human interaction and help, they can seek your chatbot and get first-hand information immediately. This will help you save the leads and get into a conversation with them so that they won’t abandon your website.

With all of this, it’s now easier than ever to see that chatbots are not a gimmick or just another sales tool to use. It’s an innovation in communication, marketing, and sales. And best of all, it’s something that you can use to become more efficient and profitable! Let’s end this article with some of the most frequently asked questions regarding qualifying leads and prospects with chatbots.

FAQ: Chatbots for Lead Generation & Qualification.

Before we end the article with our closing thoughts. Let’s take a look at some of the commonly asked questions regarding using Chatbots for Lead Generation and Lead Qualification.

What is a Qualifying Lead?

A qualifying lead is a prospect that has shown interest in your services or products and is willing to learn more about them. Qualifying leads, or prospects, might sound like an arduous task but, when you use chatbots for lead generation and qualification, it’s much more accessible than ever before! Qualifying a lead basically means finding out if they need your product or service, if the timing is right, and whether they have the budget to buy it. See, when you know what they exactly need, it becomes easier to help them get rid of their problem entirely by sending over the right solution to their needs and demands. Qualifying a lead using chatbots will make your sales process more efficient and less tedious than ever before!

What are Qualifiers when talking about Qualifying Leads?

Qualifiers are the questions that help you find out if the prospect is worth spending time and money on. They also point out that the potential buyer needs your product or service. Qualifiers are about finding out if there’s a motivation behind their actions and what that motivation is exactly. Qualifying leads with chatbots will give you more control over the sales prospecting process because both you and your sales team will have the same goal in mind: Qualifying as many prospects as possible and finding out if they have the resources to buy your product or service. Qualifying leads with chatbots will help you to spend more time on prospects that matter instead of wasting it on people that are not worth it. Qualifiers are essential because they make sure you don’t waste anyone’s time, including yours and the potential clients’.

How do I get Paying Clients by Using a Lead Qualifying Chatbot?

As opposed to doing it without a chatbot, qualifying leads with chatbots isn’t a hard task at all. See, qualifying prospects with a bot is just a matter of time and effort. The good news is that the time and effort are something you don’t have to worry about as the chatbot is taking care of that. You only have to set it up once! It’s no secret that qualified leads are more accessible to sell than leads you to know nothing about. This not only makes chatbots a great way to save time and money in your sales process! But it makes it very easy for you, your sales reps, or your chatbot to turn those qualified leads into paying clients.

How do you Qualify an Incoming Lead?

Well, qualifying an Incoming Lead with a chatbot is just as easy as qualifying any other lead. You basically have 2 options when it comes down to qualifying a lead: Inbound Qualifiers & Outbound Qualifiers. Inbound Qualifiers are the ones that your potential client sends you himself. IE, if the qualifier is a comment or question they ask in one of your social media posts. Outbound Qualifiers are qualifiers you send to the prospect to qualify them. This can be done through email or by broadcasting a message with a chatbot. That’s why it’s called Outbound Qualifiers. 

How do Chatbots qualify leads?

On its basis, chatbots qualify leads by asking questions in text form, and when the prospect answers them correctly, it will qualify them as your potential client. Qualifying leads with chatbots will give your sales team more time and resources to focus on inbound leads, which means Qualifying Your Leads gets more effortless than ever before! Qualifying a lead with chatbots in an outbound manner also means you can develop a series of questions to get specific answers that will tell you if your prospect is ready to do business or not.

How do Chatbots that Qualify Leads make me money?

Qualifying more leads will give you, your sales reps, and your chatbots more hot leads. These hot leads are primed to buy, and the only thing they need is a little push in the right direction. Qualifying Leads with chatbots will save you money and time in the long run. It’s for this reason that qualified leads are known to be the best leads you can have. Because qualified leads mean you know exactly what they want and how much they’re willing to pay for it!

How do I start getting people in my chatbot so it can qualify leads?

The question now is; how do you use a bot for lead generation? And, how do you create one without spending any money? It won’t take you long to learn how to create a chatbot. In fact, following this FREE video training that shows you how to set up a Clepher for lead generation should get you started ASAP.

Closing Thoughts on How to Qualify Leads with Chatbots

Qualifying Leads with chatbots is a great way to get more control over your sales process and save quite some time and money in the long run. And obviously, qualifying more leads will make you and your sales team spend less time on prospects that don’t pay off, which means qualifying leads with chatbots makes it easier than ever before to find potential clients. Qualifying leads with chatbots is super easy and pretty straightforward. Qualifying a lead is just one command your chatbot needs to know to ask questions and get answers, which means Qualifiers are no brainers!

Want to Qualify Leads with Chatbots? Give Clepher a Try!


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