How Do I Pre-Qualify Leads Without Putting People Off?
The number one way to boost sales, improve your conversion rate, and maximize your marketing budget…
…is to pre-qualify your leads!
By now, most businesses understand how important it is to pre-qualify leads.
Despite this, only around 44% of businesses use any kind of lead scoring system to identify the people most likely to buy from them.
So, what is holding businesses back?
The main issue is the fear of scaring people away.
If your lead pre-qualification process is too demanding, lengthy, or intrusive, your high-value prospects won’t complete it.
And you will likely lose them to other businesses that make purchasing simpler and stress-free.
This blog post will explore how to qualify leads effectively while keeping the experience smooth, engaging, and valuable for everyone in your funnel.
Why pre-qualifying leads is essential
Save time and resources
Not all leads are created equal.
Research shows that only about 5% of leads a business generates are high quality, and over 40% of salespeople believe they receive poor-quality inbound leads.
If your sales team spends the same amount of time trying to convert every lead, the result will be a lot of wasted energy and budget because they will be talking to people who were never likely to convert in the first place.
By pre-qualifying your leads, you build a clear picture of the pain points and motivations of leads who have shown the strongest interest in your offering.
This helps you filter out low-quality prospects and ensures that the people most likely to convert to sales are contacted in a timely and personalized manner.
As a result, you shorten your sales cycle, keep your sales team motivated, and create a high-converting funnel that delivers a strong return on investment.
Improves the customer experience
When you don’t pre-qualify your leads, you paint everyone with the same brush.
This means you’ll send generic messaging to your entire audience rather than tailoring your marketing and sales efforts to each group based on their needs.
Personalizing your marketing is one of the easiest ways to improve your customer experience.
The only way to do this effectively is to pre-qualify your leads!
Increases conversion rates
You might be concerned that pre-qualifying your leads will exclude people from your sales process and, as a result, decrease your conversion rate.
In reality, the opposite happens!
By focusing on people who fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), engage with your content, and have shown positive buying signals, you make sure your time and money are spent talking to the right audience.
ScoreApp makes this a breeze. Leads are automatically scored based on their quiz results, helping you send the right follow-up messages at the right time and convert more people on sales calls.
Mistakes businesses make when pre-qualifying leads
1. Asking too many questions upfront
To pre-qualify your leads, you need to ask targeted questions. But don’t ask too many.
Why? Because long and complex forms are frustrating for your leads!
We all know what it’s like to fill out a survey… and every time you think you’re getting to the end, another round of questions appears on the screen!
When a form or quiz takes too long to get through, many people will drop off before completing it – resulting in the loss of a potential high-value customer.
How to fix it: Instead of asking all the questions, stay hyper-focused on asking the right ones.
The purpose of your quiz is to find out as much as you can about each lead while still delivering lots of value.
To keep your leads engaged, make your pre-qualification questions short and sweet. As a rule, they should only make up around 10% of your total quiz.
Here are a couple of examples of pre-qualifying quiz questions:
- What’s your current budget for [PRODUCT OR SERVICE]?
- Would you like to learn more about [SOLUTION]?
- When would you like to get started with [PRODUCT OR SERVICE]?
How ScoreApp helps: Create an interactive quiz or assessment that feels like a fun experience rather than a sales form.
The average form completion rate across industries is just 1.7%. There’s a reason why a ScoreApp quiz converts at a rate of between 30% and 50%: they’re so engaging that people want to complete them!
The beauty of a quiz is that it provides a low-pressure way for leads to find out more about your business.
Instead of jumping straight into a sales pitch, your first touchpoint is to provide people with loads of value. This helps to warm people up and gives them an insight into what it would be like to work with you.
For example, if you run a marketing agency, you could set up a Marketing Impact Quiz, which helps people evaluate their current marketing efforts.
2. Making the process feel too transactional
If a prospect feels they are being screened too aggressively, they may disengage – and even worse, encourage others not to engage with your company.
83% of leads are happy to share their data if it results in a more personalized experience. To gain people’s trust, you need to prove that you want to help them rather than simply sell to them.
How to fix it: Use a value-driven approach to pre-qualifying your leads.
This makes the process feel helpful, not intrusive.
When you prioritize your prospects’ needs and deliver useful information to them, the result is:
- They think about their situation more deeply
- They understand what they are doing well – and where they need to make improvements
- They start to see your products or services as the solution to their problem
As a result, you will establish yourself as an authority in your space and set yourself apart from your competitors.
