5 Form Fields That Instantly Qualify Leads

The marketers dream: to always attract highly qualified leads.

The concept of inbound and content marketing is to attract leads at all stages of the buying cycle, from the awareness stage all the way to the decision stage. We all have to admit that, we will like most of our leads to be highly qualified and in the decision stages. Forms are one of the most ideal ways to capture leads online for most b2b companies. The conundrum that using forms posses has to do mainly with the number of fields that you should have. If the form has too many fields, you could significantly reduce the number of submissions. If the form doesn’t have the essential fields needed to qualify leads, you may not be spending time on the most qualified leads first.

All the general lead qualification guidelines—BANT (Budget, Authority, Needs and Timeline)—usually cannot be captured on a form without having an incredibly long form with many fields. Finding leads that have at least 2 out of the 4 filled out, helps set the tone for a follow-up conversation. Here is a list of fields that help you achieve this goal.

1. Use a comment box to find out about the leads pain or need.

If you are selling marketing software you could ask, “what type of the challenges are you currently having with marketing?” Although I believe this field should be optional, in my experience so far almost 95% of the people who fill out forms with a pain question answer it. The intelligence gathered from this form fill, moves your conversation with your lead from a general discovery call to a call where you could truly start to outline the benefits of your solution.

2. Use a drop down select of number of employees to find out budget and size of the company.

Finding out the budget on a form can be premature especially when your prospect hasn’t even decided if they need your solution or not. While some leads might start the search with a budget in mind, most of the prospects make the decision as the sales cycle progresses and they start to understand what their needs better. Instead of blatantly asking about the prospect’s budget (which could lead to abandonment of your form) you can find out about the number of employees their organization has. A healthy employee to revenue ratio is for a small to midsize business is between 100,000-200,000. Therefore, for a prospect with about 30 employees, it might be save to assume that the business makes at least 3 million in revenue. For purchases that are large capital investments, most businesses may spend about 5% of their total revenue. This assumption can help shed some light on how qualified your lead might be.

3. Use a drop down select to find out Industries.

For some products and services that are made for specific industries, having the industry field could be critical. If the prospect filling out the form falls into an industry category that you do not service, you could immediately disqualify the lead.

4. Find out current solution, service or product.

Knowing if your prospect is currently using a competing product or service, or if they do not use anything at all can really change the nature of your conversation. For prospects that are currently using a competing product, the key is to focus on the areas where their current solution falls short, while for leads that do not have a solution the conversation might be more educational.

5. Ask for a Job Title or Department

To help you establish the authority of your lead in the BANT lead qualification process, asking for job title could help. On the other hand, job titles could be tricky. Although some job titles suggest that a person might not have the authority to make a purchase, in some smaller organizations you could be talking to the “it” person even if their job title doesn’t sound like that of someone in a managerial position.

Key Points to Remember:

• You Only Need Two Qualifying Fields:

You should always strive to have fewer form fields to increase conversions. Although I have a list of 5 fields that help with the qualification process, you should choose no more than two extra qualifying fields that are critical to a sale in addition to the standard; name, company, email, and phone number.

• Reach Out to All leads

With the exception of cases where it is obvious that a prospect did not provide accurate information, it is still a good business practice to reach out to all leads one way or another. The lead qualification process at the front end with forms should only help you prioritize. Leads that may not be qualified today could be qualified tomorrow.