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From identifying the correct buyer persona to knowing the budget available, there are some simple ways to qualify your online lead. Here’s how you can do it in five steps.

Having a buyer persona is page one of the beginner's guide to sales. It helps you establish who will actually buy your products and how best to sell them to interested parties. Step one in qualifying your online leads is to correctly establish which buyer persona fits your current lead. Mapping out buyer personas for different lead scenarios will help you classify, prioritize, and close leads.

1. Review your lead and establish what their industry is. This is important because a B2B company will take a different place on your sales funnel to a B2C one.
2. You must also clarify who you are speaking with. This is crucial. Why? Because a company director will have more power than a junior procurement officer.
3. Is this an early stage conversation, or have they been following your blog, website, or brand for awhile? Is this a referral or a cold lead?

Each of these scenarios (and more) should have their own buyer persona with key watchwords, pitfalls, and suggested sales routes to take next. Once you’ve matched your lead to the right scenario, you’ll know how to proceed with it.

There’s a huge difference between interest and intent. If your lead is interested in your products you’ll need to sell them their value. While if your lead has clear intent, you’ll need to make the buying process as smooth as possible. Incorrectly qualifying either could cause you to lose the sale. To avoid making this mistake, turn to your website. Look at what your lead has been doing:

• Have they looked over at your homepage and product features? If so they may only be interested in your products

• Did they review your pricing, or ask your AI customer service leading questions? Then they might intend to buy from your business

Know what stage of the buying process your customer is at and you’ll find it easier to get them to end of your sales funnel.

Plenty of brands today offer many products, with a variety of features. Your product may have only one feature, and that’s fine if it does. Whichever fits your business, your leads won’t all be trying to solve the same problem with your products. You have to qualify your lead by working out how your product makes their life easier. You do this by speaking with your lead and seeing what their specific pain points are. These are the areas where your product can make a real difference to them. Knowing this lets you link your sales pitch to the features and benefits which are relevant to your lead.

There are lots of reasons why now is the time your lead is showing interest/intent in your product. Some of these will require urgent attention and others can be put off. Working out why now is important to your lead establishes when you can make a sale. For example, your lead may scaling up their company. Or your lead’s organization could have hit a roadblock they’ve never seen previously and now need to urgently fix. The list goes on and on... Once you know why today matters you can qualify their position as a lead or a prospect you can turn into a regular customer through ads, sales calls, and emails. This will boil down to two factors: the outcome if they do nothing, and the actual budget they have available.

It’s pretty simple: will your lead lose business if they don’t get your product on-board, and can they afford to buy it? Answering those two questions establishes the urgency of the lead in question. This is how you qualify the answers:

• Your lead doesn’t need your product and can’t afford it: Let them come back to you

• Your lead doesn’t need your product and can afford it: Establish when they’ll need it

• Your lead needs your product but can’t afford it: Clarify when they’ll have the budget

• Your lead needs your product and can afford it: Take them through to sale closure

Once you know cost of doing nothing and the budget available to your lead you can qualify its value to your business.

You only need to know five ways of qualifying your lead. Now that you do, it’ll be a breeze finding out whether the next lead that comes in is really valuable for your business...