How to qualify leads comes down to two habits: let your website screen people before they book, then talk about scope and budget as early as possible once they do. Andy Milligan, founder of MMG Design and the Columbus Marketing Organization, runs a solo marketing business in Columbus that brought in $28,000 the month he recorded this walkthrough. His rule is simple: "Don't be afraid to qualify early."
The video title credits this change with more than $50,000. Andy does not break that number down in the recording, so read it as his own estimate rather than an audited figure. What the recording does show, step by step, is the process behind it.
If you are still working toward your first booked call, start with how to get your first client. This guide is for the moment those calls start arriving.
Why it pays to qualify leads early
Buyers are doing more of the work before they ever talk to you. In a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers, 61% said they prefer a buying experience without a sales rep. The same research found buyers still want seller input on questions of fit, such as whether a solution matches their needs.
That is the job of qualification. You are not there to recite your service list. You are there to answer one question for both sides: is this a fit?
Getting it wrong is expensive. Forrester's State of Business Buying, 2024 found that 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process and 81% of buyers end up dissatisfied with the provider they chose. A clear, early fit conversation protects you from both outcomes.
Step 1: Let your website do the first round of qualifying
The cheapest qualification happens before a prospect ever reaches your calendar. Andy's site handles a lot of it. It clearly states pricing, answers questions in a dense FAQ section, shows case studies, and positions the studio around one industry.
The booking form also asks for a phone number and booking details, which adds a small amount of friction that filters out casual clicks.
The result, in Andy's words: ever since the studio niched into healthcare, "almost all of our booked calls have been ICP fits." An ICP fit is a prospect who matches your ideal client profile.
Positioning does more than filter. It brings the right people to you. When a local healthcare business booked a call from the site, Andy pointed out that "this is why positioning helps because they recognize you and their solution and they don't need a referral or someone to send them to you."
Step 2: Check the fit before the call
When a call lands on his calendar (1:46 in the video), Andy reviews the prospect's website first. He wants to confirm the business is real and matches his ideal client before he spends an hour with them.
Two more quick checks round this out:
- Find them on LinkedIn. Andy connects with the person who booked before the meeting. If someone else from the company is invited to the call, he looks them up on the company page and connects with them too.
- Spell their name correctly. It sounds obvious, and Andy still calls it out.
Step 3: Send a short pre-call email that sets the agenda
Next, Andy sends a personal email before the meeting. It does two jobs: it makes the call feel like a meeting with someone they already know, and it tells the prospect exactly how the time will be used.
His agenda has three parts:
- Discuss any current issues with the website.
- Define a scope.
- Outline next steps, "either with us or with a trusted partner that we can refer you to."
That third line matters. It tells the prospect, before you ever meet, that a referral elsewhere is a real possibility. It also gives you permission to qualify honestly on the call. Andy closes by inviting them to send over anything he should look at in advance.
A small writing tip from the walkthrough: "Never have two straight sentences with an exclamation point." Be warm without sounding like a sales sequence.
Andy writes these by hand on purpose. He gets roughly three or four booked calls a month from his website, and he is happy to personalize each one. "Anything customer centric, happy to do it," he says. The broader question he keeps asking is "finding out what you should and should not automate in your business."
Step 4: Put every qualified lead in your pipeline right away
The habit Andy emphasizes most is speed. The moment an inbound lead arrives, it goes into his CRM. "Speed to lead is just so important," he says in his closing summary, "and I can't seriously cannot emphasize that enough."
His CRM tracks a monetary value for each opportunity (8:32 in the video). After the first call, he sends a proposal, ideally after just one conversation, and attaches the deal value to that stage. That lets him see the total deal value sitting in each stage of the pipeline at a glance. If you need a format for that next step, his marketing proposal template walks through it.
Step 5: Know which funnel stage each lead is in
Andy uses a simple version of the standard lead funnel (19:34 in the video):
- Contacts or leads: people you know about.
- Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): people who have shown interest.
- Sales qualified leads (SQLs): people who are ready to receive an offer.
- Closed won or closed lost.
