Discover the key sales lead qualification criteria for Customer Support

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hey everyone good to see you again and thanks for watching another one of my videos so i launched a couple of weeks ago a new how-to series and the first video was about how to use video for your prospecting and in this video this week i'm going to share with you some tips and ideas on how to save yourself time and qualify your leads more effectively so one of the most uh one of the best videos that i've done one of my most popular videos is a video called bant and i'm going to share with you across some of the the next 20 minutes or so some of the ideas around how i use banff and other tools to qualify your leads effectively so in this how-to series which is a new series where i'm going to share some slides and some further information on what you can do to qualify your leads more effectively and save time and it's going to be a massive factor watch the video it's a tutorial video it's going to take about 20 minutes but once you've watched it you're going to gain some great insights it's going to make a big difference to you as a sales professional or business owner i'm going to help you with more business let's have a look at the video on how you can save time and qualify your leads more effectively [Music] so as i mentioned guys my name's james white i'm a small business sales expert i'm a man that's passionate about helping small businesses gain great sales results one of the things that's really really critical in a lot of the work that i do with sales people and it's a question i get asked a lot as people say to me i've been talking to a potential client for a little while but i'm not sure it's quite going anywhere and how do i know that you know i can you know basically qualify them to see if they're a good fit so we're going to cover off today a number of things which are really really critical as part of this overall process the first thing is why is this so important and i'm going to share with you something a formula and a key thing you have to take into account when you're winning and looking to win new business because it's something that makes a massive difference it's why a lot of the time salespeople and business people chase after deals that aren't going to go anywhere but they still put time and effort into them and we want to avoid that we're going to give you a method to approach this so when you start to look at new opportunities we're going to use some methods that you can use to start to really question and qualify whether the opportunity is as it seems and if it is what you can then do to hopefully go win that opportunity we're then going to give you your opportunity to create your own method and i'm going to give you a chance and put a sec comments in the section below of how we can send you a little criteria a little score card little school criteria that you can use to start to qualify your own leads themselves and we're going to summarize it at the end and give you some insights before you can hopefully go off and use some of the practical tips that i'm sharing today to get the impact in your business so why is this so important well the reason it's so important is when we win and look to win new business and chase new opportunities there's two factors that are the most important factors for us as business and sales people the first thing is our emotions we get that whole energy and drive and there's thoughts around us winning opportunities but our brains go into overload we start thinking about how we will link it to our targets we start even maybe thinking about how we'll spend the commission we get emotionally attached to the opportunity maybe someone's given us the opportunity to quote for a proposal or we've met someone at an event and they but you know potentially there could be an opportunity and we get our hopes up and we get these emotions in in a crazy place and what happens is that we really want to be in a position where we those emotions yes we try and control them but we can't but what we also then do because the emotional side of that really starts to drive on we start to spend more time on opportunity we start to commit meetings we start to commit time we start to do a number of things maybe proposals and other information in order to try and win that business so we're not only just committing our emotional but our time and this was double whammy this double effect creates a huge amount of problems if we work hard and we put lots and lots of effort in but then when we find that actually we get to the proposal they say to us oh your quotes hike you do it cheaper or or we'll have a think about it or you know we've lost out this opportunity to someone else or another company or i need to get it approved by someone else so there's a number of things that can happen that can basically get in our way of winning that business and we want to avoid that because if we can remove those off those challenges and those barriers to the sale before we get to that point it's going to be hugely important to us and it's going to put us in control one of the key things i always talk about with regard to sales and business people is try and put yourself in control of the situation if you can't control and by about in control i'm not being some sort of macho we've got to just be you know really ott on it but we want to be in control in order to know what it's going to take for us to win the business and we've got to be able to know what it's going to take for us to win the opportunity and what the other side the customer or the prospect wants to see from us in order to give us that opportunity and it's really really important we know what their expectations are what are their expectations around the price or the service or the way it's going to be delivered or what who's going to make the decisions we've really got to make sure we understand those so they don't