Imagine you were asked to speak at an event. How would you prepare?
Would you wing it and say whatever comes to mind? Or would you create a clearly defined outline that adds structure to your talk?
Unless you’re a master of improv, you’ll likely create an outline if you want your audience to gain value from your presentation.
Similar to a good speech, your B2B sales efforts also need a bit of structure or process.
Effective sales processes boost conversions, turn more potential customers into closed deals, and ensure all of your reps provide customers with positive and consistent experiences — no matter who they're talking to.
However, many sales managers struggle with building scalable sales processes that bring in repeat business consistently.
That’s why we've created this guide to help you find the best tactics for building a sales process tailored to your business.
A sales process refers to a series of repeatable steps a sales team takes to move a prospect from an early-stage lead to a closed customer. A strong sales process helps reps consistently close deals by giving them a framework to follow.
You can think of a sales process as a map that guides your sales team on their journey to turn potential leads into customers. Without the map, your marketing team's lead generation efforts would quickly go to waste.
Having a standardized sales process could also help less experienced reps quickly get up to speed with best practices and learn what to do at different sales stages.
You make more money when you build a proper sales process. When you provide your sales team with a common framework, they have a more efficient roadmap to closing deals. For a closer look at the "what," "how," and "why" of sales processes, check out this video:
Now that you know what a sales process is and why you should create one, let's consider the stages or steps that a typical sales process follows.
Prospecting is the process of sourcing new, early-stage leads to begin working through the sales process. It's a vital part of the sales process and part of most reps' daily or weekly workflow.
Prospecting might involve online research on sites like LinkedIn or Quora. It also might take place at conferences or industry events. Additionally, you can prospect by asking current clients or colleagues to refer individuals who might be interested in your product or service.
Hot Tip: A great way to prospect is to engage with content on the sites we mentioned above. If you find that a post resonates with you, or you disagree, voice your opinion respectfully. You'll build familiarity with the prospect and they'll be more likely to engage with you later on.
The connect step of the sales process involves reps initiating contact with those early-stage leads to gather information. The second part of this step is qualifying new leads — deciding whether or not they're a good-fit lead for your business and whether or not they'll likely move forward in the buyer's journey.
A rep can typically identify qualified leads over a "connect" or "discovery" call (sometimes over email if not via phone) by asking qualifying questions like:
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Hot Tip: Qualifying leads doesn't have to be complicated. A simple qualification process like BANT can give you a good idea of whether a prospect will be a good fit for the products or services you sell.
Next comes the research step, when reps learn more about each prospect and company.
Research helps your reps put themselves in the customer's shoes to offer a more tailored and personalized experience, thus improving the likelihood of closing a deal.
The crucial part of this stage is understanding each prospect's challenges and needs and establishing your product or service as the solution.
You might need your rep to speak with other people at the company in different departments to get a holistic view of the business and its objectives. A good salesperson is expected to understand the company better than the individual prospect who works there.
Hot Tip: It's likely that everyone involved in the sales process will agree on what the highest priorities are for the business. Tailoring your questions in a strategic way will help you pull the true answers from each person you communicate with. Once you're done, analyze the responses you received and look for themes. Then, position your product or service to match those themes.
The presentation step is typically when your salesperson runs a formal product or service demonstration for your prospect.
This step is time-consuming, so it typically comes later in the sales process and is reserved for more qualified prospects — which is why the connecting and qualifying step is so critical. You don't want a sales rep wasting any of their valuable time if it's avoidable.
Tailor each presentation to meet the specific prospect's unique use case and pain points. Additionally, a rep might bring an engineer or executive to the meeting with them to demonstrate the level of service the customer will receive when doing business with your company. This also allows them to answer more technical questions the rep might not be best suited to answer.
Hot Tip: Tailor each presentation to meet the prospect's unique use case and pain points. Additionally, a rep might bring an engineer or executive to the meeting with them to demonstrate the level of service the customer will receive when doing business with your company. This also allows them to answer more technical questions the rep might not be best suited to answer.
It's not uncommon for prospects to have objections to your salesperson's presentation and proposal. In fact, it's expected — which is why this is a specific step in the sales process. Your sales team should be prepared to handle any and all objections.
Listening to your prospect's objections and questions can help your reps better tailor your product to fit their needs. Through their research and presentation preparation, reps should identify and anticipate possible objections, whether about cost, onboarding, or other parts of the proposed contract.
Hot Tip: Objections aren't inherently bad or a waste of time. Be empathetic and attentive when the prospect is explaining their reservations. Rather than jumping in and countering their objection, find out as much as you can about why they're hesitant so you can frame your solution in the right context.
This step of the sales process refers to any late-stage activities that happen as a deal approaches closing. It varies widely from company to company and may include delivering a quote or proposal, negotiation, or achieving the buy-in of decision-makers.
