An in-depth look at how to use simple questioning techniques to determine if a sales lead will purchase and the powerful impact of consistent qualifying.

1. How to Qualify
Sales Leads and Focus
on Sales Growth
that’s Profitable
Business Growth ebook Series
Craig Klein
www.salesnexus.com

2. Table of Contents
Business Growth eBook Series
iii
Meet Your Hosts
v
Featured Expert—Michael Halper
vii
Featured Sponsor—LeadFerret.com
ix
How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
1
Review of first two eBooks of this series
2
Qualifying Leads
4
Qualified vs Unqualified Prospects
9
2-Step Qualifying Process
15
Qualifying Questions for YOUR Business
20
Next Steps
24
www.salesnexus.com
Page ii

3. Business Growth eBook Series
We want you to grow your business. It is really that simple.
In fact, we surround ourselves with companies who share our belief that when we help you grow your business, everyone wins. We believe that when we help you grow your business, we also help grow communities, families, employers and our customers.
We have created this series of eBooks—in conjunction with a webinar series—to help you expand opportunities for growth in your company. This is true even if you are not a SalesNexus customer…even if you use
one of our competitors…we want to share what we have found to be useful for business growth.
Many businesses have great products and a great team, yet still struggle to master the strategies and tactics
of connecting with their market, standing out from the competition and closing sales. Toward that goal, we
have assembled a team of experts to share the best of what they know really works. Nothing is held back or
saved only for those who are clients of our individual company. Each eBook is packed with practical steps
any business can take immediately without busting the budget.
Below you will find a list of eBooks and webinars in this series. While each eBook builds on what was presented in the eBooks earlier in the series, you can choose to take them in any order. However, we strongly
suggest you read the first eBook or attend that webinar to get an understanding of how the information fits
all together.
To Your Business Growth,
Craig Klein, CEO SalesNexus
www.salesnexus.com
Page iii

4. Business Growth Series
THE MAGIC 5
OF CONTENT BASED
EMAIL MARKETING
THAT DRIVES SALES
The Magic 5 of Content Based
Email Marketing that Drives Sales
Business Growth ebook Series
Held on January 16h, 2013
A simple 5 step process to create
on-going, automated email campaigns that engage your audience and identify highly
qualified prospects.
Craig Klein
www.salesnexus.com
How to Qualify Sales Leads and
Focus on Sales Growth that’s
Profitable
Held January 30th, 2013
An in-depth look at how to use
simple questioning techniques to determine if a sales
lead will purchase and the powerful impact of consistent
qualifying.
Building a Successful Marketing
and Sales Process by Identifying
Your Customer’s “Pain”
Held on January 23rd, 2013
An in-depth investigation of how to
identify the emotional circumstances that cause customers to buy from you, how to question prospects to diagnose their “pains” and build sales processes that win!
Manage a Sales Process of
Actions that Lead to Sales Growth
Held on February 6th, 2013
An in-depth look at what should
be measured in every sales process, how to set goals for and measure it and how to
manage sales people to achieve business growth.
360 degree View of the Customer
Relationship for Business Growth
The 4 Pillars of a Sales Messaging
Strategy that Drives Growth
Held on February 13th, 2013
An in-depth look at how strong
relationships between customers
and companies drive business growth and the risk of
mistaking a customer to sales person relationship with a
customer to company relationship.
Held on February 20th, 2013
How to communicate what your
products and services do for your
customers, get their attention and understand their
needs, with Michael Halper, author of “The Cold Calling
Equation”
www.salesnexus.com
Page iv

5. Meet Your Hosts
Craig Klein, CEO, SalesNexus.com
As CEO, Craig Klein leads a team that is on a mission to help your business grow. They accomplish this goal
by providing an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that is fully integrated with an email
marketing system. Klein brings more than 18 years sales executive and management experience to designing SalesNexus solutions.
SalesNexus is a different kind of CRM and email system for many reasons. Perhaps the most meaningful is
the company recognizes that one size will not fit all in business. Since key people of the company come from
a sales background, they know how to work with you to find unique solutions specific to you, your business
and your customers.
