As a salesperson, it’s critical for prospects to know your time is as valuable as theirs.
One of the biggest time sucks in the world of sales isn’t data entry or chasing down tough-to-reach prospects. Rather, it’s getting ahold of someone and spending time with them, only to discover they’re not the decision maker for what you sell.
It’s an issue almost as old as the field of sales, and yet salespeople continue to struggle with quickly qualifying prospects to ensure it’s worth staying in touch.
We sat down with someone who understands the power of a systems-based business, Matt Woodcock, and learned how he guides his sales team to quickly qualify prospects in a repeatable way. This not only makes them more efficient during their call blocks, but also allows them to spend more time with folks who can definitely say ‘yes.’
Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: To systemize the way you qualify prospects, Matt says to begin before you get in front of the prospect. In addition to researching your prospect’s job title, tenure in their company, and all the other factors you know you need to research, you also have the opportunity to warm up the prospect before you reach out. This makes it much more likely they’ll take your call and share the information you need to learn in order to further qualify them.
That looks like seeding the meeting with a video, voice message, or email that makes the interaction personal.
R – Repeatable: To ensure we’re using the same steps in ascertaining budget and qualifying buyers, Matt says during the call, the most valuable thing to ask an inbound lead is, “What brings us together?”
For outbound calls, Matt advises salespeople ask themselves, ‘Why should this prospect care about what I’m selling?’ Once that’s defined, then we can justify asking for a prospect’s most valuable commodity: their time. Showing up with a specific idea of how your product or service can solve your next prospect’s challenge will make them much more likely to share their buying capability and criteria with you.
I – Improvable: To ensure your qualification system continues to produce great results, Matt says to take the time after a prospect buys or tell you ‘not now’ to run a debrief. Ask the prospect or customer where in the sales process they lost interest or decided what you sell isn’t a great fit for their needs.
M – Measurable: Measuring the effectiveness of how you’re qualifying prospects doesn’t happen with the amount of leads you’re reaching out to. Rather, Matt says, it’s where prospects are falling out of your sales process. Once we know where a prospect is losing interest or not responding, we can ask why these leads fell out during that stage – what could we ask or find out earlier in the sales process that would ensure they stick with us through the pipeline to become a customer?