The Key to Good Qualification in the Sales Process

The really tough and under-managed step in any Sales Process is the qualification stage.

The qualification stage represents one of the hardest steps for expansion stage companies to successfully define.  I will start by explaining the key to establishing a good qualification step/stage.

What is YOUR definition of a Qualified Lead?

If your expectations of a qualified lead is well defined and agreed upon by the management teams of both Marketing and Sales, all parties involved will know the proper protocol before the selling process begins and will agree to the responsibility in acting upon that lead as well.

How do you define a Qualified Opportunity?

A qualified opportunity is defined by a set of criteria agreed upon by the sales and marketing organizations. This criteria is used to filter leads produced via marketing’s demand generation efforts. The result is a contact with demonstrated interest and/or attributes aligned to your ideal customer profile. A qualified lead should position sales for the best chance of success.

Possible minimum defining criteria:

Contact info

• Full name
• Company name
• Title and department
• Email
• Phone

Demonstrated interest or call to action

• Requested demo
• Downloaded information (whitepaper, product specs, etc.)
• Filled out web form
• Communicated with someone in the organization they want to move to the next step

Additional qualifying criteria

• Number of users
• Number of employees
• Number of publications
• Alexa ranking
• Google Page Rank

Auto qualifying criteria

• Lead score based on a series of behavioral inputs
• Specific data points that fit your ideal customer profile. This could include any of the above criteria that fits specifically to your company and product e.g.
• If you sell SQL Server tools, the title of “SQL Server Administrator” would be an auto qualifier

Auto disqualifying criteria

• Direct Competitor
• Fake Name “Donald Duck”
• Fake Number “555-555-5555”
• Fake Email [email protected]

How do you define qualified leads?