Thousands of sales teams from around the world have discovered that SalesNexus takes the hard work out
of selling. That way you can focus on the people part of serving your customers. They know that you enjoy
sales because you enjoy people. SalesNexus will maximize the time you spend establishing deep relationships with your best customers.
This team feels success when they make marketing and selling easier for you. That is why SalesNexus is
hosting this Business Growth series of webinars and eBooks
Don’t forget that SalesNexus offers a 30-day free trial of their program so you can try it out…look around…
ask questions to determine if it is the right fit for you. During the free trial period, you can also download
your choice of 500 business contacts—with email addresses—at no cost at all via LeadFerret.com. Learn
more about LeadFerret below.
www.salesnexus.com
Page v

6. Meet Your Hosts
Forrest Cassidy, CEO, LeadFerret.com
Lead Ferret is the world’s first 100% free business-to-business database with complete information. They
offer more than 10 million easily searchable B2B contacts—with emails—FREE.
In today’s business environment, it is critical that you use your time in the most time efficient manner possible. The objective of Lead Ferret is to make prospecting and generating leads easier for sales teams, recruiters, and small business owners.
The LeadFerret system allows you to spend less time prospecting and more time selling…and that leaves
more time to do the things you really love to do.
Learn more about Lead Ferret on a following page.
www.salesnexus.com
Page vi

7. Featured Expert—Michael Halper
Michael Halper, CEO, SalesScripter, LLC
Driving improvement in sales organizations is the mission of everything that Michael Halper does professionally. With more than 20 years in frontline sales, marketing and customer service, he brings innovative
solutions to all his clients.
We are honored that Halper agreed to share his expertise with us as part of the Business Growth Series.
Don’t miss any opportunity to learn from him. In addition to this series, here are a few ways you can get
valuable nuggets of sales wisdom from Halper:
• “The Cold Calling Equation”: As author of this groundbreaking book, Halper shares powerful insights
into the ‘blood sport’ of cold calling. Sales professionals always resist cold calls. Yet those who master the art of the cold call have always closed more deals and hit their goals. Cold calling success is
NOT about working harder or working more. Instead, it is about using proven, step-by-step tactics
to achieve immediate results. In addition, the book will help you make human connections and find
more opportunities. Get the book here.
• SalesScripter.com: This web based tool is a complete game changer in the field of sales. SalesScripter assists your company in identifying the details you need to create powerful sales messaging.
The tool will help develop your sales scripts, email templates, voicemail scripts, qualifying questions,
objection responses and more. Try SalesScripter FREE!
www.salesnexus.com
Page vii

8. Featured Expert—Michael Halper
• Launch Pad Solutions, LLC: Launch Pad is a training and consulting firm that helps businesses increase sales revenue by improving areas of sales prospecting and lead generation:
○○ Sales Consulting: Launch Pad works with management to establish sales messaging, processes,
and strategy that lead to immediate improvements in results.
○○ Sales Training: Training programs that help frontline sales people to improve their ability to effectively prospect. Sales people are able to make immediate improvements due to the effective,
yet practical and easy to implement, tactics.
○○ Sales Coaching: Launch Pad works with sales professionals and managers on a one-to-one basis
to help ensure the right steps are being taken to improve sales prospecting and lead generation.
○○ Appointment Setting Service: For businesses that do not want to spend their valuable time on
prospecting and working to generate leads, Launch Pad takes over that responsibility through an
appointment setting service. Under this model, Launch Pad’s team of telesales resources performs prospecting activities and schedule appointments for clients that have outsourced that
functional area.
www.salesnexus.com
Page viii

9. Featured Sponsor—LeadFerret.com
Lead Ferret is a sales organization’s most
powerful source of new business. Like it says
on the Lead Ferret website, when you access
this service—it is like adding 10 million+ contacts to your address book. The database
contains complete information including
email addresses…and so much more. It’s free
to join, so go check it out.
