One of the key behaviours that distinguish top-performing sales people is their ability to accurately qualify sales opportunities from a very early stage in the sales process, and to focus their attention on those prospects where they have the strongest chance of winning. It’s worth contrasting their behaviour with less effective sales people, who often invest far too much time on opportunities that are never destined to close.
But qualification skills can be learned, and must be managed. The benefits are clear: organisations that impose consistent opportunity qualification criteria have shorter average sales cycles and higher average sales win rates - and make much better use of their scarce pre-sales resources.
At the end of the day, four questions matter above all others when qualifying a potential sales opportunity:
- Does the prospect have a real need?
- Is the prospect likely to buy anything?
- Are we in a good position to win their business?
- Will winning this deal represent the best use of our resources?
We recommend that you start by comparing each incoming lead against a clearly defined ideal customer profile, and that you develop a systematic qualification checklist based the common characteristics of winning deals. Managers should expect sales people to justify the inclusion of every new opportunity in the sales pipeline based on tangible, observable evidence and not on hope or supposition.
Qualification should not be a one-off event: circumstances can change, and new learning can emerge, at any time. Managers should require salespeople to requalify opportunities on a regular basis, and certainly before elevating them to the next stage in the sales pipeline. Unless this basic sales discipline is implemented, pipeline values rapidly loose any relationship to reality.
We work with clients to establish consistent sales qualification guidelines that are relevant to their particular business focus and ideal customer profiles, and help them to implement these qualification criteria in their CRM systems and sales opportunity review processes. We coach sales people and sales managers on the application of these guidelines, and on the critical importance of consistent opportunity qualification.
Take the Next Step
We would be pleased to share what we’ve learned about helping high-growth-potential organisations implement effective sales qualification systems as part of a balanced programme of sales and marketing performance improvement. As a first step, you may find it useful to self-audit your current sales and marketing processes.
As soon as you are ready to learn more, please email us at qualifying@inflexion-point.com, or call us on +44 (0) 118 975 0595. We look forward to discovering whether we might be able to help your organisation to improve its performance in this critical area.