How to Qualify and Warm up Sales Leads Quickly and Effectively

When qualifying sales leads, it’s not just a question of selling.

You personally need to make a lot of quick judgments and decisions about the needs of not only the person on the phone, but their company as a whole.

Typically, qualifying leads follows the mantra of BANT:

The Budget your lead has to work with

Do they have the Authority to make decisions?

How much do they Need your product or service?

Yours and your lead’s individual Timescale

It’s all very well to repeat this until you go blue in the face, but how do you approach the task of deciding whether a lead qualifies? You know what to do, but how do you do it?

Well, in this post we have seven simple steps to help you qualify sales leads and be clear that you’re on the right page for successful decision making.

Start as you intend to go on

As this is a qualifying call, you are there to clarify whether you and the lead can work together. It’s not just a case of you trying to sell them something.

Before you make your call make sure to:

Take couple of breaths to freshen up

Look through your initial notes

Make sure you know your own business’s product details inside out

It’s important to see yourself as the one making the call – as in the one making the decisions, rather than thinking it’s all about the lead. You role is important; it’s you that can help the lead and decide if they qualify. So a confident and helpful manner can work wonders for boosting both yours and your lead’s confidence.

Context is key

The first key question for you should be ‘What do they want from me?’ and then ‘Why did they come to me?’

Gathering information on how your lead found out about your business and why they are choosing to approach you at this time, can be crucial for finding out what kind of lead they are.

Their knowledge of your business will depend on if they have for instance, seen one advert of yours, or been referred to you by another client or company.

Establishing little tid bits of important context like this can help you get a bigger picture of their needs, how much you might need to explain to them, and to the extent that you can help them.

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