Week 8: QUALIFYING A PROSPECT Orientation We are nearing the final quarter! It’s almost time to celebrate 12 weeks of VSB.

This week’s subject is about qualifying a prospect. Like many other areas in life, you have to practice hard to make it look

easy. When it comes to qualifying a prospect, it’s about asking a series of questions and then listening actively to what

the answers are. That eventually leads you to the answer to the question: Is this person qualified to work with you?

Qualifying is Not Judging Your goal as an entrepreneur is to identify and differentiate those people who can and will do business with you from

those who will not. It is certainly not about judging people. It’s about valuing your time and being disciplined with it,

working toward strategic objectives.

Important: This does not mean the person is not worthy of any time and attention. If your objective is to get business,

then you are wasting your time with prospects who will not do business with you. Business is not about being cold, hard,

and uncaring. It is about growing your business.

Note: Pro-bono work is a great time to have a value-adding conversation with people who are not qualified to do

business with you. How much of that you do is up to you, but that is not our focus here.

How to Qualify a Prospect

The “Combination Lock” Metaphor Qualifying a prospect is like opening up a combination lock. In order for the lock to open, you must have all the numbers

of the combination right. When you have only some of the numbers right, the lock does not open.

Unlocking the qualified prospect requires getting four numbers right:

1. Pain

The prospect must have a desire/need/problem.

When there is no difference between their present state and desired state, why would they buy?

a. All purchase decisions are based upon emotion.

b. Questions are intended to find that emotion: Find, fluoresce, and exacerbate it.

c. Get in touch. This is not manipulation. Uncovering it gets people to take action.

We are not trying to create emotion; we are trying to uncover it in order to help them. Pain motivates

action. The action they take when buying from us is to help them address their desire/need/problem.

2. Capability

The prospect must have the budget/money/time/resources.

If the prospect has the pain, but doesn’t have the money, they can’t do business with you. You are simply

wasting your time, talking about their problem.

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3. Authority

The prospect must have the ability to make purchasing decisions.

If the prospect has money, but no authority to spend it, they don’t have full authority and you haven’t solved

anything.

For personal decisions, a spouse/partner may be jointly responsible.

In a business relationship, do they have the authority to write the check?

Recognize the owner may not have the authority. Just because you’re speaking to the owner doesn’t mean she

has carte blanche to write any check she wants. In the qualifying process, you are trying to find out if this is the

ultimate decision maker, and if not, who is?

Note: Not having authority does not immediately disqualify a prospect; it simply means you have to work

with/beyond the prospect to gain approval from someone with authority to make the purchasing decision.

4. Commitment

The prospect must have the commitment to take action and create change.

We see evidence everywhere of the “know-do gap”: the between what we know and what we do.

a. You can have all the needs and desires, but if you are not going to take action, it doesn’t matter.

“Working with you would be great for my business,” but they don’t do it.

b. What are you trying to do? Qualify their commitment: assess their predisposition for taking action, their

affinity for procrastination or status quo.

How to Uncover the Prospect’s Qualification Ask questions in a conversational tone.

1. Uncover Pain

Use the S.P.I.N. selling process (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need). It is about uncovering their pain and

helping the client connect viscerally, emotionally, and deeply with that pain because all purchase decisions are

driven by emotion. Here are some typical SPIN questions you may choose to ask the prospect:

What is your current status?

Where are you today?

What’s Point A?

Where do you want to be?

What’s your current state?

What is your desired state?

What do you want the company to look like in three years?

What is going to prevent you from getting there?

What have you done in the past?

If I had talked to you five years ago and asked you where you wanted your company to be five years

from then (which happens to be now) would you have described, five years ago, the current state of

your company? Meaning: Are you on a path that you had planned?

Objective: Get the prospect to express to you what their pain is. Do not try to make the pain worse. Get the

prospect connected with the emotion, with the pain. If they don’t feel the pain they won’t do business with you.

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2. Uncover Capability

How are you going to fund this?

How have you funded previous initiatives?

What has been your approach to personal and professional development in the past?

Objective: It’s all about the prospect’s money, budget, and approach to funding a particular initiative. The

prospect is often wondering, “Do I have to paying everything up front? Or can I pay over a period of time (make

installments)?”

3. Uncover Authority

Is the prospect the decision maker?

You could ask: “Are you the decision maker? If not, who is, so I can go talk to them?” However, that could be

perceived as rude and insulting to the person. Don’t ask it that way.

Instead, you could ask:

Help me understand what your budgeting processing looks like?

What is your budget program?

Do you budget throughout the year?

Do you have a budget for 2014?

