All the best selling techniques are rooted in the best in human nature.

NCAA Basketball has a tremendous impact on my schedule starting now.  I’m looking at the schedule, kind of planning my time backward.  According to the NCAA Basketball site, final selection is on March 14, Opening Round Game is March 16, Fourth Round Completes on March 28 and the final four on April 3rd and 5th.

I’m getting my schedule ready in anticipation.  I think of the teams–all aiming to be part of March Madness.  Actually, they started months ago in their training.  Their seasons are just starting, each building a record of wins–hoping to develop a track record that enables them to qualify and compete in March Madness, each hoping to be in the final four.  Each team has to focus both on today–practicing, competing, and winning.  Each team has their eye on March, they know what they do today lays the groundwork for March. They are looking at their January and February schedules, preparing and strategizing for the teams they will compete against, knowing those performances impact that great event in March!

Oh wait—this is supposed to be an article about sales, sorry I got diverted.  Let me get back on target and talk about sales.  But isn’t what the NCAA basketball teams are going through similar to what we as sales people are going through?  Don’t we have to balance both our short term goals—winning every deal that we are competing for today, but laying the ground work for the deals we know we need to win in January, February, March, ……

Our success today impacts our ability to be successful in the coming months.  We need to focus on closing business today, our companies need it, our managers are looking for a great year end.  However, we need to keep an eye on the future.  Are we doing the right things today that enable us to compete and win in March?  For us in sales, this means looking at our prospecting, account development, territory development, and qualifying.  Are we identifying the opportunities today that enable us to be in the game in  March? 

Teams that do great in December, but fall apart later in the season don’t get to the final four.  Like those teams, doing great this month, having a strong end to the calendar year, doesn’t mean we will continue to do well.  If we aren’t identifying and developing the opportunities that will close in January, February, and March, we won’t be in the game.

The only difference between sales and NCAA Basketball, is that for us, after March Madness, comes April Angst, May Mayhem, June Jamming…..  While closing deals today, we have to lay the groundwork for the future.  Do you have a strategy that will get you to “March Madness?”  Make sure you don’t have just a great December and fall apart for the rest of the season.

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If you desire to make more money and work less in you sales career, then it would be in your interest to invest time in learning how to properly qualify prospective customers. More than any other sales activity we perform, this separates the winners from the losers in sales.

The #1 reason most salespeople fail in my opinion is because they don’t have enough prospects to sell to. Because of this, many salespeople come to believe that every lead they receive is “gold”. When this viewpoint is taken, little or no qualifying of the prospect takes place by the salesperson.

This is ultimately a mistake, because the #2 reason that most salespeople fail is by not properly qualifying prospective customers. In other words, the salesperson fails because he or she wastes too much time on prospects that will never buy or even if they do become customers, they don’t have enough sales volume to warrant the salesperson’s time.

We can take sales training to improve our overall salesmanship. We can read sales books or blogs to increase our selling knowledge. But we cannot create more time. No man, alive or dead, has ever been able to completely eradicate the problem of having only so much time.

Never forget that your time is valuable. And never hand over the most precious asset you have in sales (your time) without ensuring you have the utmost opportunity (by qualifying your prospects) to get the financial reward you deserve. If you don’t have a qualification process based on your business and customers currently in place, you should immediately develop one and practice it on an ongoing basis as soon as possible.

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Much like Karl, for me this post is a bit of a rant, because I too do not think most sales people “get it” when it comes to qualifying. We get so wrapped up in the process of “being efficient” and “not wanting to waste time” the we start looking for reasons NOT to meet with clients instead of looking for reasons why we SHOULD meet with a particular client. Granted this is a balancing act, we don’t want to just sit down with any old person we run across. However, We should be looking for reasons to include people in our sales process rather than simply excluding them because the goal of top sales people is to create opportunity. A simple switch in attitude is all it takes for you to break into new markets, and or find new uses for your product that you had not previously thought of.

This takes a bit of work, but my experiance has proven that if you start a few people into your sales funnel that you feel iffy about and it dosent work out you simply need to be honest and at some point say this dosent look like a good fit, would you agree? Then instead of following the typicla behaviro and running for the hills, keep asking questions! I say this for two reasons, first, in another question or two you may uncover a hidden need, but secondly I’ll assume you are a expert in your industry… My goal would be to referr them to someone at another company i trusted that I believed could be of assistance to them. I know that this sounds counter productive, but the simple fact is good sales people solve problems… and the natural extension of that is, if I can not help you I will point you in the direction of someone who can, and then politley ask for a referral.

This simple ast has brought me more business than I can count. If you stop “qualifying” and start talking to people and helping them solve their problems you will develope a reputation in your industry as someone people like to work with, you will develope referral business, and you will ocasionally sell to clients whom you would have never met with because “they cant afford it”, “were not a large enough organization”, or “had no need”.

Action plan: Think about your sales process, and how you go about scheduling appointments. What criteria are you using? Are there questions you could change to be more inclusive? Are you seeking to exclude rather than include? What do you do right now to create new innovative uses for your product or open new markets? What SHOULD you be dong?

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Whether you are fan of the TV show or not you may be familiar with one of the basic plot lines on Star Trek. Imagine it, a lonely star ship travelling through the emptiness of space. As you watch, you are transported into the lives of the command centre of the ship where the solitary figure of the Captain sits contemplating – perhaps pensively with his hand stroking his chin – a screen of… well, space. Suddenly a light bulb flashes on a console and an unknown ensign will turn around and say something on the lines of “Captain, our long range sensors have picked up an unidentified vessel bearing bla bla bla bla…” etc. What does this mean? Is this vessel friendly? Do we need to alter our course? Shall we raise shields and arm photon torpedoes?*

You get the picture, but what does this have to do with sales qualification? Well, that depends on our definition of sales qualification and how it is used. If I had to write a definition – and thankfully I don’t have to – I would write something on this line. “Sales Qualification – the process of collecting and assimilating information about a particular sales situation so that decisions can be made on further action” – short and to the point. In such a scenario I would liken the act of qualification to the long range scanners upon the star ship – when a sales lead first becomes known to a sales person, that lead takes the place of the unidentified vessel – “Captain, our long range sensors have picked up a sales lead”. Instantly we spring into action, we need to qualify this further to ascertain whether we need to alter course and pursue it. Is it a positive or negative lead ie: is it a strong possibility that it will end in a sale or will it distract and sap our strength? (It is only in passing – because it has been concentrated on in more depth by my other SBU colleagues – that I mention there are some who will pursue absolutely anything that appears on their radar, the equivalent of changing course arming phasers and firing as soon as a lead appears as a blip on the sales sensor)

But is that the end of the story? Should we roll credits and sign up the stars for the next Star Trek convention happy in the knowledge that we have shot another stellar episode of a hit sci-fi series? Of course not. Because in the story, that vessel has its own captain (our customer) with its own agenda. It is following its own course and isn’t just going to stay where it was initially discovered. It may turn hostile at the last minute and spring a surprise attack or may change course and need to be chased. The ships sensors don’t suddenly stop when the initial discovery is made; it becomes ever more important in monitoring changes in behaviour and actions so that the situation is always up to date. This is true in sales situations as well, especially in B2B where sales cycles and processes can be very much longer, for example, recently I was made aware of a sale that was created from a sales lead that was generated years previously but for various reasons changes in circumstances made the reality of an opportunity that more likely now. Only in keeping that long range sensor working could we allow for this opportunity to be pursued when the right circumstances came about.

To an extent all sales people have this ability – to varied levels of success – to qualify changing situations in order to move sales cycles along (those that don’t won’t last long). We all have an ability to read situations and react to changes, but here is where the science of sci-fi really has the advantage. In our story, the star ship has a memory bank where it stores information. Supposing, in our encounter with our vessel, we discover that we are dealing with a known entity – perhaps an alien race. In such situations, the captain draws from all the ships memory banks in understanding how best to deal with an opposite number – this data is created from all past encounters. In B2B sales this is just as important, we need to draw upon all our past experience in understanding patterns in how our clients do business so that we can steer our businesses in the right direction. Our past actions can draw up a picture of things that we don’t at first take in or notice, so that after a while we can see patterns in behaviour, how a business transacts and other subtle signs that we can draw inference and aid our knowledge.

