My work with sales teams includes assessing the skills of both the individual sales professional and sales leadership. I analyze 21 sales competencies, and by far one of the most impactful to sales growth is the ability to qualify opportunities. Lack of quality opportunities clogs your pipeline, causes inaccurate forecasts and causes sales professionals to miss their goals.
There are three areas you can focus on to improve the quality of your opportunities and their odds of a successful close. I’ll share even more in-depth content during our SMM Connect Webinar on April 13, so be sure to register.
Know the Elements of a Qualified Opportunity
For any given opportunity, there are six categories that can help to determine its quality.
People: Are you clear on who your decision makers and stakeholders are, and who has the actual authority to say yes to working with you? As you uncover these individuals, you may need to fill in some relationship gaps.
Process: What are the steps in the decision-making process, and have you aligned your sales process to match? This is where steps are often skipped because we don’t have enough information about all of the steps their decision-making process.
Budget: Is there available budget for your solution, or will budget need to be found? This includes understanding your budget sponsors and any other competing priorities.
Timeline: Is there a defined timeline for a decision to solve the problem you’ve identified? When there is a defined timeline, it improves the quality of the opportunity. When a defined timeline is missing, it’s very easy for an opportunity to become delayed.
Change: Is there a compelling case for change on the part of your customer? This is an often-overlooked qualification criterion. But the pull is strong for a customer to remain “status quo” over making a change – and especially a change with higher levels of risk.
Obstacles: What are the challenges that might present themselves in the customer’s decision-making process? You can assess the odds of successfully addressing those obstacles and improving the opportunity’s quality.
Know What Gets in the Way of Qualifying (and Disqualifying) Opportunities
Mindset is often the top issue I see affecting successful qualification or disqualification of opportunities. To keep a full pipeline, professionals will hang onto opportunities that aren’t truly qualified. In reality, they require need more nurturing and analysis before proposing solutions or attempt to close the business.
What are some strategies for approaching opportunities with the right mindset?
Be willing to consult and ask a lot of questions. Consultative sales professionals aren’t afraid to dig in with thoughtful and provocative questions; they’re testing the opportunity for “qualification holes.” You know you have a great question when a prospective or current customer says: “I’ve never thought of it in that way,” or “I don’t know the answer to that, but it would be worth finding out.”
Get to budget early. The more we understand about the budget scenario as early as possible, the better able we are to tailor our approach.
Approach each opportunity with a healthy skepticism. When a potential client comes to us with a problem or we uncover something to which they respond positively, it’s easy to interpret that as a buying signal. We rush to judgment that the opportunity will successfully close. This is where the qualification categories can assist; you will also signal to the buyer that you are taking a consultative approach and evaluating the opportunity on its merits. If it’s not the right fit you are willing to forego the opportunity, and if it is the right fit you’re willing to move to the next step.
Prospect consistently and continually so you aren’t beholden to one opportunity. Consistent daily and weekly opportunity generation is critical to your mindset and skillset with qualification. When you’re working on many potential opportunities, you are more likely to take a pragmatic approach to qualifying them. When you don’t have enough potentials in the pipeline, that’s where our emotions can override our skepticism; we give chase or hold onto hope that they will materialize.
Focus on Coaching and Accountability of the Qualifying Skill
Beyond the mindset and skillset of qualification, accountability is your third asset.
As a sales professional, find a peer you trust or work with your leader on a consistent pipeline review using the six qualification criteria. In the early stages of this approach, you may be clearing a lot out of your pipeline, but it will give you an accurate picture of what new opportunities you need to generate.
As a sales leader, you can take a similar approach with your teams for a systematic review of the pipeline. When you do this across a territory or vertical, you’ll get the exponential benefit of accurate opportunity data and building the sales qualification muscle with your team.
Next Steps
Would you like to learn more about the mindset and skillset of qualification to help you grow your sales? Join us at SMM Connect for a special masterclass on April 13, 2022: Qualifying: Your Team’s Top Prospecting Skill to Increase Sales. This session will provide tangible best practices for sales leaders and sales professionals, so you can grow your sales results.
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