5 SIMPLE Steps to Qualify CUstomer and SALES Opportunities to win MORE deals
by Ming
Every salesperson needs to master the techniques to qualify sales opportunities. To be successful in sales and increase the probability of winning each sales opportunity, it is critical for every salesperson to master the sales qualification skills.
By mastering sales qualification skills, salespeople will be able to ask the right questions, prompt further in conversations, clarify details, listen, observe and gather in-depth understanding of customers’ needs, challenges, pain points, decision making process, internal challenges, etc. With deeper understanding of the customers’ requirements, salespeople will then be able to determine whether the customers have any real pain points, or is the pain “painful” enough for them to take action.
If you are selling complex, long selling cycle and high-value B2B products and services, you need to understand and acknowledge that sales opportunity qualification as an ongoing process, in which you continually accumulate new learning as well as regularly revalidating any previous assumptions.
With practice comes mastery, with mastery comes knowledge, with knowledge comes strength and confidence.
After many years of on the ground learning, many rounds of meetings with prospects and customers, winning deals, losing deals, tried and tested many techniques, we created an easy and simple technique to acurately qualify sales opportunities so that every qualified sales opportunity may turn into a win.
We have also identified that to master sales opportunity qualification skills, it is important to understand that there are 2 phases to the sales opportunity qualification process; Phase 1 = external qualification and Phase 2 = internal qualification.
Now, we will be covering Phase 1 of the sales opportunity qualification process which is to qualify the sales opportunity and to qualify the customer. At RevUpZone we will categorize as an “external” qualification.
For external qualification, the RevUpZone sales technique is easy to remember. We keep to 5 easy steps to qualify sales opportunities with RevUpZone’s technical called “COTAM”.
Qualify Sales Opportunities In 5 Easy Steps
Step 1: C = Challenges
Challenges, need, pain points and problems, are the first things to discuss with the prospective customers when qualifying a sales lead before talking about the budget and anything else.
By empathizing and listening to their challenges, pain points, concerns, you are able to get to know customers and understand them better. In the process, customers will feel that they are heard, they will feel that you understand them and more often than not, the customers are more likely to open up to you and share more details with you. By understanding and clarifying more details, you will be able to find out whether there will be an opportunity for you to help customers to solve their challenges, pain points and problems.
The first way to work around challenges is to identify them. Asking the right questions can help you to discover the most pressing challenges, pain points, problems that need to be resolved for the customer.
Here are some of the best probing questions to help you qualify sales opportunities: What challenges and pain points are you facing?
How are the challenges and pain points affecting your business operations?
How long have you been facing these challenges and pain points?
Are you using any existing solutions to solve this problem? If so, why are you considering other products/services?
What does success look like for you and your company after using this product/services?
When the biggest and most “painful” problems are identified, the sales team can work on a strategy to address the problems.
Remember to look for opportunities in the challenges. If you identify challenges you can help with, the lead becomes more qualified.
Step 2: O = Objectives
Once you understand the challenges, pain points or problems faced, you need to understand “why” or “the reason why” they want to resolve it.
What is the customers’ “WHY”? Once you understand their “WHY”, you will have a good understanding of the magnitude of the challenges faced, pain points and problems that they are facing.
What is the customers’ “WHY”? Once you understand their “WHY”, you will have a good understanding of the magnitude of the challenges faced, pain points and problems that they are facing.
Tips on probing questions to qualify customer’s objectives:
What are the objectives you want to achieve by solving this problem?
When do you need to solve it?
Who is the owner of this project?
Who has the final decision?
What happens if you do not solve this problem?
What is your compelling event?
TIP: Compelling events are not created.
TIP : Salespeople need to uncover compelling events by getting to know the customer, understanding customer’s challenges, pain points, problems by probing and questioning, doing research, investigating and analyzing data collected.
If the customer has a real need, challenge, pain point or problem, the customer will be able to answer the above probing questions. If the customer has a problem with a clear objective and a specific timeline to resolve the problem, there is a compelling event for the customer to take action. If the compelling event is real, there must be consequences if the customer misses the timeline.
Step 3: T = Timeline
It is important to know what timeline your customer has or is working towards to have their problem resolved or their business needs being met. Once you know the timeline required, you need to work backwards to plan for the customer’s journey to help them navigate through their internal processes and things to be completed before the products or services are delivered to resolve the issues faced in supporting their business challenges. With the understanding of the customer’s timeline, you can then prioritize and focus on the priorities of the customer and for the customer.
Tips on probing questions to qualify customer’s timeline:
When do they need the product/services to be ready in order to achieve your business objectives?
When do you need to have your problems solved?
What happens if you do not resolve it by the timeline?
If there is no timeline, you know that the sales opportunities cannot be qualified and you should put the prospective customer lower on your priority list and for you to revisit after a period of time. Do keep the customer relationship warm and continue to nurture until the next follow-up or engagement.
TIP: Always stay up-to-date on the latest trends, latest industry news. Changes to regulatory landscape, policies, protocols or changes in customer’s management team or business directions can either increase the need higher up on the priority list or sometimes bring it down to a lower level or even completely remove as there is no longer any need to take any action.