Here we are near the middle of the year? How does it work? When do you create the budget for 2015?

When is your fiscal year? Where are we in the budget year?

Well, this sounds exciting and I’m really looking forward to working with you. Whose approval do we

need?

What kind of permission do we need to get to do this?

Who might object to this?

Whose authority might do we need to get?

How do we get permission to move forward?

Note: Use the first person plural pronoun “we”: not, “Whose approval do you need?” but, “Whose approval do

we need?”

Objective: Get the prospect to express more information about the budgeting process and start to align the

prospect with you (“us” and “we”). It’s planting a seed: sometime it’s not received consciously by the prospect,

but received subconsciously, so they start to see it as an “us” thing.

This is all about qualifying and deciding if the prospect has the authority to spend the money.

4. Uncover Commitment

The prospect is now full of momentum about who you are, what the program is all about, their pain and desired

future state, and now it comes down to the commitment.

“Timeline” questions:

What’s your time line?

What’s the next step?

When would you like to proceed?

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“Consequences of not committing” questions:

What happens if you do nothing?

Say you don’t take any action?

Who dies?

What horrible thing happens?

When you’ve had a great qualifying conversation with your prospect, they will realize all the things that were

talked about won’t happen if they take no action or do nothing differently.

How do you feel about the status quo?

What is your track record on making a decision to do something and then not following through on the

commitment?

To challenge or question a person’s integrity, leadership, and commitment in a non-threatening way, ask,

Are you for real or not? I’m ready; are you?

Take Action It’s week eight! Have you established a strong relationship with your Accountability Partner (AP)? If not, do 15 pushups!

The best way to establish a great accountability partner relationship is to be a great accountability partner.

The fundamental principle of Virtual Sales Bootcamp is: “Practice hard in

order to make it look easy!” With that in mind, this week’s exercise is to do

some role playing with your Accountability Partner(s) (see following

instructions). Have fun with this, but take it seriously. As Joe Frazier said,

"You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it

may not go the way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes. That's

where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the

morning, well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights."

This is your roadwork: don’t cheat on it now or you’ll be found out in front of

the prospect.

MOVE OUT!

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Action Plan This week, you’ll work with your Accountability Partner(s) to practice role-playing qualifying your prospects.

1. Watch the video with the worksheet.

2. Reflect on the work you did last week regarding your client avatars and how you will continue to develop and

utilize them in the weeks ahead.

3. Hold (at least) two meetings with your Accountability Partner(s) to set your intention at the start of the week

and to check in and report how you’ve done at the end of the week.

4. Schedule time with your Accountability Partner(s) to perform the role playing exercises. Be fully present in the

exercise and observe both yourself and your partner.

5. To really improve, continue to perform these exercises on a regular basis. You can also create new scenarios to

practice based on what you discover from real experiences with clients.

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Exercise: Role-PlayingWith your AP, choose roles: one is the seller and one the prospect. As the prospect, adopt one of these personas

(without telling your partner in advance). Use your own creativity and acting ability.

Scenario #1: Qualified The prospect is qualified; you do meet all of the criteria; you have the P. C. A. and C.

Scenario #2: Not Qualified – has a Want, but no Need (not enough Pain) This prospect is truly not qualified because he or she is not going to follow through with something where they are not

experiencing enough pain.

Scenario #3: Prospect has a Need, but no Authority. As the prospect, you can’t spend the money: it’s the seller’s job to uncover that. You want to do business, and like

talking to the seller, but really have no budget authority.

Whose approval do we need? Make up a name and get a plan to talk to whoever this fictitious person that you need to

speak with together, if that‘s the way you go. You connected emotionally with what the person/seller has connected you

with, but:

Procrastination signs:

Fear of moving forward

Laissez-faire attitude

Status-quo preference

Not predisposed to taking action

Typical Responses:

I’ve not done this before.

Nothing terrible has happened, maybe I can wait.

Next year will be better. I’ll be in a better position.

Salesperson’s responses might include:

Better position? I thought you said you had a great year last year, you have the resources, you said you have the

pain/need, you had turnover and you have not poured into your staff for at least five years?

Help me understand what I’ve missed? You want to wait? What are you waiting for? The bus is here! Help me

understand that.

Write a proposal with a termination date. If they have a valid reason to delay the activity, you want to find out

early on so you can overcome it.

Caveat: This is about qualifying a prospect from a business standpoint, not from a value standpoint, in terms of their

human value. If you take this whole “qualifying a prospect” dialogue out of context, it will sound cold and heartless. This

is not the intent. It’s about finding the people you can best serve in a mutually beneficial relationship.

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