The Art of Qualifying Leads

If your sales team is having a difficult time closing a sale lately, one of the reasons may be that you are using an outdated database of lead information. In this case, your business would benefit from enlisting lead generation services to qualify your leads. Below are insightful reminders for this process:

The lead-in question is the most important one.

Prevent the lead generation call from getting off the wrong foot. Do this by giving your lead-in question careful thought. The trick here is to avoid asking questions that are answerable by yes or no, like “Are you satisfied with your internet service?” If the person on the phone answers yes, you’ve lost a lead.

Instead, prepare questions that would get them talking without you actually hinting of a sales pitch. In the situation above, a good alternative would be to probe into what the person likes about his/her current internet service. This way, you can easily throw in follow-up questions that highlight a unique feature of your own service.

Don’t interrupt.

You may have a quota for your lead generation campaign, but don’t be too conscious of the talk time that you tend to interrupt potential leads. Expect some to be chatty, especially if they are talking about their dissatisfaction in their current service provider.

Remember a pause doesn’t automatically mean they are not interested. It may mean they are carefully considering how to respond to your questions.