Throughout this series, we will be showing
you how to use this contact information and
implement strategies for business growth in
an efficient, time-saving and highly professional manner.
If you are a SalesNexus user you can download 500 free contacts a month. You can even take advantage of
this free offer during the free trial on SalesNexus.
Since some people say that, “2 minutes on LeadFerret is worth 2 hours on LinkedIn.”— you should take a few
minutes to learn more.
Every record in LeadFerret is complete with company information, name, title, address and phone number.
You can search by SIC and NACIS codes. You can search by location in several ways, including a map tool.
www.salesnexus.com
Page ix

10. Featured Sponsor—LeadFerret.com
The methods we are showing you in this series will demonstrate how to use this robust interface to grow
your business. In the first eBook, you will learn how to identify your ideal prospect. You may have a geographical territory or there may be a size of business that fits well with your product/service. You can search
in terms of revenue range, industry, department within the company and the title of the individual you
should contact.
You simply plug the demographic details into the LeadFerret system. You get a list of target prospects to
download into SalesNexus. You have spent much less time finding the right type of person and can now
spend more time connecting with high quality prospects and building relationships.
It all fits together with one purpose—to Grow Your Business.
www.salesnexus.com
Page x

11. How to Qualify
Sales Leads and Focus
on Sales Growth
that’s Profitable

12. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Review of first two eBooks of this series
Magic Five of Content-Based Email Marketing That Drive Sales
• Identify five pain points experienced by your customer before they know about your solution.
○○ You need to know these pains before you generate any content or emails.
○○ Pain points are initially more important—than how you can resolve them.
• Create content pieces for each of the pain points you have identified.
• Send an automated series of emails to prospects that link to the content pieces you created.
• Your email program should track when a prospect opens the email or clicks on a link to the content
piece.
• Use the prospect’s interaction with email as a signal for your sales team to follow up with a phone
call to ask qualifying questions.
• After a prospect has been qualified, send an automated campaign of emails that answer Frequently
Asked Questions.
○○ These FAQs are based on your specific business. They are questions your prospects currently
ask before they place and order for your product or service.
www.salesnexus.com
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13. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Building a Successful Marketing and Sales Process by Identifying Your Prospect’s
“Pain”
This eBook went deep into your prospects pain. We covered:
• What pain is and why it is important to identify the pain.
• We segmented three levels and six symptoms of pain.
• Since pain can be tough to find, we offered four tactics to uncover it.
• Building on what we learned in the first eBook, we tied the pain back to effective emails.
• The introduction of the SalesScripter showed you how to make the process quicker, easier and more
effective in your sales organization.
The job of a professional sales organization has been transformed. Two major factors of this new environment are: The buyers we encounter want to control the sales process and sales automation is more sophisticated and useful to the process
We have teamed up to develop a complete model for using those factors to your advantage. We show you
how to quickly and easily gather raw leads from a database like LeadFerret. Those leads must be immediately qualified, or you will not be able to maximize your time and effort. Sales success depends on you
spending time in an effective way. This eBook will give you the qualifying skills you need to sort out prospects that need to be pursued from the ones that need to be incubated over time.
www.salesnexus.com
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14. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Qualifying Leads
You’ve learned that you need to send automated emails based on the prospect’s pain in the first two eBooks.
The next step in this model is to call the prospects that opened the email and/or clicked on the link to a
content piece based on pain. The goal is to:
• Generate a good lead, schedule a meeting or set an appointment
• Gather information to be used later in the sales process
• Qualify or disqualify the prospect as a quality lead using a two-step process
By reading and implementing the things you learn here you will be able to:
• Identify which prospects that you should spend your valuable time with
• Decrease the time you might have wasted on prospects that had no probability of purchasing
• Implement a system for incubating less qualified prospects over time
• Build a better, more healthy pipeline
• Get more control over the sales cycle and closed deals
What is Qualifying?
You probably know what qualifying is, but to make sure we are all on the same level, let’s set a foundation.
Qualifying is assessing the prospect in two key areas—First, how well does the prospect fit with what I have
to offer? Fit from a needs standpoint and also fit from how you’re able to help the prospect.
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15. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Second, the prospect may desperately need what we have to offer, but we also need to look at how likely
they are to purchase from us. Even if they really need what we have to offer, if they don’t have funding, they
are not really a qualified prospect. We will dig into that area much deeper later in this eBook. All we want
to do at the beginning is to get a foundation for what qualifying means.
You will first qualify before any outbound calls are made. In other words,
you qualify in your research and we will cover that later. The largest part
of this training eBook will cover what you do when it comes time to make
a phone call or meet the prospect face-to-face.
Whether they realize it or not, qualifying is most likely having a large
impact when a sales person is struggling to manage deals, manage their
pipeline or create leads. It’s critical for sales effectiveness and here are a
few reasons why:
Qualify in 2 Key Areas:
1. How well does the prospect fit? Do they need
what I offer?
2. How likely are they to
purchase from us?
Time is Limited and Valuable
Even if you work 60 hours a week, you only have about 40 hours a week you would consider business hours.
This is particularly true for B2B sales where you can meet with clients. There’s nothing you can do to add
more time to the week. So, time is limited. It is your most valuable resource. It’s something you cannot replace if you waste it.
Control is Limited
You cannot control the prospects that you sell to or deal with…you can’t make them return your call; you
can’t make them agree to purchase from you; you can’t force them to move faster than they want to move.
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16. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
You may be able to push the deals along a little faster, but at the end of the day, you can’t control your
prospects.
What you CAN control is which prospects you talk to…meaning, you can be more selective over the prospects that you chose to try to sell to. And if you are more selective, you will build a healthier pipeline of
prospects that are better quality, and you will then l be able to have more control those interactions and
sales cycles. The deals will be better and you can manage your pipeline better.
Knowledge is Power
In sales (and in life), the more knowledge you have, the more power you have. One way to get more knowledge of your prospects is by qualifying. While qualifying, you will be asking some really good questions. The
questions will extract some extremely powerful information.
Relationships are Key
The better relationships you have with your prospects, the more information they will share. They will be
more responsive during the sales cycle too…so it is key to build those relationships.
Qualifying gives you the ability to build more positive, stronger relationships because you will be asking
good questions which will help you to make the best impression with your prospect. Asking good qualifying
questions will make the prospect feel as if you care and are carefully listening to their wants and needs. It
helps to decrease the prospect’s guard and help build rapport.
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17. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Qualify—Even Before Talking to Them
You want to identify what type of qualities fit well in your sales process. Who is your ideal prospect?
These answers may be handed down from sales management. You’ll have a territory in terms of geography.
There might be a size of business that fits well with your product/service. Look at revenue ranges, industry,
department within the company and the title of the individual you should contact. Use these demographic
details.
The model we are offering in this eBook series uses LeadFerret to download leads that are qualified by the
criteria mentioned in the paragraph above. You will want to go to a source like this with a general definition
of a qualified prospect.
www.salesnexus.com
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18. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
You begin qualifying by entering the demographic details of your ideal prospect. You get a list of target
prospects and your first step of qualifying is complete. You have spent much less time finding the right type
of person and now can spend more time connecting with high-quality prospects and building relationships.
www.salesnexus.com
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19. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Qualified vs Unqualified Prospects
We will now jump into the middle to make sure you are dealing with, ultimately, the best quality prospects.
The chart below shows four categories that you need to check off in order to be satisfied that the prospect
is qualified. You want a medium to strong level in all four categories.
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20. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
The four areas are:
Does the prospect NEED to purchase
Need is a key word here. The question is not if they want to purchase, but do they need to purchase what
you have to offer.
Does the prospect have the authority to purchase
Authority means:
• Are they the decision maker?
• Do they have the ability to say yes?
• Are they the person that actually signs the agreement?
Does the prospect have the ability to purchase
• Do they have the ability from a funding or money standpoint?
• Do they appear to have the ability to move forward?
Do they have the intent to purchase?
You want to know if they genuinely intend to make a purchase. For example, there are lots of people that
might go to the car dealership on Sunday afternoon to take a joy ride. Very often, that person does not have
a genuine interest in purchasing. Compare them to someone whose car is breaking down and they know
they need to make a purchase this weekend—or at least some time very soon.
We need a strong to medium rating in each of the four categories. If ANY of those areas is weak, it is not a
completely qualified prospect.
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21. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Look at the right column of the graphic above. An unqualified prospect may have just one of these. To demonstrate, let’s cover each one at a time.
No need to purchase
Even if they are qualified in the other three areas, they don’t really have a strong need to purchase. They
are the decision maker and they have the budget with funds ready. They may even have intent to purchase.
They may have attended some of your meetings and admired the great features of your product or service.
They think it is really cool. But at the end of the day, they don’t really need to purchase what you offer. Their
current system works okay. It’s kind of good. Since things are okay, you’re dealing with more of a want than
a need. You’ve done a great job in getting meetings going and the prospect is impressed. When it’s time
for the prospect to say yes, the deal could get killed due to the lack of justification to spend the money and
move the purchase forward.
You may have thought that everything looked pretty good. If you ignore the difference between want and
need, you may have this prospect in your pipeline, forecasting it to your manager and thinking it is a home
run. You are confident it is coming in. But these are the types of prospects that start ignoring your calls at
the end of the sales cycle. You start wondering what’s going on. If you would have qualified the prospect,
you might have spent less time with them and not forecasted the deal.
No authority to purchase
A great example of the prospect that may not have the authority to purchase is someone you have been
selling to—maybe a department manager. Meetings are going very well. Everything is great. The manager
has some authority and they have a team of people that report to them.
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22. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
This manager may make a lot of decisions…and still not be the person who approves this purchase. You have
spent a couple of months selling to this person only to find that the person who can say yes in this scenario
is their manager. That person has not been involved in your sales cycle the entire time.
It is another scenario where things look great. You have forecasted the deal because you are working with
a department manager and you feel good. But it was never a qualified prospect because the person you’re
dealing with does not have the authority to purchase—they are unqualified.
No Ability To Purchase
Sometimes the weakness is in the ability to purchase is about funding. Is there funding allocated to the
particular project you’re forecasting? When qualifying for whether funding is available, you can also try to
identify if there are other projects that might be competing for those funds and what need to be done in the
process of getting the funds approved and allocated.
NOTE: These unqualified prospects aren’t horrible prospects. If you’ve got a lead going and you
identify that there’s no funding, you may not want to walk away from it. You just need to identify
that they are unqualified at this time. It might be a deal for next year when funding opens up and
you can qualify them. This helps you determine how to prioritize the prospect in your pipeline.
This is true with the prospect not having the authority to purchase. What you want to do when you discover
you have been selling to someone who doesn’t have the authority to purchase is to turn the person into
more of a coach than a decision maker. You can then identify the person who is the decision maker and get
them into the dialogue as soon as possible. Once that happens, you have a qualified prospect.
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23. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
No intent to purchase
This is when everything looks good, but they are not really serious about purchasing…or they are not serious about purchasing from you. These situations can show up when someone reaches out to you to ask for
pricing or a quote. You may get a little excited. You put a proposal together and send it over. But the reality
may be that they are coming to you at the eleventh hour. They’ve been working on this evaluation for a year.
They have been talking to another company and they come to you to get a price at the end. The intent is to
negotiate better with the company they have already decided to purchase from.
It can happen to you. It happens all the time. If you don’t know to recognize that, you spend a bunch of time
putting a proposal together…you may even put the deal on your forecast and in your pipeline. But it is not a
qualified prospect.
There are some questions for all these types of scenarios to help you identify them. You might not walk
away from all of these deals. But you are going to make better decisions. You are going to be able to prioritize
your pipeline better. You are going to avoid wasting time. The time you would have wasted on unqualified
prospects can help you focus on finding new prospects. It all adds up to better sales performance.
