Qualifying leads: which questions to ask in the first call?

Qualifying leads is more than checking whether a prospect fits. In your first call you find out what problem is at play, what it costs and how urgent it is. Do that well and after twenty minutes you know whether to continue, and you already have the information you'll need later to close the deal. Whether you're the founder of an IT or software company doing the selling yourself, or you lead a sales team.

Qualifying is already closing

Many salespeople see qualification as a formality before the real selling starts. They ask a few questions, hear a problem and go straight into their pitch. They never use the answers they got again.

That's a waste, because in those first questions you discover the customer's pain, what that pain costs and why things need to change now. That's exactly what you need at the end of the process, when an objection comes up or the customer hesitates. So if you qualify well, you're actually already closing.

The six questions

1. The problem: "What made you start looking for a solution now?"

You're looking for a concrete problem, ideally in their own words. "We're just looking around" isn't a problem. "We miss invoices every month because everything is done by hand" is.

2. The impact: "What does that problem cost you today?"

In time, money or missed customers. Keep asking until you have an amount or a number. If nobody can name the impact, there's rarely enough urgency to buy.

3. The urgency: "What happens if this stays the same for the next six months?"

This question separates interest from necessity. A prospect who calmly answers that little will change probably won't buy any time soon.

4. The decision: "Who else is involved in this decision, and how does a decision like this work for you?"

You want to know who needs to be at the table before anything gets signed. If that's not your contact, ask whether that person can join the next meeting.

5. The budget: "How much do you spend today on the way you solve this?"

Prospects are often cagey about budget, and the answer is usually "we don't know yet". Then ask what they pay today for their current solution, or what the current problem costs them. Then suggest using that amount as a range: "Can we take that as a guide for our proposal?" That way you have a budget, without it feeling like a difficult question.

6. The timing: "By when do you want this solved?"

A concrete date, ideally linked to something happening at their end: a new financial year, a new hire, a launch.

If you know frameworks like BANT or MEDDIC, you'll recognise the components. You don't need to work through them as a checklist. What matters is that after the call you have an answer to every question.

A conversation, not an interview

The questions above aren't a list to fire off. A prospect who feels interrogated shuts down. Have a real conversation: listen, react to what you hear, and dig deeper into what seems important. Don't think about your next question while the customer is still talking.

Do prepare, so you can fall back on your questions if you lose the thread. But take the customer along in your story, rather than ticking off point after point.

A useful tip: use an AI notetaker that records and transcribes the call, with the prospect's permission. Then you don't have to write everything down and you can really listen. What you do note yourself are the pain points the customer mentions. You can then unpack them one by one: what's the cause, what does it cost, and who is affected?

Use the pain later in the process

The proposals have gone out, and then the objection comes: "It's interesting, but we don't have time for it right now." If you qualified well, you're holding a strong card at that moment.

Say the customer told you in the first call that manual invoicing costs them about 8,000 euros every month. Then you can calmly ask:

"If I understand correctly, it's not a problem that invoicing stays manual? That means you'll miss out on around 48,000 euros over the next six months. Is that something you're comfortable with?"

You're not saying anything the customer didn't tell you. You're putting their own words back on the table. That gives you a firm footing in the negotiation, and you need to give much less discount, because the discussion is about value instead of price.

Dare to say no

Qualifying well sometimes means saying no to a prospect. That saves you a lot of time and energy, which you can put into deals that do stand a chance. Signs that you're better off stopping:

• There's no concrete problem, just curiosity.
• Nobody can say what the problem costs.
• Your contact doesn't know who decides, and doesn't want to ask.
• There's no timing at all, not even roughly.
• The prospect asks for a price straight away, without telling you anything about their situation.

Saying no only really works when your pipeline is well filled. Anyone who prospects consistently every week, as we explain in this article about a sales plan, doesn't need to force a deal and never comes across as desperate. You can contact a prospect like that again in a few months, if something does change.

After the call

Let your notetaker summarise the answers, and put them in your CRM, in the same fields for everyone on the team. Plan the next step together with the customer during the call itself. If they'd rather sort it out by email, put a placeholder in the calendar now. You can always move it, but without a next meeting a good conversation is forgotten within two weeks, on both sides. Want to know where deals still get lost after that? Read how to improve your sales process.