One of the most important steps for a salesperson to take is qualifying a prospect because time is limited and one of our most valuable resources. It is important that we get as much out of the time that we have to work with due to time cannot be replaced. To improve sales performance, we need to find a way to increase the time we spend with prospects who have a high probability of purchasing and, in turn, decrease the time we spend with those who do not. Qualifying prospects is the key way to accomplish this.

One way to approach qualifying prospects is to use a two-step process:

 

Step 1 – Soft Qualifying

Typically, you will begin talking to and working with a prospect early in the sales cycle stage in which the lead is just being created. Some examples are talking to a prospect during a cold call, at networking events, callbacks from inbound web leads, etc.

In the early stage of your conversations, you want to soft-qualify a prospect first. This means asking questions to first identify if it even makes sense to continue talking or to meet at all. First, we just need to identify if there’s any potential for the prospect to fit with what we have to offer.

It doesn’t make sense for either party to spend their time conversation and/or possibly meeting if there isn’t at least a slight potential for a fit discovered early in the call. If you reach this point while qualifying a prospect, there could be a positive outcome because you then proceed to find a prospect that does have a potential need for what you are trying to sell.

The key areas to focus on with soft qualifying are outlined below:

  •     Current state: What are the current processes, systems, and vendors in the area that your products or services impact?
  •     Level of satisfaction: How are things going? Good, OK, or could be better?
  •     Organizational details: Is the prospect the right person for us to talk to?

 

Step 2 – Hard Qualifying

Once you have scheduled a formal meeting, it’s time to work at a deeper level and perform hard qualifying. While soft qualifying is to determine if it even makes sense to keep conversing, hard qualifying is to determine if there’s a potential deal and if there’s a pressing need to move forward.

The following questions can be asked in the following categories in order to measure how qualified the prospect is as well as how high the probability is that they will purchase:

  •     Need vs. want: What happens if you do nothing?
  •     Funding: Has the budget for this project been approved?
  •     Timing: Is there a date when you need the purchase made by?
  •     Authority: What is the decision-making process?

SalesScripter provides sales coaching helping sales pros with qualifying a prospect.