- You know, the idea
of sales qualification is, in many ways, a relatively
new phenomenon in sales. The traditional sales people would go out and do
basically no qualification. They would identify anyone
who seemed to have a pulse, and they would immediately
go straight into pitch, they would go straight into
trying to sell that person, to persuade them, to convince them. And then, a bunch of years ago,
people came along and said, you know, maybe that's
not the best approach. Maybe what we should actually
do is take a step back and understand if the
person that we're talking to is actually qualified for what it is that we're trying to sell. And what they started to realize, by observing some of the same
traits of people like doctors or white collar professionals
like attorneys and CPAs, really truly professional
people who are busy, they started to realize
that qualifying prospects not only led to understanding
if someone's actually a fit, but it also established them
as much more of an expert, as much more of someone who they are attracted to doing business with. And so, what we see now are really two very distinct worlds of sales, where you have on the one hand, you have the sales people
who are just showing up and throwing up all over their prospects. They are pitching, they're coming in, and they're just opening up
their jacket pocket and saying, "Hey, look at all the
stuff that we've got. "Here are the features and benefits. "I wanna show you all of it." And then on the other hand,
you have a lot of sales people who, as soon as they get a
prospect on the phone they say, "Hey, I wanna understand,
what's keeping you up at night? Or, "What's your biggest challenges "that you're facing right now?" Or, "What do you care most about?" Or, "I wanna pick your brain "to understand what's
going on in your world." All very low value ways
of opening a conversation. And so, on the one hand you
have this one world of people who are just out pitching,
being super old school, and on the other hand
you have a lot of people who are maybe a little more sophisticated, but are still coming in a
way that's pretty low value. And so, what we want to do is we want to meld the two worlds, where we're really coming in with value, where the prospect is saying, yes, I want to have a
conversation with this person and I want them to understand
what's going on in my world, so I want them to ask me questions, but I also wanna feel like
they're definitely the person that I want to be asking me questions. So again, think of it like a doctor. How do we establish ourselves
as truly that doctor? So in this video, I'm going to show you the five keys to create massive value during sales qualification. Check it out. Number one. We want to first, we want
to establish authority. So we need to first and foremost let the prospect know that we are someone that they should be
having a conversation with in the first place. We need to show them that hey, this is someone that I do
want asking me questions. So they can't just show
up and we can't just say hey, I've got some questions for you. I wanna just kind of
bombard you with questions, or I wanna probe to
understand what's going on. That's low value stuff. No CEO or VP is gonna say, "Yeah, I'm dying to get my
brain picked right now." So, when we show up for that discovery, we need to first establish
that we are the authority. And so, how do we do that? Well, what we really want to do is use what I call the whiteboard pitch, and it's really simple. Now, I happen to have a
whiteboard in front of me. If you're doing this on
a GoToMeeting or a Zoom, you, chances are, have a way to write directly on the computer
or directly on the slide, so you can actually write it out. Or, if you're face to face with someone, maybe you have a little whiteboard, or just a piece of paper. Back of the envelope
is actually super cool. The less technically savvy it is, sometimes the more authentic it can seem. But what we want to do
is establish authority with the prospect at the very beginning. So, typically what I'm doing
is something like this. It's just a three-part matrix. So I might say something
like, "You know what, Don? "Some of the challenges that
we're seeing in your space "are the following." And so, we've got challenge one, challenge two and challenge three. And so, obviously you might
mention what those are. So in my space for sales people, it might be that they've
got low-cost competitors, just another vendor, not getting to great prospects. So those are our three challenges, and obviously those are something that you would obviously
just have planned out. This doesn't have to be a ton of stuff. And then, now what we want to do is understand what's the
root cause of each challenge. And so, we'd say, a lot of times what we see is that when sales people are perceived and they're struggling
against low-cost competitors, the real problem is value. And so they're not showing
and establishing enough value, just like this conversation
we're having here. And same with being perceived
as just another vendor. And by the way, this could also be because of the level of buyer
that they're going after. So let's say here, I'm spitballing this, but let's say it's actually selling too low. Most sales people are very
comfortable selling really low, someone with a position
of buyer or manager, but what about those directors
or VPs or C-level folks? And then lastly, they're not
getting to great prospects, and what we find is that
this is often a data issue. And so, now I'm starting to
lay out for the prospect, just in very quick language, some of the high-level challenges, the real root cause of those challenges, and then lastly is some kind
