Qualify is one of those buzz words in sales, you “know” it, you “use” it; you can smell like a sales person and play with the other dogs in the yard, and you get a seat on the bus. What the list above excludes is doing it well which many sales people don’t.

As with many things in sales, it is about the execution; to execute you need to have an objective, the skills and the tools.

Most sales people have an objective, some more short sighted than others: “I wanna close”, (down Fido), but usually they have an objective even if they didn’t have a hand in developing it.   The skills and tools is where the usually can use improvement.

The main problem with the way most reps “qualify” is that they seem to be looking at the wrong end of the telescope. As a result, qualifying ends up being too seller centric and ineffective. It turns into a selection process that eliminates viable prospects, rather than engaging them and bring them to view your offering and you as a value add to their objectives. 

In order to qualify an opportunity it has to be quantified, and to do that you have to be able to ask the right questions. Questions that help drive the value and impact you offering for the prospect in very specific terms.  

Most products (including mine and yours) are not an end to themselves, they do not on their own provide a complete answer, the ones that do are usually commodities and transactional.  Most products/services are usually a part of a broader process, flow or chain; as result it is much more effective to ask discovery questions and impact questions around the desired results of the complete project or process; then quantify the impact of having or not having your offering as part of the entire solution, and in the process validate the value your product brings.

Qualifying stops short of that, a byer may qualify, but not be moved to act, this at times causes reps to spend time with the wrong prospects.  Don’t get me wrong, those of you who have read my stuff in the past, know that I am all about the deal (yes mutual value, keeping the customers need front and centre), but I like the payoff, which means doing things right and efficiently. Sadly the way most reps qualify is not efficient.

To do this and achieve the results you want you have to have the ability to ask very direct, sometimes hard questions. A hard thing if you come from the touchy feely, Cumbaia or Barney school of selling.

You need to ask question that will establish the impact in real and measurable terms, then follow up with questions that capture the full scope of the impact. This will help the buyer understand the impact of both acting: realized returns, and not acting: tangible risk of staying the course.  Once the buyers understand things in a measurable way, it will create urgency, which reduces the cycle.  The discussion will not come down to price only, as through quantifying you will have helped grasp and take ownership of the value.  Let’s not forget, at one point you are going to ask for money, and I for one don’t want to work hard on price, I want to work hard on having established the scope and size of the the opportunity and the impact of the value they are about to receive by signing.

Qualifying is the how and why they may need to listen to you, quantifying is what’s going to make them want to act, buy, and with urgency, involve the right people and share their buying process with you to make it happen, because they want it, they know why they want it and how much it means to them.  This is because you quantified it with them, rather than just qualifying them.  A quantified prospect will be qualified, but many qualified prospects will not act because the possibilities have not been quantified.  That is why Quantifying is Qualifying 2.0 for the 21st century.

For more on the subject visit www.salesopedia.com, where you can read my article “Quantify – don’t Qualify”, and listen to the accompanying podcast interview with me on the subject with specific examples.