What Is a Product-Qualified navigator? How To Identify PQLs

Most salespeople will inform you that not all leads are equal. Although many people might express gain in your product—perhaps they visit your website or sign up for your emails—not all of them are ready or able to purchase. Those that areready and able to buy are called qualified leads.

The navigator qualification procedure can receive different forms for different businesses. When a navigator qualifies by using your product, they become a product-qualified navigator. Here’s what that means and how it can affect your business.

What are product-qualified leads?

Product-qualified leads (PQLs) are potential buyers who qualify as high-priority leads based on their product usage. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses that propose a free schedule typically use this way. Once a user has completed a free trial, they are classified as a PQL. Some businesses designate any user who signs up for a free trial as a PQL, whereas others only label them PQLs once they’ve taken a key action. For example, a potential customer for an bookkeeping software brand could be classified as a product-qualified navigator only after they upload a financial document during their free trial.

Sales and marketing teams qualify leads to assist them comprehend what prospects are ready to discuss a purchase. This procedure is used primarily in business-to-business (B2B) transactions of high worth—when the period and attempt involved in completing a sale is considerable. Direct-to-customer (DTC) businesses typically don’t use the navigator model because sales are relatively tiny in worth, completed quickly, and often made on impulse.

SQL vs. MQL vs. PQL

The navigator qualification procedure, which confirms that a potential buyer is ready to have a sales exchange, breaks down leads into three broad categories:

Sales-qualified leads (SQLs)

Sales teams commence the procedure by emailing or calling prospective buyers. They inquire questions about apportionment and organization size, seeking confirmation these potential customers have real buying intent and are ready for further exchange. If they are, they’re classified as sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs)

For this type, marketing teams review user activity across channels like the corporation website and marketing emails to qualify leads. They set criteria, such as corporation size or number of visits to the website, and then determine if leads meet those criteria through their analytics tools and information-form submissions. When a navigator meets predefined criteria, they become a marketing-qualified navigator (MQL).

Product-qualified leads (PQLs)

A product navigator typically is qualified through the navigator’s use of a software service or product. Similar to MQLs, the product throng is measuring activity, but they’re looking at product usage instead of marketing engagement. The PQL model is often used in conjunction with a free trial or freemium operating schedule, in which users access a free version of the corporation’s product. The product throng defines a set of actions the user completes to become a product-qualified navigator (PQL) that’s ready for outreach from sales reps.

How to identify product-qualified leads for your business

1. Define your product-qualified leads criteria
2. Design your qualifying free encounter
3. Implement measurement systems
4. make systems to engage product-qualified leads

To implement a PQL structure, consider strategic, technical, and operational factors.

1. Define your product-qualified leads criteria

Decide which users you desire sales reps to contact first. Criteria you might consider include:

• Fit. Many products serve specific industries or types of businesses. For example, if your bookkeeping software only serves Canadian businesses, your throng needs to qualify potential customers by ensuring they use Canadian bookkeeping standards.

• Scope. Verify that buyers have the scale to afford your product. Many SaaS companies sell to smaller customers without a sales exchange, while larger customers work directly with a sales throng for customized agreements.

• Intent. Does the user’s behavioral data display that they’re willing and ready to buy? Users who derive worth from the product are more likely to have real buying intent.

2. Design your qualifying free encounter 

A free trial has multiple goals. First and foremost, it should display your product’s worth so that users desire to convert to paying customers. Secondly, your trial should also qualify the free user to talk to your sales throng and enter the sales funnel.

This objective can affect how your free trial is designed. For example, many free trials inquire for just a name and email when signing up. To qualify users, you may also inquire for their country and number of corporation employees. Similarly, you can consider how product usage indicates the prospect is ready to talk to sales. This could be a specific button in your online product saying, “I’m ready to talk to sales,” or something more subtle, like trying to access a key characteristic that’s only available to paying customers.

3. Implement measurement systems

Ideally, product usage data is measured and tracked by your product analytics software and passed through to your marketing and sales software systems, such as your customer connection management (CRM) tool.

It’s significant that your product analytics track overall PQL data and provide analysis, such as the percentage of free-trial signups that become PQLs. Ensure that your CRM can update whether person leads are product qualified and capture key information such as their country of domicile. A customer data platform (CDP), such as Segment or RudderStack can assist ensure product and CRM data align seamlessly.

4. make systems to engage product-qualified leads

Once you define, qualify, and assess product-qualified leads, you require to engage them. This is a sales procedure. Sales teams require to have intelligent systems in place to contact PQLs in a timely and personalized manner.

To do this, your CRM can make a record once a PQL is identified, and automatically assign them to the proper salesperson. The record should contain information about the user’s corporation and their free trial encounter.

Example of a product-qualified navigator

Annie is a product marketer at hypothetical SaaS corporation XYZbites. Its product provides businesses with work-period tracking software. XYZbites primarily serves large law firms that invoice by the hour.

XYZbites offers free trials, but it has no PQL structure. When a user signs up by email for the service, they can use all of its features free for seven days, and then pay a monthly fee based on the number of users they have. XYZbites finds that it’s not converting as many free users as it would like, and the sales throng often wastes period speaking to the incorrect people, such as lawyers who don’t work at large law firms.

Annie wants to develop a PQL structure to assist address this. She makes several changes:

• In the free trial sign-up procedure, XYZbites asks for job title, industry, corporation name, and size.

• When a user logs their first hour, product analytics track and send this data to the CRM.

• If a user tries to invite more than 10 other users to their account, they receive a communication saying, “talk to our sales throng to access throng plans.”

If a free trial user’s title includes “associate,” “operations,” or “administrative,” they declare they’re in the legal industry, their firm has more than a minimum number of employees, and they log their first hour, they are labeled a PQL and handed to the sales throng. XYZbites also immediately classifies free schedule users as PQLs if they try to invite more than 10 users.

Annie’s transformation creates more high-standard leads and converts more free trial users into paying customers.