II. SECRETS TO EFFICIENTLY QUALIFYING PROSPECTS
How To Start Off on the Right Foot

It’s the old 80/20 rule again. Why is it that 20% of your customers are making up 80% of your stress? If you looked up “complainer “ in the dictionary, your customer would be pictured there dolling out a stream of negative adjectives to describe everything that is going wrong with your project, your company, your products and it is all aimed directly at you. All this agony and yet you know you will still go back for more “Well, he is the big boss and well, the customer is always right.” WRONG!!!


This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople and companies make constantly. They lay the first bricks right at the beginning of the relationship by immediately giving away too much and taking too little in return.

SalesQuest® interviewed top performing sales people to find out how they avoid and change this dominate pattern of relationship building.

1) ESTABLISH IMMEDIATE MUTUAL RESPECT - According to one of the top reps at Cognos Corporation, one way to do this is to call high in your account and establish a peer-to-peer relationship with the top executive. If you can square off and become a “trusted advisor “ at the place in the organization “where the money is”, you will save yourself a lot of time and energy, shorten your sales cycles and almost automatically have the respect of the folks in the rest of the organization.

2) SORT VS. CONVINCE - Inexperienced sales people spend a lot of time trying to convince decision-makers to do things like meet with them, talk to them and buy their products. If this customer is not open to admitting pain or sharing challenges, this will burn cycles of energy and leave the sales person with an empty pipeline and forecast. The most successful salespeople sort through those prospects and move on to those who are willing to start a relationship by answering key questions about their business.

3) DO YOUR HOMEWORK - If you approach a decision maker with something you have learned about the person, the company, or the challenges, your path to having them respect you and welcome your advice will be more easily traveled. There are many great ways to get this information including interviews and discussions with other people in the prospect’s organization, the Internet, and other great research tools.

To learn about the 4th & 5th secrets and to get the complete Guide, Sections 1-10, please enter your contact details below:

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