Five ways to determine which are good prospects

All prospects are not created equal; some are more likely to turn into sales. To avoid wasting time, you need to weed out the poor prospects and concentrate your efforts on prospects who will yield a return on your investment of effort, money and resources.

The following five steps will help you distinguish good prospects from bad prospects:

1) Define your target market precisely. Break your market down by demographics ie geography, market, company employee size etc. This will enable you to focus on the prospects that match your target audience.

2) Assess need, budget and the prospect’s purchasing authority. Ask basic questions that will allow you to determine whether a prospect is ready, such as:

What's the timescale for this project?
Who else is involved in making the decision?
What's the budget for the product or service?
How will the decision be made?
Is your company ready to purchase if the right product or service is found?
If you decide that our product or service meets the need, what will the next step be?

3) Ask for a “yes” or "no." Conventional thought says that as long as the prospect hasn't said "no," then the sale is still possible. However, when it comes to rating prospects, get a decision, even if it's no. It’s better to find out sooner rather than later that the opportunities of closing a sale are slight.

4)  Evaluate the prospect's financial position. Creditworthy prospects are better than high-risk customers. Stable prospects are better than customers going through widespread changes. A company that is merging or downsizing may delay buying decisions.

5) Develop a sales lead scoring system. Rate prospects by a letter or number grade, based on the possibility of closing the sale. Concentrate on A or B prospects, and upgrade or downgrade the other prospects as circumstances change.

Top 7 questions to determine qualified sales leads

There are seven main questions used to determine if the contact or business is a qualified prospect:

1) Does this contact or business need my company’s services or products?

2) Does this contact or business perceive a need or problem that may be met by my company’s product or service?

3) Does the contact or business have a real desire to fulfil this actual need or solve this problem?

4) Can this contact's desire to fulfil actual needs or solve problems be converted into a belief that my company’s product is needed?

5) Does this contact or business have the financial budget to pay?

6) Does this contact have the company authority to buy?

7) Is this potential contact's purchase large enough to be a profitable sale?

These are the questions that we ask, and you should ask them as well, during the prospect qualification process (which is the most important part of the lead generation process).