Do they really need your product?

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Every organization has a different prospecting stage , depending on its customers, products, and organizational structure. For example, you may have a lead generation team dedicated entirely to prospecting for leads, or you may prospect primarily through marketing campaigns that leverage downloadable content, social media engagement, and email marketing. Regardless of how you do it, the first stage of any funnel is always the same: finding potential buyers who need what you're selling.

Qualification
The qualification stage (also called "research") in the sales funnel is about finding prospects who are a good fit for what you're selling. Occasionally, lead qualification comes later in the process, after a representative has contacted a new prospect.

Lead qualification is an invaluable step because you don't want your sales professionals wasting their time on leads who can't or won't buy your product, or who might be the wrong candidate and cause overseas chinese database problems down the road. In this step, you'll analyze their fit through lead scoring and separate qualified leads from cold opportunities.

Qualifying leads involves answering the following questions:

Does the prospect have the budget for your product?

Can the prospect actually make the decision to buy, or do they need to convince someone else?


Do you look ready to buy now?


If you get one or more negative responses, that prospect may not be a good fit for your product or service. In other words, they're probably cold.


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There's nothing wrong with cold leads, you just don't want to keep them in your funnel. Instead, save their contact information (or move them to another category if you're using a CRM with multiple funnels) and move on.

Approximately 20% of your leads will provide 80% of your revenue (according to the Pareto Principle). If you find a prospect who has been blocking your funnel for longer than your typical sales cycle , place the prospect in a different category, such as a future funnel or callback list, and set a reminder to follow up later to see if circumstances have changed.

You can also save some time by automating this process with a stall feature in a CRM .