Stop! You’re Chasing The Wrong Prospects (Here’s How to Fix It in 15 Mins)

Every BDM has a graveyard of prospects who looked good on paper but never moved.

• They opened your emails.
• Took your call.
• Asked all the right questions.

But deep down, they weren’t ready. Or they were never a fit.

Multiply that by 8-10 of those “slow maybes” a month, and you’ve got a clogged funnel, misaligned forecasts, and pressure from your executive team wondering why your win rate looks soft.

You don’t need more leads.

You need to stop giving bad leads the benefit of the doubt.

You don’t need a 10-question BANT script (ie: Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)

You need one fast tool: The Priority Filter.

It’s one simple question you ask yourself (not them) after the first call:

“If they don’t solve this in the next 90 days, what breaks?”

Now if the answer is:

• “Nothing really”
• “They’ll manage manually”
• “It’ll just keep being inefficient”

Then that deal doesn’t move forward.

You mark it as low-priority and move on. Fast.

Here’s why it works:

• It bypasses politeness. Prospects will rarely say, “This isn’t important.” But your framing forces clarity on urgency.
• It stops false hope. You don’t wait for “follow-ups” from a stakeholder who’s already mentally moved on.
• It keeps your pipeline honest. Which means cleaner forecasting and better resource focus.

It also trains you to start spotting patterns earlier – who’s actually feeling the pain and who’s just browsing.

A SaaS client of ours was selling a financial dashboarding tool – built to give CFOs better visibility across business units, spending categories, and real-time performance.

On paper, the leads looked solid.

CFOs at mid-market companies. Growing headcount. Multiple revenue streams.

But after initial interest? Crickets.

Demos went well… then nothing.

Or they’d get looped into endless “we’re still reviewing this internally” updates.

So we introduced the Priority Filter – a single question the rep asked themselves after every call:

“If this visibility problem isn’t fixed in the next 90 days, what breaks?”

For a lot of the pipeline, the answer was… not much.

Sure, the dashboards would help. But these CFOs were coasting with quarterly reports, patchy spreadsheets, and finance managers manually pulling data together.

No one was panicking.

So we pivoted. Focus shifted to CFOs going through M&A, international expansion, or preparing for board-level reporting upgrades – scenarios where not having real-time insight meant real exposure.

Now the answer to the Priority Filter was:

• “We’re flying blind on spend by region.”
• “Board is asking questions we can’t answer without 4 teams pulling reports.”
• “Audit flagged data inconsistencies across subsidiaries.”

Result:
Shorter sales cycles. Fewer stalled deals. And higher engagement post-demo – because the pain was real and immediate.

Most qualification frameworks make prospects feel like they’re being interrogated.

Here’s how to keep it natural but pointed:

During the call:

• “How urgent is solving this, realistically?”
• “What happens internally if this keeps slipping?”
• “Is this something that’s already being tracked, or still kind of hidden?”
• “Where does this sit in your list of priorities?”

These are friendly, honest prompts.

They open up real conversation.

And you’ll learn in 30 seconds whether this is a live deal or just nice-to-know chat.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet for false green flags that lead to dead ends:

• “We’re definitely interested, but we need to socialise it internally first.” Translation: They’re not ready and may not have authority.
• “This looks great – can you send over a deck?” Translation: They’re information-gathering, not buying.
• “Let’s reconnect next quarter.” Translation: You’ve been iced.

The fix? Don’t fight it.

Label them “cooling” and shift focus to warmer leads.

You can still nurture them down the line.

But stop writing your forecast with them in mind.

Set aside 15 minutes today and do this:

1. Review last 10 deals that ghosted or stalled.
   What was the real urgency driver (if any)?
2. Write down 3 indicators that someone wasn’t ready.
   These become your red flags for future calls.
3. Create a simple Priority Filter note in your CRM.
   Make it a required post-call step: “What breaks if they don’t solve this?”

Do that, and your next few weeks of prospecting becomes a lot sharper.