leave any gaps in the whole element and so one of the key things i urge and employ you to do is to use some of the tools i'm going to talk about now to qualify if the prospect is a good fit for you now i should say to you at this point here it's really important that you don't use some of these tools and methods in that first conversation if you're selling a service it's a high value service i really encourage you to have that first call initial discussion and get to know the other person i've shared lots of videos and resources on how you should get to know the other person build that rapport understand what's driving them and what's going on in their world first and foremost those first conversations are about that and you generally can't win business on the first opportunity but you can certainly lose it so what we want to do is let get to know and understand if there's a you know chance we've had good conversations as a good fit there's a good rapport and actually might get to the second or third meeting we think actually we now want to move things forward the prospect is talking to us they're keen to see what happens next so we want to move things forward so there's a couple of tools and phrases and things we can do that can help you see if the prospect's a good fit and the reason this is really important is that we have to know who we are right for as businesses and sales professionals and the reason the example i give here is two cars the hyundai and the range rover both are brilliant cars if you've got a hyundai they're fantastic cars but there's a big difference between the budget for a hyundai versus a range rover so if we don't know who we are right for as business owners then the chances are we might have a range rover service and price but the prospect they're working with has only got a hyundai budget and the reality is even though they'd like to go this way they just don't have the resources or the ability to spend or don't value the service in the way that other people do so it's really really important that we know who we're right for to see if we're a good fit in order to identify whether we're going to work with someone and to do that we really must know our audience so the first thing i'm going to encourage you to do when it comes to qualifying your opportunities and prospects is write down and this is an example of a persona write down who your perfect client is your perfect client can be someone that you've worked with in the past in the last 12 months what are the characteristics about them what is the age and the occupation and their motivations what's the what's the person trying if you can create a persona like i've created here with sarah smith try and put a picture to that person try and identify the biography around them because the more that you know your audience and what you whether they're a fit for you you can then identify when a new opportunity comes along you can actually start to identify whether there could be some challenges and risks in working with that potential so if for example if this was my persona and the type of client i was working with and a 65 year old ceo male came along who just wanted to make money i'd made me look and go is this the right person for me and you can sometimes make some judgments based upon you who you're fit for i do a lot of work with clients and a lot of questions that people ask me such as well i don't i want to sell to lots of people i don't want to turn down opportunities it's not saying you have to turn down opportunities but it's about assessing whether you're a good fit for them and it's really important that you try and understand not just the psyche the demographic so their age their location their maybe their sexuality or their disability or whatever uh where they live but most of the things that's just what we call the psychographics what are the things that they do what are the things they enjoy what are the hobbies that they have for example you might see here some list of hobby activities that we would use for some of the people that we've worked with they they would buy wine for nine to ten pounds a bottle they have a netflix account they try and stay fit so what we've done is we've identified not just the demographics of sarah smith but also some of the psychographics for who that person is or what are they worried about what the concerns they've got what are the things that we like and the reason this is really powerful is because when we start to know that person and we start to understand our perfect client and how we've been able to help them we can then see if the new people that we meet fit into this category and one of the key things that's really really important that we can use in order to identify and qualify the people that we speak to are the questions that we ask sometimes you can use your gut feel sometimes you'll have conversations with people and your gut feel will be a good indicator as to whether they're a good fit but the best way to identify and qualify someone is through the questions that we ask albert einstein said if i had that hour to solve a problem and my life depended i'd use the first 55 minutes to determine the questions to ask so you've really got to be in a position where we qualify and ask questions to find out who they are so some of the questions i really encourage you to to think about and ask when you get new lead opportunities is actually find out what got them to ask you to to quote for the business in the first place or ask them what made them come to you you know to actually speak to you yeah and maybe ask questions such as if so you know is this a competitive situation who else has been asked to quote or if they've got an issue at the moment how are they currently solving that challenge or if they've got an existing provider who are you currently working with and what do you like about them what don't you like about them or if they've come directly to you maybe they've reached out to