How do you qualify your prospects into leads?

[Roynal]

Qualification of prospects as leads is an essential part of the sales process. It is also one of the critical health❤️ factors that influence your pipeline.

Most deal projections and forecasting📈 go wrong because the qualification is wrong. It could happen at any stage of the pipeline. Getting the top of the funnel right is paramount❗. 

Everyone professes the Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing (BANT) criteria, which is great in theory. But, what are the questions that accomplish this for your SaaS?

Taking an example of Glance, We are in the business of helping SaaS companies convert contacts into customers. We identify buyers, upsell opportunities, and churn risks through smart segments. We collate signals across products, CRM, ticketing systems, and analytics to do all of this.

The way I go about qualifying my prospects is this:

- Email marketing platform 📧- technical pre-requisite, also tell me a bit about their budget and need.
- Contact list size and campaign count📒 - tell me about their maturity and operational size, indirectly the need
- Billing plans🧾 - if they're multi-tiered, freemium, or free trial plans, we know that they have a pressing need for our solutions 
- I ask the person to describe his activities and his team💪. This provides operational insight. It also gives me an idea of the person's authority
 - I ask them about their pressing problem🆘 in their conversions - this gives me an idea of their challenges and the urgency of solving them. This translates to timing.

How do you qualify prospects? What are some things that you use to determine your BANT criteria?

#sales #opportunities #pipeline #bant #leads #sql

[Logannennis]

Thanks for your inspiration!

[MWolf]

Hi Roynal,

Thank you for the inspiration. That is cool!

One question, though, regarding "contact list and campaign count" - maybe I am a bit lost in translation here: 
What contact list/campaign count do you refer to? How does your contact list size/campaign count give insights into your prospect's size or need? 

In a B2B surrounding, I often use a prospect's position in the organization to identify their authority, for which sometimes I analyze email footers. The prospect's organizational size usually allows for a first budget impression. To analyze the organization size Google, most of the time, is a quick source. Need and Timing are criteria I tend to explore in direct contact: via forms, a personal call, or an email thread.

I am curious how others qualify an MQL to SQL. How do you do it? 

[AFitzmaurice]

All good stuff!

I've been in sales primarily for large companies with large sales forces, so I've learned different sales methodologies.  The Challenger model takes a teach-tailor-take control approach.  I think teaching and educating your customers even before they start looking for a solution I critical.  

I've qualified prospects based on whether they fit the buyer persona, where they are in the buyer's journey, and their timing for when they want to fix their problem.

[kvlschaefer]

This is great, @Roynal! Thanks for sharing this resource with the group 🙂