Sales Plus Profit writes:
If you’re reading this blog I’m assuming it caught your eye through the title and was relevant to your business. Regardless of how you ended up here let’s try not to pretend this isn’t a genuine issue for many business owners.
The good news is that because it’s such a common subject we, at Sales Plus Profit, decided to do a little research into our own client and prospect interactions on the subject. Now we’re not going to pretend that this was a long, sophisticated study over a prolonged period, however what was very clear that in a large number of organisations we looked at;
‘Where there was a stated challenge in closing business, every single organisation recognised that there were improvements to be made in their qualification process’
So what do we mean by this exactly? We all qualify our prospects’ suitability and propensity to buy, don’t we?
Well it would appear from our interactions that the answer is ‘No’. It’s not that people don’t qualify, it’s that they don’t do it in a consistent, documented way.
When we speak at events we always talk about the importance of being able to clearly identify, and more importantly articulate within the team, what your intended ‘prey’ looks like.
Equally important, but often ignored, is being able to clearly identify what is definitely NOT a prospect – again in writing (so as not to allow the sales people to decide).
Somebody once described a sales journey as;
‘Imagine walking down a long office corridor with doors both left and right. You have to knock on each door, have a look inside and then close the door behind you. When, and only when, you have got to the end of corridor, having closed off the doors, are you in a position to go for the close and ask for the order, safe in the knowledge that all qualification is complete.’
So, the next time one of the team comes to you and you're struggling to close off a piece of business, or you’re sat in a meeting looking at a constantly shifting pipeline, you could do a lot worse that review the steps of the sale you have gone though to date.
Do this rigorously by making sure you’ve qualified the opportunity as per your documented ‘ideal client’ profile… providing you have one that is!
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