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It is well known that companies are always in a constant search to increase their sales levels. They work on creating strategies to achieve this purpose, however, an important activity that can help them achieve this goal is sometimes overlooked: Lead qualification.
The process of qualifying a potential customer involves gathering as much information as possible so that your sales team can assess whether or not they have a real chance of making the purchase.
The better the prospect qualification, the more focused your sales cycle will be, and the greater the chances of success you will have. Here are some tips to help your sales team qualify prospects so they can know who to focus on more.
Tips to Improve Lead Qualification
Not all companies or people are potential customers of your product or service. When a lead qualification is not done, a lot of valuable time can be wasted. So take a moment to qualify your leads before taking the next step in the sales process. Here are 6 steps to improve the rating of your prospects:
1. Ask Questions
At first this seems like a pretty obvious tip, however, sometimes some sales agents focus only on listening to the potential customer. However, in order to properly qualify your prospects, you need to ask the right questions to get the right information with the help of intake form. There are four main areas you can focus on to ask the questions that allow you to assign a grade:
- Budget
- Authority
- Need
- Time in which they could make the purchase.
2. Consolidate and Centralize all the Information of Prospects or Potential Clients
When a company has orderly and complete information about its potential customers, it is able to detect greater sales opportunities. Sometimes companies make the mistake of having very superficial information about prospects or minimal data, such as: Name, email and contact telephone number.
Having a name or email address of a person or company does not make you a prospect. If a person has provided their email, has subscribed to your blog or Newsletter, it is just where the work begins, since it is your opportunity to use or focus your marketing efforts to turn them into true prospects.
A deep database can add more value and help you correctly identify your prospects.
3. Spend Time Qualifying Prospects
Some sales representatives consider closing the sale to be the most important phase of the business process and therefore focus on it. However, the rest of the stages should not be neglected in order to obtain good results. Your sales team must be consistent and take prospect qualification very seriously, in fact, this should be an activity that they dedicate time to on a daily basis. Make them see that to obtain more successful closings, it is essential to have a greater number of qualified prospects to increase the possibilities.
4. Set Realistic Prospecting Goals
We understand that every sales team dreams of a wide list of prospects, but it is important to take into account that when establishing prospecting goals, amounts that your team really has the capacity to achieve must be estimated. Take into account the time that your sellers will invest in each call, email and all those actions that seek to establish relationships and qualify each of them.
5. You can Learn a lot by Listening Carefully
Prospecting is something that even the most seasoned marketers struggle with occasionally. Making thousands of cold calls can be a bit daunting, especially since some prospects can be a bit difficult at times.That is why it is important to find a way to add value to each conversation or approach that your team has with leads, it is necessary to listen carefully, to obtain as much information as possible to define if there really are possibilities to continue with the process sales until it is closed.
6. Lean on CRM Software
A CRM software helps you to have a better qualification of prospects and allows you to convert your potential customers into real sales opportunities. Some of these systems include specific functionalities for the proper management of leads, allowing you to analyze your prospects and guide them to the closing of sales successfully.
Improperly rating your prospects can waste time following and trying to sell to customers who are not interested in buying any of your products or acquiring your services. Make the decision today to have better lead management and take your company to the next level in sales.