of piece of data or statistic that actually backs this up. And so, what we see here
is that 88% of prospects see sales people as low
level, or not-trusted advisor. They see sales people
as not-trusted advisor. And what we see here is selling too low. And again, this is according to our data, which we just recently did a study not more than a few months ago. We found that over 50% of sales
people won't sell C-suite. So we've got this comfort
zone issue that we see here. And then lastly, not
getting to great prospects, it's a result of not getting good data. And what we find from a lot of the stuff that we're doing in our
world, that most sales people, and that's again over 50%,
don't do any research. So now, we're painting
a compelling picture of exactly what's going on, and so we're establishing
ourselves as an authority. I have books, I have all of these things that establish me as an authority. What do you have that can just establish you early on
with some authority? And at the same time, at the end of this little whiteboard pitch, now I'm saying something like, "So, which of these
most ring true to you?" And now you're letting the prospects say, "Oh, well actually, "yeah, a lot of our people
are just selling way too low." Or, "Yeah, you know what, we're
getting beat down on cost." And so now I can engage
around those challenges, which goes right into the next
piece, which is number two, which is engaged around challenges. So that leads us right into two. We want to understand now our
prospect's core challenges. What are those issues that
are actually affecting them? So again, established authority, we've done a little whiteboard pitch, we've now ended it on which of
these ring most true to you, and now the prospect is saying, "Oh, well, this one." So say in this case, they're saying, "We're being beaten down
by low-cost competitors." And so now I want to understand exactly what's happening
around those challenges. And by the way, if you've
done this effectively, this little whiteboard pitch, it's gonna make everything
else so much easier. Because chances are, in
a lot of people's world, if you're going to deep
in the questions too early without having established some authority, it's likely that a prospect
is gonna say something like, "You know what, can you just
tell me about your product?" Or, "Can you just give me the price?" But instead, because we've
established this authority, almost like a doctor. Just recently I went with my wife. She had an issue right in her knee, and so the doctor actually
took out an actual plastic knee to show us what was happening in the knee. And he said, "Okay, so chances are "with what we're looking at here, "and we'll obviously do some more tests, "but chances are what happened was "one of these ligaments is injured, "and so as a result, it's
affecting the rest of the knee." Wow, right? That's super interesting. And so now, when the doctor
starts to ask questions, you're like yeah, cool. I'm totally in, totally bought in. So once we've got that authority, now we go right into the challenges, which is again, we want
to think like a doctor. I use the doctor analogy because I think doctors are so good at, if they're a good doctor, they're really good at
getting to the core issues. And so, that's where
we're now going to focus on really understanding
what that looks like. So, things like examples, tell
me more, little questions. But we wanna say something like, hey, can you give me an example of that challenge that you just mentioned? Or, tell me a little bit more about that. Or, I'm surprised you
just mentioned that issue about being a low-cost
competitor in your industry. Help me understand, big picture, what do you see really going on there? Little questions that can
really pull someone out. And you just have to be this doctor who's, through your experience,
just asking good questions. And they don't have to be crazy long or crazy sophisticated, but just really simple,
getting the entire picture. So this is where you're just detective and you're trying to
understand what's going on, engaging around those challenges
and just going deeply. And again, the key thing
here is that we are not jumping to solutions. We are not going to solutions
in this phase of the sale. I gotta get my marker back. We want to know that it's
all about the challenges, and not about you
focusing on your solution. You've gotta hold back on the solution. You may know that this is
gonna be such a great fit, but just hold back, slow it down and just focus on the challenges, And that leads us to number three, which is still within challenges, but again, really having a high level sales qualification conversation. We want to understand the cost. And again, you've established
yourself as an expert, so you really have earned this question. So you've talked about
some of the challenges, what's going on, and now
we want to understand what does the cost of these challenges really mean to the organization? What are all these challenges actually costing the organization? So again, I'll use the example of myself. Let's say I'm talking with a client about potential training work. And so, I've established
authority, blah blah blah. And so they say, yeah, our
people are really perceived as low cost, or they're getting beat down by low-cost competitors. So I say, tell me more,
tell me what's going on, give me an example that. They're like, oh just the other day we had this deal and it got thrown off because this low-cost
competitor came along and just kind of burned the deal, all of these things that are happening. And then I say, okay,
