The cog in the sales flywheel

You have a lead!

As a salesperson that’s where you start!

Now, it’s very vital to decide whether the lead needs to be given an adequate amount of time!

What you need to do here, is to qualify the lead!

Qualification is not possible without asking questions!

Ask questions that are pinpoint and which are related to the lead’s business!

Say for example a lead comes to you asking for a price of developing a food delivery solution! What are the questions you need to ask here?

1. There are already delivery apps available in the market. How do you position yourself in this market?

This question is something that investors ask before putting in their money – so there is no harm you asking it because as an entrepreneur he should be knowing his value proposition!

If he avoids this question, be sure that the lead is yet to be ready to do business! He doesn’t pass your qualification criteria.

2. Have you done any market research on how much traction you might get after launch?

If he has not done such market research advise him to get an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) done first before investing in this idea big time. If he is a genuine lead he will be interested. If he is not he will still ask you to quote for the full product. Disqualify him because he is yet to understand the basics of starting up.

As you can understand both the questions are more about him than you! You need to ask such questions to qualify the lead. You should value your time. The last thing you would want is to waste time on a lead who finally vanishes after taking the proposal. You should only send proposals when you are 70% sure about the client. After sending the proposal, there should a Yes or a No or questions from the client. If the client goes non-responsive it means you didn’t qualify him.

For every business idea that comes to you for development, you need to do the following:

• Background research of the lead
• Research about the business idea
• Research about the geographical area of business

After that, write down your questions as if you are an investor of this business idea or an early-stage user of the product. Ask questions from that perspective!

If the lead is genuine he will get extremely pleased with your questions because he will know that you care about him and his business!

If the lead gets irritated then you can very well know that the lead is not serious. Disqualify him.

We are generally trying to send signals to our brain that “All is Well”. But that’s a wrong strategy, rather you should look at finding ways of telling your brain that all is not well when you sit to qualify a lead.

If a lead is disqualified it’s one work done or rather one work less to do. Because you should look at putting 100% energy towards those leads which are genuine!

People come to me asking that after sending the proposal their leads are not responding to them and the first and foremost reason that they could think of is that the quote probably is high. This is the genuine mindset of most salespeople! Come out of that. You as a salesperson should think like a businessman! So you will charge which is profitable for the organisation!

You should go back from the day the lead came to you and check the communication thread across all channels! Look for the false signals which prompted you to think that it was a qualified lead. You will find that there were doubts which you planned to ignore. People generally ignore such doubts for two reasons:

• Target pressure
• Show a fat pipeline

Both won’t help your cause. As a salesperson working with targets is the name of the game. But pressure doesn’t mean you end up sending proposals to all and sundry. This is not a machine gun and you can’t be lucky all the time. So be selective with your choices. When you are not 100% sure, then, don’t end up spending a humongous amount of time on that lead. Ask questions – genuine clients like it. Only the non-genuine clients get angry with questions. Ask yourself do you want to work with genuine businessmen or with people having shady intentions?

Showing a fat pipeline to make your boss happy is a short-term activity that won’t linger for long. One day you will be caught and you will be judged as a salesperson who doesn’t know how to close deals. But that’s not the case. Probably you are a great negotiator but you are unable to reach that place by sending proposals to everyone and then getting swamped with follow-up work. Your quality suffers. And experience tells me that it’s better to focus on a small group of potentials to ensure better results.

Quantity is never equal to quality. So don’t end up spending an insane amount of time on leads who have not been qualified yet. Tell your brain that the lead is unqualified! Listen to your gut. Follow the process of elimination before zeroing down on that qualified lead on whom you are going to give your utmost attention!

Human brains are wired in such a manner that we always look for convenience. So we keep looking for shortcuts to reach our goals but the fact of the matter is that there is no shortcut to success!

You have limited time every day for your work and I see across many people, the same habit of spending maximum time on activities related to pitching. So it could be making a presentation, or a mock-up, or a proposal. But if you ask me, the most time that a salesperson should give is, on qualifying a lead. It’s difficult to qualify a lead as you can read from above because you have to follow the process of elimination. Hence put your most productive hours on activities that would lead to qualification or disqualification of a lead.

Rather than thinking about your target, you should have a mental model for yourself and maintain a qualification lead sheet.

• Write down the number of leads you got in a month.
• How many of those did you qualify?
• After qualification how many of them you sent the proposal?
• How many of those proposals have you closed?

If you follow the process of elimination to disqualify a lead, you will be left with very few leads. Now put your 100% focus on understanding the real need and requirements of these leads and give a customised pitch that would be client-focused.

Don’t sell your features! Sell the benefits. The value proposition is what the client will opt for.

Price is what the client pays. Value is what the client gets. It will be easier for you to sell the value to the qualified leads than the disqualified leads. Try this method on both types of leads (Qualified & Disqualified as an experiment) and you will see the difference!

When you focus on a few leads, the quality of your pitch/proposal will be far better and the lead will feel better about you because you will customise your pitch which is best suited for his business success.

There are a few advantages of following this method:

• Job satisfaction: you will be talking and interacting with clients who are serious and hence you will learn more and you will feel happy when positive discussions happen.
• You will feel that your time is not wasted.
• If you are unable to reach your target, you can quantify them by showing your boss that perhaps you have not received qualified leads.
• You will be deemed a leader who knows how to best utilise time!
• Your decision-making ability will improve.

So the next lead that you get now, follow this process of elimination to qualify a lead. Please do write back if you benefited from this idea!

One final hack: The Pareto’s Principle.

80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts. So it means 80% of your effort goes wasted. This wasted effort is basically in disqualifying leads. And when you disqualify better, you will be left with genuine leads to whom you can cater. Now target to win 100% of these leads.

Finally, you should be happy with what work you do. If you are doing it just because another person is saying it, without understanding the “why” then you might not get results. First, go through all the principles and hacks given above and sit back and think about how you have been doing thus far, and how you can customise your work schedule based on the above.

Put your best foot forward. Keep a note at every step of the above process and then let me know how it worked for you! Even if it didn’t work, at what step did you get stuck?

I am all ears!

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