
As I look back at my sales career, I noticed an interesting pattern. When I first started, I always led the team in open opportunities. However, I always finished just above my quarterly quota. Now, as I’m more experienced, I work nearly 30% fewer deals than my first year, and my attainment has increased by nearly 50%.
So what was I missing when I first started? I lacked the skill of being able to disqualify a prospect as quick as I could qualify them. My ego felt that everyone was a buyer and that I could sweet talk them regardless of their needs/timelines. Eventually, you waste enough time on unqualified buyers and you’ll notice patterns. Now I try to qualify for these things early on, so I get to the “No” quicker and focus my efforts somewhere else.
Here are my top 3 reasons to walk away from a potential deal.
# 1 No Champion
Now we could write a completely separate post (probably will) on what is a champion and how to test them. High-level idea is that a champion has power/influence over the economic buyer and is invested in buying your solution as you are in selling it.
The number of times I assumed a champion incorrectly…don't be like young me. Just because someone is spending time with you evaluating doesn’t mean they are a champion of your solution. So how do you get ahead of this? You test your prospect to see if they're a champion. Ask them if they know the decision-making process, who all is involved if they'll intro you to their boss. If they’re not able to speak to these things, it’s probably better to cut bait early and reach out to someone else in the account. The last thing you want to happen is to get stuck with one contact in an account who can say no and not give you a yes.
#2 No Timeline
If you get anything from this article, let it be this phrase. “No Date, No Deal”. I repeat, “No Date, No Deal”. A customer can have quantified pain or business initiatives that align perfectly with the capabilities of your solution. However, like everything, priorities will always change and fires happen. So before you go through the evaluation process, understand their milestones. When do they want to finish their evaluation? Launch their product? Migrate to your solution? Most importantly, once you get that date, understand what is the consequence of missing it or what/who is driving it. If the CEO wants it done by a certain date, the deadline is probably more solid than if a 1st line manager wants it done. I remember a customer in the sports betting space that was trying to time the launch of the app with the NFL season. They have real revenue targets and losses attached to their deadline. If your prospect doesn’t have a well-thought-out deadline, probably not a high-priority project. Better to cut bait now, than having to chase them down for months while getting asked by your leadership when the deal is coming in.
#3 No current pain
People will always move away from pain than towards a reward. There were a lot of prospects I tried selling into that had no issues today but had huge aspirations in scaling their business. Let me tell you, if they have no plan to scale their business, there is no opportunity. While scaling is nice, everyday fires will always take precedent with these prospects. Focus your time on prospects that have issues in the now, they’re stuck with dealing with them every day. Ask “How’s performance?”, “If we, don’t solve these challenges how does that negatively impact the business?”. Selling only on their future state is a lot harder than selling on current pain.
Now that you’re armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to decipher who is worth spending time with and who to disqualify. Let us know if you have any questions!
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