Profiling vs. Qualifying

by Catherine Brown, President

Work within “inside sales” is challenging enough, but the lack of standardization on various important terms makes it even tougher. My firm provides what we call “inside sales” contract help to other companies. We mean this to be broad, encompassing lead qualifying, research work and lead nurturing. However, not everyone means the same thing when they say “inside sales.” For example, some people call inside sales telesales or even telemarketing.

In selling and delivering our services, we and our clients must be aligned on what certain terms mean so that we are fulfilling expectations, not just contract terms. The importance of defining words properly becomes clear when sales departments’ and marketing departments’ purposes overlap in the area of account qualification, when they ask, “Is XYZ company even a target for us to be pursuing?”

A Sales organization may think, “If marketing would only provide us with qualified leads, we could focus on winning the business….” or “We just need Marketing to profile accounts so that we can go after them.” Account qualification can be broken down into increasingly specific, ever narrowing levels, and accounts are continually qualified as they move down through the funnel. So….where does Marketing end and Sales begin?

Distinguishing account profiling from account qualifying is helpful when mapping out a lead hand-off strategy. Common definitions must underlie the use of these terms so all parties work under the same assumptions about the scope of these tasks. We would love to see standard usage on these terms adopted within our industry.

 

When we at Initial Call say, “profiled,” we mean that the information sought can be gathered primarily on the internet, without a live conversation with the Buyer on the phone. When a client is looking for more—if someone has to find and reach the Buyer to answer questions, then it’s not profiling--it’s qualifying. Qualifying is gathering key market intelligence around a specific set of criteria, uncovering information that can only be learned through conversations with the prospect.

 

The next few blog topics at Initial Call will revolve around this idea of account profiling and qualifying. In our next installment:  what a profiled account really costs.

Comments

[Mary Gospe]

Catherine, your blog post on "Profiling vs. Qualifying" is excellent. It is imperative that marketing, inside sales and sales teams agree on the definition of key terms such as "lead", "prospect", "qualified prospect" and "opportunity". We have started replacing the word "lead" with "inquiry" for this reason. Industry standards around these terms would be fantastic. Thanks for starting the conversation!

[Mike Gospe]

As we enter Q4, many companies will start to think about developing their 2009 marketing and sales plans. An excellent first step with any plan is to host a "Sales and Marketing Summit". This is really a kickoff meeting that helps the marketing and sales team get aligned with each other. The best "summits" are working sessions where terminologies and expectations can be set and agreed to. Taking this step will dramatically reduce internal frustration and misalignment.

[Nicole Schwarz]

This is such an important topic to discuss. As Catherine pointed out, there needs to be a clear distinction between profiling and qualifying. Both need to happen and both serve a purpose. I have seen too many times where this process is not defined well between sales and marketing and it often causes lack of creditability between the two. Now here is the tricky part, once the definition of “profiling” and “qualifying” have been defined and agreed upon there are then some important questions that need to be addressed. Such as who’s responsibility is it to profile a company and who’s responsibility is it to qualify the prospect? Is it sales or marketing? Each department’s roles need to be clearly defined. Maybe the question we should be asking is what do you want the end result to be. Is it simply passing along correct contact information to a sales person to spend their time trying to reach and qualify a new prospect or is the sales person time better spent moving an already identified opportunity forward? Whichever the case when there is agreement in what “profiling” vs “qualifying” means the lead hand off is sure to be a smoother transition for everyone.