Lead Qualification for Agencies: Qualify Before the Call
Four questions decide whether a local business is worth a sales call, and its website answers the first one.
Robbert Veer, Founder
6 min read
Lead qualification is deciding whether one lead is worth a sales call. For an agency, four questions settle it. They cover need, budget, who decides and timing. You can answer the first one from the prospect's website before you speak to anyone.
What is lead qualification?
Lead qualification is the step where you decide, one lead at a time, whether to spend sales time on it. It sits between finding a lead and pitching it.
It is a different job from scoring. Lead scoring ranks a whole list with a number. Qualification takes the leads at the top of that list and gives each one a yes, a not yet or a no.
The step matters because a reply and a sale are different things. In an earlier campaign described in our study, the agency It'sJustContent emailed 1,382 Dutch companies. It got 5 positive replies, held 3 sales calls and won no clients. The sample is small. It still shows the distance between a reply and a signed project, and qualification is the work in between. The figures are in our write-up of the study.
What are the common lead qualification frameworks?
The best known is BANT, which stands for budget, authority, need and timeline. Others, such as CHAMP and MEDDIC, reorder or extend the same questions for long B2B sales with several decision-makers.
An agency that sells a website to one local owner needs the short version. Here is BANT turned into four questions for a local business.
| BANT asks about | For a local business, ask | Where the answer is |
|---|---|---|
| Need | Is the website costing them customers? | On their website, before any contact |
| Budget | Can the business pay for a project of your size? | Public signs first, then the call |
| Authority | Am I talking to the owner? | The call |
| Timeline | Is there a reason to act in the next three months? | The call |
BANT starts with budget. For an agency, need goes first, because it is the one question you can answer without asking anyone.
What can you qualify before the first call?
Need, and part of budget. Most advice on how to qualify leads starts with the first conversation. For an agency it starts earlier, because both answers show in public.
Need shows on the website. Open the site on a phone and run five checks. Load time. Layout on a small screen. HTTPS. A call or booking button on the first screen. Proof, such as reviews and real photos. A site that fails three of the five has a need you can name. Three is our own bar. Our list of nine signs a business needs a new website has the full set.
Our own test backs the website as a qualifier. Across 3,570 cold emails, businesses with the weakest 20% of websites replied positively about 3.2 times as often as a random sample of the rest. The test covered Dutch companies and email only. It also found no statistically significant difference between a generic email and one that named the problem, so the selection is what the data supports.
Leadodo runs this check for a whole list. Twip, the AI inside Leadodo, scores every website in a search out of 100 across 10 domains, and sites that score below 40 form the shortlist.
Budget leaves public signs. None of them is proof. Each one is a reason to make the call.
- The business has more than one location or lists several staff.
- It runs paid ads, so it already pays to win customers.
- It gets new Google reviews every month, so customers are coming in.
- It has traded for years under the same name.
These four signs are our own rule of thumb. We have no data that ties them to closed deals.
What is the lead qualification process for an agency?
Five steps, each one a filter that costs more time than the one before. Put the cheap filters first.
- Filter for fit. Pick the trade, the area and the size of business you serve best. An ideal customer profile template helps you write that down once.
- Check need on the website. Keep the weakest sites and drop the rest.
- Write with one finding. A letter or an email that names what you saw. A reply is the next filter.
- Qualify on the call. Five questions settle budget, authority and timing.
- Decide the same day. Yes means a proposal. Not yet means a date to come back. No means you close the lead and tell the owner.
Record the decision where you track your leads. Our guide to the sales pipeline for an agency shows which stage each answer belongs in.
Which questions qualify a lead on a call?
Five questions cover the three things the website cannot tell you. By our estimate they take about 10 minutes.
| Question | What it tells you | A good sign |
|---|---|---|
| "Who else has a say in the website?" | Authority | "Just me", or a partner they name and can bring to the next call |
| "What happens today when someone finds you online?" | Need, in the owner's words | They describe missed calls or bookings |
| "What made you reply now?" | Timeline | A cause, such as a slow season, a new location or a new competitor |
| "Would this come out of this year's marketing money?" | Budget | Any concrete answer, even a small one |
| "If we agreed on a plan, when would you want it live?" | Timeline and intent | A date |
Ask them in this order. Authority comes first, because every later answer means less if the person cannot decide. Our discovery call questions go deeper once a lead has passed.
When should you disqualify a lead?
When the need is missing, or when fewer than two of the other three answers are yes. That is our rule, and you can set your own bar.
Four signs point to a no.
- The website was rebuilt in the past year.
- A head office or a franchisor controls the website.
- The person you reached cannot say who decides.
- The owner wants a price by email and will not take a call.
Disqualifying is part of the job. Tell the owner plainly, thank them and close the lead. For a "not yet", agree on a month to come back and put it in your calendar.
Questions
What is the difference between lead qualification and lead scoring?
Lead scoring ranks a whole list by a number before you contact anyone. Lead qualification decides whether one lead is worth a sales call. Score the list first, then qualify the leads at the top, one at a time.
What does BANT stand for?
BANT stands for budget, authority, need and timeline. It is a checklist of four things to confirm before you treat a lead as a real opportunity. For a local business the questions are whether it can pay, whether you have the owner, whether the website is costing them customers and whether there is a reason to act soon.
What are MQL and SQL?
A marketing qualified lead, or MQL, is a lead that marketing judges ready to hand to sales, usually because of what the lead did on the company's website. A sales qualified lead, or SQL, is one a salesperson has spoken to and accepted. An agency with one person selling rarely needs both labels.
How long should it take to qualify a lead?
Before the call, about 8 minutes a site by hand. That is the estimate in our study, which put a manual review of 1,382 websites at about 184 hours. On the call, our estimate is about 10 minutes for five questions. Software can shorten the first part. The call still takes a person.
How do you qualify a business that has no website?
The need is plain, so qualify on the other three questions. Check that the business is active, with recent reviews and a current listing, and ask early who decides. Our study left out businesses with no website, so we have no reply data on them.
Next step. Let Twip answer the need question for every business in a search, so your calls go to the owners whose websites are costing them customers. See how Twip scores a website.
