by Paul Cherry
Qualifying means determining whether the sales opportunity is legitimate or simply a waste of time. As a salesperson, you are probably familiar with the following responses to your inquiries:
“Send me more information.”
“Call me back.”
“Give me a quote.”
“Let me run your ideas by my boss.”
“How about I let you bid on a project in the future?”
“Why don’t you talk it over with the buyer?”
“Can you give us a demo?”
All of these responses require you as a salesperson to exert effort. The last one could even require a trip out of town and expending money and time. Yet none of these requests signals a firm commitment from the prospective customer. Most require little or no effort on the part of the prospective customer. They may indicate legitimate interest, or they may be no more than a polite way for someone to get you off of the phone or out of her office.
The reality is that people are not always forthright with their answers—especially when they’re talking to a salesperson. Here are some of the reasons why:
•They are afraid to say no.
•They don’t trust you.
•They don’t like you.
•They were raised to be polite and don’t want to hurt your feelings.
•They want to avoid an argument or confrontation with you.
•They’re feeling manipulated or pressured.
•They don’t want to look stupid.
•They lack the confidence to make a decision.
•They want to get information from you mainly in order to renegotiate with their current vendor.
•They think there might be problems down the road with their current vendor and want to keep their options open.
•They want to keep you at a distance so that they can maintain power and control.
•They have had a bad experience with a vendor in the past and are afraid to repeat it.
Before you start chasing opportunities, listen to how prospective customers respond to your questions. The process of qualifying allows you to answer these questions:
•Is the person politely trying to get you off of the phone and out of his hair?
•Is this someone who really wants to purchase your services, or is she just picking your brain for free ideas?
•Is he afraid of any type of commitment?
•Is your timing off? Does the person you are talking with have more pressing needs than the one you are addressing?
•Is the prospect open to change and willing to talk about it?
•Are you talking with the right person?
•Are your values aligned with their values (for example, are they price-driven when you’re focused on solving problems and providing a return on investment)?
Often salespeople go forward without knowing the answers to any of these questions. Sometimes it comes from anxiety about their pipeline, combined with a big dose of wishful thinking. Or salespeople think it would be rude to ask qualifying questions. Or that it’s best not to be intrusive. Or they are in a hurry. And sometimes salespeople just don’t know what to ask.
It’s in everyone’s interest—the buyer as well as the seller—to make sure you’re not wasting time on an “opportunity” that isn’t there. Real buyers don’t mind your efforts to qualify them—their time is valuable, too. And many appreciate that you are being forthright in your approach. So you need to prepare a list of questions that you can ask in order to learn more about your customers’ needs.
But what happens when you ask those questions and you get nowhere? You need a process that will help you determine which customers to continue to engage and which ones are likely to be a waste of your time.
Interpreting Prospective Customers’ Answers
Here are some of the things you should be looking for in a prospect’s answers before you expend time and energy working on a proposal, making a presentation, emailing a prospectus, or getting into the car for a long drive to a prospect’s office.
Can your prospect articulate her needs? Any response to a question about needs should tell you whether the prospect has a good working knowledge of the problem and if she has researched possible solutions. If not, this may indicate a lack of interest in your service. Or, it may mean that you’re speaking to the wrong person. If this is the case, your task as the salesperson is to locate the individual who has to deal with the problem and has a vested interest in it being solved. After speaking with the person closest to the problem, you should be able to determine whether a legitimate business opportunity exists.
Is this need important? A prospect’s response should inform you whether or not there is a sense of urgency. Does this problem have priority over other needs? Find out why or why not. If the need is not important, the prospect may not feel compelled to pursue your service.
How do you determine if a need is important? Ask your prospect a series of questions:
1. How important is this issue to you?
2. What areas of your business does this affect?
3. Can you give me a specific example so that I can really understand the problem you are experiencing?
4. In addition to you, who else is affected by this problem?
5. What steps have been taken to resolve it?
6. What discussions have taken place within your organization around this problem?
7. What have you tried in the past that didn’t work?
8. What’s the impact of this problem on your business (time, resources, productivity, employee turnover, customer growth and retention, profits, market share, reputation, etc.)?
If your prospect can answer most of these questions with specific details and examples, then you can be sure this is a legitimate opportunity. If the need isn’t perceived to be important, you may be able to create urgency with the right follow-up questions. But you’ll need to guard your time and energy with this prospect.
How does the prospect envision the outcome of resolving this matter? In other words, what would it mean for the prospect to solve this problem? How would correcting a situation enable your prospect to do something that is desired? What you really want to understand is the motivation that will drive your prospect to action. By gaining a better understanding of your prospect’s reasons for pursuing your potential solution, you will be better able to create a plan of action. Be careful that your questions don’t come across as self-serving. If the prospective customer feels you are being manipulative, he will justifiably feel uncomfortable divulging sensitive information.
If your prospective customer is unwilling to share his motivation with you by answering your questions, one of two things is almost certainly happening: (1) you don’t have a legitimate opportunity to pursue or (2) you’ve failed to build trust and demonstrate empathy, the two key elements that get people to open up.
Responding to the Answers: The Three-Step Qualifying Process
Use the following three-step process to determine whether or not you have a real sales opportunity. This process will save you time and money and help you avoid frustration.
Agree. Most salespeople are quite agreeable and accommodating. After all, you’re in the people-pleasing business. For example, if someone says, “Call me back,” you’re not going to say no. You’ll be respectful and agree to a better time to reconnect. If someone says, “I want to think about what you’re proposing,” you’re not going to bark back, “No, you need to decide right now.” You’ll politely inquire when you should get back to them.
I’m all for being pleasant, accommodating, and supportive. But you walk a fine line. If you’re too nice, you’ll fail to get decisions. You won’t find out how buyers really feel. You won’t know whether a sale is going forward or you’re spinning your wheels. If all you do is agree, you’re traveling down a slippery slope at full throttle. The prospect says, “Get back to me,” but you can never get hold of them again. They say “call me,” but don’t pick up. And when
you do get hold of them, they whine about how busy they are and blow you off yet again.
So by all means agree with what the prospect says. But don’t stop there. To stay in control, go to the next step: clarify.
Clarify. After agreeing to some part of the prospective customer’s initial statement, get as much detail as possible about the response. Ask one or two questions to gather information about the current situation, the decisionmaking process within the company, and any concerns the person has about the current vendor.
Legitimize. Determine whether the prospect is sincere or just trying to get rid of you politely. Ask a question that will project your prospective customer into the future and will allow you to make evident any potential obstacles to an agreement. For example, sometimes prospects ask me to come to their facility or meet in person. I am usually happy to oblige, unless I have to drive more than five hours or hop on a plane and go halfway across the country. In those cases, it becomes a real time-management issue for me. Before I commit to such a trip, I spend significant time on the phone asking the prospect clarifying questions to better understand his needs. I ask, “Let’s just assume that I come out to your facility for a day. You’re able to pull a group of people together, we do a demo, and everyone really finds value in what we have to offer. What do you see happening next?”
I can get all types of responses, but basically they come down to one of two: (1) “We would do business with you,” or (2) “We would have to run it by our boss, or committee, or corporate . . . or . . . we would have to see if we could get the money . . . or . . . we would have to compare you with our current vendor . . . or . . . we’re not really sure.” If I get the first response (and have determined that the person I’m speaking to actually has that authority), I am on the next plane. If I get the second response, I hesitate to commit my time and resources because there are obstacles in the way over which I have no control. So first I need to find a way to remove those obstacles. If I can clear away issues using the phone and email, it will be easier to get a commitment once I have met the prospect face-to-face. This approach helps ensure that my time—and the prospect’s, for that matter—is well spent.
Putting the Process to Work
Now let’s look at a few common responses from prospects and see how you can use this qualifying process to determine whether it’s worth your time to move forward:
“Email Me the Information.”
Do you often get this response when you call a prospective customer? After all the effort you expend getting through voice mail and on the phone with an actual person, it can be deflating. Or, even worse, you convince yourself that the prospect is really interested and jump through hoops, only to be disappointed by the subsequent lack of commitment.
Here is how to use the three-step qualifying process when you encounter this response:
Agree. Find something within the prospect’s reply with which you can agree. In this case, you could say something like, “I would be glad to forward you some information.”
Clarify. Next, get some clarification about needs. A good example would be, “So that I get you the right information, what specifically are you looking for?” You could also ask, “What specific information would be of particular interest to you?” Or, “I want to be attentive to what your needs are; what kind of information is going to be most beneficial to you?”
Now, the important thing to do is analyze the response. You are looking for the reason someone wants information about your product.
Chances are good that this is a genuine opportunity if the prospective client answers a clarification question using words like these: “We’re looking to . . . achieve . . . fix . . . solve . . . eliminate . . . avoid . . . secure . . . improve. . . .” These kinds of words suggest that this company has already identified its problems and accepted that change is necessary. While the prospective customer explains the problem, listen to gain a better understanding of the goals and the solutions that are being sought, and whether you can provide those solutions.
If the prospective customer answers your clarification questions with something like, “Send me whatever you have,” or “I really don’t know, I just want to see what you offer,” this is probably not a legitimate opportunity. That’s a canned response and the prospect is trying to get rid of you, or you’ve failed to identify what’s important to him, or this person just doesn’t have a need. Clarifying questions allow you to understand whom best to focus your energy and time with.
Assuming you’ve gotten clarity, the next step is to legitimize the opportunity.
Legitimize. The final step in the qualifying process compels you, as a salesperson, to project your prospective customer into the future so that she can walk you through the decisionmaking process in her company.
Assuming they opened up about some issues they have and assuming that you have potential solutions, you might say, “I’m going to put together some information that will address x, y, and z, and get that to you today. Let me ask you, assuming what I put together addresses what you’re looking for, what’s our next step?”
You will be able to discern from the answer whether or not there is any real interest from this company. For example, a well-qualified buyer may respond something like this: “Well, if you proposed something that looked like it might work, I’d ask you to come in and meet with me and my team to get deeper into the issues.” (Indeed, if you got a response like this or something similar, you’d probably want to take it one step further and insist on scheduling an appointment, in order to avoid phone tag later on.)
On the other hand, if all you got were blow-off responses such as “I don’t know” during the clarifying phase, there’s no need to try to move forward with this person (though you may want to move forward with someone else in the organization). Either he or she has no power, doesn’t care, or is working a hidden agenda (for example, using you to get a better price from the current vendor). You’ve called the person’s bluff, but without being confrontational.
Some phrases with which you can begin legitimizing questions include:
“Assuming we can . . .”
“What if . . .”
“Let’s just pretend . . .”
“Just suppose . . .”
“Imagine for a moment . . .”
You can then end your legitimizing questions with the phrase, “What do you feel will happen next?” Using these key phrases at the beginning and end of your questions, you will be able to confirm how your prospective customer envisions what it will take to do business with her, as well as any hurdles to clear or objections to overcome.
You do have the option to be more direct and go for a close if the clarifying phase is going well. For example, if the buyer clearly seems engaged and is asking detailed questions, you might say something like this: “I suggest the next step should be a meeting with you. How is next Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. or Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?”
Here’s another possible scenario:
Salesperson: “I’ll get this proposal to you on Monday. How does that work with your schedule? Also, assuming we can address your needs regarding ________ and stay within your budget of ________, tell me what you see as a next step.”
Or you can go for a firm yes or no response: “Assuming we can address your needs regarding ________, and stay within your budget of ________, are you prepared to move forward?”
You can use countless variations of this language:
“If this is a good solution for you and it’s within your budget . . .”
“. . . does that mean I will have earned your business?”
“. . . how soon can we get started?”
“. . . will we able to formalize the agreement tomorrow?”
“. . . can I stop by this Friday to pick up the check?”
“. . . when would we see the purchase order?”
Sounds awfully direct, doesn’t it? But keep in mind that if your prospect is asking you to do something that requires your time
and effort and your company’s resources, why can’t you ask for the buyer to share their level of commitment? It’s a fair question.
It’s also a revealing one. They are either going to give you a yes—and if so, congratulations—or going to hem and haw, or they’re going or let you know the truth as to where they are in the buying process. Their response will allow you to gauge how easy or hard the sale is going to be.
Let’s continue with this example:
Prospective client: I have no idea. As a matter of fact, I tried suggesting something like this before and the board shot it down.
Ugh! If you hear something like that, it’s best to pull back immediately from doing a proposal. At best, you have a lot more work to do before you get to the proposal stage.
A response like that isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s enormously valuable. It helps you get at hidden objections. It doesn’t mean that this opportunity is a dead end, but the situation is obviously complex. In all likelihood you’re not talking to the right person, and he is probably far removed from the powers that be. You can either walk away from this prospect to focus on more promising opportunities, or use further clarification questions to gain insight into the decisionmaking process, the issues, proposed solutions, and get yourself connected to somebody who can make something happen.
Salespeople sometimes worry about going over the prospect’s head, but at this point you don’t have anything to lose. In fact, if prospects admit that they lack power, they may actually want you to talk to someone who does. So you might ask, for example: “Who shot it down and why?” And, “If this idea had any chance of success, who on the board would have to get behind it?”
