B2B businesses follow a lead qualification process where a lead is deemed marketing qualified (MQL) by the marketing department and then passed on to the sales team. The sales team then determines which leads are sales-qualified and tries to convert them. This is a standard procedure, but for SAAS companies, customer acquisition model has changed in the past few years. Surveys have found that more than 50% of B2B SAAS buyers now prefer to do their own research and complete the buying process without talking to a sales representative. Customers want to see things for themselves before they decide to commit. This is the reason why almost every software company now offers a trial of some sort. The users that sign up for the trials may not have attributes that fall under the marketing qualification criteria but may still be qualified. These leads although qualified would be ignored. For SAAS, the sales cycle is longer than other B2B industries and for companies who run the freemium model, qualifiers are more complicated as there is no set time-frame.

The Gap Between MQLs and SQLs

Once leads enter the funnel, they are Marketing Qualified based on their profile and behavioral attributes. This includes demographic qualifiers, company profile qualifiers and behavior triggers such as filling out forms or reading emails to determine if a lead is a good fit. The data looks sufficient but a benchmark report published by Salesforce found that only 13% of Marketing Qualified Leads became Sales Qualified and took 84 days to convert. Only 6% of those became paying customers. The huge gap proves that the traditional Marketing Qualification procedure is not good enough for the SAAS model. And, it also puts the burden on salespeople as they have to pursue leads by calling them only to later find out that most of the leads provided to them are not sales qualified. SAAS companies need a qualification system that takes into account how prospects engage with the product along with regular marketing qualification attributes.

Product Qualified Leads (PQL)

A product qualification (PQ) system analyzes product engagement to determine if the lead is getting proper value to consider a purchase. The qualification of a lead is determined based on a lead’s usage signals. Make no mistake, a lead who signs up for a free trial is not a PQL. It is his actual in-app usage that determines his qualification. While the PQL checkpoints are different for every software, you can get an idea by answering these questions:

• Has the lead completed his account setup?
• Is the lead using the product actively?
• Which features are they using the most?
• Has the lead reached an important product milestone? (Eg: Adding a team member or reaching free account limits)
• Has the lead received quantifiable value from the product?
• How fast is your lead adopting the product?
• Will the user actually benefit by switching to a paid plan?

The Qualifiers That Fit Your Product

Like we mentioned before, the qualifiers differs from product to product. For a social media company, PQ might mean adding profile information and adding 10 friends. For a chat application, PQ can be sending 100 messages. For a CRM like Pipedrive, PQ can be adding 50 leads and moving them through the pipeline. What does your Ideal Customer Profile look like? What are the actions that you expect them to perform? How do accounts of your existing customers look like? Do they use any competitor products already?

Some attributes that you can use to qualify leads:

Once you figure out what triggers define a qualified customer, setting a PQ framework is pretty simple with the right data and tools.

Product Qualifying Leads with Salespanel

Salespanel helps you find your PQLs by letting you segment and score your leads based on in-product user behavior. Salespanel tracks your leads system-wide in real-time. You can create workflows to filter out users who perform a specific set of activities or assign lead scores based on triggers. You can also send leads who are determined as PQL straight to your CRM with complete automation. Salespanel will help you show personalized content and emails to your leads. Add them to activation drips, show them relevant messages and turn them into paid customers.

Combining the power of Marketing Qualification and Product Qualification

The product qualification framework does not eliminate the need for MQL attributes. It does not matter how PQ your leads are. If they don’t have the decision making power or the budget to purchase your product, they won’t purchase your product. So, profile and behavior attributes like job role, company size, pricing evaluation, etc. still matter and need to be used along with your product qualifiers.

With the data provided by Salespanel, you can create the perfect qualification framework for your business and transfer high intent leads straight to your sales pipeline. Let your sales team talk to your sales-ready leads and finish the job with high conversion rates. Everybody wins.