Stop Wasting Your Time: Qualify Prospects Using This Criterion

Here’s a situation every VAR salesperson should be familiar with: You’ve identified a lead, nurtured the contact, qualified the opportunity and prepared a proposal you think is fair for both your business and the customer’s. Then, seemingly out of the blue, you get that dreaded call or email. You know, the one in which the prospect reveals they can’t afford to make a change after all.

If you’ve experienced that scenario one too many times, don’t fret—we’ve all been there before.

Unfortunately, those types of situations represent one of the biggest time-wasters in sales. You’ve sunk a significant amount of time into meeting with several staff members to fully understand the prospect’s business situation and technical requirements. You’ve engaged technical resources and asked them to share their vision for the ideal solution. And, together, you’ve toiled over the perfect proposal.

Then, just when you’re ready to deliver the magic words to close the deal, the prospect slams the door in your face. You feel led on. Misunderstood. Betrayed. What went wrong?

Typically, the problem lies within the prospect’s organization. Maybe they recognize they’ve got an issue that needs to be addressed. They might even like your solution and see the clear value in the proposal you delivered. But at the last minute, they just can’t move themselves past status quo.

Why does this happen? Oftentimes, the breakdown stems from a sales rep’s failure to truly qualify what the executives within the organization were willing to spend.

Over the years, selling has evolved. The tried-and-true qualification criteria that were once ingrained in salespeople—decision-maker, need, timeframe and budget—have been softened. So, rather than having discussions about budget or willingness to spend, salespeople are having conversations that focus more on value.

In some cases, it works out and the prospect signs on the dotted line. But in most instances, that approach doesn’t generate the intended action. Instead, when they do finally see a price, prospects experience sticker shock and forget all about that value you emphasized. And when sticker shock happens, most deals are as good as dead.

It’s time to return to the days of using “willingness to spend” as the qualification criterion.

Now, this approach should not be confused with qualifying budget, because savvy salespeople should know that if you’re calling high enough into the organization, budget is mostly irrelevant. Willingness to spend, however, is incredibly important.

Wouldn’t it be better to qualify a prospect’s willingness to spend before you waste your valuable time performing multiple needs assessments and creating a proposal? After all, it’s generally better to shock prospects earlier in the sales process with a high estimate than to wait until the later stages of the sales process. No, you won’t be able to quote an exact price, but you should certainly know if it’s going to cost $15,000 to $20,000 vs. $60,000 to $75,000.

So, give your prospects time to warm up to what their vision might cost in real dollars.

That way, they’ll have plenty of time to adjust to it. Worst case, prospects will make it clear they don’t want to spend that much money and you’ll move on without investing too much time. Best case, prospects will adapt their thinking and you’ll win the sale with fewer objections. Either way, it’s a win-win.

Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, prospect attraction expert, author of the award winning books “The Sales Magnet” and “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment.