Glossary
Lead qualification
In short
Lead qualification is working out whether a potential customer is a good fit (whether they need what you offer, can afford it and are ready to buy) before your team spends time on them.
It usually comes down to a few questions: what they need, when, their budget or size, and where they are. The answers decide the next step, whether that is booking a call, sending information or politely pointing them elsewhere.
AI chat and voice agents can have this first conversation at any hour, the moment an enquiry arrives, and record the answers in your CRM. Your team then starts with leads that already fit, plus the context of what was said.
The questions should come from your real sales process. Ask too many and good leads drop off; ask too few and your team is back to sorting.
A worked example
A kitchen-fitting company gets 100 enquiries a month. Say 40 are outside its area or far below its minimum job size. If a salesperson spends 20 minutes on each of those, that is over 13 hours a month on people who were never going to buy. Three qualifying questions at the start — where, what, roughly what budget — sort them in seconds and send the good ones straight to a booked call.
When it is worth it, and when it isn't
Worth it: you get more enquiries than your team can call back properly, or many are a poor fit. Less needed: a business with a few high-value enquiries a month, where every one deserves a personal conversation anyway.
Common questions
What questions should I ask?
The ones your best salesperson asks first. A common starting point is BANT: Budget, Authority (who decides), Need and Timing.
Does qualifying put people off?
Too many questions do. Keep to the three or four that really change what happens next.
What happens to leads that do not qualify?
They should still get a helpful answer — a guide, a referral, a polite no — not silence.