Your job, as Andy puts it, is to move as many leads as possible toward closed won and as few as possible toward closed lost.
Here is the payoff of good positioning: cold inbound leads who book through the website skip the early stages. They opted in, so they start as sales qualified. Leads you find yourself usually start at the top and need to be moved through each stage.
Once you track stages, look for where leads get stuck. That tells you what to fix next. From there you can calculate metrics such as cost per lead, cost per customer, and customer lifetime value.
Step 6: Budget-qualify in the first conversation
Not every lead books through the website. Andy also showed a lead that arrived through a LinkedIn message: a company that had just acquired a pharmacy and needed a new site.
He mentioned pricing in his very first reply, while still making it easy to keep talking. The prospect did not respond, which likely meant the budget did not fit. Andy was fine with that.
"Better to budget qualify early and not take the project on rather than do it and hate ourselves afterwards," he says. The important part is that the relationship stays intact, so the door is open if their situation changes.
His closing advice is direct: "Mention pricing as soon as you can in a conversation." Addressing money early may feel uncomfortable, but it is far better than saying yes to everything and putting off the money conversation until the last possible moment.
Once a lead is qualified and booked, the next job is running a great sales call. Andy covers his pre-call, on-call, and post-call routine in that playbook.
How qualification fits into your daily outreach
Qualifying leads is one part of Andy's daily routine, and he orders that routine by urgency. Active conversations, follow-ups, and inbound leads come first. Colder work that is not time-bound comes next: LinkedIn connection requests, direct messages, content, and communities.
Leads tend to arrive in clusters. On the day before this recording, Andy had four new opportunities appear at once, including two inbound booked meetings. "When it rains it pours," he says, which is why he keeps enough capacity to respond quickly when a busy stretch hits.
He also spends 30 to 60 minutes a day responding to LinkedIn messages himself and does not hand that work to AI. For the full routine, see his playbook on how to generate leads in one hour a day, or his guide to how to find freelance clients if your pipeline is still thin.
The Columbus community side of lead qualification
Many of Andy's best conversations in this video were not sales calls at all. He followed up on a coffee meeting, thanked a connection for an introduction, and offered to meet a new local contact. Those relationships produce the referrals and warm introductions that qualify themselves, because someone you trust has already vouched for the fit.
That is a big part of why local community matters. Research supports it: in a March 2026 SurveyMonkey and Reddit study of 1,202 U.S. business decision-makers, 73% said peer recommendations were their most trusted source when evaluating vendors.
Columbus Marketing Organization is a peer community for marketers, freelancers, and service providers in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Andy Milligan. Members share leads, introductions, and job opportunities, including the weekly Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter. Members compare notes on pricing, positioning, and which leads are worth pursuing, which makes qualification easier when you are not deciding alone.
How to qualify leads starting this week
How to qualify leads, in short: let your website filter for fit, check every booked call before you meet, send a short agenda that names referral as an option, add the lead to your pipeline immediately, and bring up budget in the first conversation. Each step saves you from spending hours on projects that were never going to close.
If you want to talk through your own pipeline with marketers doing the same work, come to an upcoming Columbus marketing event or join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.
Better to budget qualify early and not take the project on rather than do it and hate ourselves afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
How do you qualify a lead before a sales call?
Start with your website: clear pricing, FAQs, and case studies filter out poor fits before they book. Then review the prospect's site against your ideal client profile, connect on LinkedIn, and send a short email that sets the agenda: current issues, scope, and next steps, including a possible referral.
When should you talk about pricing with a new lead?
As early as possible. Andy Milligan mentions pricing in his first reply, even in a LinkedIn message, while keeping it easy to continue the conversation. If the budget does not fit, both sides find out quickly and the relationship stays intact for later.
What is the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
A marketing qualified lead has shown interest in what you offer. A sales qualified lead is ready to receive an offer. Inbound leads who book through a well-positioned website often start as sales qualified because they opted in, while leads you find yourself usually start earlier in the funnel.
Should you automate lead qualification emails?
It depends on volume. Andy Milligan gets three or four booked calls a month from his website and writes each pre-call email by hand, because the personal touch makes the meeting feel like talking with a friend. At higher volume, automation may make sense for repetitive steps.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en Hey there, my name is Andy. I own a solo marketing business in Columbus, Ohio that generated $28,000 last month. This is my channel where I build and strategize in public and share with you everything I'm doing to get the results that I am. If you guys are new to the channel, this is the format that we usually follow. First, we're going to start with a little bit of my lead genen. I'll prioritize my outreach, share with you guys my pipeline and everything I'm doing to build on that front. Step number two is we build and strategize in public. I'm going to share with you my daily schedule and everything I'm doing to plan ahead and make sure I'm staying ahead of the eight-ball. And number three, updates and growth stats. So, I'll share with you the latest and developments of how all my channels, two YouTube channels, LinkedIn, and the podcast are growing and have some accountability on that front. Today, especially, I'm diving into this a little bit late. I've already done a lot of my most pressing outreach work. So, a reminder for you guys, how to prioritize our outreach that I've talked about here in a past video is essentially focusing on the highest leverage activities, active conversations, follow-ups, and inbound. Then moving on to colder conversation, non-time bound, and then moving on to things like cold conversations, content, and communities. I have a lot of active conversations that I need to already follow up on. But what I wanted to share today is transitioning your existing conversations and when to add those to your pipeline. So just yesterday we had four opportunities kind of come into play. And I'm telling you guys if you've been in marketing for any amount of time when it comes to stuff like this it is very often times when it rains it pours which is just the name of the game. So, we have to make sure that you have capacity when it comes time to reach one of those pouring seasons. So, yesterday we received two inbound booked meetings. And if I go to my updates tab here, every time I get an update from Tidycow, I know that a call has been booked. So, I'll just search Tidycow. The way our funnel works currently is we have a call intro call on our site right here. Obviously on the Jesus Pete on the contact page talk to web expert. this form right here. To fill out this form, what they need to do is they need to enter their phone number and they also need to enter their uh like booking information and things like that. One booked for tomorrow and ideally I would be doing this sooner. So, what I'm going to do is I send an email to these people here. I'm going to hide their information. Send an email to them before the call occurs. So, this is how you qualify them. I've looked at their website. I can tell that they're an ICP fit. What I'm going to do is reach out with an email saying what I say and you'll see to then qualify them and make sure that when we get onto the call obviously the website is a huge filter for people booking a call. It clearly states pricing. It has dense FAQs. It clearly positions ourself. So I've had it ever since we niched into healthcare. We've had all of almost all of our booked calls have been ICP fits which is great. Has our case studies answers all of their questions there. We haven't had a lot of issues with that recently, but just to be safe, it also is helpful to, like I said, introduce yourself and just personalize the intro so that when you meet, it's like they're already meeting with a friend. So, the earliest one was with Adele here. So, what I'm going to do is send her an email. Morning Adele. Exclamation point. So thrilled to see you on my calendar for tomorrow. Period. Looking forward to meeting with you guys and discussing the website. Period. As a brief intro, this is what we use our time for tomorrow. corn. Thanks for grabbing a time comma and I'm looking forward to chatting tomorrow about the website exclamation point Well, discussing any current issues you have with the website. defining a scope and outlining next steps either with us or with a trusted partner that we can refer you to. Also, some ball knowledge here. Never have two straight sentences with an exclamation point. You want to be enthusiastic, but not like hopelessly. Oh, feel free to send over any specifics in advance that I should keep an eye out that I can dive into or have ready. Period. Otherwise, I'll see you tomorrow morning. Exclamation point. face emoji. Make sure you spell their names correctly. I've actually looked at their website and they would be a great fit company. They are local. They are a healthcare compounding pharmacy and they have multi-loss. This is primo ICP fit and this is why positioning helps because they recognize you and their solution and they don't need a referral or someone to send them to you. So this is why I love when this happens because it reinforces the effort that I put into positioning. So I'm going to go ahead and send that You book for tomorrow 10:30 proms. super quick. Okay. Forward to Adele Paulins. Adele PKI. Now, when you get a call in, it's very important that you also add them to your pipeline. So what we want to make sure we do is within folk here is we go to our sales pipeline and we add a contact. What we can also do is use the I have to update this. I haven't updated this in a while. Okay. So we can actually use the folk integration here. Go to scent. Adele f add her there. Add to group of pipeline person. Add to group. And here go here and hit refresh. should already be added. Should be she's under status. Okay. Try to read her status. Ski actually see if I can find her LinkedIn profile. Always helpful to connect with people on LinkedIn too first before you meet them. Yeah. Find her on there. focus. Interesting. All right. Usually they sometimes they hire an external contractor for the website, but I know this is a real company because I validated them. So the important part is that they're added to our CRM. Now after that call, it's important when you guys have a CRM too to have some monetary pipeline. So I have proposals and putting them each right there. So boom, proposed close one. I have to update this too. That one close lost. That one followup one [snorts] or still a weed. After you have the call and you get a sense of monetary price, then you submit the proposal. Ideally, you do that after one call, which I will as well. And then until you add them to sales pipeline and and fork, you can attach a numeral value to each. So then you can kind of get a stage of what the total deal value is. in each status of your pipeline makes it easier to keep track of. So yes, next up for me there is two of them. So let me do kind of run the same process here with um the latest one that booked autumn Miller here. and box. It's kind of just copy paste from the last ones. 2%. I call for time next here's a good one I should have added last Um, That is a wee ball knowledge. hard w to our FAQ section. Otherwise, I'll see you then, my friend. Here is to these from sent. I know I should set up an automation to do this, but I just anything customer centric, happy to do it. You know, we probably get three or four of these a month cold from the website. I can personalize the intro, clearly say the date and things like that. I'm okay with doing that three or four times a month. You know, that's like the the ultimate question in mine is finding out what you should and should not automate in your business. And you know, with this stuff, I'm still still on the side of not automating. But what I will do is add her to folk as a sales pipeline and qualified contacted Bum. See if we were able to enrich the last one here. Get her LinkedIn profile. Come on, give me a link to profile. Hate to see that. Find their company profile. I think that's the right company. Yeah. ECI. No, that's the right company.com. Damn. E3 Consulting. That's what it's called. It's their real estate because it says that they're a health and wellness brand. Health and wellness specialist. Very interesting indeed. Anyway, I know this is not worth it, but here we go. People, always helpful to go to the company page and cross reference people. See if you find anyone with the same name. Looking for someone named Anna. This guy booked the call. This guy was included on the call as well. He is a product engineering consultant. Let's connect with him and then if they accept then reach out to intro yourself personally. All right. So that is how you make sure that you add opportunities to your pipeline. Um the moment someone becomes a marketing qualified read. I think I've explained this before just in terms of a uh like a prospect client funnel here, but just in terms of your general funnel, you always have contacts slash reads. Pretty much the same thing. Then you have MQL. I've answered this in a past Q&A, but just clarifying sales qualified and then close one course lost. So right now the people that I just added are now in the sales qualified weeds meaning they are ready to receive an offer. Um they were already sometimes when weeds come in cold they automatically start in these buckets right here because you didn't have their contact beforehand. They opted in, which is again the benefit of the positioning that lets you get cold inbound. Traditionally though, you'll have them here, here, here, and your job is to accelerate ones. Get as many as possible to here and avoid as many possible going to quotes lost. Um, and based on where you're at in your situation, assess where the biggest hangup is, and then you can start to calculate other figures like cost per lead, cost per customer lifetime value, and things like that. So, just to help you conceptualize that there. Now, what I'm going to be doing is sending my LinkedIn connect because those are all my urgent activities. I'm going to be moving on more so to the colder non-timebound activities which include but are not limited to sending LinkedIn connects, answering