21 Questions to Help You Qualify Leads & Boost Sales

Measuring lead quality is a major challenge for many agency owners. Most salespeople waste a lot of time on weak leads. If your conversion rate is low, it reflects that you are not effectively converting leads into paying customers. Maybe they are still not ready to purchase from you or are low-quality leads.

Weak leads will not help you achieve your business objectives. The advantage of high-quality leads is that they close faster and have a larger average deal size compared to poor-quality leads.

It might frustrate salespeople. Without a lead qualification plan, you will probably lose a lot of sales.

Impact of Qualified Leads on Sales

According to a Somametrics study, qualified leads substantially impacted sales.

A mere 10% improvement in lead quality led to a 33% growth in sales and a 5% increase in net profits. It also led to an 1839% ROI on marketing spend. When the lead quality was further improved by 20%, the increase in ROI on marketing spend and growth in sales saw an increase of 4,044% and 73%, respectively.

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The data speaks for itself! The quality of leads is crucial to your overall success in a business venture.

A drop in lead quality may lead to a sharp decline in sales and net profits.

What's Lead Qualification?

Qualified leads indicate the readiness of a person to buy your product.

The sales-readiness of a customer decides what strategy salespeople should use to convert the prospect into a paying customer.

Likelihood of Conversion

Your sales team's further activities and strategy depend on the results of this process.

They can further categorize these leads into hot, warm, and cold (low-quality ones).

The Benefits of Lead Qualification

The prime benefit of the lead qualification process is to build more effective communication with the prospects. This communication can take place through different channels, such as telephone, email, blog, or social media. The process tremendously contributes to the sales cycle.

It leads to better personalization, which results in a greater likelihood of conversion. It is also helpful in building relationships. Through lead qualification, sales reps can differentiate between hot, warm, and cold leads and prioritize them in their pipeline to build relationships.

To increase the conversion rate, you must clearly understand leads, including their priorities and concerns. Once you develop such an understanding, you may craft messages that appeal to them. It will help you close deals faster, saving you a lot of time, money, and hassle.

According to a study, 50% of prospects will never be qualified to buy your products or services, so wasting your time on them is useless. Instead, you can spend this time on the warm and hot leads who will convert in a fraction of the effort.

Lead Qualification vs. Lead Scoring

Marketers developed Lead Scoring as a process of lead qualification. You can measure and rank a lead's interest level and sales readiness through Lead Scoring. It's usually based on a documented and agreed-upon methodology by marketing and sales teams.

Lead scoring can be done in many ways. You can either assign points or rank them as A, B, C, or D. You can also group them as "hot," "warm," or "cold."

Lead scoring will decide whether a lead should be added to your sales funnel or not. It helps remove the ones with very little likelihood of buying from you. You can prioritize hot leads based on their value to your company. Warm leads need a bit more nurturing, so you can make a strategy to craft messages to increase their interest level and convince them.

Besides that, lead scoring can also be based on many other attributes, such as demographics, psychographics, work information, and their role in decision-making.

These are the vital inputs you need to prioritize your leads.

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3 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Sales Leads

Here are the three ways to improve your lead quality and overall sales process.

1. Refine Your Lead Scoring System

It would help if you practiced dynamic instead of static scoring to prioritize your leads. The reason behind it is that factors like demographics and psychographics of your prospects keep changing, and for accurate lead scoring, it's crucial to adapt to the changing environment.

2. Commit to Lead Nurturing

According to a 2010 Forrester Research study, companies that performed better at lead nurturing could generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost per lead than other companies.

However, less than 50% of leads are actually qualified in the B2B business environment, and you shouldn't waste your time on sales calls to the rest of them.

Marketers think everyone who has attended a webinar or downloaded a whitepaper is a prospect and should be handed over to the salespeople. You need more information about your prospects before declaring them qualified leads.

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3. Practice Consistent Lead Measurement

According to a HubSpot survey, 56% of B2B companies don't measure lead generation's contribution to revenue. However, it's interesting to know that you can get great insights into the intent of your online leads, thanks to the various measurable elements.

You can use DashCicks' automated sales CRM software to get an overview of your prospects' online behavior in the sales funnel. Consistent lead measurement will accelerate lead generation.

How to Make Sure That a Lead Is Qualified?

There is no way you can judge whether a lead is qualified or not at first glance. For that, you need to get some information about the prospect. Usually, salespeople can directly ask a few questions to the prospect to assess whether it's a qualified lead or not.

How to Get Qualified Leads?

You need qualified leads to boost sales. To prevent your time from being wasted on low-priority jobs, assess your leads at the organization, opportunity, and stakeholder level by asking relevant questions.

Here is a list of 21 questions you can ask to differentiate between qualified and weak leads.

1. How long have they been operating?
2. What is their employee count and turnover?
3. What industry are they in?
4. What’s their location?
5. What customer pain points do you want to address?
6. Have you availed of similar solutions previously?
7. How are you dealing with your existing issues?
8. Is there anything that doesn’t allow you to resolve your issue till now?
9. Are you considering any other solutions to resolve your issue?
10. What are your chief concerns?
11. Do you have any timeframe in mind to implement the solution?
12. When should I get back to you next time?
13. Are you involved in the decision-making process?
14. Is there anyone else who makes such decisions to avail such solutions?
15. Do you keep other stakeholders in the loop?
16. Would they like and approve the purchase?
17.  What is the standard approval process in your organization?
18.  What is the next step once a decision-maker approves a product for purchase?
19.  Would you like to know more about our product? Can we give a demo to show you how our product can help you?
20.  What are your priorities?
21.  Can you update me on your purchase process timeline?

Pro Tip: To ensure you're sending a qualified lead to your sales team, ask as many questions as possible.

A lead can be disqualified for numerous reasons, including if someone is not a part of the decision-making process. However, you can ask other questions and ensure that the organization you're targeting needs your solution and can afford it. If you find an opportunity to sell, you can approach the decision-maker.

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Final Words

Lead qualification is an essential step, and you shouldn't skip it at any cost. It saves time and helps you improve lead quality and the sales process. You should avoid the practice of transferring weak leads even if the sales team is clamoring for it.

Try to gather reliable information on sales opportunities. Talk to your leads and ask probing questions. Documenting the entire process will immensely help you in lead qualification and making it effective.

Nurture the weak leads. Talk to the people who are not yet mentally ready to make a purchase, even though they need your solution and can afford it. Use CRM data excessively to know how to nurture the leads through the right messaging.