Qualifying
Decide which leads your solution is a good fit for
Having generated a lead your next step is to qualify whether your solution is actually a good fit for your customer’s needs.
If you take a poorly fitting lead into your pipeline you risk frustrating the customer, ending up without a sale, and more importantly, wasting time that you could have spent prospecting for customers that your solution is a good fit for.
But it is hard.
If your pipeline isn’t as full as you want it to be it can be easy to qualify in every lead.
The Qualification Bullseye
Your objective is to get your customer into the yellow or the orange as quickly as possible.
Do not fall into the trap that qualifying in a poor lead is more valuable than qualifying out.
Qualification questions
I love using this SPIN format for questions - as it naturally leads your thinking through the customer’s thought process
Situation
“What is the current state?”
Problem
“What is wrong with the current state?”
Implication
“How is that affecting your business?”
Need/Payoff
“What would it mean for the business if we fixed that?”
Situation
What is your current process?
Who manages the current process?
Who are the main people involved in the process?
How do you handle this situation today?
What does it cost you?
When is it up for renewal?
When are you opening the new office?
Problem
Where does the process break down?
Which steps in the process take the longest?
What causes errors to happen?
Who wastes the most time in this process?
What percentage of processes have errors?
What are the main risks in the process?
How do you report on this process?
How long does it take to get from one end of the process to the other?
How do you think this process will change in the future?
What are the most common ways that people try to go around or break the process?
How does this process delay other processes?
Implication
What do your customers think about this process?
What do your employees think about the process?
What do your senior executives think about the process?
How are employees going around the process?
How easy do you think it is to do business with your company?
What happens when the process breaks or has errors?
What is the overhead in keeping this process running?
How does the process’ complexity affect onboarding of new employees?
What do customers do when the process takes too long?
What are employees not doing because of this process?
How do delays in this process affect the company’s quarterly or annual results?
Need/Payoff
What would customers do differently if this problem was solved?
What would your employees be able to do if they had more time available?
What could the company do if this process was 50% shorter?
How would the company invest differently if churn was 20% lower?
What would it mean if each customer spent 30% more at renewal?
How would you align the team differently if 25% of customers in this process were zero-touch?
Who would benefit most from improving this process?
I like to use the qualification canvas to lay out the customer’s requirements and decide whether to qualify in or out.
If the customer has important requirements that your solution does not support - point them in the direction of a solution that will help them and move on.
How can I help you?
A 60 minute pre-recorded working session in which I will guide you through qualifying one or more of your own opportunities.
A 60 minute pre-recorded working session in which I will guide you through creating a list of your own discovery questions to help you qualify your opportunities.
Seven free canvases to print out and aid your research, qualification, negotiation and forecasting.