The Question Is Not How To Qualify More – It’s How To Disqualify More
Hoping that prospect will turn into something more? - Stop!
For years I have heard sales people tell me they want to learn how to qualify better. As odd as this may sound there is a danger to wanting to qualify better. It sets you up to have the wrong mindset and starts a tug of war between you and the prospect. You see there is little or no relationship and prospects are mistrusting of sales people from the start. So you start asking qualifying questions and what happens…they give you the “short answer”. You can feel the tension and resistance but we don’t want to push too hard because this has some potential and we can keep “hope” alive. From my perspective hope sucks!
Hope lets you fill your pipeline or sales forecast with junk (sometimes called deals) that are never going to close. Hope lets you lie to yourself that you have a lot going on and helps you procrastinate from making real sales calls. I once worked with a fortune 500 company who didn’t want to get real. They preferred to live in the land of hope even after I warned them they were setting themselves up for a shortfall. Sadly as I predicted the last week in the quarter $10 million in deals evaporated… not moved into next quarter but actually evaporated into thin air never to be seen again. Painfully they were $10 million short of what they told Wall Street and their stock was punished severely for it.
Until Next Time!