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24. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Good Reasons to Qualify Prospects
In most sales organizations—whether it’s cold calling, knocking on doors or going to trade shows—you
spend a lot of money and time trying to get engaged with a potential prospect. Most sales people literally
spend most of their time looking for people to talk to…right?
Then, because you’ve invested that time and resource in establishing an initial relationship, you probably
have the tendency to react as soon as anybody demonstrates a little bit of interest. You fall in love with them
because you’ve invested so much effort in getting to that point. So you end up spending more time and
resource going forward with somebody that’s still not really qualified for the reasons we described above.
We rationalize things…particularly when it
comes to the authority to purchase. You may
say “Well, this guy doesn’t really have the authority to purchase, but he can introduce me
to the person who does have that authority.
You may spend a lot of time doing presentations and the introduction may never take
place. You must focus on getting the introduction right up front…or consider walking
away.
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Time is saved
by working
with qualified
prospects. ROI
is increased.
Prospects
qualified to
determine if
purchase is
likely.
Small
percentage
of Prospects
Purchase
Business
Resources
invested
Sales Person
falls in love
with
Prospect
Automated
tools minimize
resources
needed to be
invested.
Prospect
shows
interest
Prospect
raises their
hand to show
interest.
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25. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
2-Step Qualifying Process
Use the following 2-step qualifying process to help identify the four
types of prospects we discussed earlier. The two steps are soft qualifying and hard qualifying. They have been divided into two steps because
there are some hard questions you will ask these prospects. A hard
qualifying question can be something like whether the budget has been
approved for the purchase. You don’t want to ask questions like that the
very first time you talk to a prospect. The first contact will focus on soft
qualifying questions. This is a softer approach with the focus of identifying if it makes sense to meet in person (or meet again over the phone).
Does it make sense for us to keep talking? It is really that simple.
2-Step Qualifying Process
Soft Qualifying:
• The current status
• Level of satisfaction now
• Organizational details
Hard Qualifying:
• Need to Purchase
• Authority to Purchase
Soft Qualifying
• Ability to Purchase
These qualifying questions take place primarily during a cold call or
first contact with a prospect. They focus on three key areas:
• Intent to Purchase
The current state—What is the prospect doing in the particular area where our products or services fit?
If you sell a system or you help with some type of process, what is the prospect currently doing? This first
answer alone may tell you whether or not you should keep talking.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say you sell some sort of supply chain or inventory management software. A question you might ask is, “What are you currently using to manage inventory?” After they answer, the
next question might be, “When did you implement that system?” That is a pretty big question. If they
implemented whatever they are using today last month, you are not going to qualify that prospect.
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26. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
You may also want to ask if they are locked into a contract with the current provider. The point is to ask two
or three questions to determine if they are qualified. A strong prospect would be someone who is not doing
anything in the area where you have something to offer. Medium would be someone who has a contract
expiring soon. Weak would be when they just bought something or they are locked into a contract.
The level of satisfaction—You want to know how things are going. You now know what system they are using. You may want to assume they are unhappy because you are confident your system is superior…but you
want to hear it from the prospect.
•
•
•
•
Ask, “Are things good, great, okay or could be better?”
Ask how they feel about the ability to manage inventory levels with the current system.
Ask if there is any functionality that they need that is not being provided by their current system.
Ask them to rate the current system on a scale of 1-10.
Getting an answer to any of these questions will help you qualify them. From the answers you can assess the
level of satisfaction. The prospects who give you information that sounds like things could be better could
be qualified prospects.
Organizational details—You may not need to know if the prospect you are talking to is the key decision
maker at this point. Based on their answers, you’re going to identify whether they are somebody that you
should have a conversation with.
You want to determine if you have a green light, so you want to know at least how close you are to the decision maker. Here are a few sample questions:
• “Are you involved in the management of the supply chain?”