you what made you choose us what made you come along to us and our company in order to approach for this work or how do we compare with some of the other people you're considering find out what got them to that point here and of course the questions that we ask and asking those questions in the right way the tone and the way we say it is really important but questions give you an insight into what's going on and actually one of the ways in which i would handle that is if someone came to me and said i've asked you to quote for a proposal i would actually say something tell me a bit more about what made you choose me or choose us and if they say oh i saw you on the website just say well what else do you know about us oh i don't know anything else about you i just want you to quote okay so how who else are you asking to quote and what what makes you choose them i'm intrigued by what's going on because sometimes unfortunately people will i've seen this in fact i saw this early on today where someone there's a proposal for a piece of work that's gone out and i know that the tender that's gone out by the organization i'm going to be honest with you i'm going to be chosen for that work because i created the propose i created the tender outline but they've put it out there to the marketplace just because they've got to get other people to quote for it now i know i've won that business the guy has told me it but he's had to put it out there because he needs other people to quote for it so the point is it's important if you're in that position unfortunately someone else is going to spend their time and quote and put time and effort into a project that they will win so it's really important you start to query and question a few things before you get to that point so ask these questions find out what got them to this in the first place and how they maybe are comparing you against other people or what's going on at the moment in order to be in that position and so bant is a fantastic model in auditability so some people said band doesn't work anymore and it's old and out of date and there's a video that i've done on bands and there's a video i've done on gpct and some other mod modules and models to do to do this but the general consensus behind bank works and the whole idea about bantam i will put a link into the video so you can have a look at that video itself it's one of my most popular videos that i've done is it really enables you to ask some questions of budget do they have the ability to spend based upon the service and the price that you charge for what you offer the second part is authority who is ultimately going to make the decision to go forward and say yes to the project or the to the piece of work you're doing the need those who have watched my videos before will know that i prefer to use this frame problem or want but need makes sense because of the acronym so what is the actual problem and challenge that the person has got and what's the time frame the timing is the final part of band what are the time frame that someone has got in order to be able to work towards making this project happen i give an example of a project that i did uh about five years ago six years ago actually i went up to newcastle to meet a potential client who told me they're interested in working with me i was having a great conversation drove literally all day to to get there on the way to another meeting in scotland i live in the south west of the uk and i got there and they were like every great chat you yeah we're really interested to look at this for 2023 well i was like well it wasn't funny for me if it was two years away and i was like wow so i've driven all this way but yet they only want to do this two years from now i could have used my time more effectively so knowing the time frame is really really critical and that's also a critical factor when it comes to getting an objection saying we're gonna have to think about it or we put it on the back burner we've got to ask the right questions to know that time frame so here are five questions to ask when you identify the budget for a project and by the way if you ask a question such as what is your budget for this product or for this service most clients will always tell you they're not going to give you the answer they might give you a range sometimes in government tenders they'll give you an overall figure but most of the time they don't want to give a figure because they think and know that most business people and sales people will use up to that whole figure so if you ask someone what's the budget they may not tell you but if you ask them a little bit such as um tell me more about the budget you've set aside for this project um or uh when you've purchased similar services before what price did you pay and how did you make that decision or tell me a bit more about how much this problem is costing you uh what the implications are for the organization and what's created the business case to to make this come together then you're going to get some other insights into what's going on and what budget has been set aside for this activity and also maybe if you're working with a very large organization just actually talk to and say how did you guys as a procurement team approach budget decisions so these are really great questions that you can ask to try and identify what the budget is assigned for the actual project and of course if you've got an inside track and someone can tell you they've got an amount set aside that's even better but a great way to try and identify what might be the right the root the budget that the prospect has got for the project is to ask a really great question such as this you know the services that we offer range from two and a half thousand pound to four thousand pounds how does that fit in with your budget plans and what's the reaction that you get if you get a year it's in line with what you thought you know that you're in the right ballpark if you get