Over 40% of the leads you reach are completely unqualified. 

By setting up a lead qualification strategy you ensure you’re reaching your correct audience and not wasting any unnecessary resources. 

What is lead qualification?

Essentially, lead qualification is the process in which you evaluate and classify your leads according to their value regarding your business.

In other words, deciding whether the lead is a good or bad fit for your business, and how profitable they may be.

While each company has their own criteria, a qualified lead should at least meet these 3 points:

1. Benefits from your product or service

2. Expressed interest in your company

3. Fits your ICP

Why is lead qualification important?

Lead qualification plays a major role in the productivity of a sales team.

Your team will focus their efforts and resources on deals that are more likely to go through and stop wasting time on fruitless sales that may not be a right fit for you or your prospect.

Lead qualification will ensure your company increases its ROI, by using valuable resources effectively.

Additionally, with a good lead qualification, your leads will also be receiving highly relevant and useful offers.

This will make them feel like you’re actually there for them and to fulfill their needs. Not just gain more clients.

Lead qualification will allow you to personalize further and tailor your approach to each lead to make sure you’re using the best strategy for each one.

Win-win situation.

Qualified leads

Qualified leads, as you may assume, are leads that have passed your filters and are eligible to become customers.

We can find 2 different types of qualified leads: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

The difference between them is their stage among the sales funnel.

MQL

Marketing-qualified leads stand on the Interest stage.

This type of lead has shown some sort of interest in your company, for example:

  • Visited your LinkedIn profile
  • Attended a webinar
  • They access your resources (playbooks, blog, ebook, etc)
  • Engage with your LinkedIn posts
  • Signed up for your newsletter

At this point, they still haven’t received news from you directly, but they can be considered warm leads, so this is the time to engage with them or send them some exclusive resources.

To attract marketing-qualified leads, you need to make sure you’re appealing to them. This involves setting up a LinkedIn strategy.

Watch this video and get started!

SQL

Sales-qualified leads are typically around the Evaluation and Purchase stages.

These leads have shown a certain intent to buy from you and, therefore prove to be highly qualified leads.

With these leads, you can implement a warm outreach strategy.

Even if they’re not 100% guaranteed to become clients, if you play your cards right, continue to prove yourself, and tailor your approach to them, they’re likely to become your new clients.

Unqualified leads

Unqualified leads are leads who have not met the established criteria to become customers.

There are many reasons for this, some could include:

  • They were not interested in your product
  • The service you offer at the time does not fit their needs
  • They have other priorities at the time
  • They are unable to commit
  • They are too unsure and unwilling to move forward

… among many others.

While many of these reasons would immediately mean you drop the lead, others can still qualify at a later time.

Make sure you keep a record of your lead qualification so you can come back to them at a more opportune time for both of you.

Lead qualification vs lead scoring

Lead qualification and lead scoring are both processes that are designed for teams to be able to assess and have a clear overview of the leads’ intent and profitability.

The aim of both process is to allocate resources in sales that are likely to go through and not invest the same amount of time and money in every single lead.

As we have seen, lead qualification is set with specific criteria and is a qualitative approach to sales.

On the other hand, lead scoring takes more of a quantitative approach, as it assigns a numerical value to each lead.

Lead scoring allows for a clear view of your sales pipeline, as it is based on factual information that can be shown with simple graphs.

Some of the information you can track includes:

  • Demographic data
  • Company information
  • Email engagement
  • Social engagement
  • Social media engagement
  • Negative scores

A combination of both processes will ensure that you have all the necessary data to approach your leads at the perfect time and with the most appropriate approach.

Models and frameworks in lead qualification

There is no unique way to go about lead qualification.

Each company (and salesperson, for that matter) will need a framework that fits their needs perfectly.

However, it is important to set up your framework so you lead with a structured approach and don’t change your system with every lead. Rendering all your hard work useless.

Although you can build your own framework, we’ll leave you with some popular and successful ones so you can take inspiration.

BANT

Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline

With this framework, sales reps determine how their product or service is going to fit with the lead.

First, by analyzing the leads’ budget at the time, if they have sufficient funds, if they’ve received recent financing, or if the targeted company is not going through their best time.

Secondly, reps will have to determine the decision-making authority the lead holds in the company to make sure they’re reaching out to the correct person.

Once that has been established, sales reps will need to take into account how their product or service will help the lead and if they have a real need for it.

And finally, sales reps will have to assess the amount of time leads need to make a decision, so they don’t pressure them or leave the matter hanging in the air so long it gets forgotten. Also to see if they actually have the time to go through with the sale.

Establishing this last point will also help you to plan out your follow-ups.

The BANT framework has become popular once again due to its simplicity. It is particularly useful for longer sales cycles.

CHAMP

Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization

CHAMP is a framework that appeared on the scene after BANT, with the difference that CHAMP would prioritize leads’ challenges and pain points.

Meaning CHAMP creates a more consultative selling approach.

This framework will determine if a lead is qualified or not depending on their challenges. If they’re experiencing an issue that your business could easily fix, they become a qualified lead.

Money and authority play the same role as they do in BANT:

  • Can my lead afford my product or service?
  • Am I talking to the right person in the company?

In the prioritization step, the process is similar to assessing the leads’ timeline. Here sales reps see how important this sale is.

MEDDIC

Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, and Champion

This framework is particularly useful for complex sales processes as it focuses on an in-depth understanding of the customer’s business and decision-making process.

