When executed correctly, marketing efforts generate high-quality CRM leads for salespeople to follow up on.
Whether inbound or outbound, there will always be a percentage of leads that some salespeople affectionately refer to as “crap.”
A bad lead should be changed to the status ‘Disqualified’ in the CRM. Although salespeople are among the least compliant CRM users, a bad lead can sometimes be left indefinitely in an ‘Open’ or ‘New’ status.
To prevent the CRM from becoming a graveyard of stagnant records, organizations must prioritize alignment between sales and marketing to ensure both teams work from a unified definition of a ‘sales-ready’ lead.
The more aggressively a salesperson disqualifies no-good leads, the more time they will have to spend on quality leads. But is it enough to just flag a lead as ‘Disqualified’ in CRM?
Most CRM systems can be easily configured such that the reason a lead has been disqualified must be selected from a list.
When to Disqualify a Lead
There are two good arguments for requiring a reason for a CRM lead status of ‘Disqualified.’
1. Selecting a reason gets salespeople into more of a disqualification mindset. If the CRM system is configured so that a salesperson must select the reason a lead was marked disqualified, there will be a resulting “action taking momentum.”
2. The reasons that specific leads were disqualified can be important feedback for marketing. While marketing can never eliminate bad leads, there are strategies and tactics that can increase the percentage of leads worth a salesperson’s time to pursue.
Just because a lead is disqualified from sales pursuit doesn’t mean the person shouldn’t be part of an email marketing campaign. There may be a few golden nuggets in a sea of disqualified leads.
Mechanically, ‘Reason Disqualified’ can be a dependent pick list that appears when a salesperson changes a lead’s status to ‘Disqualified’ in the CRM system.
As CRM systems become more autonomous, salespeople may be prompted to disqualify certain leads, with the reason for disqualification auto-suggested.
Here are some example ‘Reason Disqualified’ dropdown values with explanations of each. Some of these will not apply to your business. Conversely, you likely have several reasons that do not appear here.
Competitor
The lead is either a direct competitor or a service provider for a competitor.
Too Small
There’s a deal value at your company below which it’s not worth spending time pursuing a lead. When a lead falls below your threshold, this reason will be selected.
No Budget
You communicate with the lead, but they clarify that your price point is well above what they would consider paying for your product or service.
Out of Market
You sell only in certain regions or countries. Leads from outside those served areas are immediately disqualified. Using reverse IP lookup, out-of-market leads could be filtered out before entering the CRM system.
Unfindable
The lead used a cryptic freemail address. The web form does not require a company name or phone number. There’s just not enough information to research the person in a sales intelligence system or on sites such as LinkedIn.
Unreachable
The salesperson has gathered intelligence on this person. Their company looks to be a fit for your product or service. However, the CRM lead does not respond to one-to-one emails or phone calls.
No Access to Decision Maker
The lead intentionally blocks access to the decision-maker. The deal is not going to progress.
Already Committed
The lead had already purchased goods or services from a competitor, but still wanted to check out your product or service.
Not Interested
The lead may be interested in your content but not in your product or service.
By ruthlessly disqualifying leads that would likely be a waste of time — and explaining why those leads were disqualified — salespeople help themselves and the marketing team.
Marketers can implement more robust lead scoring best practices to ensure that only the most sales-ready prospects are passed through the funnel.
In turn, salespeople can focus on the leads most likely to close.