Closing a sale is what every salesperson wants to achieve. It should result in a mutually beneficial, contractual agreement between the prospect and the seller. Once a deal closes, the salesperson receives a commission on the price they negotiated with the customer, and the account usually passes to an account manager or customer success representative.
Hot Tip: There are seven closing techniques that sales reps use to seal the deal. Check them out and see which one fits your style or selling.
Although closing deals is the ultimate goal in sales, it's not where sales reps stop working with customers. Not only should reps confirm that customers receive what they've purchased, but they should also play a part in transitioning customers to whichever team is responsible for onboarding and customer success.
The final step of the sales process also involves continuing to communicate and reinforce value to customers. This can provide opportunities to upsell and cross-sell, as well as opportunities to get secure referrals from delighted customers.
Hot Tip: Early on in the sales process, mention the service and customer success reps who will be helping your client onboard after the deal closes. That way they're familiar, at least by name, with the team who will be taking over, and the transition will feel less abrupt.
Next, let's unpack how you can improve this process.
These best practices will help you improve the impact of your sales process across your team and customer base.
Consider what is and isn't working for your sales reps to tailor your new process to fit their needs better, as it will help close more deals and delight more customers.
One way to analyze the success of your current sales process is to observe reps as they work through the process.
Look back at the last five or ten deals you closed. What did these deals look like from beginning to end? What were the touchpoints with the customer?
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Access nowConsider roughly how long the entire process took and how much time elapsed between each step. The more examples you have (and the more people on your team those examples come from), the better.
Once you've outlined that timeline, work backward to understand the timeframe for each deal. For example, if six of those ten deals closed in approximately six weeks, take a look at the average steps to get there during that period.
Working backward might look something like this:
You can also dig a bit deeper to understand the subtle motivations and pain points that drove each deal to close.
Outline the buyer's journey for your target audience or your buyer personas. This will allow you to look at your sales process from the perspective of your customers. You'll be able to get a better understanding of the interactions they have with your reps, the pain points they experience, and the reasons they need your product or service.
When you outline the buyer's journey for your target persona, you'll gain insight into how you can tailor your sales process to ensure your team has everything they need to build strong relationships with prospects and close more deals.
Build Your Buyer Personas with These Free Templates
You should understand what causes a prospect to move from one stage to the next in your sales process. Ideally, the reason or cause will be based on the prospect's actions, not the perception of the sales rep.
To determine the action that moves prospects to the next stage, ask the following questions:
Define the exit criteria for each step of the sales process for your team. This means you should identify the things that need to happen for your prospects to move from one step of your sales process to the next. You can refer to the sales process steps and the buyer's journey (as mentioned above) to get started with this.
For example, suppose you're working through the "presenting" step. In that case, your reps might determine they need a specific type of content — such as customer testimonial videos — to share with your prospects to move them to "closing."
When determining exit criteria for each step of the sales process, consider the following questions to ensure all of your reps have the same information. That way, they’ll provide all of your prospects with positive, professional, and on-brand information.
Your sales process will evolve as your team finds ways to work more efficiently and move prospects through your pipeline faster. As you define and enhance your sales process, you’ll want to measure your success to ensure it successfully coordinates your team's efforts and reaches your target audience.
For example, note how many prospects transitioned in and out of each step of the sales process over a given period.
This way, you can conclude, “In July, we started with 75 prospects in the ‘awaiting demo’ step ... at the end of the month, we had moved through 28 prospects and added 19, leaving us with 66 prospects in the ‘awaiting demo’ step."
Here are some other examples of metrics to consider for the different steps of your process:
These are the basic metrics most teams find value in measuring. Give some thought to metrics specific to your business that will help you define success or the need for improvement in a particular step.
Learn how to create a robust, buyer-centric sales process with our free HubSpot Academy lesson ‘How to Map a Sales Process.’
Another great way to measure your results is with the three levels of sales process success. Determining which level of success you're in will provide you with more insight into what you need to fine-tune for your team and prospects regarding your sales process.
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Access nowYour sales process is humming when 80% or more of your reps are hitting their quota every month. This is also when all of your new hires are being ramped up quickly to target performance, and your team isn't providing you with any negative feedback about the sales process.
Experimenting is when your sales process isn't quite humming, so your team is experimenting and testing different tactics to determine what's most effective.
For example, a team might be experimenting with different modes of contact in the "connecting" step of the sales process to get sales discussions going with prospects. They can test whether or not their prospects respond best to a specific email template when starting a discussion with a rep.
Thrashing is when a team is rapidly moving from one solution to another within a specific sales process. Thrashing is ineffective and something you'll want to ensure your team gets out of as quickly as possible if you're ever experiencing it.
