Get ahead by qualifying your leads in more depth

In our other blogs, we talk about how to win more sales by being more relevant than your competitors. Here I wanted to share with you how we actually do that. The biggie? Make sure that you know everything you need to know before you step into their office.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

We go through our qualifying leads tips below so that you can arm your sales team with all the insight they need.

Qualifying leads tips

Before we go into our qualifying leads tips, we share our sales process. This sales process isn’t about specific sales techniques, it’s about helping the customer to see that your company ticks all the right boxes for them:

1. Find out – Asking the right questions to arm yourself with key bits of information
2. Match needs – Making it incredibly easy for them to know what they need to know about you
3. Be helpful – Being proactive and super helpful when it comes to helping the customer answer all of the questions they need to answer
4. Hold them to timescales – Structuring the conversation in such a way that you can get an answer from them sooner, rather than later

Nothing to it, eh? Like I said, we’re not here to tell you what to do, this is about showing you ways that we’ve found has worked for us. This will take you through what we do:

Before the meeting – Qualifying leads and reviewing the information 

During the meeting – Building rapport, matching needs and collecting more information

Providing the quote – Providing a well formatted, well structured quote quickly

Following up and closing –Helping them answer all of their questions and holding them to specific timescales

You’ve got another lead!

So, we’ve secured you another lead, lovely stuff! So, what do you know about them? A key part of our qualifying leads tips article is about asking more and more questions.

What you know about them

The biggest of the qualifying leads tips is about asking questions. What information is vital for your sales team to help them close the sales? Examples include:

• They’re definitely expecting you – That you have a meeting booked with this company and they’re expecting a quote from you
• What happens after the quote – An idea of their decision making process after the quote
• The right person – That you’re speaking to the right person
• Why they’re changing – An idea of the reasons behind their drive to change
• Easy to service – That the site is in a specific area and of the right size for you
• When they’re changing – An idea of when they wanted to change
• Price vs. Quality – An idea of their opinion of flex in their budget
• Genuine problems that you can solve – The fact that they aren’t happy with their current supplier and why

Make sure that you review this information and anticipate what things they’ll ask about so that you’re prepared

The questions don’t stop at the meeting

I’m sure you’ve gotten this already, but the method behind the approach is “arm yourself with information at every stage”. The more you know, the easier it is for you to be the most relevant company to their needs

Your meeting is a chance to ask great questions to find out even more about

• Their current supplier’s misdeeds (let them vent, but it’s generally best for you not to add to criticisms as you don’t want it to seem like you’re bagging on your competitors. It’s always better to take the high road)
• Even ask their current budget (it’s not too difficult to get this, as long as you precede asking with ‘if you don’t mind me asking….’. That seems to be enough of a softener)
• Elaborate on information You can even get more information on bits of the info you know by phrasing it in a ‘confirming’ manner e.g. “So you mentioned to my colleague that you haven’t heard from your supplier’s Area Manager in a while?”

Check out our webinar to close more sales

Our qualifying leads tips don’t stop here! Check out our September webinar which shows your sales team on how to close more sales. I hope it’s useful for you