The human ability to learn and evolve is unparalleled; however it is limited by memory and subjectivity. Without the conviction in recording what we have learnt we cannot hope to learn all there is to be learnt. Qualification is a continuing mission to seek out new sales situations and to learn from them not just for yourself but for your entire organisation.

*By now you may realise that I have watched a few episodes…but I would like to clarify that I am not in any way a “Trekkie” and therefore should be in no way regarded as strange or geeky….at least not for that.

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Good qualification is critical for salespeople to avoid wasting time and to focus their energy on higher potential prospects.

You can find solid guidelines for qualification criteria in many good sales books; and SalesBlogger colleague Colin Wilson has some excellent free resources to help with qualification on his Entrepreneurial Salesperson website.

But there’s a dirty little secret about qualification I’m going to share with you.

It’s a tip geared at professionals (consultants, lawyers, accountants) and other non-salespeople who have to sell.

It’s one you won’t hear anywhere else – so shhhh – don’t spread it around.

If you want to get better at qualification – the most important thing you can do is: get a better pipeline.

You see the idea behind qualification is great. Weed out low probability and low value opportunities and prospects so that you can focus your precious time on the higher potential ones.

The problem is that most professionals and other non-salespeople hate lead generation (cold calling, networking, and initial meetings) so much that they actively avoid it – or at best do it very badly. As a result, their pipelines are often so weak, they don’t have any high potential opportunties in them.

Qualification then becomes a charade – one I’ve seen played out many, many times in professional firms. The consultant, accountant or lawyer inflates the assesment of their opportunities so as not to look so bad. To avoid embarassment, they force-fit them to the qualification criteria – knowing full well that the vast majority of them aren’t really worth pursuing. But once they’ve declared publicly how great the opportunities are, and how they meet the qualification criteria; they are forced to chase them – despite knowing in their heart of hearts that it’s just a waste of time.

So what’s the best way of improving opportunity qualification?

In most cases, I’ve found that for professional firms, they key is not to redo the qualification criteria, nor to order professionals to “get tougher” in the way they qualify. The first step is to boost their capabilities and motiviation in lead generation. It’s only when lead generation is working well, and they have a strong pool of opportunities entering the funnel that qualification then becomes a valuable and effective tool.

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Man I get a chuckle when I listen to the average sales person. No offense to those that are beyond this place in their career but I cannot get past this one annoying mindset. Sales people in general want to pigeon hole the entire landscape of leads into possible customers and exude frustration when the people they are talking to “do not get it”.

Guess what Mr. and Ms. Sales person, you are the ones without a clue. See the goal of a sales person is not to convince or cajole. It is not to smile and deliver a great pitch. The goal of any sales person looking to make sales consistently is to listen for the needs that create opportunity.

Qualification is not a tool of asking questions to decide that someone can somehow fit into your pipeline. It is not a check list of behaviours and issues that give you permission to spew solutions on someone. Qualification is the filtering of many leads into one opportunity.

What you are doing when you start discovery and begin qualifying someone is figuring out if they are worth your time. This is not meant to reflect poorly on the prospect, simply to elevate the value of your time. You only have so much of it and for every person you talk to that is not engaged and ready to act, that is time wasted.

Stop looking for opportunity and start weeding out leads that are not opportunity. Become more critical of the business requirements needed to be allowed to work with you. Start having expectations and if they are not met then rule people out. It is rare that a potential buyer that truly needs what you are selling will omit details. That is, if they are really the person making the decision.

Qualifying is a tool for maximizing your time. It is a process that many discuss but rarely seem to explain why. It is simple, if you find people that will truly benefit from what you are offering, and they have the time and money to make a decision, you will sell. If you do not find this out you are wasting time.

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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.

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According to Salesopedia.com, the definition of qualifying the prospect is “asking questions to discover whether a prospective buyer has a need for the product, can afford it, and has the authority to buy.”

