Top 7 questions to determine whether sales leads are qualified

There are seven essential questions used to determine if the contact or business is a qualified prospect:

1) Does this contact or business have a need for my company’s services or products?

2) Does this contact or prospect business perceive a need or problem that may be met by my company’s product or service?

3) Does the contact or prospect business have a real desire to fulfil this actual need or solve this problem?

4) Can this contact's desire to fulfil actual needs or solve problems be converted into a belief that my company’s product or service is needed?

5) Does this contact or prospect business have the financial budget to pay?

6) Does this contact or prospect have the company authority to buy?

7) Is this potential contact's purchase large enough to make it a profitable sale?

These are the questions that you should ask, and we ask them as well, during the prospect qualification process (which is always the most important part of the lead generation process).

The traditional Four Ps of marketing

In the 1960s, the Harvard Business School in the USA discovered a number of company actions that influence the decision to buy goods or services. They suggested that the actions are a “Marketing Mix”, containing four marketing elements: product, price, promotion and placement.

Product: The product aspects of marketing cover the specifications, and how they relate to the end-user's different needs and wants. The scope of a product normally includes supporting elements eg warranties, support and guarantees.

Pricing: This covers the process of setting the best and most effective price for a product, including discounts. The price does not necesarily need to be monetary - it can be what’s exchanged for the product or service - eg time, energy, or a measure of attention.

Promotion: This covers web advertising, sales promotion, traditional advertising, publicity, and face-to-face selling and branding, and refers to the various methods of sales promotion.

Placement (or distribution): covers how the product or service gets to the customer eg distribution or retailing. This fourth P is also called Place, referring to the different channels through which it is sold (eg online or retail etc), which region or industry and which market segment (eg teenagers, families, business people etc).

These four marketing elements are very often called the marketing mix, which can be used to create a marketing plan. The four Ps marketing model is very useful for B2B both products and services. High-value consumer products require some refinements to this model. Services marketing must also take account of the unique nature of the services.

B2B marketing must also take into account long-term agreements which are typically found in supply chain contracts. Relationship marketing also attempts to accomplish this by looking at all aspects of marketing from a long-term relationship-building angle rather than simply looking at individual transactions.