Lead qualification is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy. It ensures that your time and resources are focused on leads with the highest potential to convert, rather than wasting effort on those unlikely to make a purchase. But in today’s fast-paced marketing landscape, speed matters. Slow lead qualification processes can cost you valuable opportunities and drive up costs.
In this guide, we’ll explore actionable tips to help you speed up your lead qualification and, ultimately, boost your marketing ROI. Whether you’re a marketer looking to improve campaign performance or a sales team member trying to maximize conversions, these strategies will help you qualify leads faster and more effectively.
The goal of lead qualification is simple—separate leads who are likely to become customers from leads who are unlikely to become customers. When you know which leads are more likely to buy, you can focus your resources on converting them rather than wasting time with unlikely buyers.
Qualified leads are usually split into two categories:
Lead qualification should be done by both marketing and sales teams.
For marketing teams, qualifying leads means you can boost your ROI by being more strategic with your spending. For example, let’s say Google Ads Campaigns A and B both generate 100 leads. However, A brings in 90 unqualified and 10 qualified leads, while B brings in 25 unqualified and 75 qualified leads. Rather than spending your budget on both, you can double down on Campaign B and cut Campaign A altogether, leading to a higher marketing ROI.
For sales teams, knowing which leads are qualified means you can spend your time nurturing and converting the best candidates into customers. This is a big deal for sales teams because reps waste 67% of their time (or 1,393 hours per year) trying to convert unqualified leads.
In the end, both marketing and sales teams benefit from lead qualification.
No. The criteria used to judge a qualified vs. unqualified lead varies across industries, organization types, and even individual businesses. For example, an HVAC service provider’s qualification criteria might look like this:
For a company selling enterprise accounting software, the criteria might look like this:
On top of criteria differences, many businesses will also have different qualification processes—who qualifies leads, when they qualify, and how they qualify. For more on this, see the guide below.
There are a slew of benefits to qualifying your leads regularly and often. It’s why we recommend doing it in WhatConverts on a daily basis. Here are the top reasons why and the consequences of not qualifying your leads.
Benefit | Qualifying Marketing Leads | Not Qualifying Marketing Leads |
Marketing ROI | Improved ROI by allocating resources to high-potential leads. | Lower ROI due to inefficient spending on unqualified leads. |
Customer Acquisition Cost | Lower cost per acquisition by focusing on qualified leads. | Higher acquisition costs due to wasted efforts on poor leads. |
Conversion Rates | Higher conversion rates due to targeted efforts. | Lower conversion rates, as many leads may not be ready to buy. |
Sales Efficiency | Sales teams focus on leads that are more likely to close. | Sales teams spend time on unqualified or low-interest leads. |
Sales Cycle Length | Shorter sales cycles, as qualified leads are closer to purchase. | Longer sales cycles, as more time is spent nurturing unqualified leads. |
Sales and Marketing Alignment | Better alignment between marketing and sales teams. | Misalignment, as sales teams may get leads that don’t match their criteria. |
Customer Retention | Better fit customers, leading to higher retention and satisfaction. | Low retention, as unqualified leads may result in poor customer experiences. |
Lead Nurturing | Focused, personalized nurturing based on qualification criteria. | One-size-fits-all approach, leading to disengaged leads. |
First, you need to establish what a qualified lead is for your business. What signs can you look for early on to know this lead is likely to become a customer? Better yet, what signs indicate that this lead matches your ICP—ideal customer profile?
For sales reps, you can use various frameworks like BANT to establish your lead qualification criteria.
However, marketers should look for earlier indicators of a qualified lead. For example, a qualified lead might be one that clearly is not spam (uses a real email address vs. one with random numbers and characters), is interested in a service your client offers, and is in your client’s service area.
How do you know if a lead matches your qualification criteria? You need to be able to see the data behind the lead. This can be problematic for marketers since a lot of the most used tools—Google Ads, GA4—only show aggregate data, not individual lead data. And that means you can’t see which leads are qualified and which are bunk.
Lead qualification tools like WhatConverts pull back that curtain. For every lead captured, you can see the critical who, what, and where data that tells you if a lead is qualified or not.
With this data (which you can easily see in WhatConverts), you can evaluate if a lead is likely to become a customer.
Once you have your qualification criteria set and the data you need is being collected, it’s time to build a process. Setting a defined lead qualification process ensures your whole team stays on the same page, leads are being qualified in a timely manner, and nothing slips through the cracks.
The point here is to be consistent and efficient. In WhatConverts, you can speed up your lead qualification process using Custom Views, automations, Lead Grouping, and even AI technology like Lead Analysis for quick and helpful call summaries (see below).
An example qualification process might look like this:
For more lead qualification process examples, check out the guide below:
Time is money for sales reps. And teaching them how to qualify leads quickly and efficiently is one of the best ways to speed up the process. So, how do you do that? You develop proven scripts from past successes.
Which reps are nailing it? And what are they doing differently from the rest of the team? When you figure that out, you can build qualification scripts and teach your (or your client’s) team how to run an effective qualification call.
To find calls to model your scripts after, first look for only quotable leads. Then, sort your leads by the highest sales value (e.g., the most valuable customers).
Then, once you’ve found high-value leads from your pipeline, you can use the call recording and transcript features to listen to and learn from the call. What did the rep do right? What could they have improved? And how can other sales reps learn from this example?
You can access call recordings/transcripts as well as Lead Analysis data by:
In fact, a lot of marketing agencies use WhatConverts to help their clients spot sales team training opportunities. This extra value-add goes a long way toward becoming an indispensable partner, not just another vendor.
Case Study: Path to $1M MRR – Agency Shifts from Vendor to Partner w/ Advanced Reporting
Sure, you can qualify your leads manually. But there are also a variety of automation options out there that can do the heavy lifting for you.
With WhatConverts, there are three main ways to automatically qualify your leads:
Last but not least, find ways to optimize your campaigns so you attract more high-quality leads. This is easier said than done unless you have lead qualification tools like WhatConverts.
For example, our Google Ads integration lets you send only qualified leads back to Google as conversions. As a result, the algorithm builds a more accurate profile of what a qualified lead is and begins to target more and more of those. This cuts down on spam, increases lead quality, and can even help reduce costs.
You can also find high-opportunity keywords and campaigns that you know are bringing in more qualified leads than your other marketing. For example, you can use the Quotable Leads by Keyword report to see which keywords are outperforming the rest. Then, you can put more budget into them and less budget into the low-performers.
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Accelerating your lead qualification process doesn’t just save time—it drives better results across your marketing and sales efforts. By establishing clear qualification criteria, leveraging the right tools, and automating where possible, you can ensure that you’re focusing on high-potential leads.
The faster you can identify qualified leads, the quicker your team can act, resulting in higher conversion rates, better alignment between marketing and sales, and a more efficient overall process. Start implementing these strategies today, and watch your marketing performance soar.
If you don't have a WhatConverts account yet, sign up for a 14-day free trial and get started with qualifying your leads today!
Alex Thompson is a professional copywriter and content writer with a passion for turning complex ideas into digestible, educational content that keeps readers engaged. He specializes in content marketing, SEO, and B2B marketing.
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