uh not sure then you might think that that actual range of two and a half to four thousand pounds is maybe a bit high and if you get a uh a bit higher than we thought then you know that you're quite a long way from where you want to be now again go back to that range rover hyundai discussion if you're a four thousand pound range rover offering in the service but they've only got budget for a 1000 pound hyundai you're better to know that straight away in order to be able to then probe and ask other questions to qualify whether it's worth spending your time so if i was to go and ask a prospect around a question like this such as you know our services range from two and a half to four thousand pounds how does that feel for you or how does that fit with your plans and they then look to me and said yeah a bit higher than we thought i'd be okay tell me a bit more about what what your budget was for what you're expecting you know to pay for this type of service or we were expecting it to be at the 1500 to 2000 mark okay and tell me a bit more about what makes you think it's you know worth that amount or or what's driving you to come to that figure or what's coming you know what's made that figure the key thing for you and i would probe a bit more into the budget and it might even be i'd even ask and if you had to make a decision between you know a two thousand pound offering that was cheaper a three thousand pound offering that would deliver the service but deliver the results you want what option would you choose what matters most to you i'll probe in those areas because i'm really keen to find out what actually matters to them in most cases if you talk to a potential client and they've got a problem they want solving most people would rather pay a bit more and get the problem resolved and pay a lower price and not still have the issue but we've sometimes got to be able to see what that is and then see and ask them what they need to see in order to feel comfortable paying that amount but the budget is the critical thing so get comfortable about money and the budgets and the figures that you're talking about talk a little bit about the price that you use and continue to repeat it my price for our services two and a half thousand pounds you know the investment that people make to work with us is four and a half thousand pounds and use words such as investment not cost you're going to get a real different reaction if you start to use words such as investment rather than cost costs are things that people want to get rid of investments are things that boards and other organizations make so use those type of questions you know typically our services range from this to this how does that fit in with your plans watch for the reaction watch for the eyes what's the way they react is it uh or is it yeah in line with what i thought those reactions are really critical and what you then do from that is really important if you get it yes in line go great fantastic really appreciate you letting me know that really great for us to understand so that we can make sure we you know do the right thing for you and your firm just get comfortable with that and then you can mark it down in your conversations so the next thing really when we look for the band process is the decision process the authority we want to be able to know who's going to make the decision to actually go ahead and say yes or no who's going to make that commitment happen and it's really important that we understand that and again if you say to someone are you the decision maker most people like to feel important they're not going to tell you outright but they're not important and it's someone else or most people won't they'll tell you that they're they're having you know of course they're involved of course they're they're responsible for making that happen but invariably it may not be them that actually makes the final decision and again i've got caught out with this i had a proposal to an i.t company about four years ago i was talking to the ceo i was sure that i was talking to the right person he was the ceo of the business i couldn't get any higher right wrong there was a shareholder in the business that was the major shareholder that the ceo had to get the approval from and again because i hadn't included that person in the conversation and haven't worked with them and understood what they needed and wanted to see i lost the opportunity so really try and get ask the right questions tell me a bit more about who sets the budget for the services that you work with or this great question which i really love to use who else is involved in making the decision alongside yourself or tell me about the decision making process that you'll use at your company or in three to six months time who will ultimately decide if this project or this offering has been a success or sometimes in organizations it may not be the higher people that cause the issues it can be those people that are using the service those people are implementing what you're doing so maybe ask the question about saying who in the organization will use this service and how do they feel about this how are they going to react to this you need to understand who's affecting the decision on what's actually taking place so find out how decisions are made at that organization and if someone won't tell you or won't share with you how a decision is made then you need to query whether you should commit your time and energy to engaging with them ask them the questions such as who's involved in making the decisions and how they feel about it and get an insight into what's going on there the other key thing i really encourage you to do especially in high value business business services that we offer and you can you may put in place it's trying to understand a map if you're working in organizations there's going to be other people involved so try and find out who for example are the decision makers in this part of the process