Wow, that’s a lot, isn’t it? Qualifying the prospect includes discovering whether a prospective buyer has a need (that’s a subject for an entire book – or an entire series of books – not just a blog post!). It also includes determining if the prospect can afford your product, which can be one of the most challenging issues to address with prospects. And to top if off, we need to see if the prospect has the authority to buy? Wow. That…is…a…lot.

Despite the significant breadth and depth of this topic, I offer seven qualification tips to help you do a better job at completing one or more of the aforementioned tasks that we call “qualifying:”

1. When dealing with your prospect, develop in yourself a spirit of discovery, not a spirit of pitching. You can’t accurately qualify your prospect if you are in pitching mode all the time.

I was working with a client’s salesperson some time ago who had prepared a canned sales pitch for her product. In working with her, it was very difficult for her to break away from her pitch mentality in favor of the spirit of questioning, learning, and asking that I was advocating.

After several coaching sessions about this topic, her eyes lit up and she turned to me and said, “I think I get it now “ (you could almost see the light bulb over her head). “You’re telling me I need to have a spirit of discovery!”

I said, “YES, you’ve got it!” We continued to talk and I saw a transformation take shape before my very eyes. Almost everything you need to know to sell to your prospect is within your prospect. Discover if your prospect needs your product. Discover if they can afford your product. Discover if they’re authorized to make the purchase. You don’t get that information by pitching; you get it by discovering.

2. If you sell to businesses, ask, “Who else—in addition to yourself—will be involved in deciding to move ahead with this purchase.” If you sell to consumers and have only one individual who is part of a couple in front of you, ask “How do you want your husband (or wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/etc.) involved in the decision to move ahead with this purchase? Then, follow up with the second question: “How will your husband want to be involved in the decision to move ahead with this purchase.” These are two similar questions, but they’re very different, and will often garner two different responses.

There are other good ways to address this issue, too, of course, but what we need to accomplish is finding out who has authorization to make the purchase, and where that authorizer is on this potential purchase at the moment. The more complex the sale and the bigger the purchase for the prospect, the more care needs to be taken with making this determination.

[I dislike talk about “decision-makers” That’s a term that we use in the sales profession, but it should never be used with a prospect. I cringe when I hear a salesperson as, “Who’s the decision-maker on this purchase?” Argh. I just cringed typing that question.]

3. Whenever possible, link your future sales activity to getting increased clarity from your prospect about the authorization for the purchase. Get the prospect to walk with you down the path to the sale. Don’t let the prospect stand on the sidelines as an observer.

Get and give. Get information and then give information. Get that prospect alongside you!

4. In selling to businesses it’s okay to ask about “budget” but if you sell to consumers, avoid using the word budget.

Instead, ask about what investment level the prospect is comfortable with. Even if they lie (and prospects do often lie when asking this question), you’ve succeeded in getting the price issue on the table where it can see the light of day. Once there, it can be examined, analyzed, studied, debated, and verified.

5. One of the greatest qualification questions ever is “If I can get you what you need for a price you’re comfortable with, tell me what would prevent you from moving ahead with this purchase?”

Prospects love to shop and dream and hope and get ideas. But as salespeople, we need to understand if they’re shopping and dreaming and hoping and getting ideas, or if they’re in the process of buying. The best way to develop this understanding is to ask closed questions that will encourage the prospect to give accurate answers and not avoid the subject. It can be uncomfortable, but I’d rather be a bit uncomfortable early in the selling process rather than going home and kicking my dog later on because I missed out on the sale.

[WARNING: Don't try this at home. I've never kicked my dog. Or any of the dogs I've owned. I love dogs. A lot. I don't condone kicking animals, especially dogs. I was just trying to dramatize the frustration salespeople feel when they lose a sale they thought they had in the bag. This illustration was for literary purposes only, not a suggestion about how to treat your dog or any other animal.]

6. Never assume anything.

Yes, I said anything.

But, I guess you can assume one thing, and that one thing is this: if you assume something about your prospect’s qualifications, go ahead and assume you will have unsuccessfully qualified your prospect, because your assumption will probably be correct.

7. Be skeptical of everything.

Yes, I said everything. Especially things that appear to be obvious. And don’t kick your dog.

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