Stop Wasting Time on Prospects Who Won’t Buy

Learn how to qualify prospects beyond just money, authority and need so you can focus your time and energy on opportunities you can win.

Do you have blind faith that, if you can somehow convince a prospect to engage in a sales cycle, you will eventually make a sale? If you do, watch out! This belief can waste your time, effort, and company resources.

How many of the opportunities in your pipeline have been stalled at the same step in the sales cycle for weeks or months? In how many opportunities have you and your company invested enormous amounts of time, energy and resources (conducting product demonstrations, writing lengthy proposals, providing product evaluations, etc.), only to have the prospect decide they don’t want to buy, or prove incapable of funding the purchase? Even when you make sales, how many turn out to be nightmare customers who are always dissatisfied and consume huge amounts of post-sale resources? Unfortunately, simply investing your time and resources does not necessarily produce the results you want.

All prospects are not created equal
As a sales professional, you need to help your prospects explore whether their business problems are substantial enough to justify investing time in a sales cycle. However, you also need to figure out whether each prospect is worthy of your time and resources. If a prospect is not a good fit, gracefully exit from the opportunity.

How can you determine whether you have a worthy prospect? Many sales skills training courses teach an acronym, M-A-N, that stands for Money, Authority, and Need. The basic idea is to determine whether:

The prospect is willing to commit enough budget dollars (Money) to pay for the product or service; The key decision-makers and influencers (Authority) have been identified; and The prospect’s pain (Need) is severe enough to justify investing in a solution.

Unfortunately, even when you do a good job of M-A-N qualification, you can still be blindsided by issues that delay sales cycles or destroy opportunities outright.

For example, some prospects may prove incapable of securing financing. They may have a budget, but they are not credit worthy, so they can’t fund the budget. In other situations, decision-makers may need to have specific information provided in a specific format before they can authorize a buying decision.

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Sometimes you may invest considerable time and effort in troubleshooting complex problems and designing solutions, only to be informed that the prospect must take the proposed solution out to bid. This can lead to your losing the opportunity to a low bidder or the profitability of the opportunity being cut.

To avoid these situations, add additional questions to your M-A-N qualification process. The acronym that I have assigned to this revised process is M-A-I-N BP, which stands for Money, Authority, Information, Need, and Buying Process. Here are some sample M-A-I-N BP questions::

Money

How will your prospect pay for the product or service? Has a budget been established? Are they creditworthy?

Authority

Who in the prospect’s organization needs to approve an acquisition of this nature?

Information

What information do the decision-makers require before they can make a decision? What format does this information need to be in?

Need

What are the prospect’s business problems? How compelling are they? In other words, can you quantify or associate dollars, percentages, and time frames with the pain the prospect is feeling? Are these quantified business impacts substantial enough to warrant investment by the prospect’s organization (and your company) in identifying and fixing the problems?

Buying Process

What is the prospect’s buying process? What impact might this process have on the profitability of the transaction? What competitive advantage will you receive if you invest your time and resources in designing a solution that goes out to bid?

If you decide to add M-A-I-N BP qualification to your sales opportunity qualification process, here are some final thoughts to keep in mind.

If you don’t know the answers to all of the M-A-I-N BP questions, it is highly likely you are wasting your time and resources.

Opportunity qualification is not a one-time event. As an opportunity advances through the sales cycle, you should frequently ask whether any of the answers to the qualification questions have changed. If an answer has changed, it could affect the length of the sales cycle and even destroy the viability of the opportunity. At minimum, an answer change will probably require a change in focus and/or reprioritizing your planned activities.

Never feel bad about disqualifying a particular opportunity because the amount of opportunity in most sales territories is virtually unlimited. If you carefully qualify and re-qualify each opportunity, and only invest time and resources in qualified ones, you will maximize your return on your investment.

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of “How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance” and “How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling.” His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and FREE sales and sales management tips, visit www.8020SalesPerformance.com.

Here’s a simple negotiation technique to help you give up less and get more of what you want.

