Every veteran sales person has worked with an unqualified suspect. Because these suspects meet a predetermined buyer profile, sales people continue to believe they are potential buyers. Even though the sales person believes there is potential, they are unsure about how to qualify a suspect. Being unsure about how to qualify means the sales person continues to invest time and energy in unqualified suspects. When the suspect is unqualified the sales person wastes energy that could be more profitably spent finding buyers. Once sales people have been burned by an unrewarded investment of time and energy they become more aware of the pitfall, but being aware of the pitfall does not increase their ability to correct the problem. In fact, awareness often results in overcorrection.
Sales people overcorrect when they say they will only work with qualified suspects. Another form of overcorrection is for sales people to ask probing questions prematurely.
In either case the sales person loses. Not qualifying the suspect wastes valuable time, and overcorrecting drives away potential buyers. Either way the sales person loses opportunities to increase sales volume and commission income. The solution is to understand how to qualify suspects. Qualification, like the Griffin Hill Sales Process, is progressive.
When a sales person understands that qualification is progressive, the system works for them. Rather than focusing on qualification, he can focus on the sales process and let the system take care of qualification. By putting the process to work, Griffin Hill’s Sales Technology can actually create qualified buyers.
The Case Open Routine illustrates how Sales Technology creates qualified buyers. The first element of buyer qualification is interest. If the buyer has no interest in your product or service, all the tools of persuasion in the sales tool bag have no value. Time invested in trying to persuade a buyer that has no interest is wasted.
The Case Open Routine stimulates interest by offering something valuable in the benefit play. This offer of value can create interest or stimulate interest in the suspect. In this way, a well designed benefit play does its job by creating or stimulating interest in the suspect.
Where the Benefit Play excites interest, the Schedule the Next Event or Permission Play tests it. The permission play seeks a commitment from the suspect that signals sufficient interest to take the next step. If the test for interest is successful, the suspect meets this qualification criterion and is allowed to advance in the sales process.
Other routines in the sales process qualify the suspect in different ways. As the sales process advances, so does the level of qualification. By following the process and basic plays, the sales person never has to focus on qualifying the suspect. Griffin Hill’s Sales Technology makes that qualification easy.
