Qualify Leads Better With Predictive Lead Scoring
It can be frustrating for marketing and sales teams to spend time on prospects that don’t result in sales. That’s because not all prospects are qualified leads. Hence, your sales team needs to ask important lead qualification questions.
Developing a Predictive Lead Scoring Model
Many digital marketing tools provide predictive lead scoring solutions. However, it takes proven systems and methodologies to enable predictive lead scoring.
What Does Predictive Leading Scoring Take?
Unlike traditional lead scoring, a predictive lead scoring solution is a data-driven lead scoring methodology that uses a data-backed lead scoring methodology based on proven predictive modeling algorithms. A predictive lead scoring system uses a variety of statistical predictive scoring algorithms which consume historical and current data. For predictive scoring systems to provide impactful predictive lead scoring, sales people need to ask the right lead qualification questions.
What Is Predictive Lead Scoring?
DEFINITION: Predictive lead scoring is a data-driven approach that applies big data and machine learning algorithms to lead scoring to find the right combination of behaviors and key attributes of existing and potential customers. While it may be a black box, you can rest assured it is heavily weighted toward customer purchase data and customer engagement data. It uses these data points, along with historical data contained within your entire contact database, to predict future outcomes.
Automatic Predictive Lead Scoring
Then, these attributes are automatically matched and ranked to those of new leads. That way, you know which of your new leads look the most like your existing customers and which messages they are most likely to respond to.
How to Qualify Leads and Prospects
As part of your lead qualification strategy, asking the right lead qualification questions will not only reduce the amount of time your salespeople spend on unqualified leads, but it can increase your conversion rate and improve your customer experience. Most lead qualification strategies, such as BANT or GPCT, form part of what can viewed as a lead qualification funnel.
What is BANT Lead Scoring
BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline. The BANT lead qualifying system uses a BANT scoring system to rank order leads according to their overall BANT score.
BANT Qualification Questions
In subsequent sections of this blog, we provide typical BANT question examples you would use in a BANT lead qualification as part of your customer qualification process. The Hubspot supported CRMlead qualification process allows a salesperson to quickly whether a prospect meets your BANT customer qualification criteria.
GPCT Takes it a Step Further
GPCT, which stands for Goals, Plans, Challenges and Timeline can be used to enhance your BANT sales questions and greatly enhances your business lead qualification process. For B2B sales qualifying activities, many companies have achieved better sales qualification outcomes using a combination of BANT and GPCT. When calling and qualifying inbound leads using BANT questions, Hubspot CRM provides an excellent platform, which is used to support B2B lead qualification services, by providing mechanisms to store and have readily available B2B lead generation questions.
Develop and Store a Readily Available Lead Qualification Checklist
When it comes to lead qualification, whether for b2b sales qualification or b2b lead qualification, predictive lead scoring software like hubspot provides the ability to both develop and store the lead generation questions to ask as part of your client qualification process. When it comes to inside sales lead qualifying questions, Hubspot CRM allows you to create Sales Playbooks, which allows sales managers to teach sales people how to qualify a sales prospect.
How to Qualify Inbound Leads
There are many examples of qualifying questions. To help streamline your sales process and improve your team’s efficiency, review these 42 inbound lead qualification questions that you need to ask every prospect.
Why You Need to Ask These Lead Qualification Questions
When it comes to deal qualification, a qualified lead is worth more than a dozen prospects. When you qualify a lead, you are one step closer to converting that organization into a new customer. That is why lead qualification service providers focus on client qualification. They know that you have to qualify the client as well as the deal. It is why lead qualification services can be very valuable.
How to Qualify an Incoming Lead
Qualifying an incoming lead isn’t necessarily hard, but 61% of B2B marketers struggle to find high-quality leads. By not asking B2B qualifying questions, salespeople contribute to 67% of lost sales.
Lead qualification questions are one of the most effective ways to find out if your prospects are potential customers. Your sales funnel should include a lead qualification process, yet 62% of B2B companies haven’t even identified their sales funnel.
If you want to give your sales team quality leads and help them close more deals, you need to put together a list of questions to ask every prospect.
42 Lead Qualification Questions You Need to Ask Every Prospect
Depending on your industry, there are dozens of potential lead qualification questions you can ask your prospects to help streamline your sales process.
Problem-Solution Questions
The first set of B2B qualifying questions you want to cover is around the problem your client is having and the solution you can provide. You want to ensure you have a solid understanding of what your client needs so you can be sure you’re the right fit for them.
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- Have you tried to solve this problem before?
- How did previous solutions fail?
- Why are you trying to solve this problem now?
- Why haven’t you attempted to solve this problem until now?
- What will happen if you don’t solve this problem?
- Are there any foreseeable setbacks to solving this problem?
Budget Questions
After identifying the problem and ascertaining whether you can provide a solution, you’ll need to address budget questions. Communication is key when it comes to finances, so be clear about your prospect’s budget constraints and set appropriate expectations for them.
- What are you currently spending on this problem?
- How much have you spent on solving this problem in the past?
- What is your budget for this project?
- Do you have any budget concerns about the project?
- Who is responsible for making financial decisions for this project?
- Do you have estimates from other companies?
- Is there a price concern about our products or services?
Implementation Questions
Every client has an idea of when they’d like their project completed. To make sure your schedule aligns with your prospect’s timeline, you want to cover key questions about their needs and how they see the implementation process going.
- When would you like to see a solution in place?
- Are there any obstacles to implementing this solution?
- Have you considered how this project will impact your daily routine?
- Is there a plan for how to deal with your routine during implementation?
- What is your time commitment to seeing this project through?
- Do you have any general concerns about how this solution will change your process?
- Are you looking for an immediate setup or do you want to roll out implementation?
Product and Service Questions
One thing you want to cover with your prospects is how your product or service actually benefits them. This is more than just uncovering solutions. You want to find out about other products they’ve used and their experiences with them.
- Have you used other products or services like this before?
- What was your experience with those solutions?
- What is it about our product or service that fits your needs?
- Are you familiar with all of the features of our solution?
- Do you foresee any limitations to our solution?
- Are you considering other similar products or services?
- Is there a solution to your problem that you haven’t been able to find?
Daily Impact Questions
When you offer B2B products and services that companies rely on, you want to make sure what you offer doesn’t negatively impact their daily routines. While not every business has thought this through, your questions can help uncover additional needs and goals.
- How does your current problem impact your daily routine?
- Do you have a workaround or temporary solution for dealing with this problem?
- How would you like to see this problem handled in your routine?
- Are there any problems your team members experience on a daily basis?
- Will this new solution solve all of your problems or just create a patch?
- Can you see this new solution scaling with your organization?
- Do you think this solution will improve your team’s efficiency?
Solution Success Questions
While you may know what a successful solution looks like, your prospect may have a different idea of what that is for their organization. You want to understand their long-term goals for this solution and what a successful implementation looks like to them.
- Is this a long-term solution to your problem?
- How do you currently measure results for your problem?
- Are your goals qualitative or quantitative?
- How would you like to measure your success?
- Does solving this problem align with your company goals?
- Will this solution make it easier to achieve your goals?
- What is your personal objective with this project?
Ask the Right Lead Qualification Questions to Boost Your Conversions
When it comes to streamlining your sales process and putting together your sales funnel, lead qualification questions need to be a part of the process. The right questions help you determine if a prospect is right for your organization. This will lead to a more efficient sales team and improve your conversion rates.
Get Lead Qualification Questions eBook
We've created an ebook based on these questions which you can get by clicking the button. You will want to have these questions handy in order to build your sales playbooks.
