Don’t you wish you had a crystal ball that could prevent this waste of your time and dollars on bad leads?
While no such crystal ball exists, there are ways to create the next best thing: a lead disqualification process. Continue reading to understand how to create "A-list" prospects.
Most businesses focus their efforts on lead generation and qualification. However, disqualification is more successful in reducing the customer acquisition cost and increasing the percentage of won bids.
Disqualification requires a high level of understanding of your core competencies and the value your solution provides to your customers.
Are you up for the challenge?
Here are some ways to ensure you only reach out to “A-list” prospects:
Asking the tough questions. I hate when I pick up the phone receiving a cold call, and the person on the other side just follows an obvious sales script.
Make a very short introduction, and then start engaging the lead at the other end. The simplest way to immediately engage and value the lead is by asking a question that requires a sentence or longer response:
What would you say is the most challenging marketing issue you currently face?
Where you do you see your business in 1 year and how will you reach your goals?
Take time to think critically about your product and make a list of engaging questions that will allow you to quickly identify if your potential customer is a good fit for you and your product.
While compiling this list is a challenging task for you and your sales team, the return on investment will be exponential down the road when you’re able to significantly reduce the time inefficiencies for your sales team.
Create a lead ranking algorithm. What does your ideal customer look like? Can you quantify their characteristics? What characteristics do most of your customers share?
By identifying the commonalities between your most valuable customers, you can easily target the potential leads that have the most potential to join this most valuable customer group.
Focus your time and effort on the leads with a high ranking. Living in the modern era of the internet, data can easily and inexpensively be compiled about the business strength of your prospect list to assist you in determining who to assign to your best salespeople and who to ignore.
Only invest time in the least likely leads when you have time and people to spare.
Treat your clients as you would like to be treated. Few things are more frustrating than a salesperson promising a miracle solution from a product, only to find out after the purchase that it is useless to you or your business.
Use integrity when selling to potential leads. If a client doesn’t seem like a good fit for your product, neither party will benefit from a lengthy sales process.
Listen to your potential customer and let them disqualify themselves if the fit isn’t right. There is plenty of fish in the sea, focus on the ones that will be a win-win for both sides. And someone wise once said it’s better to promise less and deliver more!
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