Qualifying the Prospect
Qualifying a prospect is the process of narrowing down your list to the prospects you think you can
convert to clients. How you qualify will depend on the amount of interest you’ve been able to stir up. Is
your team scrambling to find people to meet with or do you find yourself rescheduling people often? If
you’ve recently found yourself screening more prospects without a change in your number of clients,
focus on qualifying those prospects better so that you can invest your time and effort in the battles you
can win.
Questions to Ask When you Qualify a Prospect
1. Is this good business for us? Sometimes you may even need to ask whether this prospect will do
business with anyone at all. Companies may begin the process of looking for a solution but stall because
the problem is either not urgent enough or because powerful people within the organization were
uninterested. Don’t waste your resources on those prospects. Make sure you ask:
a. What pain is your prospect addressing or what opportunity do they see with your solution? Do they
currently have a solution?
b. What is the compelling reason and compelling event for the purchase? (i.e. why this solution, and why
now?) To avoid a never-ending sales process, keep an eye out for a sense of urgency. Urgency may
come from a government regulation, management directive, new product rollout, change in technology, or
even internal elections. Whatever the case, make sure your prospect has a reason to find a solution
quickly.
c. Do they have a budget (for this solution, not just in general)? If they don’t, can you reach someone
who will spend money outside of the budget in the organization? Should you pitch to them now to get
money in the budget for the next cycle? If they do have a budget, is it stable?
2. Is this an opportunity we can win? In some cases, the company may have chosen another solution
before you even pitched. They may continue courting you for political reasons, such as needing to do
their due diligence. Don’t waste your resources on prospects who are likely to go with someone else. Ask
yourself:
a. Who are the competitors? Why us?
b. Among the stakeholders, do we have a coach or advocate? Who is against us? What is the level of
influence/impact of each stakeholder? Who makes the final decision and signs the contract?
If your solution is disruptive enough, as is often the case with startups, you may have to ask a different set
of questions. In these cases, you may be trying to address a pain the company hasn’t even realized they
have. Instead of reacting to a pain, you will need to create it in the minds of the people who matter. In
these cases, you should be asking:
1. Will this pain drive the prospect to buy?
2. Can I make this pain urgent enough to spur a purchase?
3. Can I reach the right people within the company? Will they act as sponsors throughout the sale
process?
3. How does this compare to our other prospects? If it seems like another prospect is more easily won
and/or has a higher ROI, think about focusing your resources there. After choosing your battles, you have
to win the battles you’ve chosen. Make sure you don’t end up spreading yourself too thin and losing them
all.
4. What resources would this prospect require of us--and is it worth it? Focus not just on revenues, but
profitability. Would you make more money focusing your energies elsewhere? Do you sincerely believe
this prospect will emerge a satisfied client on the other side of the sale? If you charge forward, even when
you are not sure whether they will be satisfied, you may dissuade the company, the selection committee,
and any executive from doing business with you again. In those cases, it may be best to bow out before
you even start to avoid building a bad reputation in the business simply because of a mismatched
opportunity.
At the end of the day, you may choose not to a pursue a prospect for several reasons, including:
● Your solution is not a good answer to their pain.
● You cannot access the decision makers.
● The process itself favors your competition.
● You need to concentrate your resources elsewhere, perhaps because those are better
opportunities.
Sources
Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale by Rick Page. (2002)
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