Avatar photo Alex Thompson
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Oct 2, 2024

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.

What Does It Mean to Qualify a Lead?

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:

  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – Leads identified by the marketing team as having potential based on engagement with campaigns.
  • Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – Leads that have been vetted by the sales team and are ready for direct sales efforts.

Who Should Qualify Leads?

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.

Do All Businesses Qualify Leads the Same Way?

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:

  • Filled out a form for a quote
  • Located within the service area
  • Looking for an offered service

For a company selling enterprise accounting software, the criteria might look like this:

  • Has the budget for the software
  • Looking to purchase within the acceptable timeframe
  • Has the authority to make a purchase decision

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.

How to Use Lead Qualification to Optimize Your Marketing Optimize campaigns & boost your marketing ROI with 4 simple steps to qualifying leads.
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Why Should Marketers Qualify Leads At All?

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.

BenefitQualifying Marketing LeadsNot Qualifying Marketing Leads
Marketing ROIImproved ROI by allocating resources to high-potential leads.Lower ROI due to inefficient spending on unqualified leads.
Customer Acquisition CostLower cost per acquisition by focusing on qualified leads.Higher acquisition costs due to wasted efforts on poor leads.
Conversion RatesHigher conversion rates due to targeted efforts.Lower conversion rates, as many leads may not be ready to buy.
Sales EfficiencySales teams focus on leads that are more likely to close.Sales teams spend time on unqualified or low-interest leads.
Sales Cycle LengthShorter sales cycles, as qualified leads are closer to purchase.Longer sales cycles, as more time is spent nurturing unqualified leads.
Sales and Marketing AlignmentBetter alignment between marketing and sales teams.Misalignment, as sales teams may get leads that don’t match their criteria.
Customer RetentionBetter fit customers, leading to higher retention and satisfaction.Low retention, as unqualified leads may result in poor customer experiences.
Lead NurturingFocused, personalized nurturing based on qualification criteria.One-size-fits-all approach, leading to disengaged leads.

How to Qualify Leads Faster: 6 Strategies

Establish Criteria for Qualified 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.

Capture “Who, What, & Where” Data

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.

  • Who a lead is (are they legit or spam?)
  • What are they interested in (are they actually looking for a service you offer?)
  • Where they came from (which campaign, ad, keyword, etc. brought them in?)

With this data (which you can easily see in WhatConverts), you can evaluate if a lead is likely to become a customer.

Build a Process

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).Screenshot showing the call summary feature of Lead Analysis in WhatConverts. This feature is one of many that makes it the best call tracking software for marketers and agencies.

An example qualification process might look like this:

  1. Switch to Qualifier View.
  2. Qualify call leads with Lead Analysis and forms with Mapped Fields or form field data.
  3. Mark lead as quotable or not.
  4. Use Lead Details page to fill out Custom Fields. If quotable, input the requested service (“sprinkler installation”). If non-quotable, input the reason why (“out of service area”).
  5. Add Quote or Sales Value based on Custom Fields. E.g., if “Requested Service” is “sprinkler installation”, Quote Value is $3,000, etc.

For more lead qualification process examples, check out the guide below:

How to Use Lead Qualification to Optimize Your Marketing

Train Your Reps

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:

  1. Clicking "View Leads" to go to the Lead Details page Screenshot showing how to access the Lead Details page inside WhatConverts. This is the best place to find voice of customer data.
  2. Viewing recording, transcript, and Lead Analysis data Screenshot of the Lead Details page inside WhatConverts. You can mine voice of customer data by listening to recordings, reading transcripts, or using the AI-powered Lead Analysis.

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

Automate the Process

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:

  1. Lead Intelligence – Automatically qualify leads based on your own criteria. Plus, you can also automate sending leads to Google/your client/CRM, adding information like lead value or service they’re interested in, and so much more.
  2. Call Flows – Build a lead qualification process right into your Call Flows. After a call, agents can simply hit a button on their phone to mark a lead as qualified and even assign a quote or sales value to them.
  3. CRM Integrations – WhatConverts integrates with over 1,000 different tools, including some of the leading CRM software. This lets users pass value and qualification info back to WhatConverts automatically from their CRM.

Visual of a call flow for a plumbing company, showing various lead paths and a lead manager tool.

Optimize For More Quality 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.

9 Best Marketing Reporting Software for Agencies in 2024 (In-Depth Look)

Wrapping Up

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!

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Alex Thompson

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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