Pre-qualifying your leads assists you in determining if you and the lead are a good fit. Will they pay your fees? Are they looking for the specific type of work that you offer?
You don’t want to waste your time on people who are not good fits, and pre-qualifying is a way to determine if the potential client will be a great client.
How to Qualify a Lead
As a business owner, your time and money are extremely valuable. Don’t waste it on people who don’t resonate with what you are offering. Sometimes business owners aren’t sure how to pre-qualify, or they don’t have business boundaries in place, or they may not take their time seriously. We want to stop wasting time on leads that won’t make you money.
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If that makes you uncomfortable, I have a newsflash for you – businesses are for making money. That’s the purpose of a company to bring in new money. Without money, you don’t have a business. First, we want to be efficient with using our time by pre-qualifying leads because time is money.
Make Money by Problem Solving for People
God put me on this earth to solve the problems for a specific group of people. These particular people are the ones that I need to be talking with that are good leads. And the next thing you want to do is you want to stop giving away all your time. Your time is precious, and if you’re going to make money in your business, you have to start treating your time as your number one priority.
Networking Isn’t Always Your Best Lead Generation
I don’t participate in coffee chats or long business networking groups. Why? Because I value my time – I’m not here to chit chat for 90 freaking minutes. I’m here to see whether or not I can make some money. If not, then I’m moving on and having a conversation with the right people.
I work with coaches and course creators. So if you’re trying to sell a product or in direct sales, you aren’t a good fit. Ask specific questions when you are pre-qualifying, such as the lead’s vertical, what services they offer, or what products they sell.
Referring Out When a Lead Isn’t a Good Fit
If the answer’s no, I’ll refer them somewhere else or point to a book or tag them into a video and move onto the next one. Let’s chat, let’s talk and get this set up so you can present the offer. If the pre-qualifying process tells you they aren’t a good lead, refer them elsewhere, or recommend a book. Simple things you can do so that they still feel like they’ve been served and that they’ve been helped.
Second, you’ll want to find out is whether or not they can pay you. Right? Because an example of that would be like me, for example, who works with coaches and course creators is by asking if they are in business full time and how long have they been doing business? What goals do they have for their business financially? I can ask different qualifying questions to figure out whether these people would have the means to pay me. These questions usually give me enough information to know whether or not they have a means of payment.
Experience with Sales and Pre-Qualifying Leads
There is a part of sales that comes with having experience, putting yourself in the situations, learning from those experiences. Once you have experience, you start getting a bit of intuition around sales and qualifying leads.
However, make sure not to put too much weight on counting people’s pockets. People can discount pre-qualifying leads very quickly when they don’t know what funding people can access for their business.