For example, your reps might be trying different presentation techniques in the "presenting" stage, making it impossible to determine what's working for the majority of prospects.
Remember, your sales process is never perfect, but it should constantly be evolving to fit the needs of your team, business, and prospects.
Now if you have a sales process already, but haven’t mapped it out yet, here’s where to start.
Mapping your sales process is the practice of walking through each step in real-time and understanding how it applies to your business, sales team, and customers.
This process allows you to uncover inefficiencies, gain insight into what's working, and align your sales process with your business goals. It helps your team develop a sustainable strategy suitable for long-term growth.
When you map your sales process, you answer the "why" behind every decision you make — which is critical because your sales process is the foundation of everything your team does. Let's walk through how to map the sales process using a fictional business example.
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To know where you're going, you must know your destination. In terms of sales process mapping, this involves setting goals for your sales team. Keep your plan specific but simple.
Example: Fred's Vegan Food Supply is mapping its sales process. They've set their destination "goal" to increase their win rate by 5% next quarter.
Your sales team can't meet their goal alone. Other departments across your organization — including marketing, product, customer service, IT, and more — have a stake in your sales process and impact your customer experience. Gather these stakeholders, share your goal, and involve them in your process.
Example: Fred brings together his sales team, marketing managers, customer service leaders, product designers, and distributors. These teams touch potential and current customers and can, therefore, affect the sales team's win rate.
We covered the sales process steps above, and now it's time to walk through each step as it pertains to your business, products, and sales team. Take a look at your sales process history. What steps were effective, and where did prospects fall off?
Moreover, how long, on average, did each step take? With your stakeholders on board, you can map what teams affect each step and what actions they can take — particularly your sales team.
Example: Fred's sales team maps the six sales process steps and jots down the actions they take within each stage. They also review the last 12 months of sales activity concerning each step to understand where they can improve their new sales process to meet their new goal.
Next, take a look at your sales process from the customer's perspective. On the same document, jot down your customers' actions and reactions to your sales process. Keep your buyer personas handy to ensure your team stays customer-centric.
Example: Fred’s sales team now maps the buyer's journey within their established sales process. By aligning these actions, they can identify where their team is experiencing inefficiencies, what steps are working well, and where they need to improve to meet their goal.
Once you've mapped your sales process from both the seller's and buyer's perspectives, you're ready to put it to work. You won't know if the process will help with your goal until you test it and measure the results.
Example: Fred puts his new sales process into action with his team. They walk through each stage and the appropriate actions, and they pay close attention to how their customers react. As they move through each step and towards their new goal, they tweak the parts of their process that aren't working so smoothly.
Now that you have a map, you can identify key action points using a sales process flowchart.
A sales process flowchart is a document that shows the steps each salesperson should take as they nurture a lead from prospect to customer. What distinguishes a sales process flowchart from other documents is that it features yes/no scenarios, providing action items depending on the customer’s response.
The chart guides your team so customers have a uniform experience regardless of the rep they talk to.
While you can create complex yes/no scenarios, you can also create a simple flowchart that shows the process from beginning to end. Below is an example:
Now that we’ve covered the details of creating and mapping your sales process, let's review the answer to a common question: What's the difference between a sales process and a sales methodology?
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Access nowUnderstanding the distinction between a sales process and sales methodology is essential. Although closely related, a sales process and sales methodology are two very different things.
As we reviewed above, a sales process is a concrete set of actions your sales team follows to close a new customer.
A sales methodology is the framework backing your sales processes, practices, and tactics. It’s more of a philosophy than a set of steps.
Here's a diagram to help you visualize this:
Think of your sales process as the high-level map of the steps your team takes, while your sales methodologies are the different ways your team can approach the sales process.
Choosing a sales methodology sets the foundation for your team as they approach your sales process. You might choose to incorporate one, as they are another way to streamline your customer's buyer journey and ensure professional, impactful, and helpful interactions between those customers and your sales team.
Here are five popular sales methodologies.
The Challenger Sales method is an approach to sales that says the seller, or Challenger, must teach the prospect. Sellers learn about a customer's business, tailor their selling techniques to their needs and pain points, and challenge any of their preconceptions throughout the process.
Solution selling requires reps to focus solely on the customer's pain points instead of only selling products or services. Products are framed as solutions, and emphasis is placed on the customer's pain point.
The Sandler Selling System says the buyer and seller are equally invested in the sales process. Good sales managers train their reps to address customer objections early to save valuable time for both parties. And the buyer is almost convincing the seller to make the sale.
Consultative selling emphasizes that the salesperson becomes a trusted advisor to the customer, gaining authority and trust over time. Consultative selling happens when the sale aligns with the customer's buying experience. In other words, the customer-rep relationship defines the sale.
