Qualifying

Mike Montague interviews Brian Jackson on How to Succeed at Your 30 Second Commercial. Brian is an award-winning Sandler Trainer in San Diego, CA.

Troy Elmore, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at dealing with the competition and selling a crowded marketplace. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 21 Minutes

Sales superstars are OK with a “no”. They realize that a “no” is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, they are often satisfied with a decisive “no” and move on to the next opportunity.

One of the most essential steps required to qualify or disqualify an opportunity is to figure out if a prospect is willing and able to make any investments to move forward.

How do you build a business case as you go through the process of uncovering the clients’ needs and wants? First, you should quantify “pain” and its impact.

As a sales person, it may be common to find yourself at the end of your presentation hearing things like, “I’m going to end up using my current supplier” or “We decided to go with the lowest price.”

Sam was surprised when his boss, Juanita, called him into her office, closed the door, sat him down, and asked him: “So what is it you guys do?”

Having a big pipeline of “prospects” is typically seen as desirable. The more prospects you put into the pipeline, the more will eventually emerge as customers. At least that’s the theory. And the theory is partially true. Some of the people you put in the pipeline will become customers. The question is, “How many will be customers and how long will it take for them to materialize from the other end of the pipe?”

Melody was feeling unmotivated. Carlos, her sales manager, was pressuring her once again to improve her closing ratio ... but as usual, he wasn’t giving her much guidance on how she should go about accomplishing this goal.

Jane was struggling. Most of her deals weren’t moving forward, and her quarterly income target seemed well out of reach.

They say no pain, no gain. So, how can not finding a prospects pain cause you to lose business?

Rosita had been behind quota before, but never by this much and never for this long. When her manager, Sam, offered to take her out to lunch, she figured she was either looking at very good news … or very bad news.

Your prospects willingness to change can effect if you make the sale or not. Find out how to narrow the area of uncertainty and eliminate wasted time spent on prospects that are unwilling to change.

Prospects who’ve been in business for a while know just how to answer sales people without committing and saying anything concrete. They do this to mystify sales people. And if you get trapped by this and go along, then you’re mutually mystified.

Prospects will sometimes make statements that, on the surface, sound positive, but on closer inspection, reveal no actual commitment. They contain indecisive, play-it-safe words or phrases that allow prospects (and customers alike) to avoid making commitments.

How well can you run through your presentation? We all have our dog and pony show down and most of us love giving it. We are excited about our product or service and want to give all of those wonderful features and benefits. The problem is that there are very few prospects out there that need every one of our solutions.

Consider what a first timer to a Sandler sales class might say. “You want me to do what! Go for no! Are you outta your mind? Why would I do that? I’m here to close more sales, not lose them.”

When’s the last time you experienced pain? Jabbing, stabbing pain. Emotionally upsetting pain. Bet you couldn’t wait to get over it. You would have done anything for it to go away. Your doctor was your Superman, your Spiderman, and your Lord of the universe whom you depended on to heal your pain.

Indecisive prospects. Who hasn’t dealt with them? Everything seems to move along during your sales call, and a prospect nods positive with everything you have to say. And just when you think he or she will be a breeze to close, you hear, “Let me think about.”

If you’ve been up close to the Sandler Training sales approach, you’ve probably heard, “Go for no” at least more than once, if not a hundred times. In fact, hearing the word, no, from a potential client can be your gateway to a sale. But it makes a big difference when the no occurs during your sales cycle with a prospect. You may hear a hard no or a soft no. The trick is to know the difference.

Pain represented the prospect’s collective reasons to buy a product or service.

Why do some of those “great” opportunities end up going nowhere? In most cases, the “great” opportunities were never great to begin with.

At Sandler Training, we believe in not solely talking about features and benefits during your sales call, but rather focusing on the prospect’s needs. However, there is a time for presenting, once you have qualified the opportunity. Once a prospect is fully qualified in Pain, Budget, and Decision, then it is time for you to make the presentation, and you want to make that presentation as persuasive as possible.

To really understand what someone means, not what you hope he means, ask for clarification.

What you find out is more important than why you found it out.

Whether you’re simply attempting to “get your message across” or struggling to persuade a prospect that your product or service is the best fit for his or her situation, it can sometimes feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle.

The world of the prospect and/or customer is the only world that matters in a business situation.

Who’s the one buying? You or the prospect? Whose concerns count? Yours or the prospect’s?

Every person who buys anything from you has already decided, before they have even met you, what it will cost. Find out if they are being realistic.

By engaging your prospect to make clear commitments and to actually do something before the meeting, you’ll spend more of your valuable time with people who are just as invested as you are in producing a positive outcome.

There are prospects out there right now, who need to buy what you sell. Sell them!

If your goal is to find more prospects, get more and better referrals, and make more commission dollars in 2016 than you did in 2015, consider upping your social selling game. Here are four quick tips that will help you to avoid some common mistakes online.

Creating an effective sales pipeline can be a massive headache for sales leaders because reps have been known to stuff the pipeline with opportunities that have zero chance of closing. In a previous life, I took over a product specialist role selling a web-based media monitoring and crisis communications program. My first six weeks in that role was spent culling a $3 million pipeline down to $160,000 of real, qualified opportunities

Does this sound familiar to you? Prospect A says, "This looks very good. I think there's an excellent chance we'll do business." The salesperson thinks, "I've got one." Prospect B comments, "Your price is higher than we expected." The salesperson thinks, "I'll have to cut the price to close the deal." Prospect C reveals, "We were hoping for a shorter delivery time." The salesperson thinks, "I'll have to push this through as a rush order to get the sale."e