who is the influence who are the people that influence the decision and who find the other people that are the implementers that basically may not get as much say on the decision but are really important in actually putting things in place so these are things that are really really important for us to be able to know the decision maker who's actually going to sign the check or say yes to it and sign off and has the authority to sign off on this and who's influence in that decision the influences can be really key again in my organization i've got a marketing manager and when that mark even though i may be the final decision maker she is a significant influencer and she comes to me and says actually i'd really want to do this i think it's important it's going to affect my decision to understand the decision-making process like i mentioned really get to understand the time scales involved in the project as well try and understand what's prevented them from fixing this in the past where it was made you look into this now where in the buying process do you think you guys are or when would you like to have this issue resolved by or what would be the impact of not resolving this within the next three months six months for you as a company well how would you feel another great question which is not on here how would you feel if in three months time you still have this issue like you feel frustrated so it sounds like you want to get this result but then it sounds like you want to get a solution like yes i do but watch out for the reactions around the way in which the customer or the prospect talks to you if they go yeah it's pretty important then you might send some warning signals that actually this isn't maybe as important as some other things well if they say yes it's so important we get this done you know time scales are going to drive hopefully the project through the way you want it to so time scale is really important and then the final element is what is the problem or one that's driving them to do this if you've watched my videos before you know i say people only buy based upon a desire or a problem so you've got to be able to ask the questions as to how long this has been a problem for them what impact is this having on them how are they currently handling this issue and what does it mean for them and how important is it for them on a scale of one to five with five been really important to get this issue resolved and what pain is this causing them personally remember people biologically but they buy emotively they buy based upon they don't want the sleepless nights and the stress that causes when systems don't work or things don't happen or they can't have challenges they buy with their heart and actually those are just as much if not a more powerful factor than the the logical elements of things well what's the impact for you personally even if they're in a company of not getting this issue resolved or what value does a solution like ours have for you if it was implemented correctly you know what's prompted you to look at this now and how do you feel it could resolve the position you're in you want to use these questions and you'll notice that the how's the what's the where the tell me more those are the types of questions you want to ask not do you have a problem with this if i ask someone do you have a problem in this area yes tell me more about the problem you have in this area well we've got a problem we need to deal with all this if you're not careful you'll get closed closed questions get your closed answers and that doesn't get you to the really good bits of information that you need and sometimes you've got to remember that the people that we talk to as i mentioned to the prospect that i had that i traveled to newcastle to meet they may be a fit but just not right now so put in place some automation systems put in place some tools that you can use that can help you basically nurture them through sending some value and some communications over a period of time that can help them grow their their their awareness of you and so when it does come to the time when they want to move forward they're going to hopefully come to you first so these methods are a really really great method to use bannon the questions you can use a ban are critical and i really encourage you to look at this but another really simple tool you can put in place and by the way if you're watching the video hopefully you're still watching this and you're loving what the content is please smash that like button and share the video subscribe to the channel let's get other and make sure you let other people that uh work in a similar space to you to to get these insights but one of the things that we give to some of the clients we have and i'm open to putting a link in this in the section if you want to comment on the video and say yes send me the sales qualification sheet send us your email address and we will send you a copy of the qualification sheet we use and the way this works is that what we do is we identify as i mentioned at the start the criteria for the perfect clients that we have there are some people that are really good for us and they understand what we're about and the values and we're we know we're a good fit for and there's other you know people aren't so what we do is we we basically get some clarification questions some criteria for the other person and then we ended a little scoring system and the whole idea of this is that if we think that they meet our criteria we'll put a yes or one there and if we think they won't then we'll put a zero there and the whole idea is that we might get for example a score of that query and i'm not saying you want to go to the the opportunity with the other person and let you score them like a like a checklist but have that paper paper written down have these questions written down on your notepad so that when you're asking a question tell me more about you know how you you know want