Too often qualification is considered a linear step in the sales (buyer) process. A step that the sales and marketing team take when deciding whether to accept or qualify a lead.
In reality, qualification should be a constant thread with every step the sales person takes on an account, from the first time you speak with a stakeholder within the account, all the way through to close.
Why is qualification important?
For many years, sellers have been given the opportunity to engage a companies valuable resources to work on ‘opportunities’ and these resources are mobilised based on outdated qualification criteria. Usually qualifying budget, whether there’s a need or pain to solve, if the person your talking with has the authority to mobilise a purchase decision and a timeline has been agreed.
The problem is, most companies haven’t agreed these things therefore your sales team is looking for something that doesn’t exist. And mobilising a team to work on opportunities that don’t exist gets expensive - I did some analysis several years ago that found the cost of working an average deal (cost of sale) was c£20,000, when you take marketing expenses and the teams time into account, including sales, pre-sales, consulting team, and leadership.
The complex B2B sale
Not every company is the same, it depends on how much effort you want to put into winning new and expansion business - however, as our industry becomes overcrowded and the competition raises their game, your table stakes must include a value based, team approach to selling and this requires enablement and valuable resources. It also requires experienced sales people and a strong coaching mentality to optimise performance.
For now, let’s bring this back to qualification:
- Typically, only 5% of brands are in market, meaning they have budget, need and a timeline defined already.
- 20-30% are considering solving a particular problem, though haven’t quite decided what they need - this is a golden opportunity, if you have a strong value proposition and can clearly define an evaluation path, you can steer the opportunity in your direction.
- 70-80% of your territory has no intention of buying what you are selling. Again, this is a golden opportunity, however, it requires a particularly type of approach, one that is geared towards delivering insight and teaching your stakeholder/s about a different perspective. It also requires being confident of the differentiating commercial value or impact your solution delivers to your customers - without this depth of understanding, you will fail to teach.
Qualification is a critical component of the entire sales (buyer) process.
To keep things simple, I’m framing three phases of a deal and outlining the type of qualification you should expect to be doing based on targeting the area of your territory with the most opportunity, the companies not in market. Yes, I know it sounds strange, but tackle this successfully and this is where your exponential future growth will come from.
Three simple phases of any deal
- Prospecting
- Deal Management
- Closing
Prospecting
So your working hard to build relationships with stakeholders in your target market, you’re following a tried and tested Social Selling Methodology, we train and coach sales teams on Social Selling, see this article of mine, ‘Why can’t we generate enough pipeline: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/martech-growth-why-cant-we-generate-enough-pipeline-alex-abbott …so you’ve successfully opened the door so what next, well, you need to use insight to establish an area you can help with, and use this to build credibility and begin teaching your prospect a new perspective.
But first;
- has your insight successfully uncovered a problem your buyer didn’t know existed.
- have you successfully led ‘them’ to uncovering the problem through a series of carefully constructed questions or have you jumped the gun and presented it to them.
- once the problem is acknowledged by your buyer have you been able to uncover the commercial value to them for solving the problem and have you clearly identified the opportunity cost, the cost of doing nothing about it today.
The key is to uncover the type of individual your buyer is. You need to be confident they have enough influence within the organisation to drive change or, as a minimum, are coachable so that you can help them navigate the complexities of purchasing the solution to the problem you are solving.
How do you know your buyer is the right type of person?
- their willingness to explore a range of solutions
- their interest in understanding the commercial value and cost of doing nothing
- their willingness to discuss additional stakeholders and their role in supporting
All need to be part of your carefully thought through journey of qualifying an individual within an account and judging whether this is going to be a good use of your time.
And this is unlikely to happen in your first meeting.
Other indicators to look for are;
- Do they care more about revenue growth than cutting cost
- Are they willing to put their head above the parapet for success
- What experience do they have of building consensus with senior stakeholders
- How well connected to the Board or Exec team are they
This first phase of a deal is the most critical. The good sales person recognises this and spends the time and focus needed to establish trust and qualify before moving the conversation forward. They are able to manage the negative pressure coming from leadership desperate to bolster the forecast and use every interaction to qualify exactly where things are at what step must be taken to strengthen your position and move forward.
I recall a deal several years ago, I was running an opportunity as one rep was leaving the territory and a new one coming in. I was fairly certain I had my buyer qualified, he was influential enough to drive change, we knew of each other, and he’d introduce some key members of his team to the discussion, which was a good sign, however the team did not accept they were not already ‘customer centric’ with their marketing practices. They were open to exploring alternative solutions however they felt that the effort they were putting in to segment the database their customer data and with the lifecycle programs they were running, they were in fact already ‘customer-centric’ in their approach.
I used commercial insight to pin point a specific problem and the cost to their business not solving it, and shared how a different way of working would increase process efficiency, allow for easier testing and improve customer engagement. Essentially, their existing team of 10 could do more with what they had. Which they liked the thought of, however didn’t believe me.
There was a risk challenging their thinking, their process, what they worked so hard to sustain on a daily basis, and they were a young team working with one of the largest e-commerce fashion retailers in the world, which carried a flare of arrogance. They knew best! And I knew that if I didn’t successfully challenge the way they were thinking and show them an alternative and far easier way of working, I would not win the deal.
So at this early stage we agreed to disagree which created some healthy tension between us, and with the support of the Head of eCommerce we created a series of meetings that addressed a number of topics: ease of use, process efficiencies, segmentation, integration etc…
This took time but eventually the team accepted a better world existed by working with us.
The challenges continued throughout this particular deal however the main takeaway here is that the initial qualification took time, and whilst we did not agree that we were the solution for them early on, they were open to learning more, taking the next step with us, after we established an area they were not adverse to be challenged on. No standard qualification criteria would have qualified this deal. No budget, no timeline and the need, well, we were about to establish this - with more effort.
This deal resulted in one of the most fierce negotiations I’ve experienced, with procurement threatening to work with our biggest competitor several times - all we had to do was confirm there was a difference in capability, and out a value on it to maintain a premium and in turn a value difference.
After rapport is built you must use insight to uncover a business problem your buyer didn’t know existed and subtly align it to potential solutions, you know you can bring to the table in the future.
What’s next?
In my next article I’m going to explore the importance of defining the buying criteria and obtaining commitment before allowing yourself to move to the next phase of a deal.
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