Friday, December 26, 2014

Qualify for Success

Please invest five minutes of your time. You may become a better sales person as a result.


Many times in my sales career, that now spans over 17 years, I have had debates with peers, executives, and managers regarding what the most critical sales stage might be. I have enjoyed the animated conversations because everyone has their own opinion and it’s usually a strong one. I just love the passion and energy! Some say it’s the closing skill, some say it’s prospecting, and on down the line………..


I too carry a strong bias! I contend that qualification is the single most important step in the sales process. This simply can’t be overstated, but its power is often under-estimated by professional sales people in every industry. This under-estimation is due, in part, to the fact that most people, who qualify well, tend to do so on accident or as a result of natural curiosity.


Have you ever known a person who sold only one product? It’s a tough road, but there are thousands of people who only have a single solution (one widget, if you will) in their bag and most sales people in this position get burned out quickly because they attempt to make everyone buy their product. Seems like the right strategy doesn’t it? “Try to get everyone to buy……” Great in theory, but it is simply not realistic. So why do some succeed while only having one product to sell? The survivors figure out how to ask questions that help to do one of two things


1.) uncover a need or


2.) identify the lack of a need.


We all know that this is called “qualification” and as I said earlier it is the most important step in the sales process. Why? Because with the information you have from conducting a thorough qualification, you can make all the other steps in the sales process work more smoothly, more naturally, and you can make your plan seem like your customer’s idea.


If I told you that I wanted you to complete a 50 piece puzzle and gave you

15 pieces, would you start putting them together immediately, or would you ask me to give you the other 35 pieces?


Allow me to demonstrate how this works in sales. Let’s say you are an Account Executive selling Long Distance services – you talk with a prospect and discover that they are currently with a competitor’s service, fears change, fears downtime, have little price sensitivity, have no IT staff, contract expires in 3 months, have had outages with their current provider and they seem to like you. They have their other telecommunications needs addressed by a variety of other suppliers. You talk about your ideas and how great your flagship product is. You get his LD bill and set an appointment for next Thursday to present your proposal.


With a big smile on your face you leave the prospect with a bill in hand and a plan! You think to yourself, now that was one fine meeting, I’ll have to repeat that more often. Over the next week you put together your proposal (saving 5% over what the customer pays today) and now it’s Thursday. You meet with the prospect, present your solution, and ask for the business. You are expecting a ‘yes’, but instead you get a “we’ll have to compare this to our other proposals and we’ll get back with you”. In superior sales man style, you reply, “when will you be making a decision?” The customer says, “end of this month”. So you ask, “can I call you next week?” He says “sure”. And that concludes your meeting. You walk out to your car unsure of whether that was a good meeting or not. You were professional, prepared, articulate, and knowledgeable. You asked for the business, you set a follow-up expectation. Yet somewhere in the back of your head, your subconscious is saying “you didn’t nail that one, did you?”, “you’ve heard that one before – yeah, we’ll call you”, “you’re not getting that business pal”. But you conclude that you touched all the steps in the process, so you push those thoughts away and move on to make the same mistakes at your next opportunity.


So what was the mistake? Where did you go so wrong? I gave you a hint earlier when I mentioned the puzzle.


If you only have a third of the puzzle, then the best you can hope for is

33% and that’s assuming all the pieces fit together, which they won’t. The same holds true in sales – if you only ask questions that identify a third of the opportunity, then perfect execution nets you 33%.


I expect my sellers to be the best of the best and here’s a secret – SO DO OUR PROSPECTS!!!! That means asking twice as many questions as our competitors, not half as many. It means presenting an impressive presence, a comfort with our products, an understanding of the prospect’s business, and an interest in what needs they have today and may have tomorrow.


If I were a prospect and a seller came to my door without all that above and an ability to (at least generically) explain what my competitors were doing, why they were doing it, and what effect it was having on them, I would not buy from them. Would you buy from you?


The bar is set high for you by your prospects and if don’t clear that bar with ease, then you will not likely earn their business!


How do you win? You qualify completely!!!! You ask who they’re doing business with, what they like, what they don’t like, why they selected the current provider, why they would leave them, who they would choose if they were to do it all over again and why. Ask them why they would consider buying from you, why they would select another provider this time, who are you are competing against, what they want in a provider, what downtime costs them, who makes the decisions, what drives that person, when can you meet with that person, do they have the budget, what could derail the project, do they want to change, when do contracts expire, are there out clauses in the current contracts, do they know other companies that might be interested in buying the services you sell, etc……….


When you have as close to 100% of the pieces as you can get, then you can assemble them, match the right solution to the current situation, quantify the solution’s value in the customer’s terms, separate yourself from the competition, and ask for the business by identifying how your solution addresses the issues the customer identified during your qualification efforts. This makes closing both far more likely and far more professional.


And don’t forget option Two. Not every customer has a current need. You may find that this prospect doesn’t, so pay attention and don’t waste their time or yours! Time is the most precious asset of the sales professional – you must protect it!!!!



Mark Gross is a Senior Manager for a Fortune 100 company. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MBA from the University of Mississippi in 1997. Since 1989 he has been a top performing seller who has translated his skills into a career in B2B management, leading sales team and organization turn-around efforts across the Southwestern US.



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