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tags: A2, Discovery
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# The why, what and how of qualification
## *Why* we qualify
Let’s assume your prospecting efforts doing cold calling, emailing and social were successful and you managed to schedule a meeting with a lead.

🤔 Now what?

Before you can sell anything - it's time to **qualify!**
:::info
:bulb: [A study by Sales Insights Lab in 2019](https://salesinsightslab.com/sales-research/) found out that 50% of prospects will not be a good fit for what you’re selling.
:::
**The main objective of qualification stage is to determine whether or not you and your buyer are a good fit for each other and determine if it makes sense to continue with the process**

Without sales qualification, you risk pursuing leads who aren’t a good fit for the product due to budgetary constraints, organizational challenges, or other factors. Simply put, sales qualification is important to sales organizations because it makes the sales team more efficient by significantly improving close ratios.

**Qualifying leads allows you to spend more time on prospects with a higher chance of converting and ultimately close more deals.**

 
## *What* is a qualified lead?
Now that you know why you need to qualify leads, you're probably wondering *what* counts as a qualified lead right?

**That depends on each company and situation!**

Companies define their own criteria to determine when a lead becomes qualified. These are criteria they want their salespeople (often SDRs/BDRs) to validate before scheduling a demo call (usually with an AE).

Some examples of qualification criteria:
- Need or pain (do they have a problem we can help with?)
- Urgency (does the problem need to be solved now or in the future?)
- Decision Making (do you understand how decisions are being made by whom?)
- Priority (is the need pressing enough to allocate budget to our solution?)
- Decision maker (Is the person you're talking to the final decision maker?)

Many companies use qualification frameworks such as BANT or MEDDIC. There are many such frameworks out there that combine these criteria in different ways (we will revise the most common ones later on), but ultimately they are all variations of the same thing.

**What's important is that you understand why you need to qualify, what the qualifying criteria is for your specific company and situation, and how to do it effectively.**

Our course will cover all three.
 

## Understood. *How* do I qualify leads?

So you know why it's important to qualify and the criteria that would make a lead a qualified one... how do you actually do it?

**Enter discovery calls!**

A discovery call is the first conversation with a prospect after they show initial interest in your product.

The objective of a discovery call is to:
:::info
**Discovery call objectives**

- Understand your buyer's pain points, priorities and goals so you can qualify or disqualify them and effectively sell to them
- Close the next meeting: usually a demo
:::

In the upcoming sections we will cover:

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