By Spencer Wixom – President & CEO – The Brooks Group
Most sales professionals today are spending more time prospecting than ever before—and it’s getting harder.
- 40% of sales professionals say that prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process.
- More than half of sales professionals think it’s more difficult to get in front of prospects than it was five years ago.
This means your sales team needs to be more efficient than ever when qualifying prospects.
Talking to anyone other than a highly qualified lead is wasted effort.
Understanding the characteristics of a legitimate sales opportunity will help your sellers hyper-focus on qualified prospects and keep them from spending time on leads that won’t progress to close.
As a sales leader, your role is to make sure sales professionals have a clear process and can quickly and easily home in on customers who are the best fit for your organization.
How to Qualify a Prospect in Sales: 5 Characteristics
Build your qualification process around these five characteristics of qualified sales prospects.
1. Awareness of Need
A qualified prospect has a need they’re aware of. They might not know exactly what the solution is—or that your company exists—but a qualified prospect will know they have a problem.
Your sales team can ask probing questions during initial conversations to uncover if a prospect has a need they are aware of. Instead of Yes or No questions, asking, “What are the most difficult challenges your team faces today?” will reveal what motivates a prospect.
For examples of the best sales prospecting questions to ask, read the Ultimate Guide to Asking Open-Ended Questions on Sales Calls.
2. Authority to Buy
A qualified prospect has the financial resources and decision-making power to make a purchase. Your sales professionals need to be able to determine if the person they are dealing with has the authority and budget to buy, without investing too much.