Remember as a kid at the amusement park – you must be this tall to go on this ride? This closely parallels a key part of all complex sales – Qualification.
So when marketing gets a lead, capping off their piece of the process, sales is far from the end, it’s actually the beginning of their work with the lead. The main question that sales has to answer is “Is this buyer capable of buying from us?” Are they tall enough to ride this ride?
The process of answering that question requires a rep to do offline research as well as having one or several conversations. In larger sales where multiple internal people are needed, the lead may not progress to involve anyone else, because the rep spoke with them and determined they aren’t a sales-qualified lead. The process varies depending on the company, but in all cases, it takes a bit of human intuition. There’s a whole art to it.
To get a salesperson’s perspective on how to do this, I spoke with Martin MacArthur, who is passionate about getting on the phone and helping companies fill their pipelines with qualified leads that drive sales. Let’s get into that discussion.
Cover concepts including how we arrive at a qualified prospect.
People and Products mentioned:
LinkedIn profile reviews
Retinitis pigmentosa (condition which affected Martin’s sight)
Martin MacArthur’s LinkedIn profile
Reboot:
Look into these good books about conversation: