Qualification skill (10) - FAQ on my qualification question list & 2 common mistakes

A lot of people think having the list of qualification question is everything there is to learn about qualification calls.

Actually, that is probably the easiest part.

I hope that through today's newsletter, you can appreciate the complexity of conducting qualification calls.

Q Would you REALLY be able to ask all these questions in the first call??

My answer is “Yes, but it does depend on the lead situation. The temperature of the lead. ”

There are 2 types of scenarios where I would be able to ask pretty much all the questions in the 1st call:

Scenario 1 - INBOUND HOT leads?

For example, people who fill out a form on the company website, asking about pricing information or requesting a demo (if it is not already available on the website). Sometimes they even already mentioned in the form that they are looking for a software tool like mine.?

Another type could be people who sign up for a free trial of our software. They could also be actively evaluating our software, just that they choose not to fill up a form.?

Scenario 2 - OUTBOUND HOT prospects

Typically, these are the people who respond to my cold email within the same day and agree to have a call. Sometimes, they already indicate in their email reply that they have a project underway. Other times, they only disclose during the call that they are evaluating.

This kind of situation only happens when my cold email reach them just at the right time. But majority of the people who responded to my cold email would not be like that. (The OUTBOUND warm category.)

In both of these situations, the lead/prospect is very willing to share information, so I have no difficulty asking all the questions in the first call.

Many SDR/BDR asks me this question because they are not aware of Common Mistake 1 & 2 below.

Common Mistake 1 :?

Beginner level SDR/BDR/AE think they HAVE TO get through the entire list in the first call. Very often, they would just ask the questions one by one, and the call becomes an interrogation instead of a conversation.

That is why they meet resistance from the lead/prospect in answering their questions.

This question list serves as a big picture map to remind you of all the important qualification information you need to obtain from a lead/prospect. However, whether you can obtain all of this information from a particular lead/prospect is highly dependent on the lead's/prospect's situation.

For example, after I ask the "current situation" and "pain" questions, I may find out that the lead/prospect is still very early in their buyer's journey, and they cannot even articulate their pain points. In such cases, I would not continue with the subsequent questions in the list.

Instead, I would decide whether there is a next step that I can suggest to the lead to prepare them for further sales engagement and then exit the call earlier. This is what I mean by "disqualify".??

So, this is where an experienced SDR/BDR differs from a beginner level SDR/BDR.

As an experienced SDR/BDR:

• You should have this qualification question list in your mind without referring to paper.
• You know which qualification question corresponds to obtaining what qualification information.
• You have the ability to modify a question in the list to suit the call.
• You know in what situation you would ask all the relevant qualification questions in a first call (The analogy is like hitting a home run in a baseball game), and in what situations you would stop the call earlier and disqualify.

Common Mistake 2:?

Beginner level SDR/BDR may not be able to catch/recognize all the important information the lead is telling them. i.e. their listening skill is still weak.

Basically, the qualification criteria is telling the SDR/BDR/AE what is the important information to catch in a call.?

Sometimes, the lead’s reply to one question already embedded more qualification information than what is being asked. For example, this reply contains both “current situation” & “pain” info (the underlined part).?

So, if the SDR/BDR hears and recognizes the pain, then he/she doesn't have to ask the pain question separately again. Instead, he/she can ask a follow-up question based on the information the lead provides, which is exactly what the salesperson has done.

This is why listening skill is very important for SDR/BDR. Usually, by the time an SDR/BDR gets promoted to AE, he/she shouldn't have any problems with listening anymore. However, sometimes I still observe this issue with young AEs. (I will write about this separately in the listening skill series).

Q: I tried to use your question list to do a role play, and I got the feedback that the questions sounded TOO DIRECT.?

1) The questions in this list are in their simplest form. In actual calls, I would modify them to suit the conversation. In the example below, I added information that the lead shared with me earlier in the call to soften the question and make it easier for the lead to understand why I asked it. This approach also makes the question appear as though I'm continuing the conversation rather than asking an isolated question. This technique is called framing.

2) It very much depends on the context of the call and the tone of the salesperson. In the example in common mistake 2, during the call, the salesperson actually only said, "The quality is not very good?" (with the right tone), and it sounded perfectly okay.

However, if we were to read the transcript, we might think, "Hmm, is that not a bit too direct?"

So to determine if your question is too direct or not, we have to go back to listen to the actual call recording.

3) It ties back to the lead’s temperature, as I mentioned at the beginning of this newsletter. If you ask a prospect who is just beginning to research and explore the market, "What is your evaluation plan?" then the prospect might feel you are TOO DIRECT because the timing is wrong. You are too many steps ahead of the prospect.

Lastly, I would acknowledge that our culture in APAC is not as direct as compared to America’s. However, in practice, I have been able to ask these questions in English or Chinese when selling to Singapore and the Greater China Region. So, I don’t believe that the questions in this list are too direct. Considering the three points above, I think you can see it is really a question of “How you ask.”

Q: Are there questions that SDR/BDR shouldn’t ask, that we should leave to AE to ask?

In my opinion, No.

An SDR/BDR should be able to ask all the questions from this list, especially if they want to be promoted to AE one day.

Of course, there are AEs who don’t want SDR/BDR to ask too much. Those, I would say, are a minority. When you have those kinds of AEs, you can just ask the things that the AE wants you to ask and skip the ones that they don’t want you to ask. What I often hear from AEs are complaints that SDRs/BDRs are not able to get the basic qualification information right, such as pain.

As for an AE, he or she should definitely be able to ask all the questions from this list.

In fact, when an AE picks up a lead qualified by an SDR/BDR, he or she should check against the qualification criteria to see what information is still missing so that the AE could remember to ask those questions in the next call.

Some AEs say SDR/BDRs shouldn’t be talking about pricing in their first call, leave it to the AE. That is actually about handling pricing questions asked by the lead. In qualification (8), I mentioned testing the lead with a price range to further qualify on B as an SDR/BDR. I have received quite a few objections about it. I will write a separate newsletter just on that. Stay tuned!

Read related articles in this Qualification series here.

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