to achieve this problem solve this problem and they then talk about how important it is to them and you then yeah you can then mark yes this is really important you can give it a one rather than a zero now you'll notice in the in the screen here some of those questions are read and what i try and do is try and create four criteria that are the most important criteria when you're doing business with a potential client and what it does mean it means that if you then get someone scoring for example between four and seven so they haven't met your perfect criteria for a client you can look at the answers they given to the questions in red and say actually these are the really key things that make a difference for us and therefore they've answered them in the right way or the wrong way therefore that move them forward so if you can see if someone's becoming an eight to a 10 or over 10 in my criteria i would say they're a perfect client for me and therefore i'm going to want to try and work with them and and move that opportunity forward but if they're potentially a a three or four then i might say look this we're not the right person for you i'm not going to commit more time and energy into working with them i'll probably say to them look i wish you'd work all the well but better to work with someone else rather than what we would do with us and sometimes when you actually say that to a potential client actually we're not the right people for you you'd be amazed at how many people will then say to you well i really want to work with you tell me why don't you think that people don't like being told no and sometimes it can actually help you in a sales situation so this little criteria this scorecard this qualification sheet if you'd love a copy of it put your comments in the section below we'll even put a link to a link you can use to get access to this it's a great way in which you can basically create your own criteria and we can provide some ideas on how to create the criteria for you to score your leads and if you score them in this way it doesn't mean you automatically have to go through religiously if they are several we go moving forward or not that gives you a sense of the other person you're talking to him whether it's worth committing your time and energy for this so look i hope this presentation has giving you some insights has been useful for you as i mentioned it's so important that we qualify our leads in the right way so that we don't waste our time and our energy and like i mentioned qualify at the right time it's probably not ideal to do this in the first meeting unless you've got a very long meeting with that person maybe on the second meeting call learn to ask these questions that we've talked about in the questions i mentioned around bantam these other evidence in the right way at the right time if you ask a question with poor tone you will lose opportunities so you'll put the other side's back up and we want to avoid that ask questions a really nice empathetic time tell me more about how you're solving this and talk me through the decision process and where are you at and how big of a problem is this for you your tone is critical for this question things if you get the response you get back is not right if someone won't give you information they won't give you answers then why should you commit your time and energy if you if they can't tell you what you need to be successful i will always ask the people i work with what do i need to do to be successful here what do we need to show you to make you think that we're the right option for you and if they can't tell me that i'll query whether it's worth my time for that and then try and think of this way of scoring your lead see if they're a good fit and then maybe identify the last five to ten leads within that scoring system the ones you've won the ones you've lost were the ones you won the ones that you were perfect for and the other way around identify whether the scoring criteria helps you to know whether to cut your losses early and not focus on opportunities that aren't going to go anywhere because we don't want to waste our time and our energy and our emotion and get our heads in the wrong place thinking we're going to chase business isn't going to happen so there we go here's the second video in our how-to series how to qualify your leads and save time i hope you found it helpful i hope you found it useful if you have please put some comments in the section below let me know what you think let me know whether you agree with me and disagree with me if you disagree with me tell me hey i've got no issues with all of people saying james you're talking cod's wallet but if you have loved it please share and like the channel and if you want to join our facebook group the seven figure the sales experts on facebook or follow me on twitter or instagram they'd love to see you do that but please make sure if you're watching the video for the first time like to say the channel subscribe to it like the video let's share it with other people let's make sure we get loads of people business owners and sales professionals all over the world getting the right sales results to help them win great business so there we have it that was this week's video on all about what are the key things you can do to qualify your leads and save time effectively i hope you've enjoyed it i hope you found it helpful if you have like that but like the channel like the video let's share it with others and let's get business owners and sales professionals everywhere winning business using the resources and help that we provide and the work that i do i'm passionate about helping them win my goal i don't care if you never buy from me ever it's all if i can help you in any way i can to win business that's what i'm here to do thanks for watching the video love to uh to see you doing this and hopefully you've got this far and have a brilliant week and i'll see you next saturday [Music] you