If your marketing efforts are bringing in 250 leads a day, what do you do with those leads? Do you need to recruit new sales people to handle the load? Shweta Jhajharia of The London Coaching Group believes that this would be a waste of time and money, and says that the goal of a sales machine is to be a pre-qualifying process, which should ensure that before the sales team picks up the phone, the person on the other end of the line is someone who is already appropriate for buying what you are selling.
Shweta suggests a set of minimum qualifying conditions that you should have at the beginning of your sales process:
1) They understand the value, and will pay for it
We have all been there – a prospect clearly has the exact problem that you solve. They want your product. They know they need it. But they don’t want to pay for it.
There will always be people in the world for whom it will always be ‘too expensive’ no matter how much they need and want a product/service.
Create a 'tripwire' priced product. That is, price something nominally – maybe shipping costs for your lead magnet – and find out if they are willing to pay a ridiculously small amount for something of real value, and move them up the loyalty ladder. If they are not then that’s a good indicator that they are going to be very tough to convince to pay the actual amount that it is worth.
2) They would be served first in your A&E
In the Accident & Emergency room in a hospital, they do not address people on a first-come first-served basis – they triage people and treat those who need it the most first.
Triage your prospects. Who amongst them has the worst problem that you can solve? That person is the one who is most likely to convert – because they need your help the most!
Request prospects (in an automated way) to submit further information about their request for your solution so you can better identify their level of need – and that they actually have the problem you are solving!
3) They have the permission to make decisions
Before you use up any of your time, or your sales team’s time, you should always make sure that the decision could be made in that meeting itself (even if it won’t necessarily be made then).
This is usually incorporated into #2 above – have them answer the question “Who needs to be present to make the decisions in your business?”
Only book an appointment when all the decision makers can be present.
4) They cannot find your solution anywhere else
A critical part of a successful business is the USP – a unique selling proposition, something about your business that makes you unique to this prospect if they are going to buy into your product/service.
Something about what you do must appeal – that is your USP. If you are concerned, then conduct some market research – see what your competitors are doing and identify what is different about your own business.
5) You must have access to them, and they must have access to you
In order for a sales process to happen at all, there must be communication between you and the prospect. Even if they fit every other category, if the person is not able to communicate with you, how do you expect to be able to convert them?
If you have a lead and you do not have their contact details, then no matter what other information you have about them, the lead is junk.
Whenever you collect leads, you must ask for contact details. Exactly which contact details depends on your sales process. You want to ask for as few details as possible, but enough that you can continue your sales process effectively.
These five features form the bedrock of your qualification process. Once you assess your sales pipeline and refine your qualification process, you are likely to find that your conversions will start clocking up faster, and your costs per conversions will drop with a streamlined system that your sales team will love!
