The very nature of selling dictates that a high percentage of
people you consider prospects will say "no" to whatever you
are offering. For example, it's not at all unusual for 99% of
the people who receive a direct mail piece to throw it in the
trash.
For that reason, alone, selling can drain off enormous amounts
of time and other vital resources. It can sap your enthusiasm.
It can also create morale problems and stress among your staff
and play havoc with your other priorities.
At best, you'll have to deal with many people who will never
buy from you. So, effective professionals learn to quickly
weed out the time-wasters and focus on the legitimate
prospective clients. It's called qualifying prospects.
The most effective way to go about it is to set up criteria to
look for in prospects. You ask certain qualifying questions to
assess immediately how good the chances are for the prospect
buying your expertise.
One good approach to qualifying prospects is to frame your
questions around the four most common reasons people don't
buy.
The first reason is no confidence. Let's say, for instance, you
are a stockbroker and you are talking to a person who keeps his
or her money buried in a jar or under a mattress. You might
invest many hours in trying to convince that person he or she
could safely put money in the stock market. And, you might,
on rare occasions, succeed. But it's far more productive to
spend the time it would take to educate such a person on
someone who already has some confidence in your area of
expertise. If you find you are dealing with a "no confidence"
prospect, immediately assess your chances of quickly building
enough confidence to move the person to action. If the
possibilities are slim, move on to a new prospect.
The second big reason people don't buy is no money. In one
area of my business, for instance, I find no money to be the
most common reason people don't buy. So, I will usually ask
very early in a conversation, "Do you have funds budgeted to
undertake such a project?" If they say "no," I quickly move on
to talk to others. Even if they say "yes," I ask more direct
questions to see if they're trying to impress me or if they
really do have the resources.
It might sound crass to some professionals, but the fact is that
we have to get paid to stay in business, and the more time we
spend with people who have no money the more we have to
charge our paying clients to make up the difference.
Interestingly, I've found that most people are more
embarrassed by the money issue if it comes up at the end of an
interview than if it's dealt with forthrightly out front. So,
find out quickly if people have enough money to do business.
If
not, move on to find prospects who do.
The third most common reason people don't buy is no need. If
they have no legitimate need for your products, it is a waste of
your time and theirs to try to talk them into buying your
services. If they have a need, but do not perceive that need,
you're back to the challenge of educating them. So it might
help to rate their perception of need on a scale of 1 to 10.
If
their need perception is about a 7 or 8, it might be worthwhile
to invest a little time in educating them. But if it's about
a 1
or 2, forget it and move on to find prospective clients who are
higher on that scale.
And the final most common reason people don't buy is that
they are in no hurry. Maybe they want to shop around a little
more, or they're not sure they want to go ahead with whatever
you are proposing, or they might have to ask someone else for
permission to act. In some professions, it takes time for big
deals to come together. But as a rule, I've found that the
longer it takes a prospective client to make up his or her mind,
the lower the chances of selling them anything.
One stalling tactic many professionals encounter is that
prospects will say "Submit a bid or proposal along with
everybody else, and we'll pick the one we want." That may be
necessary in a few professions. But, for me, it's like being
paraded before an auction block. It certainly doesn't set the
tone for a good professional relationship.
The point of all this is that we need to be spending our time
either selling legitimate prospective clients or executing our
expertise for people who are paying us. So the quicker we
separate the prospects who have no confidence, no money, no
need, or are in no hurry from the good prospects, the more
successful we will be at selling.
Of course, you have to be tactful about it, and you have to be
careful that you don't make false assumptions based on shallow
contact. But it is very professional to tactfully disengage
yourself from people who would only waste your valuable time.
Remember, professional salespeople -- and selling professionals -
- generate a lot of leads, then they carefully qualify those
leads to make sure they talk to the right prospective clients.
Nido Qubein
Member: Speakers Roundtable
Web site: http://www.speakersroundtable.com
Email: office@SpeakersRoundtable.com