The inbound sales approach is characterized by attracting buyers with tailored and relevant content rather than advertising irrelevant messages and hoping they'll buy.
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With so many choices in today's marketplace, sales teams need to put the needs of their buyers ahead of their own.
The inbound approach came from the belief that:
These shifts in buying trends are examples of how buyers have seized control of the sales process from the sales reps who once held all the power.
With these changes in mind, it's important for sales teams to adopt a more helpful, human approach to selling — or inbound selling.
The seven-step sales process is one of the most popular because it includes both overcoming objections and following up after the close. With this approach, sales reps have more opportunities in front of the prospect which can work in their favor when it's time to finalize the deal.
Beyond Business Group takes a unique approach to this traditional process by combining prospecting and lead qualification, but it's nearly identical to the seven-step process we featured above.
This process is great for B2B products and services that are used by large, diverse teams and departments. The longer process gives the prospect's colleagues more time to interact with the sales rep and weigh in on the purchasing decision.
This unique sales process is six steps and the visual not only explains what sales reps are responsible for, but it also explains what the consumer does during each of the steps. The primary difference between the six and seven step sales processes is the separation of inbound and outbound prospecting and it doesn't include a follow up after the close.
B2B and B2C companies will have success with a six step sales process because it doesn't require a lot of interaction with the customer. If your business sells products or services that have a short life span, this shorter sales process could work for you.
As the shortest of the sales processes with just five steps, it takes the prospect from start to finish with only the most critical touchpoints. With fewer touchpoints, emphasis is not placed on research or objection handling. Instead, the sales rep spends time qualifying and pitching to close the deal.
For B2B products and services that are centralized to a specific team at a prospect's company, the five-step process would be suitable. Rather than spending time getting buy-in from other stakeholders, sales reps can focus on one point of contact over a shorter period of time. This process can also work for B2B products and services that are purchased infrequently like vehicles, appliances, and life insurance.
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Access nowLet's take a look at some common mistakes made when developing sales processes. Avoiding these will help you create a sales process ideal for both your team and customers.
It’s essential to define specific, concrete actions that move your business's prospects from one stage to the next. If you don't identify these triggers, your sales team might come away with a less than accurate understanding of what is and isn't working for prospects, potentially causing them to mishandle part of the process.
Once you define your sales process, document, share, and practice it with your team. Role-play exercises to drive home the valuable techniques your team should take away from each step.
While some teams choose to stick with and follow one methodology closely, others prefer to study several popular sales methodologies and combine bits and pieces they find useful from each.
Regardless of which approach you take, it’s a good idea to stay aware of what's new and changing over time. As the needs and desires of buyers and your business change, different approaches, methodologies, and ways of managing your sales process will fall into and out of favor.
On that note, it's important to remember your entire sales process is also ever-changing.
Your sales process is never complete or perfect and should always be a work in progress.
So, in addition to consistently measuring your success, you should also have check-ins with your reps. These check-ins help uncover any major issues or red flags with regards to your process.
Remember, continually developing and improving your sales process will make your work more straightforward and improve your customers' interactions and experiences with your salespeople and business as a whole.
Creating a sales process is futile if you don’t align your sales plays with the process. The plays each rep must take at every step should be written down for future use.
This is where a sales playbook comes in. For example, in the prospecting stage, you might typically send up to three emails to each prospect before qualifying them. Write down those emails and keep them in a shared location where everyone in your team can access them. Your sales playbook can be a formal PDF document or you can create one in a tool such as Sales Hub.
By marrying your sales plays with your sales process, you can ensure that your sales organization is as efficient and effective as possible.
Marketing needs to know what’s happening in your sales organization — which prospects have been proven to close, which industries are less profitable, and which market segments have potential. You want your marketing team to have all of this information so that they can better supplement each part of the process.
For instance, they can provide better prospects and better lead nurturing materials — and when it’s time to continue nurturing the customer, they can even take that off your hands by creating drip campaigns on your behalf.
Marketing and sales alignment is critical to any organization, and that’s no different when creating a profitable sales process. You can schedule monthly meetings with your marketing organization, or you can asynchronously stay aligned using an all-in-one solution such as HubSpot, where both marketing and sales tools live in one platform.
While sales is about closing deals, it’s always about providing value first and foremost — which will hopefully end in a closed deal down the line. Even if a prospect doesn’t seem like they want to purchase, you must keep providing value at every step of the process if their business needs can be solved by your product.
When your sales reps research the prospect’s business, they’re not just looking at company size and leadership boards. They’re looking for the problem that prospect is experiencing so that they can deliver a pitch that makes it hard to pass on the solution.
Center your process on providing value every step on the way and not just on meeting quota and closing deals.
