The process of determining whether a prospect has a real problem, budget, and authority to actually buy from you.
Qualification is the filter you run prospects through to decide whether it's worth your time to pursue them. It answers three questions: Do they have the problem? Do they have the money? Do they have the power to decide?
A deal that looks big but isn't qualified will waste months of your pipeline. You'll spend cycles on a prospect with no budget, no authority, or a problem they're not ready to solve. By the time you realize it, you've lost momentum on real deals.
After discovery, you assess: Are they actually experiencing the pain, or just curious? Do they have headcount or budget to solve it this year? Is the person on the call the one who approves it, or do they need to convince someone else? If the answer to any of these is "I'm not sure," you qualify it as "not ready yet" and move on. If all three are clear, you move to next steps.
Salesspeople qualify too late or not at all. They assume that because someone took the meeting, they're qualified. Or they fall in love with the deal size and ignore warning signs like "I need to check with my boss" or "we're not budgeted for this until Q3." Qualification happens early and often—not just once at the beginning.
Part of our guide to Discovery calls.
Repwing listens to your discovery calls and puts the next question on your phone while you are still in the conversation. Fourteen days free, no card.
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