More leads and sales calls is always good news for your business, right?
Wrong!
If you keep booking sales calls with wrong-fit leads (the kind who’ll either be nightmare clients or never convert), you’re wasting your limited time. And whether you run these calls yourself or have a sales team, wasting time = wasting money.
How much more efficient and profitable would your business be if you only booked calls with right-fit leads?
That’s what happens when you start pre-qualifying prospects!
I’ll show you how.
What does it mean to pre-qualify prospects and leads?
Pre-qualifying prospects means checking that they meet certain criteria. So, you’ll know they’re more likely to convert into customers and be right for your business – all before you get on a sales call with these leads.
Why should you pre-qualify your leads?
Only dealing with pre-qualified leads will be a game-changer for your business (and sanity).
You won’t waste time with random people
When you jump on calls with prospects you know nothing about, the chances of them turning into clients are low.
Can you really afford to spend half an hour (or more) with every single one of them?
You won’t end up taking on the wrong client by mistake
Put down that bottle of champagne: just because a lead has turned into a client, it’s not necessarily a cause for celebration.
If they’re not the right fit for your business, they could:
- Make your life difficult
- End up being disappointed (and write bad reviews or ask for refunds)
- Be a nightmare to work with
You’ll lower your risk of getting ghosted after a sales call or proposal
It’s not just about the actual duration of the call: think about the time you spend looking up that prospect and getting back into your workflow (which takes 23 minutes on average, after an interruption).
And if you also have to create a proposal? You’re looking at 5-7 hours on top of that!
Not only is it annoying enough if you don’t actually get that sale: some prospects won’t even have the decency to let you know. And +7 hours is A LOT of time to spend on someone only to never ever hear back.
You’ll set the right expectations
Having a process to pre-qualify leads will also show your audience that you’re not desperate for sales and itching to jump on a call with anyone.
Instead, you know exactly who you want to help and are selective about who you work with.
Much better than letting all kinds of random prospects drain your time (and ghost you), isn’t it?
How to generate pre-qualified leads for your business
There are different ways to pre-qualify prospects and leads. And the best part? They can ALL work together, saving you plenty of time.
1. Make sure your marketing is speaking to the right people
First things first: you can’t expect to generate more right-fit leads if you are not clear on what this means!
- Define your target customer – If you haven’t done that already, make sure you know exactly who that is and what problem they’re struggling with right now
- Create all your marketing for them specifically – You might think that targeting “everyone” will boost your chances of getting clients, but it’s actually the opposite. It’s a lot more efficient and effective to speak to ONE specific type of client. Otherwise, your marketing would end up being too generic
For example, let’s say you’re a productivity coach. You could try and hook everyone in with a post or ad that starts with “Feeling overwhelmed?”.
OR you could focus on freelancers who are still spinning all the plates in their business. In that case, you’d say something like: “You quit your corporate job because you wanted the freedom of freelancing. And yet you’re spending your Saturday morning writing social media content and answering emails… again!”
Which one do you think is more likely to interrupt their scrolling?
(Yes, the second one).
2. Create content to attract the right leads (and put off the wrong ones)
From the blog on your business website to your social media, your content can help you draw your dream clients in.
But that’s not all it should do! As we’ve seen, more leads isn’t always good news. That’s why it’s just as important to repel the wrong-fit clients.
For example, you could create content around:
- Who is or isn’t ready to invest in your products/services – e.g. “5 things you must put in place before hiring a blog writer” or “7 signs you’re not ready to work with a graphic designer (yet)”
- Your rates – No point getting on sales calls with prospects who genuinely can’t afford you (or who aren’t prepared to pay your rates because they don’t see the value in what you do). So, you could share your rates or pricing starting points on your website and create content that provides more context (e.g. “Why our design services are more expensive than what you see on Fiverr”)
- Your process – e.g. “Your guide to working with our content marketing agency”
- What type of person you (don’t) work with – e.g. “5 things our clients have in common” or “Why we are NOT the right accountants for you”
This will help you attract the right clients and keep the wrong ones away.
Or maybe they would be the right fit – but they first need to fix some problems or implement some systems? Then you’ll still save time by telling them all this through your content rather than on a call!
3. Share case studies and real-world examples
A simple way to pre-qualify your prospects is to show them what kinds of clients you’ve already worked with.
Create strategic case studies
Start by highlighting what type of customer or business that was. Maybe it’s the same industry or they had a similar pain point.
Either way, if the right-fit leads can recognise themselves in that example, they’ll think: “This is for me!” And the wrong-fit prospects will see that it’s not for them – and that’s good.
Be smart with your testimonials
It doesn’t matter how good that review was: is it from a type of client you no longer work with (or don’t want to)? Does it mention a service you don’t offer anymore?
Then it’d be counterproductive to plaster it on your website!
For example, you have a testimonial from a freelance copywriter but you now want to work with bigger agencies because they pay better. So, replace it with recommendations from those.
4. Use a quiz to pre-qualify your leads
Those first strategies will help you attract better-fit prospects. But the truth?
Not everyone who gets in touch with you has read all your content and case studies.
Some people might still find your business through a random search or word of mouth. They’re probably looking at lots of different competitors, too – and expecting to jump on calls with each of you, ask for proposals and choose the cheapest quote.
Luckily, that’s where a quiz as a lead magnet comes into play!
- Useful insights – Unlike traditional lead magnets and PDFs, a quiz gives you a tonne of data on each prospect. This is especially the case when you use professional quiz software and create a Scorecard quiz. Instead of a single percentage, it’ll show your audience what they’re already doing well and what they still need help with, dividing their results into categories
- Standing out – You’ll set yourself apart from all your competitors and attract prospects who see you as an authority in your field
- Qualifying prospects – As long as most of your quiz is engaging and brings value to your audience, you can certainly ask a few questions to pre-qualify your leads
But how can you do all this successfully?
- Get clear – What do you need to know to understand if someone is ready to buy (and would be a good client)?
- Ask the right quiz questions to pre-qualify leads – For example, “What’s your current budget for [type of product or service]?”, “When it comes to [specific problem], what strategies have you found most effective?” or “How open are you to exploring new solutions or approaches when faced with challenges related to [their specific problem]?”
- Keep it short – Your pre-qualifying questions should only make up around 10% of your entire quiz. Oh, and don’t start with them
Then, analyse your data, and only offer calls to leads who meet your criteria. Plus, as well as identifying pre-qualified prospects, a quiz will help you close more sales, too!
- Send different and personalised email sequences based on their results
- You can literally reference their answers in your email invitation (and during the actual sales call)
For example:
“Hey Mark,
I noticed you recently took my Influencer Marketing Quiz and scored 45%. You scored really high in the INSTAGRAM section (which is great), but quite low in the OUTREACH category.
Would you be open for a quick call with me so I can offer some advice and tell you about some strategies to help improve this?”
Now, that’s better than a generic copy-and-paste message asking to just “get on a call”, don’t you think?
Start pre-qualifying your prospects with a quiz
Overall, dealing with pre-qualified prospects will
- save you hours every week
- let you focus your limited time and energy on leads who are likely to convert and be the right fit
- allow you to earn more
So, get strategic with your marketing, content and case studies – and launch a quiz that keeps on pre-qualifying leads for you automatically.
With ScoreApp, you can create a lot more than a quiz: from landing pages to personalised emails, you’ll get a full quiz funnel that’s always working in the background for you!
And it’ll be a breeze to set it all up in 3 minutes thanks to our AI quiz builder. Get your quiz live for FREE with our 14-day trial, and start pre-qualifying your leads today.
