Here is an interesting article from ‘ Eye on sales’ on how you can save your business from some of the hassles of qualifying leads, we have also added some points of our own to the mix.
As a business we work hard to move leads from a suspect, to prospect to opportunity and then finalising by placing the order and then delivering the product or starting the service. However sometimes thing don’t always go ahead as planned.
You spend all your time qualifying, asking basic sales, technical and business questions to try and eliminate important deal breakers.
– How long has the prospect been investigating the product or service that your business sells?
– How did they come to hear about the company, product or service?
– Does the product/service meet the technical requirements?
– Does it measure up to what they need?
– Does the main communicator have a budget?
– Are they the final decision maker, recommender or just doing research for someone higher up in order to sort through the plethora of familiar and to get familiar with the product or service?
Your lead could be telling you what sounds like all right things, so you then set up a demonstration or arrange a trial to learn more about the product or service with the prospect.
So you’ve done everything correctly however, something happens. What seems to be a real opportunity about to go ahead, goes silent. They either state that the budget has been postponed, or their CFO/CEO has some concerns etc.
So how and at what point can you protect yourself and your business from this?
Listening to what the lead says is the most critical part of the whole process. Most often, sales people are rapt and excellent at explaining their product or service they sometimes can caught up in selling, promoting etc and then miss important information from the prospects.
Gathering this information is vital for the business deal. Is the person you are speaking with supposedly responsible for the decisions? Who else is involved? What are the issues or concerns? How long have they been looking for the solution? Have you received information from your lead that is important to understanding their needs that just aren’t being delivered? Is there a current product or service they have that is not meeting their requirements?
The most important thing, with any business is to LISTEN to what the prospects are saying or trying to say and to also listen to what is NOT being said. What they are doing and also NOT doing.
If your prospect or other decision makers don’t show up for meetings, calls, delay the delivery of critical information or aren’t committed to a trial of the product or service, you may need to re think further investment into the prospect.
People will buy what they want…
People will try what they like…
But will procrastinate when they are not sure they need it…
Part source: www.eyeonsales.com
