Did you know that around 96% of website visitors are not prepared to buy? However, they may be willing to keep your brand in mind by giving you their contact information in exchange for something valuable. Queue lead generation and qualification.
If your publication struggles with generating and qualifying leads, you are not alone. But learning how to optimize your strategies is essential to get the best return on investment from your efforts.
So what exactly are leads? How can you qualify them for marketing and sales? We will address these questions and more in our guide.
Quick Takeaways
- Someone can become a lead by taking a specific action that shows interest in your business, product, or service.
- Lead qualification is a process involving marketing and sales. It includes predicting how likely different prospects will move down a business’s sales funnel.
- After generating leads, you must qualify them to see who is worth pursuing and who is unlikely to convert into a sales qualified lead or customer.
- You can choose from various lead qualification frameworks, including BANT, CHAMP, MEDDIC, and GPCTBA/C&I.
What are Leads?
Leads are organizations or individuals interested in what you offer. Someone can become a lead when they take a specific action, such as filling out a contact form, clicking on an ad, signing up for a newsletter, or calling your business.
Leads express interest in your brand, product, or service. They can leave a trail for you to follow and determine whether you are positioned to solve a problem they have. If you are not, you will not have to spend time persuading them to buy from you.
What is Qualifying a Lead?
Lead qualification is a process that involves a business’s marketing and sales teams collaborating to predict how likely a prospect will move down the sales funnel. It can help your business determine which potential customers will be most prone to buy from you.
Instead of investing in all your prospects equally in the awareness and consideration stages of the sales funnel, you can identify which candidates are worth your time and resources. Lead qualification can save your business money and help you increase conversion rates and revenue. Concentrating your efforts on those poised to buy from you will have the most significant payoff.
The Lead Qualification Process
After generating leads, you must qualify them to see who is worth pursuing and who is unlikely to convert into sales qualified leads or customers. To qualify leads, follow the general process outlined below.
Sort Your Leads
You likely have several different types of leads already, including:
- Unqualified: Leads you still need to nurture to move further down the sales funnel
- Marketing qualified: Leads you should market to and communicate with via email, social media, advertising, and other content offers
- Sales qualified: Leads the marketing team has already qualified – those who are ready to enter the sales process
By sorting your leads into these different categories, you can meet them where they are in their buying journey. To qualify your leads for sales or marketing, disqualify them altogether, or continue nurturing leads until they are ready to move toward a purchase, you can ask open-ended questions.
These qualifying questions should factor in urgency, budget, and necessity. Here are some examples:
- What problems are you (or your business) struggling with most?
- How can our product or service help you with a pressing business challenge?
- What is your budget for your current project?
- If you are using another solution for this problem, why do you want to switch now?
- What has kept you from solving this problem up to this point?
- Who are the key decision-makers for this purchase?
- Will you be a regular user of this service or product? If not, who will?
- How can this product or service help you streamline daily tasks or processes?
- Can we follow up with you on [date] at [time]?
Based on the answers to questions like these, you can either qualify or disqualify your leads. If someone is not the right fit for your business and you cannot solve their problem, do not hesitate to disqualify them. Focus on quality over quantity.
Choose a Lead Qualification Framework
To qualify your leads, choose a qualification framework to use as a rubric for communicating with your prospects. Do not let the following acronyms overwhelm you. We will touch on each one, so you can choose the best framework for your team and business. Each method takes a slightly different spin, but they all have commonalities.
Try choosing one and seeing how it works for your business model. You can research the one you select in more depth, so you know how to lead your prospects through meaningful conversations and learn what you need to qualify or disqualify them.
BANT
BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. It is a standard sales qualification framework and will help you determine:
- Whether a lead is positioned to buy from you
- If your contact has the authority to purchase
- If they have a problem that you can solve
- When your prospect plans on purchasing
CHAMP
CHAMP addresses challenges, authority, money, and prioritization. Its questions can easily lead to authentic discussions, making it an easy framework to implement first. However, it does not always dig as deep as others to measure success and demonstrate value.
GPCTBA/C&I
This qualification framework stands for goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, authority/negative consequences, and positive implications. It helps you ask questions to understand your lead’s goals, business model, and how current issues fit into the bigger picture (HubSpot).
MEDDIC
MEDDIC stands for metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, and champion. It can be an excellent framework for your company if you sell something with a high price point or your product requires a behavior change.
Generating and Qualifying Quality Leads for Your Publication
Lead qualification is essential to successful selling and earning a high ROI for your business. If you need help developing a solid marketing and sales strategy or implementing lead-generation best practices in your publication, BOOM Communications Group can help.
We offer business consulting and strategy, marketing and advertising, and niche printing and publication services. We would love to partner with you to ignite growth in your business.
Feel free to contact us to learn more.