When I look around my basement, I realize maybe I’m hanging on to too much stuff. On the positive side, when I trade for goods and services, I’m also pretty good at hanging on to my stuff, namely my profit when I’m the seller, and my money when I’m the buyer. So, how good are you at hanging on to what you have? Here’s a simple technique that can make you much better at this aspect of negotiating.

Bad negotiating exemplified
Let’s imagine for a moment you’re a seller engaged in a dialog with a potential buyer:

Buyer: “You’re higher than your competition. What can you do when you sharpen your pencil?”

Seller: “I am authorized to match our competition’s price.”

Buyer: “Great! Unfortunately, I see your standard shipping is two weeks, and I need it on Tuesday. Can you do that?”

Seller: “I can expedite shipping for you. You can have it by Tuesday if you order now.”

Buyer: “Nice! But I won’t be able to use it without the accessories kit. Will you include it at no charge if I buy?”

Seller: “Sure, I’ll do that just for you, because you’re special.”

Let’s stop our example there, although the dialog, and the concessions, probably didn’t stop there. Notice that at no time did the buyer commit to the purchase, despite the fact that the seller discounted away profit and increased costs by expediting shipping and giving away accessories. The buyer is on a roll; why wouldn’t he keep asking for more concessions?

He will because he is grinding, a negotiating technique that enables buyers to continue to sweeten the deal until they take pity on the seller and stop, or the seller makes them stop.

A fair turn
Stopping a grinder is easy: simply replace concessions with trades. Whenever you are asked to give something up, prepare to trade for something of perceived value.

This method works even when no money is trading hands. Perhaps just your time is involved. For instance, maybe your boss wants you to take on “just one more thing.” Instead of automatically saying yes, ask what can come off your current projects list to make room for the new one. Or, say you’ve been scheduled for one more meeting. Ask which deadline can be pushed back to accommodate the new unplanned need for your time. Similarly, when your buyer asks for a price concession, ask for… well, what can you trade?

Bring in your trade-offs
When negotiating, it pays to be prepared. So, anticipate the potential concession requests you may hear from your buyers. Prepare a list of possible trade-offs, which might include:

Reduced feature set Slower (less expensive) shipping Accepting delivery (and making payment) sooner Faster payment terms Cash instead of credit	Adding a bonus Increasing the order size Testimonial letter Referral to a new prospect Booking the order now

Preparation is key. When your buyer asks for a discount, you had better have something ready to trade. When your boss asks for “just one more thing,” it will help to have that list of current projects ready so you can agree on which one to cross off or postpone. When you’re prepared, your dialog can sound like this:

Buyer: “You’re higher than your competition. What can you do when you sharpen your pencil?”

Seller: “I’d be happy to discuss reducing the price. Which features of my offer would you like me to delete so that I can deliver only what my competition is quoting?”

Buyer: “Well, we need everything you’re quoting but, unfortunately, I see your standard shipping is two weeks, and I need it on Tuesday. Can you do that?”

Seller: “I can give you expedited shipping to hit your Tuesday deadline for free, if we can increase your order quantities by 10% to hit our free shipping minimum.”

Buyer: “Well, OK, but I won’t be able to use any of it without the accessories kit. Will you include it at no charge if I buy?”

Seller: “I’d love to do that to get a great new customer like you. Tell you what: if you buy now and agree to give me a glowing testimonial letter when you decide you’re thrilled with us, I’ll get the accessories kit included for you. Have we got a deal?”

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Negotiating the give and take
When you make trades instead of concessions, you can walk away from both formal and impromptu negotiations with more of what you want. Notice that you never have to say “no”; you simply have to be prepared to say, “I’ll give you what you want if I can have what I want.” Prepare, and become a trader that stops the grinding in day-to-day negotiations. You’ll find you’ll have more of what you want, including more deals that are more profitable.

Paul Johnson the Trouble Breaker works with organizations to convert trouble into double and triple digit performance breakthroughs. Discover breakthrough concepts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Visit http://ConsultativeSelling.com for more insights about Consultative Selling.