How to pre-qualify leads effectively easier

When a company is successful or has a product that attracts a lot of attention, it will inevitably receive a lot of inquiries and leads. This can seem like great news, but for companies that have a low ratio of leads to conversions, it can become a serious problem. The reasons behind it can be many, from lack of budget to the need for a specific permit, software, or machinery to be able to use the product.

In these cases, true leads, that can actually purchase the product, can become lost in a sea of irrelevant requests, and separating them from the rest can take a lot of work. In B2B especially, sales teams will frequently spend a lot of time talking to the potential customer before they are able to determine if the product is suitable for them and if the lead is indeed a true one.

Traditional lead qualification methods

Most companies deal with lead qualification issues with one of two methods. They either add questionnaires to their contact form or they hire more people to pre-qualify leads. Both approaches have their virtues and challenges.

Questionnaires and additional fields in contact forms will generally scare off some leads, especially senior-level ones, that don’t have the time or the patience to fill them in. For the same reason, the quality of the answers received is often low, and relying on them can result in filtering out good leads.

Conversational filtering is more reliable as people tend to take more time and provide better answers when talking to someone. The downside is that using people to do lead qualification can be expensive and often introduces delays between the moment a potential lead reaches out and when an agent is available to move them forward in the sales process.

Making lead qualification easier

To get the best of both worlds, companies need to find a conversational filtering solution that does not rely on human agents. Luckily, current technology has made things easier and today’s chatbots are easily able to replace human beings in lead qualification tasks.

They can operate on any text-based messaging tool, from website chats to messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, or Slack, and will happily work 24/7, handling multiple conversations at the same time. In advanced systems, they can also be set up to follow up on leads, analyze data and log data directly in the company’s CRM system.
To learn more about how to qualify leads more efficiently, reach out to our team using the contact link below: