One of the most important conversations salespeople have with their prospects is the discovery call.

Here lies the proverbial fork in the road for you and your prospect. Either they’re a good fit for your product or service and you can move forward with the relationship, or it’s time to part ways.

But it’s not always immediately obvious which path to take. That’s where sales qualification comes in.

By asking the right questions, you’ll be able to determine whether the relationship should continue, and if so, what next steps are appropriate. This guide will walk you through the fundamentals of sales qualification, five different frameworks you can use, and provide pointers on disqualification and conversational tip-offs to listen for.

What is a qualified prospect?

A discovery call is where you might do the bulk of your qualification, but it certainly isn’t where qualification starts or ends. At every step of the sales process, you’ll continuously evaluate prospects for more and more specific characteristics.

According to Bob Apollo, the founder of sales consulting group Inflexion Point, there’s a hierarchy to qualification. That is, sales reps must qualify prospects at three different levels — what Apollo terms “organization-level,” “opportunity-level,” and “stakeholder-level” sales qualification.

Organization-Level Qualification

This is the most basic level of qualification, and doesn’t tell you much other than whether you should do more research. If your company has buyer personas, reference them when qualifying a prospect. Does the buyer match the demographics of a given persona?

Questions you should ask at this stage include:

• Is the prospect in your territory?
• Do you sell to their industry?
• What’s the company size?
• Does the account fit your company’s buyer persona?

Opportunity-Level Qualification

This form of qualification is probably what you thought of when you read the title of this post. Opportunity-level sales qualification is where you determine whether your prospect has a specific need or challenge you can satisfy and whether it’s feasible for them to implement your particular product or service. The other half of a good buyer persona, opportunity-level characteristics give insight into whether a prospect could benefit from your offering.

For suggestions of questions you can ask to qualify at the opportunity level, see below.

Stakeholder-Level Qualification

Let’s say you’ve determined that your prospect’s company is a good match for your solution and fits your ideal buyer persona. It’s time to get into the nitty-gritty — can your point of contact actually pull the trigger on a purchase decision?

To determine this, ask the following:

• Will this purchase come out of your budget?
• Who else is involved in the decision?
• Do you have criteria for this purchase decision? Who defined them?

When to Disqualify Leads

These three levels are listed in the order you should use them to disqualify.

For instance, if your prospect is a complete departure from your company’s buyer persona, it’s safe to disqualify them right then and there on an organizational level. Maybe one day, you’ll serve their type of buyer, but right now you don’t — so don’t waste time trying to shoehorn your offering into their business.

Similarly, you could be speaking with the CEO of an organization with complete budget authority who passes stakeholder-level qualification with flying colors. But if there’s no problem, there’s no need for your solution. Qualify for business pain first.

Also keep in mind that unless a prospect can be qualified on all three levels, you shouldn’t advance them in the sales process. For example, if you ask your prospect about the company’s strategic goals and they’re unable to answer, it’s a good sign they’re not close enough to the decision process and lack influence.

You should disqualify this contact at the stakeholder level, even though they pass at the opportunity level.

Why Disqualifying Isn’t a Bad Thing

Many salespeople are loath to disqualify prospects and shrink their pipelines.

Their natural instinct is trying to work as many leads as possible, but this isn’t the best approach. The quality of your leads matter more than the quantity.

As a salesperson, your most precious asset is your time, and it’s far better to spend it on a handful of your best prospects than spreading yourself thin across dozens of leads. Trying to close every deal that comes along is only going to result in dead ends with poor fit prospects, while you neglect prospects likely to buy.

What is a qualifying question?

A qualifying question helps the salesperson determine their prospect’s fit for one criteria. That might be need, budget, authority, sense of urgency, or another factor.

A good qualifying question is typically open-ended. Asking a close-ended question, like “Is this a priority right now?” boxes the buyer into an answer. The better version would be “Where does this fall on your list of business priorities?” Because you’re not leading the prospect to an answer, the response will usually be more honest and revealing.

What is BANT?

A qualification framework is essentially a rubric that salespeople can use to determine whether a prospect is likely to become a successful customer. Every customer and every sale is different, but all closed-won deals share commonalities. Sales qualification frameworks distill those shared characteristics into general traits reps can look for when qualifying.

The BANT Qualification Framework

The Old Faithful of sales qualification frameworks, BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is used at a variety of companies and in a variety of markets.

Originally developed by IBM, BANT covers all the broad strokes of opportunity and stakeholder-level qualification.

BANT seeks to uncover the following four pieces of information:

• Budget: Is the prospect capable of buying?
• Authority: Does your contact have adequate authority to sign off on a purchase?
• Need: Does the prospect have a business pain you can solve?
• Timeline: When is the prospect planning to buy?

Here are a few examples of BANT questions in the context of a prospect conversation:

While BANT addresses many opportunity-level requirements, it misses the mark on others.

According to research from CEB, it now takes an average of 5.4 people to make a buying decision, so the “ultimate” buying authority could be more than one person. Make sure you engage all relevant stakeholders early on in the process and secure each individual’s buy-in.

“Timeline” is another area where BANT falls short today. A strict BANT qualification might tell you to cycle a lead who won’t be ready to buy until next year into a closed-lost queue.

But you might be acting prematurely — send over educational resources and offer to help until they’re ready to buy, if you can.

Lead Qualification Frameworks

BANT might be the most popular, but it’s far from the only sales qualification framework out there. Here are five alternate frameworks that sales reps can use if BANT just doesn’t cut it.

MEDDIC

MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion) was pioneered by Jack Napoli when he was at technology company PTC. MEDDIC requires sales reps to understand every aspect of a target company’s purchase process, down to whether you have an internal champion — an employee at a prospective company who will internally sell your product.

MEDDIC was incredibly valuable for increasing forecasting accuracy, something that’s crucial for companies that sell to enterprise companies — after all, losing just one deal can be crippling when each is worth several million dollars.

“From $0 to $100 million, [PTC was] successful because we sold a better widget,” HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan said. “From $100 million to $1 billion, we sold a shift in technology. MEDDIC became important because it’s not just any old purchase — it’s a transformation of the business.”

You should consider using MEDDIC as a qualification framework if your company sells a product that requires a transformation in behavior or average sales price is incredibly high, as understanding exactly how a prospect buys, why they would buy, and who’s championing you internally is crucial to maintaining an accurate pipeline.

CHAMP Sales

CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization) is similar to ANUM but places Challenges ahead of Authority.

“Your prospect buys things because they have a challenge,” Atiim, Inc. founder Zorian Rotenberg writes in a blog post. “[Challenges] are the first fundamental part of sales qualification.”

CHAMP also defines authority as a “call-to-action,” not a roadblock. If your initial contact is a low-level employee, you can safely assume they won’t be the decision maker. That doesn’t mean you should hang up the phone. Instead, “ask your prospect questions that help you map out their company’s organizational structure” to determine who to reach out to next, according to Rotenberg.

GPCTBA/C&I

Yes, it’s a long acronym, but a useful one. Developed at HubSpot the qualification framework, GPCTBA/C&I (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority/Negative Consequences and Positive Implications) is a response to changes in buyer behavior. Buyers come to the sales process increasingly informed, so salespeople need to add value on top of product knowledge to be worth speaking with.

But value isn’t something sales reps can just “add” — to truly act as an advisor, you must explore beyond the scope of the discrete problem that your product or service could solve. This means understanding a prospect’s strategic goals, their company’s business model, and how the specific issue you’re discussing fits into the larger picture of their professional life.

Here are some of the questions you should ask at each step:

Goals

The purpose of the following questions is to find out your prospect’s quantitative goals. You can help clarify or set goals with your prospect if their response isn’t well-defined.

• What is your top priority this year?
• Do you have specific company goals?
• Do you have published revenue goals for this quarter/year?

Plans

Once you understand your prospect’s goals, find out what work they’ve already done to achieve them. Determine what’s worked and what hasn’t, and make suggestions for improvement.

• What are you planning to do to achieve your goals?
• What did you do last year? What worked and what didn’t? What are you going to do differently this year?
• Do you think XYZ might make it hard to implement your plan?
• Do you have the right resources available to implement this plan?

Challenges

Defining your prospect’s challenges — and reinforcing that what they’ve already tried isn’t working — is crucial. Unless they understand that they need help, a prospect won’t become a customer.

• Why do you think you’ll be able to eliminate this challenge now, even though you’ve tried in the past and you’re still dealing with it?
• Do you think you have the internal expertise to deal with these challenges?
• If you realize early enough in the year that this plan isn’t fixing this challenge, how will you shift gears?

Timeline

Your most important asset is your time. So while a prospect that doesn’t want to buy now or in the near future isn’t necessarily a lost cause, they should move down your priority list.

• When will you begin implementing this plan?
• Do you have bandwidth and resources to implement this plan now?
• Would you like help thinking through the steps involved in executing this plan, so you can figure out when you should implement each piece?

Budget

Just asking “What’s your budget?”, isn’t a question likely to get you valuable insight, according to HubSpot sales director Dan Tyre.

Instead, try asking:

• Are we in agreement on the potential ROI of
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• Are you spending money on another product to solve the problem we’ve discussed?

Then, go in for the kill. Databox CEO and former HubSpot VP of sales Pete Caputa suggests phrasing the budget question this way:

“We’ve established that your goal is X and that you’re spending Y now to try and achieve X. But it’s not working. In order to hire us, you will need to invest Z. Since Z is pretty similar to Y and you’re more confident that our solution will get you to your goal, do you believe it makes sense to invest Z to hire us?”

Authority

Unlike in BANT, qualifying for authority under this framework isn’t necessarily trying to determine whether your contact is a decision maker. Your contact might be an influencer or a coach, two types of internal champions who can give you insight into the decision maker’s thought process.