When defining metrics, you’ll need to find out your leads’ desired KPIs. What do they need from you? How are you going to benefit?

You’ll also need to track down the company’s economic buyer or the decision maker (similar to the Authority point in the previous frameworks).

The decision criteria and decision process will help you understand how to approach the sales process to fit the company. This includes budget, ROI, integrations, and on the other hand timeline or company hierarchy.

Once you’ve analyzed the company’s sales process, you’ll need to track down their pain point or challenge and see what need the company actually has for you and your product or service.

Lastly, the champion will be any support you have received from your team during the sales process.

FAINT

Funds, Authority, Interest, Need, and Timing

Very similar to BANT, FAINT places its main priority in the leads’ budget, with the difference that FAINT doesn’t just consider the funds the company has, it considers if the leads can potentially find or allocate the needed funds for a purchase.

FAINT considers if the lead is qualified based on their decision-making power (AKA authority), or if they can influence a decision within the organization.

FAINT takes into account both the interest and the need a lead has in the product or service. They may not have the budget or immediate need for it, but perhaps, they’ve started research on your product or service. In this case, you would have to cultivate and nurture said interest.

Lastly, FAINT qualifies leads depending on the time that has to be allocated to each one. FAINT is less about immediate purchase urgency and more about the potential to build a relationship for when the lead is ready to buy. You want to assess how soon they could potentially convert and what nurturing efforts may be required.

FAINT works well in environments where leads might not have a set budget or an immediate need but could become valuable over time with proper nurturing.

AI and lead qualification

Lead qualification can be tricky and time-consuming, especially because it can get very subjective.

For this reason, depending on AI to help you qualify your leads is your best course of action.

AI can automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, lead scoring, and even initial contact emails, freeing up sales representatives to focus on more complex and personalized aspects of the sales process.

AI algorithms can also predict which leads are more likely to convert, allowing sales teams to prioritize their efforts effectively.

Additionally, you can find your leads based on your specific criteria by using AI-powered databases with advanced filters.

Check out lemlist’s for example.

As a new feature, lemlist has implemented a company search in its database with 63M companies available.

lemlist provides access to globally compliant and accurate data. Our database ensures you’re working with the freshest, most reliable company data, helping you target companies with confidence.

By using the Intent & Signals filter, you will be able to access highly qualified leads and reach them at the right time with the right approach.

Behavioral analysis

AI can collect data from your leads, from different sources such as online interactions and purchase history. It is then processed to identify patterns and offer a full analysis.

What can behavioral analysis do for you?

  • Collect leads’ data
  • Recognize patterns
  • Segment your leads
  • Offer actionable insights

The best part of this method is that AI is going to track down triggers that humans may have missed.

It is also a highly scalable method. Data collection grows with your business without the need to invest more hours and resources to keep up the same lead qualification quality.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics are one of AI’s best allies to prioritize leads.

It works similarly to behavior analysis, with the difference that with predictive analytics you get insights into how your leads’ may perform, rather than how they have performed in the past.

Like behavioral analysis, predictive analytics takes data from past performance, like engagement with content, time spent on certain websites, etc.

lemlist’s AI Variables

lemlist AI Variables allows you to quickly qualify leads based on their data.

Here are some ways to qualify leads with AI Variables:

  • Give leads a score based on the authority of their job position. For example, decision-makers get a better score than workers lower down the ladder.
  • Qualify leads based on their industry, location, and much more
  • Bulk clean up your leads’ data to ensure accurate data for lead qualification

Here’s how to create an AI Variable in lemlist:

You can create an AI Variable in your campaign’s lead list:

Then, let AI help you qualify or segment your leads:

AI Variables work with prompts, just like ChatGPT, except you can simultaneously apply the prompt on as many leads as you want, saving you hours of tedious work.

The examples above are merely the tip of the iceberg. The lead qualification possibilities are pretty much endless.

AI Variables are available in any lemlist plan.

How to optimize your lead qualification strategies

While there are many different strategies and tools to make your lead qualification as efficient as possible, there are some things that you can do to ensure that your lead qualification goes seamlessly.

Define your ICP

Defining your ideal customer profile or buyer persona will help you determine what a qualified lead is for your company.

By attributing every feature you need in your clients, you’ll be able to carry out an efficient and objective lead qualification in the future.

You can use this generator to build your buyer persona.

Once you have all the details, you can simply mark which features your leads have and which ones they lack.

Personalize your content

One of the most efficient lead magnets is having a content base that showcases who you are and what you do.

This can be on LinkedIn, your website, a blog, webinars, etc.

If you tailor your content to fit exactly the pain point you’re looking to solve, you’re inevitably going to attract inbound leads who already meet your criteria to become a qualified lead.

This will also be a crucial factor when transitioning MQLs to SQLs.

Check out this video to learn how to create a LinkedIn lead magnet 👇

Make sure that your content is true to what you do and consistent.

If you constantly change your niche or topic, leads will assume you’re not committed and will move on.

Lead qualification checklist

When preparing your lead qualification, make sure you follow this checklist:

  • Define your ICP and set clear criteria for MQLs and SQLs
  • Set your lead qualification framework
  • Invest in a tool that will segment and qualify your leads
  • Contact your leads according to their qualification and tailor your messages

Additionally, maintaining a customer-centric approach throughout the qualification process can lead to more meaningful engagements and a higher conversion rate.

To make things easier for you and not spend hours and hours building a qualified lead database, don’t forget to use lemlist and start turning prospects into clients!