Not tracking key sales metrics or not measuring KPIs is an easy way for your sales process to become ineffective. Don’t forget to measure KPIs after creating or adjusting your sales process to understand what’s going well and what’s not.
While the focus shouldn’t be on numbers only, this will help you understand your success. You can then dig deeper into the data. Maybe fewer deals were closed in one quarter, but the average contract value (ACV) increased by $1,000, which is a boost in performance.
You can keep track of these KPIs automatically using a sales dashboard like the one included in Sales Hub. Your CRM might also provide basic performance metrics, which you can then use to adjust your existing sales process.
Creating and mapping a sales process will help your sales team close more deals and convert more leads. This will also ensure your team provides every prospect with a consistent experience that’s representative of your brand. Follow these steps to create and map a sales process tailored to your business, sales team, and customers to boost conversions and build lasting relationships today.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Sales qualification streamlines the process of turning potential buyers into serious prospects.
When done well, sales qualification reduces the time required to determine if you’re talking to the right person. Are they interested in what you’re offering? Is there a specific business challenge your product could help them overcome?
While it requires practice, great sales qualification is more than worth the effort. Ready to get started? We’ve got you covered with our ultimate guide to finding and keeping qualified sales leads.
Sales qualification is the process of determining whether a lead or prospect is a good fit for your product or service. This assessment takes place during sales calls and is important when determining which customers may stick around long-term.
Without sales qualification, you’d probably talk to hundreds of leads a day — only to wind up with just one or two closed deals to show for your effort.
Sales qualification allows you to work smarter, not harder. This process is essential to any successful sales workflow. But why is it so crucial? Let’s take a look.
Simply put, sales qualification is important to sales organizations because it significantly improves close ratios. Without sales qualifications, you risk pursuing leads who aren’t a good fit. They may have incompatible budgetary constraints or organizational challenges.
Sales qualification allows you to pursue the leads who are most likely to purchase the product, saving you time and energy.
Here are more reasons sales qualification is so important:
Let’s say you try to sell your product to a lead you haven't qualified. If the product is a poor fit, the customer might return the product for a refund or go on a social media tirade.
By intentionally qualifying prospects through a discovery call, you can deliver a highly tailored solution that improves post-purchase satisfaction.
What does the sales qualification process look like as a whole? Let’s walk through that below.
The first stage of sales qualification is creating an ideal customer profile (ICP). In other words, it’s about identifying the type of customers best suited to your product or solution.
For example, let’s say you sell a SaaS software tool that helps companies manage warehouse and inventory processes. Your ideal market might consist of brands with high inventory volumes and diverse supply chains.
Within an ICP, it’s also worth developing buyer personas that describe specific individuals within target organizations. These individuals are those with enough experience to understand business pain points and enough authority to make purchasing decisions.
The creation of an ICP is a collaborative process between sales, marketing, and product development teams. Creating an ICP requires effort from all departments. However, the end result streamlines sales qualification, making the exercise time well spent.
Next, identify criteria for sales leads before they’re placed in the qualification pipe. This process helps eliminate leads that are less likely to convert from interest to investment.
Common qualification criteria include:
For example, imagine a sales lead with urgency and authority. This prospect lacks the budget required to bring on your solution. Despite interest and intent, they won’t be able to afford what you’re offering. Your sales efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
Pro tip: Create a checklist for these criteria that you can distribute to salespeople. This ensures that all employees are using the same method to evaluate sales potential.
The amount of data required for successful sales qualifications is substantial. You’ll need sales and research data, prospect activity, customer information, and other details. Even experienced teams can get overwhelmed.
As a result, it’s worth deploying technologies such as customer relationship management (CRM) solutions capable of capturing this data for future use. This software provides a single source of truth for sales and marketing teams.
Your team can also track emerging trends in customer behavior to help create more effective sales strategies.
The more you know about your leads, the better.
Here’s why: From start to finish, the sales process is about creating and building relationships. Even if you have the best product on the market, sales numbers will never match expectations if your team isn’t able to build reciprocal relationships with customers.
Achieving this goal means understanding as much about your leads as possible — before getting in touch. Start by researching your prospect. What is their role at the company? Have they made any company website blog posts? Personal social media posts?
It’s also a good idea to track down any relevant company information. This might take the form of a recent news article or a report posted on their corporate site. You can gain more context to the conversation.
The last stage in the sales qualification process is reaching out.
With lead data in hand, get connected via phone, email, or social media sites and set up a qualifying call. The goal of the call isn’t to make a sale, but rather to get a sense of where your lead falls in the decision-making process. As a result, you’re looking to walk away with more information about pain points, budgets, needs, and the overall decision-making process.
More importantly, you’re looking to kick-start a relationship. If you go all-in on sales tactics during the first call and this approach doesn’t work, you’ve burned a bridge.
