Writing qualification questions that actually convert leads
Choose and word the questions your SAMI Bot asks on the call so leads stay on the line and answer.
The questions your SAMI Bot asks decide whether a lead opens up or hangs up. This article shows you how to pick and word them using the built-in question library, so every call pulls the details you need without feeling like an interrogation.
Start from the proven library
When you build a bot from a standard vertical, its questions ship verbatim from a library that's been tuned over many iterations in production. Open your bot in SAMI Bots and you'll see the set that matches your lead type:
- Buyer leads — area ("What areas are you thinking about for a new property?"), timeline, price range ("What price range you're hoping to stay under? Even a ballpark is fine."), whether they're already working with an agent, owner-vs-first-time-buyer, and mortgage pre-approval ("Have you spoken with someone in the mortgage industry to figure out your buying power?").
- Seller leads — beds and baths, property type, working with an agent, a ballpark value, and a move timeline.
- Cash-offer seller leads — property type, target price, mortgage status, condition issues like foundation or roof, recent upgrades, who else they're talking to, and timeline.
Don't paraphrase the library wording unless you have a reason to. These prompts have been A/B-tuned for tone and answer rate — small rewrites can quietly lower how often leads respond.
Order from low-friction to high-intent
Notice how the library opens with easy, low-stakes questions — what area, how many bedrooms — and saves the sensitive ones (price range, pre-approval, who else they're talking to) for later. People answer "where are you looking?" before they'll tell a stranger their budget. Mirror that order when you add or reorder questions in the bot editor: warm them up, then earn the high-intent answers.
Keep every question skippable
Qualification questions are intentionally non-blocking. Each one is marked not-required, so SAMI can move past a question gracefully if a lead deflects rather than getting stuck repeating it. Word your questions so they invite a partial answer — "Even a ballpark is fine" does this well — and SAMI will take what it can get and keep the conversation flowing.
Two of the buyer questions — owning a home to sell, and pre-approval — are flagged skip-if-inferable. SAMI won't ask them if the lead already volunteered the answer earlier in the call, so the conversation never repeats itself.
Map answers so they land on the contact
Every question carries an extraction variable and a plain-English description — internally, The user's response to the question "…" — that tells SAMI exactly what to pull from the transcript. After the call, those answers are saved against the lead, so price range, timeline, and area show up on the contact and can drive routing and scoring.
Open the bot and find its questions
Go to SAMI Bots, open the bot, and find the qualification questions for its lead category.
Review the wording out loud
Read each prompt as if you were saying it on a call. Keep it conversational and add an easy-out phrase like "even a ballpark is fine" for anything sensitive.
Reorder low-friction first
Drag the gentle questions (area, beds and baths) above the high-intent ones (budget, pre-approval, who else they're talking to).
Confirm what each answer captures
Check the extraction description on each question so you know which field the answer lands in, then trim any question that won't change how you follow up.
A tight, well-ordered set of five or six questions beats a long script every time — it gets you the answers that decide the next action without testing the lead's patience.
Related articles
Last updated 2026-06-21