To make the correct judgement, you need the essential insights, and this is what it means by "qualify". If you are not selling the product or service to the correct lead, you will end up wasting a lot of money, time, energy and resources. So what you should do to qualify leads and prospects? How will you know whether a prospect is fit for your offer? Will the lead ultimately lead to a sales opportunity?





You should invest your money and time only after qualifying someone. Only then you should start selling the service or product to the prospect.





If you are not quite experienced you will jump at the given opportunity without properly studying the prospect. What happens here is you are trying to selling something on an assumption without the proper background check. It may or may not culminate in sales. Only mindless salespeople will do this kind of marketing and they will end up losing their energy and time chasing wrong leads.





Instead of talking all the time, try to listen to your prospect. Then you will understand whether he/she is a qualified prospect. If you listen to them your chances of selling will be much higher.





Spend time on qualified prospects, and you'll achieve significantly more costly deals.





Even if you get a qualified lead you must put in a lot of effort to make him/her your customer. You must know all about your valuable prospect or else you will miss an opportunity to sell your product or service to them.





If you end up selling a product to a wrong customer or to people who should not have bought your product, it is not just bad for the customer but bad for you and your company.





To find a quality lead you must know how to evaluate a prospect. For instance, you must know what their drawbacks are. How have they evaluated your solution? What type of an organisation they belong to? These details are essential to personalise your pitch for your prospects.





Know their pain points and also about their organization and personality. If a salesman is not able to close a deal it shows that he did not know all the important details about his prospect and hence he did not properly qualify as lead.





Ask as many questions as possible to your customer and gather the correct information. There are certain qualifying questions which every salesman should be aware of. We list out the most important ones.





Customer profile





A prospect should match your ideal customer profile. How big is the company? What industry are they in? Where are they located?





Needs





You must know your customer's needs to qualify the prospect. And you should know how to fulfil their requirements and requests. You should have an idea what result they are aspiring for, and how the result is going to impact their company or team.





Decision making process





You should also know how they make decisions and how many people are involved in the decision-making process. Are they impulsive buyers or do they take time to buy products?





For instance, some companies take almost a year to purchase products. But if you have a sales target to achieve in the next four months then they are not your qualified prospects.





Competition





It is said that you should keep your friends close and enemies closer. So you should know about your competitors. You must know whether the lead has worked with any of your competitors and also what are the decisive factors on which they will base their decision on.