Tweet

7 Reasons Why You Must Zealously Qualify Prospects

Written by: Tessa Stowe

Article Overview: Tessa Stowe explains why you should make an unbreakable rule that you will zealously qualify prospects before you try to sell them anything.

7 Reasons Why You Must Zealously Qualify Prospects

Have you ever worked really hard on a sale - put in a lot of time, money and resources - and they decided to do nothing or they bought from your competitor? When you looked back you could see that if you'd asked a few more questions you could have found out at the beginning that there was a very low probability that you were going to win this sale.

There is a way of finding out at the beginning of a sales campaign what the probability is of winning the sale. You find out by having a sales qualification process in place and by zealously putting each and every prospect and opportunity through this sales qualification process.

Here are seven reasons why you must be zealous about putting your prospects through a qualification process before you sell to them:

1. Qualifying ensures that you only sell to people who are going to buy.
By qualifying you can determine if your prospect is going to buy and, more importantly, if they are going to buy now. By qualifying, you avoid wasting time, money and resources on selling to prospects that do nothing.

2. Qualifying tells you where to focus.
On which prospects do you spend your valuable time? Qualifying gives you that answer. By qualifying, you identify high probability opportunities and these are the ones you need to focus on.

3. Qualifying enables you to win more sales.
As a result of qualifying, you only sell to prospects that are going to buy and you only focus on high probability opportunities. Just by having this focus on high probability opportunities, you increase your probability of success, if that makes sense.

4. Qualifying speeds up your sales and results in a shorter sales cycle.
As a result of qualifying, you will find out the reason why your prospect should act now. You find out their 'compelling event.' When you find out your prospect's compelling event, they will be motivated to take action now. They will be motivated to buy your solution now rather than later and your sales cycle will be reduced as a consequence.

5. Qualifying reduces your wasted costs.
If you routinely sell to people who are not going to buy or have a low probability of buying from you, then you are wasting a lot of time money and resources. By qualifying you stop these wasted costs.

6. Qualifying enables you to choose whom you want to become your client.
Do you have a client that you wish was not your client? They require so much time and energy that they really are not worth having. Also more importantly they distract you from serving your ideal clients and from winning new business. With qualifying you will identify these non-ideal clients straight way.

7. Qualifying attracts prospects.
If you share your qualification process with your prospects, they will see that you are a professional and selective about whom you have as your client. When you become selective about who you work with, people want to be 'selected.' It's human nature. Your prospects will be trying to sell you on why you should sell to them! Even if you both agree that you are not a good fit for them right now, this process will leave them feeling impressed by you and they'll probably refer others to you.

Right now make it an unbreakable rule that you will zealously qualify prospects and you will only ever sell to qualified prospects that will be ideal customers. So find, learn and implement a sales qualification process straight away and watch the impact on your sales results.

(c) 2008 Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation. WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? Yes, you can, provided you make all links live and include this copyright and by-line below.

Related Articles
  Are You Wasting Sales Leads?
  Prospects Are Like Children
  Need a Bank Line of Credit Use a Bank Guarantee BG Program
  Win Franchise Sales and at Franchise Development in a Tough Economy
  Win More Sales By Better Qualifying Your Potential Customers Also Known As Prospects

Article Tags: competitor, probability, prospects, sales campaign, shorter sales, time money, wasting time



Related Forum Posts
Re: 10 Reasons Who Startups Fail & Book Recommendations - Great post,but please edit the headline. I presume it is "10 Reasons Why Startups Fail & Book Recommendation
Re: Email Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":24jznj58] The P.S. suggestion is good but it depends on the type of communication (e.g. Autoresponder series verses one off emails to Clients or Prospects)[/quote:24jznj58] Andy, You are right. I was mainly referring to Auto Responder emails. To end a normal email, I attach signatures. Takuya
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling - Gary, A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple! In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people: 1. Strangers 2. Prospects 3. Returning Customers You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question. My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative). My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him. So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc. The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation. You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him. At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation. Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool. Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Tactics for Blog Traffic - Blogging; if you know how to do it right, can be a great experience. Unfortunately the majority of people getting online to begin blogging fall into the common frustration of seeing low traffic numbers when they check their stats. Why is this the case? Ultimately it is because getting traffic to a blog is a science, like many other strategies implemented in marketing products and services. There are four ways that can help in achieving more traffic at a quicker rate. Two of the ways to produce an abundant traffic stream consists of writing and promoting your subject and/or niche in other sites, and another strategy to reeling in this traffic is a traditional business tactic in attaining a base of customers; or in regards to blogs, followers. 1.) Write Captivating Articles - Article marketing is one of the best ways to attain traffic as it is almost always free and can allow a marketer to express their interests in any desired niche. If you submit articles to directories you are not only getting a steady stream of readers, but you are also building backlinks to your blog site. An example is EzineArticles.com, as it is has its own readership of people looking for topics that you may just be blogging about. Therefore, if you write an article and submit it to a directory a person will not only read your article but also be enticed to visit your blog. 2.) Reasons to Re-Visit- Giving people a reason to go back is seen all throughout commercial businesses. For example, stores and restaurants will hold special sales, events, and offers to keep customers coming back for more of what they love; but this time with a lower price or ???buy one get one free??? offer. This exact formula can also be replicated in your blogging techniques. The idea to keep people coming back over and over can be lucrative and the best way to do this is to create special events and offers. For example, you can give away a new prize each week to new subscribers to your list. In addition, you can also run contests for people who leave comments on your blog posts. In short, making your blog ???a place to be??? will attract more people as your subscribers may even tell their friends. 3.) Doing Keyword Research- Rather than throwing up blogs and expecting traffic it would be wiser to research the keyword data to find terms that are getting a lot of searches. In addition, attaining keywords that have low competition would be a greater choice as it will make your blog easier to rank. 4.) Link Baiting- The idea behind creating link baits is stirring enough controversy through your post that you can produce strong emotional reactions by people in order for them to comment and link to your blog post. For example, if a hot new electronic product; like the iPad, just recently came out on the market and everyone is raving about it, you can explain why you don???t like it to your readers in a way that will give you strong emotional responses automatically. In short, these are four ways that can be solid; if used appropriately, in bringing in more traffic and attaining a base of avid readers.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Designing Employee-Enhancing Training Programs

Unharnessing Creativity in Business

TRADE SHOW FOLLOW-UP: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.