DMs, and things of that sort. But for the life of me, I can never get this to work the way I want it to. Great. Anyway, I had another opportunity come in from Maria as well from a LinkedIn inbound. So, she sent a message that said, essentially had a weed for us because they acquired a pharmacy and I was trying to budget qualify her pretty much as soon as I could. So I basically said she said hey how many apps pharmacy and pharmacy called clear water pharmacy old not a far had a website but it's pretty generic on flexy old branding we just got new brand the website on go the ecom proponent bro mentioned pricing as early as possible but made it easy for her to connect and say got time to chat and she saw it and didn't respond so probably wasn't budget qualified which is Okay. Um, better to budget qualify early and not take the project on rather than do it and hate ourselves afterwards. But the important thing is that you can still preserve the relationship, which is what I did a good job of there. So yeah, um, now it's time for LinkedIn connects. What I'm going to use now is quad to help me send more connection requests. So I go to my project here, go to code, LinkedIn API outreach system and okay, log back into LinkedIn and go ahead and send 30 new connection requests aligned with our ICP from the spreadsheet. Make sure that they are healthcare focused and fit within our buyer bucket. I may have to log in here quickly. May have to do two factor again which will be unfortunate because I'm using the link didn't log in here. So while that gets set up we yeah right even when I click automatically keep me signed in it never does but I want to show you guys how this works. using SMS. Okay, so I should get a text here. 92 34 6 and my name I will keep you. Okay, we're all logged in. Please proceed and don't bug me again until you sent 30. Awesome sauce. Uh, we got a pressing message here as always. Damn. Okay. So, while that loads, let's get on to responding to messages. Coffees lower urgency conversations. This is a lead for Columbus Marketing Jobs. Hey, Jacob. Exclamation point. Sorry, I didn't I assume by your response that you weren't interested. Laughing face emoji. Hope you're doing what? Good as well, brother. Exclamation point. What email works best for me to add? I will say too on a daily basis it probably takes me 30 to 60 minutes to respond to everyone on here. So yeah, still not letting AI do that and probably won't ever will. Hey Paul, loved our meeting yesterday. I said it earlier, but you are incredibly easy to talk to and I loved our conversation. Period. Let's get a coffee on the radar in a few weeks and I would love to hear the latest from any travels you go on. Exclamation point. You forced me to think critically and those are the types of chats that I love having. I was surprised to see that we had chatted for so long. It went by incredibly fast because I enjoyed it. Period. Keep paying a light meeting with Aaron. I'll get to that later at the co-working space above two. I just sent her a nice email, introduced her to someone at 900,000 clients. Positioning, baby. That's how we get in touch with the right people. Thank you for the lovely intro. It was so great meeting you earlier this week and it felt like we already knew each other. Exclamation point. Kim Tony K, [snorts] it's great to meet you. Period. Kim spoke highly of your expertise and I'm always looking to meet smart and intelligent people in our space, especially here locally. Smiley face emoji. I would love to get you coffee sometime soon. Period. What does next week look like for you? Also, feel free to text me or email me any of the contacts below. And if you'd like to save Kim's inbox, Kim's inbox smiling face emoji. Looking forward to it, my friend. Period. my name. I can reach you there. I'm going to tear pretty much set there on the LinkedIn follow-ups. Um, yeah. So, that's about all I wanted to cover in this video. Essentially, the moment biggest gist of this conver this walk through here, the moment that you guys get an inbound lead immediately adding it to your pipeline, like speed to weed is just so important and I can't seriously cannot emphasize that enough. And also, don't be afraid to qualify early. Mention pricing as soon as you can in a conversation. And regardless as to whether or not it works out with the weed that comes in, I promise you it's going to feel better to put off to directly address the money conversation earlier rather than having a minimalist mindset saying yes and putting out the conversation till the last possible moment. So that is qualifying leads. Thank you guys for joining me. Be sure to check out the community in the below. If you're trying to grow as a marketer and are looking to better automate, better get better at your sales process and things like that. I talk about this all the time. Join a community of high performing people that are doing the same. And feel free to drop any questions below as well. I always answer questions. DM me on LinkedIn and I will answer you one to one as well. But yeah, I appreciate you all and see you in the next one. Bye.