If your contact isn’t the economic buyer, ask them:

• Are the goals we’ve discussed important to the economic buyer?
• Amongst their priorities, where does this fall?
• What concerns do you anticipate they’ll raise?
• How should we go about getting the economic buyer on board?

Negative Consequences and Positive Implications

In this part of the qualification process, you’re finding out what happens if your prospect does or does not achieve their goals.

“If your product can significantly help them avoid consequences and further aid in achieving even bigger follow-up goals, you’ve got a very strong value proposition,” Caputa says.

Here are some C&I questions to ask prospects:

• What happens if you do or don’t reach your goals? Does the outcome affect you on a personal level?
• When you overcome this challenge, what will you do next?
• Do you stand to get promoted or get more resources if you can hit your goal? Would you lose responsibility or be demoted if you don’t?

The benefit of GPCTBA/C&I is that is allows salespeople to gather a huge amount of information. If your product is complex, highly differentiated, and stands to become an integral part of your prospect’s business strategy, having these insights is incredibly valuable. Sales reps selling these kinds of products need to step into their prospects’ world to be effective advisors and business partners.

However, GPCTBA/C&I might not be right for every sales force. Depending on what you sell, such thorough qualification may not be necessary.

ANUM

ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money) is an alternative spin on BANT. When qualifying using ANUM, a sales rep’s first priority should be to determine whether they’re speaking with a decision maker.

Need functions the same way as it does in BANT, but has been moved up in priority. Urgency correlates with Timing, while Money replaces Budget, but with subtle distinctions. David Garcia explains:

“With Urgency, we want to know how high up [the prospect’s] priority list this particular business pain is. Budget has been updated to Money to reflect the fact that we have to only find out if they potentially have the money to purchase our solution. Then it is our job to prove our value and why [the prospect] should apply to get the fixed budget for this purchase.”

FAINT

The RAIN Group advocates using FAINT (Funds, Authority, Interest, Need, Timing) to qualify sales leads. FAINT is designed to reflect the fact that many purchase decisions are unplanned and thus won’t be associated with a set budget.

Like ANUM, reps using FAINT should look for organizations with the capacity to buy, regardless of whether a discrete budget has been set aside. FAINT also adds Interest into the mix. According to RAIN Group’s John Doerr and Mike Schultz, Interest is defined as “[generating] interest from the buyer in learning what’s possible and how to achieve a new and better reality than the one they have today.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.”

This phrase is the root of countless arguments, but it’s as good as gold when it comes to sales qualification. Your prospect will provide you as much information via their tone of voice and delivery as the words they actually speak.

Here are some tip-offs (both good and bad) to listen for when qualifying a prospect that can help you determine whether to advance the sales process or disqualify ASAP.

Good Signs to Move a Prospect Forward

Excuses

Wait. How can excuses be a good thing?

According to Psychology Today, we make excuses to resolve cognitive dissonance — mental stress caused by holding conflicting beliefs. Excuses help resolve our actions with who we want to be.

During a sales conversation, your ears should perk up if your prospect tries to explain away previous inaction regarding business pain. This indicates one of two things: either the excuse is legitimate, or your prospect wishes they had done something about it earlier and is trying to rationalize why they didn’t. Either way, it confirms their pain is real.

Specificity

Prospects who can give specific answers to questions such as “What are your goals?” and “When do you need to see results?” have thought carefully about their problem. Listen for sequential plans, thought-out explanations, and statistics. Specifics also indicate that your prospect feels real pain. After all, people without real problems don’t spend time thinking about why they exist and how to address them.

Of course, the caveat is that specifics must be accompanied by reality. A prospect who says, “I want to quadruple revenue in the next two weeks,” is using specifics to demonstrate that they don’t have strong business acumen.

Knowledge

Specificity’s partner is knowledge. A knowledge check is your best bet for qualifying at the stakeholder level. True decision makers will have intimate knowledge of company goals, challenges, and needs. A contact who doesn’t have access to this information likely isn’t going to be valuable in the sales process.

Red Flags in the Sales Process

Inconsistency

A prospect whose answers contradict each other is likely one who wants to be helpful, but can’t because they don’t possess adequate knowledge. However, this isn’t a dealbreaker — prod them to tell you who does know the answers, and continue qualifying the opportunity with another contact.

Short answers

True business pain permeates an organization — executives lose sleep over it and employees have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. If you give the impression that you can help alleviate the pain, prospects will want to talk to you.

A prospect who’s giving you one-word answers isn’t someone who feels there’s basis for a conversation. It could be that the problem is a non-issue, or the contact isn’t clued in enough to feel its severity. Depending on what you think is going on, disqualify or try reaching out to another member of the organization.

Over to You

Sales success rests on effective qualification. Your ability to find good fit prospects will make or break your business. Prospects who turn into happy customers mean not only revenue, but increased word-of-mouth, referrals, and the possibility of cross- or upselling. So it’s imperative that you get it right.

Want to learn more? Check out the weaknesses that cripple a rep’s ability to qualify here.