To Qualify…or Not to Qualify?

That is the question!

When it comes to qualifying leads, whether it’s a new account or within an established client, is there really any question whether or not qualification is important? Unfortunately, there is. There are instances where more accurate qualifying could have saved you or your company significant amounts of time, effort and trouble in terms of managing resources and maximizing your opportunities.

Another way to make the point is this: Have you ever seen a deal on the forecast with a 95% chance of closing this month, only to find there is some excuse that causes the deal to drift into the following month? And then it slips again and again into the ensuing months… until the same deal has been forecasted at 95% for so long that managers either get frustrated or they assume it’s a lost cause and take it out of their numbers completely?

I was recently offered an opportunity to get in on a business deal that had a seemingly “phenomenal upside,” in a marketplace that was “rapidly growing,” and I was assured this person’s Internet-based product was virtually “bulletproof.” The deal was simple—where I basically agreed to trade my negotiation experience in working with large corporations in exchange for a small percentage of the company’s earnings. Granted, I wasn’t putting any of my own money at risk, but still, the time I would ultimately have to spend bringing the opportunity to fruition would require a significant investment in time on my part. But, the potential payoff definitely would have been easily worth it—a cut of 20+ million dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. That was twenty million…with seven zeros!

Although some people consider it annoying at times, part of my personality is to listen closely and hold people accountable for what they say. For example, when my partner in this deal told me that he would have his attorney draw up a contract that documented our verbal agreement, I expect it will be done within the week, as promised. When that didn’t happen, it wasn’t the end of the world, but missing verbal commitments registers with me—strike one. In the meantime, we strategized about the business plan several times but it became clear that the opportunity was not moving forward according to the expectations set by our main contact in the account—strike two. Now if my years in sales have taught me anything, it’s that at some point, you either hang in there and keep chasing what could be a pipedream, or you pose some tough questions to reveal where you really stand in the process.

Well, I chose the latter, and my tough questions initiated an uncomfortable conversation to say the least. I wasn’t upset that things turned out to be much less "baked” than had originally been communicated. But even as a minority partner in the enterprise, I wanted to know the real scoop. And that’s where things started to unravel. It turns out the attorney on the deal wasn’t being forthright, and the actual product is still miles from completion as opposed to “on the verge” of being finished, as was originally communicated. Strike three! Net/net, I broke off whatever partnership existed, wished my friend well in his endeavors, and I believe saved myself a great deal of time and hassle.

In my experience, when the planets are not aligned and you get the feeling that something isn’t working, you’re intuition is probably right. In this case, I concluded that this opportunity had little or no chance of success. Thus, continuing to chase a pipedream as if it had a 95% probability of success would have costs me a lot more than simply walking away. “Chasing ghosts,” I call it—where situations like this create one of the biggest drains on a salesperson’s time not to mention other valuable resources.

That said, is it possible that a deal you take off the forecast can come back from the dead, so to speak, in spite of a whole history of negative buying signals? Sure, that’s happened to me several times. And when it does, I am ready to jump back in with both feet if the status of an account actually changes. But, just because you forecast a deal with a high probability of closing doesn’t mean they are ready to move forward.

Just telling people that it’s important to qualify opportunities doesn’t provide sellers with enough information, however. It’s important to provide a strategy for “how” to effectively qualify in order to have a more reflective and accurate forecast. That’s where Question Based Selling comes in.

One of the old-school adages I often hear from sales managers is that sellers should qualify ‘early and often.’ I agree, with the caveat that it’s possible to qualify yourself out of an opportunity by asking inappropriate qualifying questions too early in the sales process. Here’s one for example, “Mr. Prospect, do you have $150K budgeted for an emerging technology solution that you’ve never heard of, but might save your company significant time and money?” The answer to that question is likely to be “No.” Of course they don’t have money budgeted for a product or service they haven’t even heard of yet. Thus, it’s possible to disqualify an opportunity before the need has been developed and your value has been appropriately conveyed.

My strategy for qualifying opportunities is relatively simple. First, you have to be willing to ask direct questions and then be patient enough to listen for the answers. “But, doesn’t asking qualifying questions sometimes put customers on the spot?” sellers will ask me. Yes, absolutely. I want to put potential customers on the spot to some degree—because I want to find out, “Are we working toward a mutually beneficial opportunity, or is this something that might be nice, but isn’t really a priority for them at this time?” If you are respectful and sincerely don’t want to waste the customer’s time, I have found that by being direct, customers are more than willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and concerns. It’s those quick-talking salesmen with a fake-smile plastered on their face that cause customers to shy away from telling you where they really stand.

Here’s a simple two-step process for effective qualification. First, you have to know where you stand in the deal. What’s the best way to find out? Easy, just ask…and the more direct you are with the customer, the better. “Mr. Customer, do you mind if I ask where we stand in this opportunity?” Or, “Mr. Customer, can you help me with something? My boss is asking me where we stand in this opportunity. Should I tell him that it will probably close within the month or should I let him know it’s likely to be pushed out into the future?” Then, I would probably some follow up questions about what obstacles were preventing them from moving forward?

That’s the key right there. If a transaction is never going to happen, you want customers to tell you right then and there. He or she doesn’t want to waste any more time chasing ghosts, either. Likewise, if a deal is going to happen, even if the customer doesn’t know exactly when, they are likely to give you their best guess on timing, along with the issues that have to be dealt with along the way. Now you are in a position to proceed accordingly.

One last note about qualifying. I don’t ask once and assume the answer I received at the time is set in stone forever. In fact, I make it a point to ask the same questions to more than one person. If their answers match up, then you can be pretty sure the information you’re getting is correct. However, if two different people within an account give me two distinctly different responses, then more work needs to be done to understand what’s really going on.

The QBS technique for this is called Cross-Referencing. When you are collecting information about an opportunity, make it a point to verify the data with someone else. I usually don’t share who I got the information from, because I don’t want to sound like a gossip within the account. But I still might ask questions like: “Ms. Customer, I heard that this contract could close by the end of this month, but the possibility exists that it might get hung up in legal. Is that an accurate assessment from your perspective?” From there, you might find out that the intel you’ve gathered thus far is dead on. Or, you might get a second opinion that is dramatically different, which would cause me to investigate further. Either way, the goal is simply to know where you stand, in order to know how best to proceed toward the ultimate goal.

So, you may want to take a few minutes right now and assess where you really stand on some of the more shaky deals in your forecast. Are they even real? Have you qualified them to the point where you know who the decision makers and influencers are, and how as well as when the decision will be made? Doing so might just make the difference in this week’s productivity, and ultimately in this  month’s commission check!