Focus on gaining a better understanding of your customer. This means that even if your current lead doesn’t end up being the best sales fit, they could help point you in the right direction.
The lead qualification process begins with a pool of leads that have been generated by your marketing, sales, acquisition, and product teams. If you work on a smaller team, this pool of leads may come from website form submissions and may not have a specific designation.
In a sales organization, there are several types of leads. That includes the following:
These leads are then fed into a lead qualification framework, where you can then ask a series of qualifying questions to find out whether they’re a good or poor product fit.
From there, the leads are divided into qualified and disqualified leads. The qualified leads are then fed into the sales process. Disqualified leads are placed into a nurturing sequence, where they’ll ideally warm up to the product and make a purchase later down the line.
Let's take a look at three of the most crucial aspects of the lead qualification process: qualifying questions, qualified prospects, and frameworks you can use to qualify leads.
A qualifying question helps the salesperson determine their prospect's fit for one criteria. That might be need, budget, authority, sense of urgency, or another factor.
A good qualifying question is typically open-ended. Avoid close-ended questions, like "Is this a priority right now?" You may unintentionally box the buyer into an answer.
The better version would be "Where does this fall on your list of business priorities?" You're not leading the prospect to an answer. Your prospect’s response will usually be more honest and revealing.
Here are some strong qualifying questions:
The answers to these questions would then result in you qualifying or disqualifying the prospect.
A qualified prospect has gone through the lead qualification process and is now ready to be entered into the sales pipeline.
You’ll typically do the bulk of your qualification during a discovery call, but it certainly isn’t where qualification starts or ends. At every step of the sales process, you’ll continuously evaluate prospects for more and more specific characteristics.
A qualified prospect has most or all of the following attributes.
Every potential lead is looking for a solution. However, a vague business challenge isn’t enough to make them a PQL. If a prospect can only provide blanket statements, you likely won’t be able to nurture them all the way to a closed deal.
Ask questions to elicit clear pain points. The more specific the need, the better when you can tailor your pitch.
When asking discovery questions, try to figure out whether your prospect is acutely aware of their own pain points — the more aware they are, the better.
Have you ever had several calls with your prospect, only for the deal to die because they can’t afford your product? When qualifying prospects, you should aim to learn about their budget as quickly as possible.
Consider posing this simple question: “How much are you planning to spend on [CRM, sales, website, etc.] software this year?” Talking about money right away may seem like a faux pas, but it will save you time. You can then focus on prospects who can afford your solution.
A qualified prospect will have the budget and make that clear from the onset. For instance, they might already be using a similarly-priced product or are having expensive problems.
Be sure to ask about a range, not a fixed price. There’s a possibility of upselling your prospect if their need is dire enough. However, that will come after you’ve built sufficient trust with them.
A qualified prospect will be able to either make the final buying decision or sway the stakeholders who make the decision. As early on as possible, try to identify whether your prospect is a gatekeeper, decision-maker, influencer, or blocker.
Most often, they’ll be an influencer, but they must be the right type of influencer.
Throughout the course of your career, you might have to chat with coordinators and even interns, who usually research solutions on behalf of their manager. These are influencers — not your qualified prospects.
If they’re an entry-level influencer, gently circumvent them so you can get to an upper-level influencer: The actual manager who’ll be presenting the solution to the decision-maker.
The decision-maker will likely be a leader, and usually not the person you’ll talk to during the prospect qualification process.
Don’t forget to take business size into account. A manager at a large company, for instance, is much farther from decision-makers than a manager at a smaller company. Do research on LinkedIn or their website to learn where your prospect falls on their organizational diagram.
A qualified prospect will have an urgent need to find and purchase a solution before a certain time range arrives: Before next quarter, next month, or next year. Your prospect needs to have a reason to make their purchase as soon as possible.
Another way to tell? They might cite a dangerous decline in business performance that they need a new solution to recover. If they also cite a dropping ROI on their current product, you have a qualified prospect on your hands.
A qualified prospect will understand that you’re genuinely trying to help and that you can both help each other succeed in your roles.
Remember: You’ll likely be speaking to an influencer. The influencer, in the end, wants to shine in front of leadership.
You can make that come true by providing a solution that helps you meet your quota, and that helps them and their team do their work better.
Sales reps must qualify prospects at three different levels — "organization-level," "opportunity-level," and "stakeholder-level" qualification. We’ll discuss each below.
This is the most basic level of qualification. Here you’ll determine whether you should do more research. If your company has buyer personas, reference them when qualifying a prospect. Does the buyer match the demographics of a given persona?
Questions you should ask at this stage include:
This form of qualification is probably what you thought of when you read the title of this post. Opportunity-level sales qualification is where you determine whether your prospect has a specific need you can satisfy. You’ll also find out if it’s feasible for them to implement your particular product or service.
