Empower your business to prospect and qualify in IS standard documents

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we can't sell to everybody there's always going to be someone who we're just not a good fit for but more importantly there are plenty of clients who just aren't a good fit for us so how do you know the difference hey everyone ian campbell here i am ceo of mission suite before we jump into today's video do me a favor and hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so that you're notified whenever we post new videos the entirety of my career i've been in sales and i hate to admit it i spent and wasted a lot of time trying to sell the people who simply weren't qualified sales prospects it was my thinking that if i could get enough time in front of someone i could convince them that they needed to do business with me well i wasted a ton of time and a fair amount of money trying to do this and when i finally figured out that if i changed my target i could hit the bullseye with a significantly higher percentage everything changed it's important to remember that even if our product or service is the best thing since sliced bread some people just don't like bread so why try to sell to them i sell crm software i'm a firm believer that everyone should be using a great crm to manage their business or they're losing sales wasting time and probably making poor business decisions but if you're 60 years old and have no interest in moving off of your excel spreadsheet why should i try to sell to you sure there was a time when we focused on educating prospects and slowly coaching them to a point where they understood that why they should see things our way but now we have email marketing we have webinars we have more information on the internet than anyone will ever need or know what to do with so people can educate themselves you focus on finding someone who not only likes bread but wants to buy yours here's how you can be qualifying your prospects more effectively first know your ideal client profile i've talked about this a lot in the past in fact dean isaacs and i even did a full community table session about identifying your ideal client profile there's a link to the recording of that conversation here in the corner of the screen and as well as there's one in the description of the video knowing who your perfect client is can make targeting your sales efforts significantly easier plus it helps you identify who to say no to which is really the most important part of qualifying a sales prospect if you know that your perfect clients fit a specific profile let's say companies with a team of five sales people who are trying to expand their sales team you'll know the exact questions to ask to find out if the prospect you're talking to is a good fit for you two questions that come to mind right off the top of the bat for example how many sales people do you have working for your company are you planning to grow your sales team in the next six months regardless of their answer you're going to know where these people stand as they relate to your ideal clients going a step further let's say that your perfect client is someone who is currently using one of your competitors that you know you have a good story to tell to compete against as an example i'll use a large competitor of mine that just about everyone knows we'll we'll call them gail's fort now i know that i can explore a bit further to ask the question what kind of crm are you using now are you on gail's fort are you happy with the way that your sales team is using it is it actually helping you to set appointments and close deals all of that information just because i know exactly what i'm probing for now don't get me wrong if they're not on galesfort or if they don't even have five sales people i can still look at the potential of doing business with them but i know they're in one of the rings around my bull's-eye and not squarely in the bullseye itself and that actually brings me to my next point know your deal-breakers while targeting your client technically is about excluding people who don't meet your qualification criteria there are always going to be exceptions there are plenty of people out there who may not want to grow their sales teams but they want to get off of gail's fort continuing this this metaphor that could still be a great client for me but they're outside of the exact ring of my target again they're in that kind of you know second second ring that's okay as long as you know where your deal breakers are for example mission suite charges on the database pricing model meaning that the more contacts you have the higher pricing tier you're going to be at we don't however charge per user so more often than not that makes us significantly less expensive than most of our other competitors including the one that i've been talking about in this video but there was one time i spoke with a recruiting firm who had three users and literally one million contacts that was an anomaly to be sure but because that would send our price into the stratosphere in comparison to that per user pricing model it didn't really make sense for us to even continue the conversation so are there times when the pain is so great that they'll swallow the cost and try to work with us anyway sure but it's so rare and would take so much work to make happen that it's not a good use of my limited time to do so deal breaker knowing these deal breakers is a hugely important aspect to qualifying a sales prospect because if the odds are that it's not going to work out to do business together why waste your time and why waste the prospects time they'll be significantly more appreciative that you pulled the ripcord earlier in the process then towards the end and who knows there might be some opportunity down the line one of my favorite statements to start a meeting once i've learned about a prospect's needs is let me tell you why this won't work for you if they have things on their list that are deal breakers for them that i know we're not going to be able to compete on then why bother there's no point in trying to square every circle and force a fit where there is none i'd rather start going after more circles so what is your favorite qualifying question for a sales prospect we've all got them they're all with all these little arrows in our quiver that we love to use so let me know down in the comments and while you're there give this video a like so we know that you're actually getting something out of it the next thing to focus on ask open-ended questions i'm going to be diving deeper into open-ended questions in my next video but open-ended questions are one of the most important parts of the sales process you need open-ended questions to not only learn more about your prospects needs but also to keep them talking yes or no questions just shut down a conversation so you want to use them very sparingly asking open-ended questions is how we find those key things that they're looking for to make sure that we understand exactly how we should be crafting our pitch throughout the sales process we need to make sure that everything that we're doing is focused on dialing into the prospects needs what we think they should want doesn't have any bearing on selling certainly doesn't have any bearing on them buying we're not here to push a product or service we're here to provide a solution to a need the only way that we can do that is by listening to that need and that brings me to the most challenging part of the sales process listen to the answers this truly is the hardest part of the sales qualification part of selling for just about every salesperson that i know our natural urge is to talk sometimes we're talking about our solution sometimes we're piping in when someone mentions something that we know we're a really really good fit for something we're really good at sometimes we just talk because we're uncomfortable with silences what separates a good salesperson from a great salesperson well it's not the ability to talk but rather it's the ability to listen get yourself comfortable with silence let the prospect consider their answers to your questions and consider their needs if you push them they may easily get flustered or frustrated and just decide to stop trying to talk to you and this is especially true if the prospect is describing their needs or what they're looking for in a solution don't chime in with oh yeah we do that or that's in our thing too just keep your mouth shut take notes you're gonna have your turn to speak soon enough just make sure that your questions are all answered first so once again i really hope you got something out of this video and if you did do me a favor give it a thumbs up give it a share so that others can see it too that always helps us a lot of the youtube algorithm also don't forget to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so that you're notified every time that we post new videos and while you're at it check out the other videos on the screen and we are going to see you next time around cheers