TIP: Professional salespeople qualify based on reality.
It is critical that salespeople be realistic when they gauge their priorities and rank their sales opportunities’ priorities. Try to gauge a realistic timeline from your conversations instead of focusing on the timeline priority that you want to have happen (most likely your target timeline will be based on sales performance target timeline). Pushing your personal timeline onto a potential customer is not a good way to close any deal and should not be used in any sales opportunity.
Step 4: A = Authority
A stands for Authority in COTAM.
“Authority” in COTAM stands for the person who makes the final call. However, salespeople need to be aware that there is more than one person involved in the decision making process. If you are selling to Business to Business (B2B), MNC corporations, it is important to talk to the team of people in charge of buying when making a sales pitch. There will be a team of people involved in the decision making process. This group of people are collectively known as “stakeholders”.
“Authority” in COTAM stands for the person who makes the final call. However, salespeople need to be aware that there is more than one person involved in the decision making process. If you are selling to Business to Business (B2B), MNC corporations, it is important to talk to the team of people in charge of buying when making a sales pitch. There will be a team of people involved in the decision making process. This group of people are collectively known as “stakeholders”.
Nurturing a prospective customer takes a lot of time, money, and effort, so do not just talk to one person in the customer’s organization and assume that he or she is the only one involved in the decision making process. Do not chase a prospective customer who does not have the authority and cannot purchase your product or service. Otherwise, you must start over again in the sales process once you find the right person to engage and you would have wasted all those time and resources.
Tips on probing questions to qualify customer’s authority:
How is the company’s decision making process?
Who else is involved in the decision making process?
Who has the final authority to make a decision that will sign off the contract?
Who influences the decision?
Who recommends the final authority?
Who are the users of the products/services?
Where are they located?
Although you want to talk to the person or people with authority, it is important that salespeople cover all key stakeholders and do not neglect low-influencing team members in customer’s organization. Oftentimes, someone who seems low-influencing can still help get you foot in the door or put in a positive and good word for you to tilt the decision towards you. People without buying authority can also be privileged with important information about people’s character, personality, political alignment and how to best approach a person and difficulties in a department.
TIP: Salespeople need to cover at least 8-12 (more than 20 if dealing with Fortune 500 companies) key stakeholders in each organisation before closing a sale. It is essential for salespeople to identify and engage with all the necessary stakeholders as early in the process as possible when pitching to win group business.
Each company or MNC organization has their own way of authorizing contracts or procuring products and services. Some companies have a board who must approve big purchases or changing contracts while others have simpler processes and have their procurement team to manage the end-to-end purchasing process. It is important to verify the right contact before investing too much time and resources into a sales opportunity.
Step 5: M = Money
One of the most sensitive subjects and in some cultures considered taboo to talk about for any individual or companies is money. It is also vital to discuss when buying or selling products and services.
COTAM technique has money as the last qualification as we focus on spending more time to discover the customer’s challenges, pain points so that salespeople can frame the money discussion in a way that shows the benefits of spending some money to deal with their problem. Positioning the purchase as an investment to the company rather than an expense will have a longer runway and geared for success.
COTAM technique has money as the last qualification as we focus on spending more time to discover the customer’s challenges, pain points so that salespeople can frame the money discussion in a way that shows the benefits of spending some money to deal with their problem. Positioning the purchase as an investment to the company rather than an expense will have a longer runway and geared for success.
Instead, ask questions that inspires customers to look for the money by asking probing questions like:
What is the budget you have approved to invest in this project?
What is the typical process for getting final sign off and approval for this type of purchase?
What is the budget ?
Has the budget been approved? When must budget be utilized?
Demonstrate to the customers that by working with you and by purchasing your products and services, they are investing for themselves and they will receive the benefits of relieving their challenges, pain points, increase customer satisfaction, increasing their Return on Investments (ROI) overtime.
In summary, by using COTAM technique, salespeople can focus on the best opportunities that will convert opportunities to a closed deal. When more time and money are spent on qualifying the right opportunities, the probability of deal closure will be much higher than not and most likely to increase the bottom line and profitability to the company.
It takes 2 hands to clap or it takes 2 to tango.
Understanding customer’s needs, challenges, objectives, timeline, budget, alone will not be sufficient in completing the sales qualification process. In order to qualify for opportunities with a high win rate, salespeople need to understand the positioning of their company, their competition, problems that their products and services can solve, and how they can add value to customers
To complete the mastery of sales opportunity qualification skills, salespeople need to master the “COTAM” external sales opportunity qualification technique combined with an internal sales qualification technique called “ 3CPU”. 3CPU is Phase 2 of RevUpZone sales opportunity qualification. 3CPU technique qualifies sales opportunities based on internal qualification - Company, Competitors, Customers, Product, Unique Selling Point.
Once you have understood and are able to apply both COTAM and 3CPU sales qualification techniques effectively for every sales opportunity qualification, you will master the sales opportunity qualification skills and will be able to successfully close more deals in shorter selling cycles effortlessly.
Contact coach@revupzone.com for more info on RevUpZone sales training programs for you and your sales team or 121 coaching sessions to master sales hunting skills to win big and win fast!