"Can you send me your prices?" It is the most common message a business receives on WhatsApp, and the least useful one: it says nothing about what, where, when, or for whom. Replying with a number is the single most common sales mistake on the channel — it turns your business into one row of a comparison table the buyer will finish somewhere else. A good salesperson never answers straight away; they ask four or five questions first. This guide sets out those questions, the order to ask them in, and how a WhatsApp CRM that qualifies inside the conversation runs the same sequence at any hour, without ever skipping a step.
The six questions that qualify almost anything
Whatever the sector, qualification comes down to six pieces of information. The wording changes; the function does not. Here is the list, with what each one actually lets you decide.
- The nature of the job. Which service exactly, and at what level. This is the question that frames everything else: without it, the other five have nothing to attach to.
- The size. Square metres, volume, headcount, duration. This is what lets you give a range instead of "it depends" — the most frustrating reply a buyer can receive.
- The location. Where the work needs to happen. It is a painless question to ask and it immediately removes the enquiries you could never serve anyway.
- The timeline. By when. This is the best separator between a real project and a browse — and it is more reliable than a stated budget, which buyers frequently get wrong without meaning to.
- The decision-maker. Is this the person who decides, or does a partner, a co-owner or a managing agent need to weigh in? This question prevents the meetings that end with "I'll need to check with someone".
- The budget. Not to haggle, but to confirm you are in the same order of magnitude. It goes last, and never anywhere else.
Why budget is the last question, never the second
This is where most qualification scripts go wrong. Asked too early, the budget question produces three effects, all bad. First, the buyer has no reference point: they have no idea what the thing they are asking for costs, so they name a number at random, usually too low, and you disqualify each other for nothing. Second, the question feels intrusive before any value has been exchanged — you are asking what is in their pocket before telling them what you can do. Third, it moves the conversation onto price when it should still be about the job.
Asked last, the same question becomes easy. The buyer has described the project, pictured it, and received a range. The question is no longer "how much have you got?" but "does that fit what you had in mind?". The difference in wording is small; the difference in response rate is not.
One question per message, never a form
The second principle is about format, and it carries as much weight as the content. Six questions sent in one block is a form in disguise: the buyer sees the wall of text, decides to deal with it later, and never comes back. One question at a time, in the natural order of a conversation, produces a completely different completion rate — because each answer is short, and the whole thing reads like a dialogue rather than an intake process.
Two writing details change the outcome. First, offer options rather than open questions where you can: "gas or electric?" is answered in two words, "what type of system are you looking for?" requires effort. Second, for the appointment itself, always propose two specific slots. "Thursday 2pm or Saturday 10am?" gets an answer; "when are you free?" opens a negotiation that drags.
Four ready-to-use sector frameworks
The six questions translate differently depending on the trade. Here are four versions you can use directly, adapted to your own vocabulary.
| Sector | Qualification sequence | The hot-lead signal |
|---|---|---|
| Trades and construction | Type of work → surface or dimensions → area covered → target date → owner or tenant → budget range | A timeline under three months |
| Health and wellbeing | Reason for visit → how long it has been going on → first visit or follow-up → urgency → availability → how it is being paid for | Pain happening now, not a check-up |
| Hospitality and events | Type of event → number of guests → date → venue → dietary or access constraints → budget per head | A date already locked in |
| Business services | Requirement → volume or scope → sector → deadline → who signs off → budget envelope | An internal deadline mentioned unprompted |
A scoring grid with exactly three tiers
Plenty of teams build an elaborate points system that nobody uses three weeks later. Three tiers are enough, provided each one triggers a genuinely different action.
- Hot — the need is clear, the location works, the timeline is short and the budget is compatible. Action: propose a slot immediately and notify the team.
- Warm — the project is real but distant, or one piece of information is missing. Action: store the criteria collected and schedule the follow-up for the right date, not for three days' time.
- Out of scope — outside your area, outside your range, or a job you do not take on. Action: an honest reply straight away, ideally with a referral. This is the most profitable tier of the three, because it saves you time without costing you reputation.
These three statuses are only worth anything if they are written down somewhere. Qualification that stays inside a chat thread is qualification lost: at the next contact, someone will ask the same questions again. That is exactly what an AI agent connected to WhatsApp Business changes — every answer becomes a field on a record rather than a line in a transcript.
The one question that matters most, trade by trade
The six questions are universal, but in every business one of them carries more weight than the other five combined. It is the question that on its own separates a workable enquiry from one to file away. Three telling examples.
- Estate agents — the financing question. Timeline and budget both sit behind a single piece of information: is the buyer funded, and how far along are they? A buyer with a mortgage agreement in principle and a buyer who is "starting to look" ask about the same property but are not worth the same hours. Asking by the second exchange prevents the Saturday viewings that never convert — the point is developed on our page for estate agents.
- Photographers — the date question. Here the timeline is not a priority criterion, it is an existence criterion: a fixed date means a real booking, a date "sometime this year" means price research. It is also the only piece of information that lets you say yes or no immediately, since availability is the actual stock of the trade. See how that plays out day to day for a photographer.
- Garages — the vehicle question. Model, year, mileage: without those three, no estimate is possible and any figure you quote is a liability. This is the textbook case where answering on price before qualifying costs more than not answering at all, as covered on our garage page.
What they have in common: in every trade, this decisive question is always asked by the good salespeople, and almost never by the automatic welcome message. That gap is precisely the difference between an answering machine and an agent that qualifies.
Three mistakes that lose a qualified lead
- Asking a seventh question. Past six, the buyer feels interviewed. If something is still missing, collect it during the appointment.
- Qualifying before giving anything. The very first reply has to contain something useful — an availability, a clarification, a ballpark. Qualification comes after that, never before.
- Treating an existing customer like a new lead. Running the full sequence on someone you already know is the fastest way to tell them they have been forgotten.
On enquiries generated by paid advertising, this sequence is what separates a profitable campaign from one that burns budget, because the cost is already sunk by the time the message arrives. And when the conversation ends on a slot, it is automatic appointment booking that locks the result in. If the lead turns out to be warm rather than hot, the follow-up mechanics are covered in our guide to customer tracking on WhatsApp.