Streamline Sales Opportunity Qualification for Small Businesses

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in this video we explore how to qualify opportunities we discuss the process of when you're playing fetch or catch and when to act on leads [Music] welcome to how to business i'm frederick weiss today we're talking to the vp of the sales specialist team at sangoma john roth john welcome to the show thanks very much for asking me to be on and i'm glad to be here thank you i'm very happy to have you john before we jump into our main topic i want to ask you a little bit about yourself could you tell us in your own words i've been in the telecommunications world and i say it that way because i've been in since 1986 it has grown into the ucas which is unified communication as a server i have been on the streets carrying a bag i've run many sales teams i've been doing this for a little bit of time i've got five grandkids and i do a lot of fishing on the lake that i'm i live on that's a little bit about me excellent thank you so much john so let's go ahead and get to our main question here which is how to qualify opportunities first off john let's begin with a high level overview and dive deep i think qualifying opportunities is probably one of the most important facets of sales we might get a lot of leads that we have to go through and understand which ones are low priority and to understand which ones are higher priority it takes qualification and it's really through a discovery process that you do with a potential prospect really sort of a potential suspect in my world the way i think of it a suspect is someone that basically has contacted you you've contacted them you've made some connection and then from that point you you go through the process of understanding what their needs are understanding who the players are and then once you get into that realm and it's this discovery process is your product or services something that this potential suspect or when you get them qualified a little more you go into the prospect phase are they a fit for you and you are fit to them i think that's important that you don't just think that everyone is a fit for you need to vet those to make sure they are and as you go through the process it's really an understanding of am i being called in at the last minute to put a quote together so you can have or the prospect can have three quotes not gonna win many of those because you're the last player and they need to have three quotes but if you're running the beginning and understanding what the your first initial contact person is then from there you build on that you go initial contact person i always ask the ability to go i need to speak to other mid-level or higher level of executives at your company and it could be that one person you're talking to is the owner manager does everything so they could be doing actually all of the decision making so to qualify them a great question to ask in the beginning is on a scale of one to ten with one being less and ten being the highest are you prepared to make a change what you're currently doing and that's really a qualification that helps you down the road so you find out if you get an eight on that yes i'm going to be doing this or there's some sort of uh upcoming event that basically makes them such as they're moving their offices they have to move their lease is gone opening a new office you have to make a decision so that would be an eight and then the other question as you get further into the process is understand you've gone through several probably at least quoting you understand the needs you've got buy-in through multiple levels the next question you ask is on a scale of 1-10 would i be your vendor of choice and that's where you know the rubber meets the road if they say yeah you're an eight so now i got an eight on being they know they're going to make the change and another eight that is a very well qualified prospect and potential client and that would rank above others because you're going to get others are going to say yeah i don't know that first question of uh 1-10 it's a 5. i don't know i'm not sure i'll have to see you rate those lower when you look at the time amount of time you put into them because i'm not going to waste my effort on someone that's a 50 50 or less than that because it is a waste of time however you've still got to work those but that are lesser priorities so you should have your lower level prospects that are in at five or below in that first question and the higher level ones are coming in when they get an eight those should go to the top of the board so to speak it doesn't depend on size but those two questions will help you best qualify a prospect how do you know for sure when you're either playing fetch or you're playing catch how do you how can you really identify what game you're both playing how can you clearly identify the opportunity to take action or is there a lot of nuance here when you're when it comes to these scores i don't think there's a lot of nuance to it i think it's more of a staying on point staying on focus questions that i've always tried to teach my members of my team and and myself when i was selling was basically it's kind of like a volley you're playing tennis or pickleball or whatever it might be you ask them up front you get a road map of exactly what they need to make a decision the first one would be i want to know more about your company and what you guys do and to see if you're you know a good fit for us because it's coming from the our actual uh potential client and you understand that you go okay and you write that down and then said what happens next if i achieve that part of it and it sounds like i am a good fit what would happen next at your volley knocked it over the net to them and they'd say we'd go through this step and i want to see more about the functionality and maybe do a demo okay and then what if that went well what happens next so it's the old it's just back and forth and now if you write all those down and you go to check box and you just check them off so to speak one by one and you give them everything you find out this really initial discovery and you find out okay and after that and i presented the proposal and it's in the it's in the budget that you've asked for what would happen next and they might look at you and go you idiot i want to buy from you yeah it's uh it gets to the point where you make it to the point it's if i i'm gonna do all these things for you and if i come across and basically you say you've checked off all the boxes then the inevitable happens and you get the sign on the line which is dotted which is from our glengarry glen ross i have to refer to that great film of our times but it just gets to the point where if they back if they back off of that a little bit you can always go back and say we covered that you said this and we did accomplish that that's where it gets down to basic at the end it's like it's no brainer i've done everything you've asked me to do so now it's time to get the approval on the agreement and we'll start the project excellent thank you so much john i really appreciate that and john now that we're at the end here tell us how people could find out more about you where should they go i work at san one of those things you can just seek me out wherever you might i do host a couple of different or help co-hosts i should say a couple of podcasts put your heads in the cloud you can find me on twitter you can find me on linkedin if you want to come to lake placid florida and you can search me there and i'll take you out the boat and we'll go fishing maybe i'll take you up on that john i appreciate it all right thanks hey john thank you so much for being on the show we really appreciate it and we'll put all those links in the show notes thank you so much and thank you everybody for watching take care thank you [Music]