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Author - Real Profit
Solutions March 2006
Qualify
Your Customer
Save Resource –
Qualify Prospects
The marketplace is now global
and the competition is fierce.
Managers of all types and
sizes of companies feel real pressure to increase sales
and simultaneously reduce selling and marketing costs.
Qualifying your prospects has never been more important
from a business perspective.
What the heck is
Prospect Qualifying?
This consists primarily
of asking in-depth questions and organizing the answers
for better decision-making and comparison to successful
customers. For example:
• What business is
your prospect in? - Manufacturing? Service? Retail?
• How do they see themselves in the Marketplace?
• Do they specialize, or are they generalists?
• How big is your prospect in terms of Annual
Sales?
• How big is your prospect in terms of Employee
Size?
• Where are your prospects located? Locally? Regionally?
The cumulative answers to
these important questions help business managers pursue
two goals: SHORTEN the sales cycle
and INCREASE the likelihood that sales
prospects place orders.
**What is the cost to
your company for the acquisition of each customer? How
can you lower that figure?
The Right Questions
Spending the time to plan
not only your questions but also the answers that you
NEED sets you up for future success. You can generate
a huge time and hard cost savings in future.
To really be set up for
success, plan your next steps carefully.
Example Next Steps
Imagine that after the above
you have 400 prospects and 10 reps on your team.
1. You know Annual Sales
and Employee Size for every prospect. And, since you
know your customers, you have a verified Customer
Profile.
2. 100 prospects match your
Customer Profile closely.
3. 100 do not
match your profile and 200 or so are average matches.
You will close more sales
faster by sending your sales reps to the top 100 prospects
first which saves time. How are you saving time? You
are not wasting your sales rep’s time on prospects
that don’t match your chosen
profile.
Facts: Formal Qualifying
1. Businesses that perform
detailed analysis of their potential prospects
AND ONLY target and invest in proper Marketing Strategy
succeed the most.
2. Qualifying based on deep
sources of business data from Real Profit Solutions
provides a great advantage.
3. Today’s data rich
business environment and computer technology allows
for inexpensive prospecting programs for businesses
of all sizes.
4. Inexpensive formal prospecting
analysis is available to all businesses — from
small mom and pop operations to the largest corporations.
Example of Informal Qualifying
A definition of this area
is common sense or judgment.
Example:
If you sell the latest,
most expensive computer systems to large companies,
should you market to large charity organizations, churches,
or schools?
They probably do not have
the funds and budget to afford your product, right?
Even though formal qualifying yields a match your sales
reps should be trained to utilize sound judgment and
experience to the qualification process.
Summary
1. Prospect qualifying closes
more sales faster, saves time, and saves money.
2. Formal prospect qualifying
is affordable using business data sources to answer
key questions and then matching your Customer Profile.
3. Informal prospect qualifying
adds sales rep experience and judgment to the process.
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Marketing Articles: Properly Qualify Your Customers