The other half of a good buyer persona, opportunity-level characteristics give insight into whether a prospect could benefit from your offering.
To determine whether your prospect is qualified on an opportunity level, ask the following:
Let’s say you’ve determined that your prospect’s company is a good match for your solution and fits your ideal buyer persona. It’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. Can your point of contact actually pull the trigger on a purchase decision?
To determine this, ask your prospect the following questions:
The three levels above are listed in the order you should use them to disqualify.
For instance, if your prospect is a complete departure from your company’s buyer persona, it’s safe to disqualify them right then. Maybe one day, you’ll serve their type of buyer, but right now you don’t. Don’t waste time trying to shoehorn your offering into their business.
Similarly, you could be speaking with the CEO of an organization with complete budget authority who passes stakeholder-level qualification with flying colors. But if there’s no problem, there’s no need for your solution. Qualify for business pain first.
Keep in mind that unless a prospect can be qualified on all three levels, you shouldn’t advance them in the sales process.
For example, if you ask your prospect about the company’s strategic goals and they’re unable to answer, it’s a good sign they’re not close enough to the decision process. You should disqualify this contact at the stakeholder level, even though they pass at the opportunity level.
Many salespeople are loath to disqualify prospects and shrink their pipelines.
Their instinct is to work with as many leads as possible, but this isn’t the best approach. The quality of your leads matters more than the quantity.
As a salesperson, your most precious asset is your time. Focus on a handful of your best prospects instead of spreading yourself thin across dozens of leads. Trying to close every deal that comes along is only going to result in dead ends, while you neglect prospects likely to buy.
Up until now, we’ve discussed qualifying questions and what a qualified prospect looks like. You can organize all of the processes we’ve discussed thus far using lead qualification frameworks.
A qualification framework is essentially a rubric that salespeople can use to determine whether a prospect is likely to become a successful customer.
Every customer and every sale is different, but all closed-won deals share commonalities. Sales qualification frameworks distill those shared characteristics into general traits reps can look for when qualifying.
The Old Faithful of sales qualification frameworks, BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is used at a variety of companies and in a variety of markets.
Originally developed by IBM, BANT covers all the broad strokes of opportunity- and stakeholder-level qualification.
BANT seeks to uncover the following four pieces of information:
Here are a few examples of BANT questions in the context of a prospect conversation:
Information to Uncover
Questions to Ask
Budget
Authority
Need
Timeline
While BANT addresses many opportunity-level requirements, it misses the mark on others.
The “ultimate” buying authority could be more than one person. Make sure you engage all relevant stakeholders early on in the process and secure each individual’s buy-in.
“Timeline” is another area where BANT falls short today. A strict BANT qualification might tell you to cycle a lead who won’t be ready to buy until next year.
MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion) was pioneered by Jack Napoli when he was at technology company PTC.
MEDDIC requires sales reps to understand every aspect of a target company's purchase process, down to whether you have an internal champion.
This framework is incredibly valuable for increasing forecasting accuracy, something that's crucial for businesses that sell to enterprise companies. After all, losing just one deal can be debilitating when each is worth several million dollars.
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“From $0 to $100 million, [PTC was] successful because we sold a better widget,” HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan said. “From $100 million to $1 billion, we sold a shift in technology. MEDDIC became important because it's not just any old purchase — it's a transformation of the business.”
You should consider using MEDDIC as a qualification framework if your company sells a product that requires a transformation in behavior or the average sales price is incredibly high. Understanding exactly how a prospect buys, why they would buy, and who's championing you internally is crucial to maintaining an accurate pipeline.
CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization) is similar to ANUM but places Challenges ahead of Authority.
CHAMP also defines authority as a “call-to-action,” not a roadblock.
If your initial contact is a low-level employee, you can safely assume they won’t be the decision-maker. That doesn’t mean you should hang up the phone. Instead, ask questions that help you map the company’s organizational hierarchy to determine who to reach out to next.
Yes, it’s a long acronym, but a useful one. Developed at HubSpot, the qualification framework GPCTBA/C&I (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority/Negative Consequences and Positive Implications) is a response to changes in buyer behavior.
Buyers come to the sales process increasingly informed, so salespeople need to add value on top of product knowledge.
But value isn’t something sales reps can just "add" — to truly act as an advisor, you must explore beyond the scope of the discrete problem that your product or service could solve. This means understanding a prospect’s strategic goals, their business model, and how the specific issue you’re discussing fits into the larger picture of their professional life.
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Here are some of the questions you should ask at each step.
The purpose of the following questions is to find out your prospect’s quantitative goals. You can help clarify or set goals with your prospect if their response isn’t well-defined.
Once you understand your prospect’s goals, find out what work they’ve already done to achieve them. Determine what’s worked and what hasn’t, and make suggestions for improvement.
