Lead qualification is the process of filtering several opportunities to find the best ones. Without refining leads, your sales and marketing teams won’t be able to prioritize their task and will waste time on leads who will never convert.

In this FunnL post, we will take you through the basics of a lead qualification process for generating SQMs.

Stages of a Sales Funnel

What makes a lead qualified?

A lead is deemed qualified when they fulfill all the 5 requirements for them to be considered as an SQL. As you can see in the sales funnel, a marketing qualified lead (MQL) becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL) when they agree to continue the sales process and become an opportunity for the representatives that can be converted. Therefore, it’s crucial for the marketing and sales representatives to plan and ask qualifying questions to prospects to discover whether or not they will be transforming into full-fledged customers.

Let’s discuss some traditional and contemporary lead qualification models and how effectively they work.

Lead Qualification Frameworks and Related Questions

BANT 

The Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing (BANT) framework is the most widely used lead qualification criteria. Potential BANT questions are:

1. What will be your dedicated budget for this project?
2. Who all are a part of the decision panel?
3. What are the challenges that you are facing?
4. Do you have an immediate requirement for your need?

CHAMP

The CHAMP framework was developed by InsightSquared, the more important questions are asked first for both the prospect and the marketer. It includes questions related to Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization. The questions are:

1. What objectives are you looking to achieve by solving this issue? (Challenges)
2. How are purchasing decisions made, and who all are the decision-makers? (Authority)
3. What is your expected budget-limit to purchase the solution? (Money)
4. How soon are you thinking to start the implementation? (Prioritization)

Since CHAMP focuses on the pain points of the prospective buyer, it can slow down the sales process, but it may result in getting more SQLs for the funnel.

GPCTBA/C&I

Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority, Negative Consequences, and Positive Implications—proposed by HubSpot to put the sales representatives in more supportive roles for their prospects to keep them fully informed. The questions asked are:

1. What are your specific company goals?
2. How are you looking to implement this plan?
3. What difficulties are you currently facing?
4. How soon do you need the solution?
5. Have you planned a budget to fund this project?
6. Who all are concerned with the buying decision of this product?
7. What happens if you don’t achieve this goal?
8. What do you think you can achieve with this project?

This framework gets into the basics and can quickly indicate if a prospect is truly feasible, however, the discovery call may look like an interrogation to the intended buyer.

All the above-mentioned lead qualification models provide you with the likelihood of converting your leads. You can pick any one qualification method that suits your business type.

Lead generation is a practice that should be executed by experts. The success of the lead generation campaign depends on your approach. As different businesses have different needs, there is no tried and tested way that can get you the best results. That is why outsourcing your lead generation is a sure shot way to achieve sales qualified leads that will result in more SQMs for your business. Specialized inside sales companies like FunnL.us can help you boost ROI. Contact FunnL to never miss out on an opportunity.