Qualifying the Prospect

January 4th, 2010

When do you start qualifying your prospects? What do you use to qualify them? What do they qualify for?

When we work with sales people we often find they do not have a plan for qualifying prospects. Sometimes sales people who are new to the program mistakenly declare a qualified prospect is one whom the sales person has concluded needs the product or service the sales person is selling. In our system, it doesn’t matter what the sales person has determined.

What matters is what the prospect believes. Does the prospect have enough pain to go through everything necessary to make a change from what they are presently doing? Do they have enough conviction that what you are selling will solve their problems and remove their pain? Does the prospect have a budget? Have they set aside not only money but the necessary resources of time to implement the new solution? Are they ready and willing to tell the present supplier they are making a change?

Can they make a decision if they are convinced you can solve their pain within the resources they have budgeted and at the time they have declared they want the product delivered or installed? Can they describe the decision-making process the company will go through to make a decision about your offer?

These are the things that qualify a prospect in our system. If, at any point, a sales person using the Sandler system determines the prospect has no pain whatsoever, the prospect is disqualified. If the sales person concludes the prospect does not have enough time to implement the solution or needs it sooner than the sales person can possibly deliver it, the prospect is disqualified and the sales person moves on to the next prospect. If the prospect does not have the necessary funds to purchase the solution, even if the solution is broken into smaller parts for implementation, the prospect is disqualified. When would you want to know these things, sooner or later? If you don’t know the answers to these questions before you make your presentation, you could wind up wasting a lot of valuable time. The time you spend preparing for and giving a presentation to an unqualified prospect is wasted time you could have spent looking for a truly qualified prospect. Again, when do you want to know this: now or later?

How much more effective would sales people be if they only gave presentations to prospects who are thoroughly qualified with pain, a budget and the commitment to make a decision? I don’t know about your sales process, but I do know people in our program quickly stop making presentations to unqualified prospects because they find they are a waste of time.

How about you? How many of the last six presentations you made were to unqualified prospects? What do you think it cost your company? What impact did that have on your commission? How do you feel about that? Ready to make a change?
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