Plus, your ideal-fit clients will pre-qualify themselves – and be much more ready to buy!
How ScoreApp helps: ScoreApp automatically generates personalized results Scorecards for everyone who completes your quiz.
These Scorecards go further than simply providing a percentage score.
Instead, prospects receive a detailed report dividing their quiz results into categories, with clear advice on the areas they excel in and the ones they need to work on.
You can then use the data you collect on each prospect to add them to automated email marketing journeys.
For example, if you are a personal trainer, you could set up a profile quiz called ‘Discover Your Fitness Persona’ using our fully customizable template.
This quiz will help people identify where their training is going well and where they could make adjustments in line with their goals.
Then, you can use the data to set up email marketing sequences related to each person’s results. Within these email journeys, build trust by sharing sales enablement content, such as:
- Nutrition advice
- Workout videos
- Injury prevention techniques
- Client case studies
By the time you reach out to set up a call or send them a special offer, you will have provided so much value that your pre-qualified leads are primed to buy!
3. Failing to offer an incentive to complete the process
If you want leads to fill out a survey or quiz to provide the information you need to pre-qualify them…
You need to give them a reason why.
Without a clear benefit – such as a discount or freebie – many people won’t bother completing your quiz, as they won’t see what they will gain from it.
Luckily, ScoreApp quizzes are chock-full of value. Your prospects will want to fill them in so they can access the incentives on offer!
How to fix it: Create an interactive quiz lead magnet and state exactly what people will get from engaging with it upfront.
For example, on the landing page for your quiz, make it clear in your copy how long it will take and the benefits of completing it.
(ScoreApp makes this easy with beautiful landing page templates, which can be completely customized with over 50 sections and branded with your logo, fonts, and colors!)
The incentive you offer will depend on your industry and your product/service, but it could be:
- A special discount
- Free resources
- Exclusive content
- A free trial
How ScoreApp helps: With ScoreApp, every lead who fills out your quiz will instantly receive a personalized feedback Scorecard based on their responses.
These in-depth reports have easy-to-digest charts and are full of actionable advice, so your audience clearly understands their current situation and the improvements they can make.
Your sales team can then use this information to contact the leads you have identified as being the most likely to buy directly, referring to information from their quiz to increase trust and build a personal relationship.
You can then utilize the data to send a personalized follow-up message such as:
Hey [FIRST NAME],
Thank you for taking the Marketing Impact Quiz. I noticed that you’re scoring high in Brand Awareness (which is great!), but your score was quite low in Engagement.
I would love to give you some tailored advice to help you improve this score. Would you be free to jump on a call next week?
Thanks,
[FIRST NAME]
Because this message follows such a high-value experience, people are far more likely to book a call to learn more about what you offer.
Want to know the best part of using ScoreApp for lead qualification?
The process is fully automated, so high-value leads are scored and contacted 24/7.
And considering marketing automation software can increase the number of high-quality leads your business receives by 451%, automating lead generation and qualification with ScoreApp is a no-brainer!
How ScoreApp makes pre-qualifying leads seamless
- Gamify the process with interactive quizzes and scorecards: With hundreds of ready-to-use and fully customizable templates, you can create an engaging and fun lead magnet to pre-qualify your leads in minutes.
- Automatically segment leads based on engagement levels: Prioritize converting the right people to sales. Our AI software scores your leads based on behavioral quiz dat,a and you can see at a glance who you should reach out to first.
- Deliver value upfront so prospects see the benefit of completing the process: ScoreApp automatically generates personalized Scorecards for everyone who completes your quiz, so you can build strong customer relationships on autopilot.
Make lead pre-qualification a win-win with an interactive ScoreApp quiz
When done effectively, pre-qualification helps you to attract better leads while keeping engagement with your content high. Pre-qualifying your leads should never be done at the expense of your customer.
When you lead with value, you can collect the insights you need to effectively market and sell to customers and enhance their experience of engaging with your brand, rather than disrupting it.
With ScoreApp’s interactive quiz software, you can build engaging lead magnets in minutes, deliver heaps of value, and automatically pre-qualify every prospect so your sales team can focus on converting the right people to sales.
Make lead generation, qualification, nurturing, and conversion easier than ever when you try ScoreApp today and create your first quiz for FREE.