• “Is this an area that falls under your responsibility?”
• “Does this area impact you at all?”
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27. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
After you go through the three soft qualifying steps, the answers will tell you whether or not you should try
to schedule a meeting or an appointment. These soft qualifying questions uncover any glaring reasons that
you should be talking to someone else.
Here is how you might assess the answers you get from the prospect:
Strong: The prospect is the key person that oversees the area that is impacted by your product.
Medium: Although the prospect is in the area your product impacts, they are at a lower level.
Weak: The prospect doesn’t have any connection to the area where your product impacts.
These questions take place in a 2-5 minute phone conversation. When you schedule that meeting and
you’re sitting face-to-face—or—you have thirty minutes on the phone—or—a meeting on the calendar, it is
time to dig into hard qualifying.
Hard Qualifying
When you are progressing in the conversation and moving through the sales cycle, you need to begin with
harder qualifying questions. To hard qualify a prospect, you will focus on four key characteristics of a qualified prospect. Let’s look at them one at a time:
Need to Purchase—The goal of this hard qualifying process is to separate the prospects who want to purchase from those that need to purchase.
EXAMPLES: Let’s say you are talking to someone who has expressed an interest in what you sell. Try
asking this question, “Well, let me ask you. What happens if you don’t purchase from us or purchase
anything in this area? What does that look like?”
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28. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
If you ask that type of question, listen carefully to the answer. If it is not a bad impact, you need to
know. If the prospect says, “We could just keep using the system we use today.” Their answer might
explain something to you. If there is not a big impact, it is not horrible because you might still close
the deal. But this prospect is not as qualified as you want them to be.
You might ask if there is a date when the purchase needs to be made. If they answer, “We have to do
something by the end of the year because that’s when our contract expires,” that is a pretty qualified
prospect in this area. If, instead they say that they would like to do it this year but it really doesn’t
matter…the lead is not as qualified.
Authority to Purchase—You don’t want to ask, “Are you the decision maker?” You can get that answer
while being a bit more diplomatic. Instead ask, “What is the decision making process?” They can explain it
to you. If you need a little more information, you can ask a few more questions about what it takes to reach
the decision to purchase from a pure decision standpoint. You will also want to know something about the
paperwork process so you can map it out step-by-step. There may be a committee and a multi-layer chain
of command to reach the ultimate person that signs off on the deal.
The person that ultimately signs the contract—the CFO or executive in the corner office—is someone you
will want to bring into the process. It is a very good question to get answered to determine the authority to
purchase from the beginning.
The authority to purchase can range from the prospect being the only one needed to approve the purchase
to the prospect not being about to make the final decision. The other scenario that is real common is when
the prospect is expected to make the decision, but will require approval prior to funding. Knowing where
your prospect falls on this spectrum is important from the very beginning.
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Ability to Purchase—This is where you find out about funding. The real question is “Do you have any money
or funding?” While you don’t want to come out and ask the question bluntly, here are a few more diplomatic
ways to get to the answer. Try these:
• Is there a budget that has been approved for this project?
• What budget range does this project need to stay within?
You might be surprised at how often the prospect will give a budget range when you ask direct questions.
Intent to Purchase—You want to know if other options are being considered. It may be a bit uncomfortable
to ask this question…but without knowing the answer you are not moving forward in the right direction.
Say someone has reached out to you and you give them a demo. Before or during that demo you can ask
“What other options are you looking at for this?” They may tell you exactly what they are considering. If they
do, probe deeper to ask how far along they are in the process of talking to the competitor. They may lie to
you. But asking increases your chances of knowing where you stand.
If they tell you they have been talking to X Company for about six months, you can ask how they feel about
their solution. Ask, “What do you like about their solution? What don’t you like?” These are great questions
to learn if the prospect is really serious about buying or if they are just trying to get a competitive price.
Of course, you want the answer to these questions to be that they are very serious about making a purchase
and are only considering your product service. Weaker answers would be when they are considering several
options and do not have a preference yet or they don’t have a definitive plan to purchase anything from
anyone.
