Sales are the lifeblood of your small business, and if you don’t want to waste your time chasing the wrong leads and missing opportunities for success, it’s smart to develop sales questions that can help you qualify your leads. Sales conversion is always better when you focus on quality over quantity.

Qualified leads have a higher chance of conversion and are a better use of your time. There are certain questions you can ask in the sales process to qualify your leads and ensure you’re spending your time and energy wisely.  

Why is it important to qualify leads? 

Getting good sales results goes beyond the number of leads. In fact, the best salesperson in the world likely could not convert every lead into a sale simply because some leads won’t be a good fit for a sale. It is also a matter of the most efficient use of time. Chasing unqualified leads is a waste of your valuable time and resources, and it won’t result in the best achievement of sales.

Pursuing qualified leads results in closing more sales in less time and helps to avoid unsatisfied customers and returns. Sales qualifying questions help to identify and nurture the best prospects into sales. 

What is the importance of lead conversion? 

Lead conversion is the process of transforming leads and potential customers into actual customers. Successful lead conversion results in sales and opens the path for further business opportunities. Converting leads requires a clear understanding of a business’s target market. That is who they are, what their needs are, and how your business can provide solutions for their needs.

Good lead conversion means that a higher conversion rate will result in more customers at lower customer acquisition costs. More customers at lower acquisition costs translate into more profit. The key is using sales qualifying questions to achieve a healthy acquisition of good customers. 

Sales questions to qualify your leads and maximize conversion 

There are different types of sales qualifying questions you can ask to improve the quality of leads and translate to maximizing conversion: 

First, it is important to establish a solid foundation for a good business relationship. That includes asking where the potential customer heard about your business as a signal for what interests them. Ask what they may be looking for in a new product, service, or vendor. That will enable you to identify ways that your company can fit their needs. Next, ask what attracted them to your brand to understand their priorities. 

Second, dig deeper to understand the needs of the business; discover their business problem. This includes understanding what solutions, approaches, or resources they’ve tried in the past and what resulted from them. Ask about prior products, services, or vendors and what didn’t work with them. Similarly, ask what they are looking for and what they want to accomplish.  

Third, seek to find a solution. That will include attempting to discover where they see their competitors having an advantage over them. Ask them to help you understand the most important attributes that they are looking for. Is it money, or productivity, or something else? And ask what their budget is. 

Fourth, discover their timeline and any outside factors influencing it. 

Fifth, understand their decision process. Who will be involved in making a purchase decision? Ask how your business can help them make a good decision? What could stop us from working together? 

To achieve sales success, seek outside expertise 

As a fractional VP of Sales, James Bellew works with small to medium-sized business owners to build or rebuild their sales organizations. That includes sales strategy, processes, building, establishing, and aligning sales teams and their sales tools to achieve solid sales improvement.