Qualifying Your Prospects?

At a recent speech a member of my audience wanted to know if her salespeople should qualify the prospect before going on an appointment.

In theory, qualifying a prospect is a great idea. The last thing you want to do is waste your time seeing people who will never be able to buy from you. However, what goes on in the real world, far too often has nothing to do with theory.

As almost any sales manager or sales executive will tell you, in the real world the biggest problem with salespeople is: they don’t see enough people. If that’s the case, what the heck do they need to qualify for?

In way too many instances, salespeople use qualifying questions to talk themselves out of appointments. It gives them an excuse to not have to sell. It’s almost as if they reject the prospect before the prospect rejects them.

My feeling has always been: If you’re one of those people who doesn’t have enough appointments; JUST GO! You’re better off being in front of a prospect than sitting in your office doing nothing. Besides, let’s say you get there and the prospect says, “I’m not the person you should be seeing.” What’s the next question out of your mouth? “Who is?” Then after getting the right name, you ask, “Would you mind calling that person for me?” If they say “No,” just say, “Then would you mind if I called and used your name?” They’ll probably say, “Yes,” because you just let them off the hook.

When you are so busy and your appointment book is loaded, then start qualifying. Before you do however, formulate a client profile that spells out very clearly exactly the kind of clients and prospects you’re looking for. This helps not only you, but makes it easy for other people to send hot prospects your way.

But, if you’re not that busy, JUST GO! You never know where your next big client is going to come from.