By Bill Stinnett, Author of “Think Like Your Customer”
For many sales professionals the question, "Is this deal qualified?" is one they dread to hear. It comes from fellow sales people, from pre-sales and marketing types, from his or her own boss, and from their boss, and their boss, and their boss. It's a question that is difficult to answer because qualifying sales opportunities is not simply a step in a process that is "checked off" as a yes or a no. It is an integral part of the ongoing process itself. So, as conditions change throughout a sales campaign, an opportunity could easily be qualified one day, and not qualified the next.
The purpose of sales qualification is to determine the "quality" or close-ability of each sales opportunity in our pipeline in order to prioritize our efforts and properly allocate sales resources. Therefore, answering a question like, "How many do they want to buy and when do they want to buy them?" hardly scratches the surface of what we need to know. What we really want to know is why they would want to buy something in the first place, and how could they buy it if they wanted to. We need to qualify our prospective customers for why and how by qualifying for motive and means.
Motive
Understanding motive requires a knowledge of the client's business, their business goals and objectives, and how the business is performing against those goals and objectives. A business need, which precedes a motive to buy, shows up as a discrepancy between where they are today, and where they want or need to be in the future. Whether the buyer discovers their need on their own or with our help, we then proceed to help them find a suitable solution.
Sales qualification starts with a powerful one-word question: Why? To fully understand motive we need to ask questions like:
Why does this discrepancy you've discovered constitute a problem?
Why does this discrepancy exist?
Why haven't you done something about it before?
What "good" would come from solving this problem?
Why would you invest money to solve this problem rather than investing that money to address a different need that the company has?
What are the risks involved in tackling this issue?
Why couldn't you let someone else in the company worry about solving this problem?
Why not just "do nothing" and hope it works itself out on its own?
The answers to questions like these reveal not only corporate motives to buy, but individual motives as well.
Means
If we are able to determine that our prospect has a motive to buy, then we will want to qualify for means. We will need to know:
Can they afford the solution we will propose?
How will they justify the purchase?
How will it ultimately be approved?
How do they plan to pay for it or finance it?
Will there be a lending party involved?
Who will execute the contract or release the Purchase Order?
Who must give their approval before the contract signer can sign?
Do they have the resources to fully utilize your solution?
Can they really derive the value that they are seeking?
Once they do, will they be willing to act as a reference for your next prospective client?
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