The curriculum vitae: a document that aims to promote our strongest attributes and paint us as someone worthy of employment – on two sides of an A4. Though the CV is commonly used by HR departments and prospective employers to ascertain the fit of an individual for a position, marketers can also latch on to the practice of scouring CVs when it comes to prospect profiling. Just like an employee must have the right attributes, skill sets and values as the business they work for, prospects must fit a certain profile before they’re considered an appropriate lead to nurture. After all, it’s impossible to forge the strong relationships necessary between your brand and a client if you’re not on the same page. Here are some of the “interview” style questions you can ask a prospect during prospect profiling to determine whether they’re worth pursuing:
1) CV question: Tell me a bit about yourself
Probably one of the hardest questions to be asked, but one you should start with nonetheless. In this context, you wouldn’t necessarily be interested in their work experience or extracurricular activities (although, you never know!), but in their educational background, age, what their position is in the company, their duties and responsibilities, where they are based, where they’re originally from (to understand cultural nuance), their income level and email address. Spend time asking questions to get to know the industry they work in, too. The important thing here is to get your prospect feeling comfortable, so feel free to ask any questions that might achieve that – it might turn out you both support the same football team.
2) CV question: What challenges have you faced in the past?
Asked by prospective employers to discover the challenges that interviewees have faced in the past and whether they’d be able to handle the stresses of the position they’re applying for, “what challenges have you faced” is a great question to ask during prospect profiling. It helps you paint a picture of the pain points your prospect has endured (and might want to avoid) and the solutions they might have used to overcome these problems. Also find out what challenges they currently face, as well as their goals within their position. This will shed light on whether there’s an opportunity for your product or service to assist them. Remember, not every company within an industry faces the same problems. For example, company A might battle with the price of an IT system, while company B struggles with its lack of customer support.
3) CV question: What are your colleagues like?
It’s useful to find out about your prospect’s colleagues and who makes up their team, but it’s even more important to learn more about the overall organisational structure of the prospect’s company and how their team fits into it. This will give you insight into how decision-making processes are carried out. Your prospect might be the key decision maker (which will make them a key person to target during lead nurturing later on), or they might work underneath the decision maker, and therefore require sign-off on any purchase decisions. If you find yourself in the latter situation, find out as much about the decision maker as possible, as you’ll need to market and sell to them too.
4) CV question: Why are you applying here?
You wouldn’t actually ask this question verbatim (after all, during prospect profiling, you’re the one reaching out to them), but phrase it more like “what solutions and suppliers are you currently using”? The idea is to determine the competition you’re up against. (In the job interview you’d be determining whether the interviewee is applying to similar positions at companies within the same industry.) In addition to finding out which vendors they use, ask them if they’re happy with the solution these vendors offer and what kind of problems they’ve encountered with them. If they’re willing to tell you, find out how much they’re paying for these solutions, as this will give you insight into whether they can afford your solution, or whether you can compete with the other vendors on price.
5) CV question: How much do you currently earn?
The next step is to find out what kind of budget they have access to, and what they’d be willing to spend on a product or service that could help them overcome their challenges. This is a vital part of prospect profiling, because if your prospect can’t afford your product, or doesn’t want to allocate their budget to a solution you can offer, they’re not a suitable fit. However, you don’t need to write them off immediately: sometimes it takes a while to determine exactly what their budget situation is, and circumstances can also change. Time is of the essence when it comes to budgets, so ask your prospect about how budgets are planned and how long it takes for them to be signed off.
6) CV question: What do you think of our company?
In a prospect profiling context, this question could be translated into “on what criteria are buying decisions made?” Perhaps your prospect’s business values cost above all else. Others might prioritise functionality or scalability. In a perfect world, your product’s strengths will be aligned with the criteria they use to choose solutions. Usually, it’s not so easy. If you’ve got this far in the prospect profiling process and think they might be a good fit, you can use their answer to influence how you might sell your services to them further down the buying channel.
7) CV question: How soon can you start?
Asking how soon they can start – how long is your buying cycle, in this situation – will give you information about the time frames involved in the decision-making process at your prospect’s organisation. According to the BANT framework, a buying cycle of 1–3 months indicates a qualified opportunity; 3–6 months, an opportunity; 6 months plus, a lead; and anything beyond that simply an inquiry. There’s little point passing a prospect on to sales if they’re a year away from making a buying decision. That doesn’t mean that you have to abandon all hopes of the prospect buying. With careful nurturing, they might become a qualified opportunity, especially if they shows signs of being a good fit.
If you want to learn more about lead management and how to convert marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads, download the guide:
