Streamline Your Business Operations with airSlate SignNow's Sales Lead Qualification Criteria in India

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I'm thrilled to have with us Colin Stewart our Colin is the co-founder and the co-ceo of predictable revenue and host of the predictable revenue podcast which is one of our favorite podcasts we love listening to it welcome Colin thanks Tom good to having her men so why don't we just jump right in so for some of you out there listening and I know when we're doing sales training this is a big thing for people is actually qualifying leads properly because most people when they approached us they go hey can you help us increase our closing rate or we're struggling with putting deals over the line and I okay well we can talk about closing but maybe you're trying to close deals that just are well qualified to begin with 100% because it's it's all about this like part of it is about the source I'm part of us about the execution on that on that lead it's one of those things like you can use Bant you can use medic and this is a much deeper conversation on you know getting into forecasting and what your sales stay just look like the only thing I'll say because we could go into a whole other episode about that I think just pick the pick the things that are most critical for your business to see a deal moving forward and then make sure that your sales stages actually makes sense right right like we have we brought her in a sales manager of three four months ago now and he's doing a great job he came from a great company super highly recommended and we were having a conversation about cuz I'd heard him say a couple things where I'm like oh he doesn't sound super confident in the forecast right and we are using medic we had somebody on on my podcast yeah she taught us about how to forecast within 1% and she's doing a half billion dollars in death yeah Jamie there one of our customers in impact right yeah great great company Jamie bus it was an amazing episode yeah so I went and I took that and I internalized that in fact she modified it from medic - medic medic yeah so you play around and some have medic with one see so I'm happy to see exactly you got to personalize it to yourself right but I noticed that he had this issue when I hear him he said oh well so-and-so thinks they're gonna close this so-and-so things are gonna close out I'm like well this doesn't sound like a guy who's confident that we're gonna close this and here's why and what we what we diagnosed we when I sat down and had a conversation it turned out that the issue was we he wasn't following he was following medic right and we've got the medic built into our Salesforce so you can see the medic score and he was just kind of looking at the medic score and saying okay you know does the rep have a strong medics core but it's not just about the medics core it's about it's the dance right it's the dance of the qualification your qualification criteria and your sales stages right and with I think the magic with Jamie that I realized on the podcast and I don't know if you can see my face but just like my just my soul is getting destroyed when it comes to I'm realizing I've never used sales stages properly because they talked she talked about having a customer verifiable outcome you know to move from one stage to the next and the customer verifiable outcome plus the subjective yeah qualification now let's just pause this because see Colin I'm like we're speaking the same language right but not everybody listening is good yeah so it's basically let's break it down rather than you know you know I scheduled the qualifying call no they could they scheduled a qualifying call they booked the time in my calendar like for example or you know rather than I sent them a brochure they confirm that they went through the brochure right or they introduced me to someone or they did this they did that so it's good not the behavior of the sales rep exclusively it's the behavior of that prospect or the customer what did they do and those give you more clues as to where they are in terms of their you know decision-making process or no favorability right yeah I think ours are like customers showed up to the first call customers showed up to the discovery call right customer brought the all the correct stakeholders to the follow-up call right and then we have one sort of subjective one and that's the rep can clearly articulate why do nothing is off the table all right and that that's the bar right if you can if you have a for me if you've got a high medic score that you can defend and you've and you can clearly articulate why do nothing is off the table right that's an opportunity that's gonna close in a moment we're gonna break down what medic is in terms of the the acronym right but I love that thing that you were talking about Colin about you know do nothing is not an option right do nothing is off the table so what does that mean you you know it's this buyer identified pain right like the buyers like we have to do something now it may not be with you absolutely but we have do something well why is that well if we don't do X Y will happen so it's basically like old school it's asking like a consequence question right like what will happen if you don't make this change what will happen if you don't change to this new technology etc etc and if that pain is strong enough and they're like we absolutely have to do something well then you know this is really qualified right hundred percent but if you're like well to be honest with you Colin if we don't do it won't be the end of the world it's kind of a nice to have but not a need to have well then obviously that medics core is gonna go down 100 percent and or the medics core might stay the same but you're never gonna get past that certain stage with the customer where the rep can clearly articulate that do nothing is off the table right well well yeah because the I and medic is identified hanging so if they haven't identified the pain and I guess maybe we have to be subjective as to how painful the pain is because well that's and that's the dance of there's on the on the medic side there's the identified pain which is like this is that this is the quality of the pain this is the right this is the qualitative metric right right there is there so much we're losing every month by not doing this or this right yeah it's the way it's the way that the buyer would describe the pain and then there's the metric which is the qualitative side of things so that's the Emin metrics right exactly and really it's those two economic buyer that are the sort of the most three that are sorta three that are most important okay so when I'm when I'm doing a sort of qualification call with my reps to make sure they're following the process and to see if a deal is actually where we think it is it's really it's those three right right it's metric do you understand the impact that this is gonna have on their business the identified pain can you really articulate what it is and then the economic buyer have we had a conversation with that economic buyer and if you've got those three and the fourth one is you can articulate why do nothing is off the table whether it's with us or not right like I know this company's gonna do something now we just got to work on this is a real opportunity exactly all that's as opposed to fairy dust whereas like I've looked at my pipelines before my entire life and I'm like mmm it's a big old shrug and you've got forecasting software and you can do this and you can do the math and you can but it's so subjective right and it's sort of like you know I find you know sales reps we're awesome right like we're so great what about or the mask we're smiling we think regret we're super optimistic yeah and that's beautiful because we need that optimism but often it's kind of like a false a false hope because we're just like look at my pipeline and you're just like yeah you know it's looking pretty good even as a rep you have these rose-colored glasses about oh yeah I feel like it's gonna it's gonna close and here's why but it was implementing this sort of this methodology the structure the formalizing of the process that helped me step away from like yeah my good I think it's gonna close and then gave me the right set of questions not just to ask my reps but to ask myself well and I think that was that was the most important to each of us honors so we've done that in our CRM as well they've got these you know questions and sand stages steps rather within the stages hmm and it's just checkboxes yeah have you done this have they done that and only until all those check boxes are ticked do we now move that from a new opportunity to a working opportunity from working to closing that kind of thing absolutely so you know we've got the metrics we've got you know economic buyer the first D is kind of the decision making process right so do we understand the decision making process the other D if I'm not wrong with decision decision criteria so do we know what is the criteria with which they will make that decision and do we fit that criteria yeah even better have we maybe helped that prospect frame the criteria absolutely that's like like gold right that's one of those that those are rep sort of not struggle with but they weren't doing previously right because it's an awkward question it's it can be an awkward question to ask so what's important to you but at the same time it's obviously one of those most important pieces but making sure and when we're having that conversation but when you when you have it in your CRM system that says hey you need to be able to articulate to your sales manager after this call right what's most important you're gonna ask those questions a little bit differently and that's gonna have a huge impact on your sales process you know I love that call and I remember listening to one of the guests on on your podcast who said something like it's probably from lesson ly okay if you can explain your customers pain better than they can't mm-hmm if you can explain their problem their challenges better than they can yeah now you're walking enroll now you have it I love that okay that's cool right so then you got to admit and then the the P was the process that the paperwork yeah yeah baby paper a paper process if you have to be set up as an improve vendor is there you know any NDA's you have to sign it's kind of get your paperwork in order the I was identified pain yeah see was kind of the competitors like it's like competitive landscape who else are you up against and then ii see was the champion exactly do you have an internal champion lobbying for you advocating for you within that client organization you got that that's awesome so you guys use med pick so my understanding was typically med pick is kind of like you know bigger deals with a very long buying process a long complicated cycle right yeah but for many of our listeners out there if you're a small business owner and you're dealing with like SMEs or SME SMBs or your own insurance agent for example listening right you might use like band as a basic framework 100 percent are you constantly amazed at how few sales reps even know what we're talking about when we say band yeah I mean there's no there's no class in there there aren't too many sales classes or courses in university so if you're hiring great at hiring ready at a university where they gonna learn that right yeah so band is just you know budget Authority need in timeline and gradually few people ask prospects those questions right and they're and doesn't have to be in that order everyone gets all messed up all the times like asked about budget right away I'm like well it's just a nice acronym that you can you can you know say right but you kind of figure it out do they have a budget right what is it have they bought before similar expenditure or what do they look at that etc and authority are you dealing with something with the decision-making authority is there that I are identified need or pain and then what's the time frame that they're looking at so exam or qualify you [Music]