so help me understand, what would you say these
challenges that you've mentioned are really costing the organization? And this is where you're
turning someone's academic pain into something very real. 'Cause now they like. (sighing) And they're doing the
ROI calculation themself. You're not doing the ROI calculation, you're letting them doing it, by having had a really good
conversation up until now, and now you're letting them do that math. And so, I typically will find that a lot of my clients
will say something like, yeah, these challenges, these are costing us millions
and millions of dollars. And let's say they say millions
of millions of dollars. And I say, okay, I appreciate,
millions and millions. But if you were to really just try to ballpark a specific
number, what would you say it is? They're like, $10 million. And now you've gotten them to tell you that the cost of their challenges
is $10 million dollars. And by the way, they're
talking to you right now. So the value of your solution, if you were able solve those challenges, is worth, in my case,
$10 million in revenue. It's not 10 million in profit. You can dig more by the
way, if you're really ninja. You can say, okay, 10 million in revenue, so give me a sense of what that
would mean in actual profit. And so they're like, 10 million in profit, that's 2 million in straight profit. And so now, we've
understood from the cost, we have talked about
the dollars and cents. We understand exactly what's going on and really how that's
affecting the organization, and that's your ROI. This is your ROI right here. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Now that leads us to the
next piece, number four, which is understand their drive. So I'll write down here, this
is gonna get a little wonky. We want to understand their drive. We want to know what is
actually driving the prospect to be focused on this particular concern. What's in it for them? Why does this matter to
them, what's driving them? Or, how are these challenges
driving them in a certain way? So we wanna really understand
what's in it for you, and of course we wouldn't say it that way. But we might just say something like, okay, so I appreciate the
challenges you've mentioned, and you said that it's costing somewhere in the range of $10 million, which I appreciate you
sharing that number. So how is this affecting you personally? Let's say the head of sales. "Well, I'm responsible for that number, "and if we don't solve that
issue, I could be out of a job." And so now you've gotten, because of just a really thorough and
thoughtful conversation, you've gotten the person to say
something along the lines of this matters and here's why. So this is how you're avoiding so many objections down the road that might be about price, or oh, this isn't a priority right now, because they've just told me
that they're depends on it. So if later, the VP says oh, we're actually gonna
kick this out into Q3. I'm like, hey, George, you just mentioned that this is affecting your job. Help me understand what's
going on here. I'm confused. We want to understand that drive, what's really pushing them? Like one of my friends always says, "What's the fire under their ass?" It's like you wanna light that lighter and you wanna know how
is this affecting them? Understand their drive. And that leads us to the
last one, number five. Only present to their challenges. So we'll put it here. Present to challenges, and that's five. I hope you can see that.
Yeah, you should see it. We want to be sure that you are presenting only to the challenges
that they mentioned. This is one of the biggest
mistakes that people make in a demo or in a presentation, is that they've done let's say a pretty thorough qualification or a discovery, and then they get to the presentation and they start presenting
all of this other stuff that's outside of the challenges that the buyer said in
the qualification stage. We only want to present
what they care about. So for me, some of my work, let's say I'm talking to this prospect and they're focused so
much on how they're getting beat down by low-cost competitors and everyone's just
beating them down on price. I'm not gonna talk about,
in my presentation, all of the amazing tools
for setting new meetings. I'm not gonna be focused on prospect, I'm gonna be focused
specifically on the solution to the challenges that they mentioned. Now, those might be there. So if you offer, let's
say a software service, and you have a ton of cool features, and there's all these
different benefits involved with all of those cool features, those can be there and it's
okay if they're in the proposal, ideally, they're not in a big part, but you want to be focusing
on, in the presentation, what they actually care about. So it's literally like, hey, you mentioned this challenge, and so here's how what we're going to do is going to solve that. And so you're only presenting to what they care most about. That way, when they see that presentation, it just clicks, it just makes sense. That way, they're so much
less likely to push back, they're so much less likely to
have all of these objections. Because they've already said, "Okay, I told this person
exactly what the challenges are, "they completely
understood what they were, "and now they're
presenting a solution to me "that makes complete sense." So only present to those challenges. So there are the five keys
to create massive value during sales qualification. And if you enjoyed this
video, then I have an awesome free training on the data-driven approach to help you crush your sales goals. Just click right here to
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