Turn marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified leads with our lead qualification checklist.
If you’re a newer sales or marketing manager at a B2B business, you’ve likely thought about ways to improve your team’s lead qualification process. A checklist makes the most sense if you want reps to be consistent and thorough in their evaluation of leads. But the real struggle is creating a checklist that results in higher-quality sales leads and actually gets used by your reps.
Our five-step lead qualification checklist is easy to follow, comprehensive, and informed by insights from Gartner, a leading global research firm.[1-4] As a bonus, it features our lead qualification worksheet, which helps filter leads by demographics and engagement with marketing materials. We explain how to use the checklist and why each element is important for effective lead qualification.
/ Why use a lead qualification checklist?
An effective lead qualification process is what turns a marketing qualified lead (MQL) into a sales qualified lead (SQL). Successful conversion of MQLs into SQLs is especially important, given that almost a third of sales reps say alignment between marketing and sales teams is a challenge impacting lead quality[1], and only a small percentage of marketing-generated leads convert to closed sales.[2] Tools such as our lead qualification checklist can help with these efforts.
Step 1: Is the lead interested?
This first step may seem like a no-brainer. Someone who has viewed your pricing page or downloaded your eBook is clearly interested in your product or service, right?
Not so fast. Research shows that B2B buyers spend an average of six months exploring options before meeting sellers.[3] This can make it tricky to determine whether you’re a finalist in your prospect’s shortlist or simply an early-stage contender.
Luckily, there are tools that can give you a better sense of a lead’s interest and likelihood to buy. Lead nurturing tools determine a prospect’s funnel stage by analyzing the amount of time they spend on your site. Marketing analytics tools with website analytics and engagement tracking are another option. The image below shows an example of one of these platforms.
Heatmap showcasing user behavior on webpages in marketing analytics platform Hotjar
If you’re able to collect this data, take the next step by recording your findings on page 6 of our lead qualification worksheet, shown below.
If you don’t own software with behavior tracking capabilities, you can still gauge a sales prospect’s interest by asking the following qualifying questions—either over the phone, email, or live chat:
Are you looking to invest in a [add your type of product or service]?
Can I suggest a pricing plan that will work for you?
Are you interested in learning more about our solution?
If the prospect’s answer is no, or if they don’t respond, you don’t necessarily need to disqualify them just yet. Categorize them as a cold lead, and return to them later.
Step 2: Can you provide what the lead needs?
After confirming that your lead is, in fact, interested in your product or service, it’s time to determine whether your offering matches, or could potentially match, what they’re looking for. This step is important because if you can’t demonstrate how your solution can fix your lead’s problems, you’re wasting both your time and theirs.
Some questions you should ask to determine whether you’ll be able to meet their needs:
What are your immediate and long-term goals for your business?
What’s standing in the way of these goals?
What is your business currently struggling with?
What steps are you taking to overcome these challenges?
By asking first about your lead’s goals and challenges—rather than what specific products or services they have in mind—you can use your vantage point as a brand expert to personalize recommendations. This way, you can introduce them to offerings they might not know are available rather than limit their search to a singular product.
/ Note
It’s important to inquire about your lead’s needs before broaching the budget conversation. Once you know what your lead is looking for, you can narrow the options by asking for must-have versus nice-to-have features. This will allow you to provide a range of options that meet their criteria as well as a more specific idea of what they can expect to spend.
Step 3: Can the lead afford your product or service?
Our next step is to discuss whether or not your lead has the funds to invest in your product or service. This can be an uncomfortable conversation for both you and your potential customer, but it doesn’t have to be. Below are a few qualifying questions you can ask to ease a lead into the budget conversation:
What products or services are you currently using?
Do you feel like the price you’re paying is fair?
What’s your ideal price range for this product or service?
The best way to find out a lead’s budget is, of course, to ask them. But there are also context clues to keep an eye out for as you’re researching leads, such as their company size, revenue, and salary ranges. Using these figures, you can gauge whether a lead should be able to invest in your offering.
If your lead has a budget that isn’t compatible with what they’re asking for, and you have more affordable solutions available, you can review those options with them. However, a mismatched budget will often result in an unqualified lead. In this case, you can either move on or check in at a later date to see if their budget has changed.
Step 4: Is it the right time for the lead to make a purchase?
Timeline is another important factor to qualify leads. Most of the time, if a prospect is contacting you, they've done their research and are ready to buy. In fact, B2B buyers spend six months (on average) exploring options before meeting a seller.[4]
There are a few exceptions such as subscription services where a lead may not be able to commit just yet because they’re still within their contract with another brand. In these cases, and others where leads are unable to buy just yet, ask the following questions:
When is your contract up with your other provider?
What’s prompting you to change providers now?
Are there any other types of time constraints you’re working with?
What if you don’t meet your timeline?
In some cases, there might be fulfillment constraints on your end that prolong the sales process. Be upfront about any potential delays, and be prepared to compromise with alternatives or discounts.
Step 5: Is this lead the decision-maker at their organization?
Our last step is concerned with your lead’s authority to make purchasing decisions for their organization. As with budget, sometimes you can find this out through context clues while you’re researching your lead: An individual in a leadership role is more likely to have the power to purchase than a bookkeeper or an office manager.
Sometimes, though, a person with purchasing power will task someone else with researching products or services. If your lead doesn’t have this authority, but they can connect you with someone who does, you can continue to qualify them. But first, ask these questions:
Who decides what products or services your organization should use?
Whom should I speak with to discuss solutions for your business needs?
/ A note about lead scoring
Some sales teams may opt to approach the items in this checklist as a scorecard rather than an ordered list. This tactic is called lead scoring and allows you to rank leads against each other based on their likelihood to buy. It can be used in tandem with a checklist like ours as long as you discuss interest before needs, and needs before budget for the reasons we outlined earlier.
If you’re interested in implementing a lead scoring system, check out our collection of lead scoring tools here. You can also hire a marketing analytics agency to assist with lead generation and scoring. Find out more in our marketing analytics company hiring guide.
Download our free lead qualification checklist to get started
The research-based guidance we’ve provided is intended to give your sales team more context for each item on our lead qualification checklist, so they know why each step is critical for effective lead qualification.
As an additional resource, your download comes with our lead qualification worksheet, which includes ideal customer profile- and engagement-based lead qualification criteria that your sales professionals can use to record their findings for each prospect.
We recommend using this blog post to supplement your team’s sales training and to include it in your sales team’s collection of resources for future reference.