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30. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Qualifying Questions for YOUR Business
As you read in our first eBook of this series, you want to develop qualifying questions for yourself. You use
those qualifying questions to determine the best prospects for your product or service. This process uses
two steps:
1. Identify what your ideal prospect looks like.
○○ Prospects that don’t currently have a solution
○○ Prospects that have an old solution that no longer works
2. Try to develop questions that assess/qualify the fit.
○○ Use www.SalesScripter.com to identify the questions and a whole lot more.
SalesScripter
This program is an online discovery tool that you can use for the two steps above. Here is how it works:
• The tool asks a series of specific questions to extract details about your products, your company and
your prospects.
• This information is plugged into a library of sales script templates and other online tools.
• The tool automatically produces a report that helps you build out all of your content…from sales
scripts to emails, voicemail scripts to qualifying questions, call and meeting scripts to objection
maps…all very specific to your business and your customers.
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31. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
SalesScripter Reports to Automate Prospecting
A couple of paragraphs ago, we showed the two-step process of developing qualifying questions that are
specific to your business and customers. Using the SalesScripter tool, your ideal prospect report will help
you to identify the qualifying environment of your ideal prospect. In other words, you will know where to
look for your best prospects based on the “Ideal Prospect Report.”
You can simply plug the details of your ideal prospect into a system like www.LeadFerret.com and get a list of
contacts that fit those criteria. Lead Ferret will spit out 500, 1,000 or even 2,000 contacts right away. You can
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32. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
download them into a simple spreadsheet. But if you want to realize the true power of automation, you will use
a CRM like SalesNexus. When the contacts are automatically downloaded into the SalesNexus platform, you
can have a campaign ready and waiting to be sent to each of those prospects. Your CRM will let you know when
the emails are opened or the link to content is clicked. Your sales team knows that someone has demonstrated
some interest. From there, they make a call using the qualifying process we have talked about in this eBook.
It is best to pick three to five questions to ask on a cold call. SalesScripter may give you nine…so you will
want to pick the ones that are best suited to your unique ability to qualify a good prospect. If the call is going well after three to five questions, you probably want to move to the next level. You can check in with the
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33. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
prospect to ask, “Before we go any further—I called you out of the blue. Do you want to keep talking about
this right now?” or you may want to say— “Hey, I called you out of the blue. Let’s dig into some of the details.
Can I put 30 minutes on your calendar next Tuesday?”
There will be an entire webinar devoted to a complete introduction to the
SalesScripter tool at the end of this Business Growth Series.
This chart demonstrates the content marketing campaign that the eBook series is using:
• Know the pain your clients and prospects experience.
• Send emails to them with a link back to
content pieces that address those pains.
• Respond to all emails that are opened
and clicked to ask qualifying questions.
• Set up next step—whether it is a presentation, demo, purchase or a face-toface meeting.
• Send a series of FAQs to follow up.
This process will help you save time by identifying really early, the people who are not likely to
buy anything from you. That way you can move
on in a productive direction with prospects that
are more qualified.
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34. How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable
Next Steps
We hope that you’ve benefited from our ebook! We truly want to help you take your business to the next
level. If you have questions about how these ideas can best be applied in your business, we’re only a phone
call away! Really! Call or email and we’ll do our best to help however we can.
All the best,
Craig Klein
CEO, SalesNexus.com
713.862.0001
Free Live Training
For hands on instruction on how to write emails, create email templates and build campaigns, join our
weekly live training session on Wednesdays at 3pm ET. http://support.salesnexus.com/training/
Sales Growth Webinars and ebooks
In addition to this ebook, we’ve published 6 webinars and ebooks. Access them all, completely free, here
http://www.salesnexus.com/sales-growth-webinar-series/
30 Day Free Trial
Start your Free, 30 day trial of SalesNexus and transfer 500 LeadFerret.com contacts to email to begin identifying qualified leads for your business today. http://www.salesnexus.com/free-trial/
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