deal qualification

Also called: qualifying a deal, sales qualification

Checking early and honestly whether a deal is real: is there a problem worth paying to solve, who pays, by when, and what the buyer will do next. Dropping a weak deal early is a good result, not a failure.

Deal qualification is an early, honest check of whether a deal is real and worth selling time. A practical version asks four things. Need: what problem, and what does it cost today? Budget owner and buying process: who approves the money, and how does this company buy? Timing: why now, and what happens if nothing changes? Alternative: what would the buyer do instead (another vendor, a hire, a free tool, or nothing)?

The way you ask matters as much as the list. Questions about the buyer's past and present ("how was the last training course approved?") get facts; questions about your deal or the person's authority ("are you the decision maker?") get polite guesses. Write the answers in the buyer's words and numbers. When something is unknown, mark it unknown and turn it into a next step with a person and a date instead of filling the gap with a guess.

A deal counts as qualified when all four answers are known. Dropping a weak deal early is a good outcome: it frees weeks of selling time and keeps the forecast honest. Real timing comes from the buyer's calendar (a budget cycle, a new contract, the end of an incumbent's term). A deadline the seller invents, such as a discount that "expires on Friday", tells you about the seller's pressure, not the buyer's plans.

Example

After the first calls with Veloria, a logistics company of about 600 people where 40 need business English for foreign carriers and customs paperwork, Klasna for Teams wrote down the four answers:

Question	What is known	Gap and next step
Need	English calls go to two colleagues; when they are off shift, loads are lost, a few a week	Cost of a lost load unknown: ask the operations director
Budget owner and process	The finance director signs off; procurement compared three offers last time; legal took three weeks	The amount above which the owners must approve is unknown: ask the main contact
Timing	New contracts with Polish carriers start in March; 2027 budgets close on 15 December	None
Alternative	Hire one more dispatcher with English, or a free app that must pass IT security	Prepare a comparison with the cost of a hire

Status: still discovery, with two named gaps, not "qualified because three of four look good". The history shows why this matters: of the 40 companies Teams talked to in 2024–2026, 10 ended with no decision, and 3 of those faded because nobody owned the budget.

Common mistakes

Asking "are you the decision maker?" Ask how the last similar purchase was approved; the answer names the people and the steps.
Filling gaps with guesses. An invented budget or cost looks like data in the CRM. Mark it unknown and assign a next step.
Calling a deal qualified at three of four. The missing answer is usually the one that kills the deal later.
Inventing urgency. A discount that "expires on Friday" is pressure, not qualification, and costs trust when the buyer notices.
Forgetting that the alternative may be doing nothing. Compare your offer with a hire, a free tool or the status quo, not only with competitors.

Learn it in the course

Qualifying a deal: four honest questions · Need, budget owner and process, timing and the cost of doing nothing, and the alternative: four questions that tell whether a deal is real, asked about the buyer's past and present.