Defining your prospect’s challenges — and reinforcing that what they’ve already tried isn’t working — is crucial. Unless they understand that they need help, a prospect won’t become a customer.
Your most important asset is your time. So while a prospect that doesn’t want to buy now or in the near future isn’t necessarily a lost cause, they should move down your priority list.
Just asking "What’s your budget?" isn’t a question likely to get you valuable insight, according to HubSpot sales director Dan Tyre.
Instead, try asking:
Then, go in for the kill. Databox CEO and former HubSpot VP of Sales Pete Caputa suggests phrasing the budget question this way:
"We've established that your goal is X and that you're spending Y now to try and achieve X. But it's not working. In order to hire us, you will need to invest Z. Since Z is pretty similar to Y and you're more confident that our solution will get you to your goal, do you believe it makes sense to invest Z to hire us?"
Unlike in BANT, qualifying for authority under this framework isn’t necessarily trying to determine whether your contact is a decision-maker. Your contact might be an influencer or a coach, two types of internal champions who can give you insight into the decision-maker’s thought process.
If your contact isn’t the economic buyer, ask them:
In this part of the qualification process, you’re finding out what happens if your prospect does or does not achieve their goals.
“If your product can significantly help them avoid consequences and further aid in achieving even bigger follow-up goals, you’ve got a very strong value proposition,” Caputa says.
Here are some C&I questions to ask prospects:
The benefit of GPCTBA/C&I is that it allows salespeople to gather a huge amount of information. If your product is complex, highly differentiated, and stands to become an integral part of your prospect’s business strategy, having these insights is incredibly valuable.
However, GPCTBA/C&I might not be right for every sales force. Depending on what you sell, such thorough qualification may not be necessary.
ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money) is an alternative spin on BANT. When qualifying using ANUM, a sales rep’s first priority should be to determine whether they’re speaking with a decision-maker.
The RAIN Group advocates using FAINT (Funds, Authority, Interest, Need, Timing) to qualify sales leads. FAINT is designed to reflect the fact that many purchase decisions are unplanned and thus won’t be associated with a set budget.
Like ANUM, reps using FAINT should look for organizations with the capacity to buy, regardless of whether a discrete budget has been set aside. FAINT also adds Interest into the mix.
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According to RAIN Group’s John Doerr and Mike Schultz, Interest is defined as “[generating] interest from the buyer in learning what’s possible and how to achieve a new and better reality than the one they have today.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.”
This phrase is the root of countless arguments, but it’s as good as gold when it comes to sales qualification.
Here are some tip-offs (both good and bad) to listen for when qualifying a prospect that can help you determine whether to advance the sales process or disqualify ASAP.
Wait. How can excuses be a good thing?
Excuses help resolve our actions with who we want to be. During a sales conversation, your ears should perk up if your prospect tries to explain away previous inaction regarding business pain.
This indicates one of two things: Either the excuse is legitimate, or your prospect wishes they had done something earlier and is trying to rationalize why they didn’t. Either way, it confirms their pain is real.
Prospects who can give specific answers to questions such as “What are your goals?” and “When do you need to see results?” have thought carefully about their problem. Listen for sequential plans, thought-out explanations, and statistics.
Specifics also indicate that your prospect feels real pain. After all, people without real problems don’t spend time thinking about why they exist and how to address them.
Of course, the caveat is that specifics must be accompanied by reality. A prospect who says, “I want to quadruple revenue in the next two weeks,” is using specifics to demonstrate that they don’t have strong business acumen.
Specificity’s partner is knowledge. A knowledge check is your best bet for qualifying at the stakeholder level.
True decision-makers will have intimate knowledge of company goals, challenges, and needs. A contact who doesn’t have access to this information likely isn’t going to be valuable in the sales process.
A prospect whose answers contradict each other is likely one who wants to be helpful, but can’t because they don’t possess adequate knowledge.
However, this isn’t a dealbreaker — prod them to tell you who does know the answers, and continue qualifying the opportunity with another contact.
True business pain permeates an organization — executives lose sleep over it and employees have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. If you give the impression that you can help alleviate the pain, prospects will want to talk to you.
A prospect who’s giving you one-word answers isn’t someone who feels there’s a basis for a conversation. It could be that the problem is a non-issue, or the contact isn’t clued in enough to feel its severity. Depending on what you think is going on, disqualify or try reaching out to another member of the organization.
Sales success rests on effective qualification. Your ability to find good-fit prospects will make or break your business. Prospects who turn into happy customers mean not only revenue, but increased word-of-mouth, referrals, and the possibility of cross- or upselling.
Our guide can help you streamline your qualification process to find better leads, get them interested in what you’re offering, and put them on the path to ongoing purchases.
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