MQL to SQL: 7 Step Lead Qualification Checklist

Don’t you just wish there was a magical lead magnet that made the lead generation process 10x simpler? Are the marketing and sales teams of your organizations praying to the lord of leads to bless them in making the lead qualification process better?

Dear Marketing & Sales team, worry not, your prayers have been heard!

This blog here is the ultimate lead qualification checklist that you have been searching for. That’s not all, for a bonus blessing, we introduce you to a godsend tool to track your website visitors and convert them into quality leads. Let’s begin, shall we?

Introduction

On an average the MQL (marketing qualified lead) to SQL (sales qualified lead) conversion rate is 13%. That simply means just 13% of the people marketing teams consider a “lead” is something the sales team can work with.

It’s no surprise that there are thousands of people that visit your website on a daily basis. While some might genuinely be interested in your offerings, (interest stage of the sales funnel) others might only be looking for information and still making up their mind as to how they feel about your products or services. (Awareness stage of the sales funnel)

Asking your sales team to chase all the leads, even those that may still be at the awareness stage might be a futile effort and a waste of precious time. But to steer clear of this recipe for disaster you need a plan of action.

This is where lead qualification comes into the picture. To get the ball rolling, you must have a clear strategy when it comes to approaching leads and filter out those who are not pursuing your services or don't fit your demographic. This will allow you to focus on making the best out of the opportunities that come your way.

Truth be told, lead generation can be stressful and chaotic, but when you’re armed with a solid lead generation strategy, it’s a lot easier to sort through leads. For example, if you know what your most promising leads look like, you can use certain criteria to determine which leads are worth following up with and which are best left untouched.

So, what should your lead qualification checklist look like?

The 7 Step Lead Qualification Checklist

Consider your buyer personas

Who are you selling to? Think about who your target audience is and whether they fit your main buyer personas. Once you align yourself with your target market, you can better understand who they are as individuals so that when people approach you, it'll be easier for you to determine whether or not they fit into one of the buckets within your customer segmentation scheme after which you can immediately classify the person as an unqualified lead.

Evaluate if they’re truly interested

Lead generation can be tricky. It's unpredictable as everyone is not necessarily interested in buying your product. That's why lead generation tools are important, in fact, vital for any business that is serious about turning its prospects into actual customers.

Although people visit your website regularly they may not be ready to pull the trigger just yet and buy it right away. Perhaps all they’re looking for is some information and once they've heard all about your company's fascinating solutions or gotten their hands on some valuable content that could help them solve their problems then they may become interested. Riyo.ai’s live chat allows you to get in touch with your website visitors in real-time in order to gauge their level of interest and ask the following question?

• Are you looking to purchase a (product or service)?
• Can I help you get more information about our pricing plans? (If they’re on your pricing page)
• Would you be interested in learning more about this topic? (If they’ve downloaded a pdf or whitepaper from your website)

Know more about their problems

Lead qualification is the most important part of any sales process. Before you can sell to a lead you want to be sure that your product solves their problems - so you need to find out exactly what those problems are first.

Most sales experts will tell you that the most common pitfall for entrepreneurs when it comes to lead qualification is that they spend too little time trying to understand the problem and instead move on too quickly to share their commercial offering with prospective leads. It’s best to ask them the following questions to discover their problem and see if you have what they need.

• What are some of the challenges or concerns you are facing?
• What are your immediate short-term and long-term goals?
• Have you tried any specific solutions or products before?
  

Offer the solution

Now that you’ve understood their problems, gauged their needs, and gained their trust it’s time to get down to business. Educate them about your offerings and how your products could really make a difference to their business. It is important to let your leads know that you're a value-added proposition. In other words, make sure that they know how your products could be beneficial to them by illustrating in detail why their business needs you now more than ever!

Ask about their decision making process

Asking this question during the discovery or information-gathering stage with potential buyers is important because it will enable you as the salesperson to determine who is involved in the purchase decision and how you can influence them. This will help you discover which methods of influence are most effective for your use case. You may also ask questions like “who else should I speak with?” to distinguish who the right contacts are towards the end of strengthening relationships.

Get details about their budget

An important, yet sensitive topic is the budget for your partnership. This can ensure a successful collaboration between you and the lead if it's an area that you both agree upon from the start of your discussions, but if it's not an area where both sides seem to see eye-to-eye or would like to at least fine-tune a specific number, there's really no use in trying to move forward with the deal at this stage.

Get all the details about their budget by delicately asking the following questions:

• Could you specify the solution/product you are currently using? (This will give you an idea about their spending capacity)
• Are you satisfied with the asked price for your current solution/product?
• What is your ideal price range?

Ask them where they are standing time-wise

Now that you've established whether or not your lead has authority, you can move on to meeting their timeline. You're aiming to clinch a quick sale: make sure they either want the product now or in the next few weeks. When looking to pitch a product, you might want to ask the lead when they are hoping to make the purchase. One can still consider a potential lead who is planning on making the purchase one month or two months from this date. But for a timeline longer than that, you can consider them as unqualified leads.

Asking the lead when they plan to implement the solution is a good way to determine whether or not someone may be closer to becoming your sure close!

Wrapping Up

When searching for potential partners, you need to identify the leads who will turn into clients. Use this 7 point checklist to determine how likely it is that a lead will represent a sure sale (with SQL) or just a so-so chance at cooperation (which can be an MQL). The list contains pointers that will help your entire team generate high-quality leads after receiving marketing lists and close some lucrative deals in no time. Checking off these points will help your team generate strong sales and profit from cooperating with some interesting partnerships.

But wait? It’s time to reveal the bonus blessing tool. Say hello to Riyo.ai, a website tracking tool to boost Your Lead Generation and 10x your revenues. However, the all-important question is how does Riyo.ai actually help?

Start Riyo.ai-ing!

Amazingly, many business owners today don't know what really happens with their website traffic. Imagine if you could actually track your visitors around? What steps are they taking after landing on your site and reaching out to your lead forms? What exactly do these people want and how can you tailor each visitor's experience to better suit their needs?

Did you know only 2% of your website visitors actually sign up on your lead forms? So what about the other 98% of the traffic? Is it possible to identify your visiting accounts to engage and retarget your qualified visitors to quality leads? Yes, it absolutely is!

This is what we at Riyo.ai strive for. We are able to identify your target cohorts in real-time allowing us to personally tailor their experience on every single website that uses our solution. This way, our customers can execute highly successful conversions by directing the right visitors toward the right product or service offering.