In order to most effectively identify whether a sales lead is qualified, stop trying to qualify altogether.
Huh? That doesn’t make sense…
Instead of trying to qualify prospects like every other salesperson out there, change your mindset to disqualifying prospects.
Your primary goal in selling from this day forth should be to disqualify those prospects who aren’t hurting from a problem you can solve. You do this by asking a targeted series of questions. Prospects must be able to answer your questions such that they prove themselves to be qualified.
Thus, after you have set your rules of play, begin the conversation by taking the prospect through the Disqualification Checklist:
Does the prospect have challenges you solve? Yes
Has the prospect fixed the problems yet? No
Do the problems cost a significant amount? Yes
Is the prospect personally affected? Yes
Is he willing to invest enough money in a solution? Yes
Can he make the decision? Yes
If you ended with the appropriate answers then the prospect is qualified.
From now on, whenever you’re in a selling situation, you want to identify these six points. To be clear, these aren’t the actual questions you would ask the prospect, as they’re all close-ended questions and will not lead to discussion. Your goal is to have the prospect paint you a picture of these six points by asking him open-ended questions, which I explore in much greater detail in my sales training in Boston.
This checklist is simply for your purposes, to identify whether the prospect is qualified. If you don’t get the right answer to any of these questions, then your prospect is not currently qualified and you want to move on as quickly as possible to focus on prospects who are.
By Marc Wayshak, America’s Sales Coach on Game Plan Selling and Sales Trainer Boston. He is the Author of the book Game Plan Selling.
