Chapter 11

Qualification and Discovery Whiteboards

Through this approach I uncovered opportunities in five different areas of our portfolio. I plan to continue using this approach to discover more opportunities from the Scottish customer base.

—Account Manager, large hardware, software, services company

If you work in a large enterprise, have you ever had presales, technical, or other subject matter expert (SME) resources complain they are being poorly utilized, or being pulled into sales opportunities before the right level of qualification has been done? Salespeople often put the cart before the horse. They use slides and jump to a Solution Whiteboard before they have confirmed whether or not an opportunity is qualified.

A Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard establishes whether or not—and how—a vendor and prospect should invest time and energy continuing the sales cycle. It's all about taking a prospect's temperature and figuring out whether they are a serious buyer or just kicking tires. These types of whiteboards can be conducted either in person or remotely using distance whiteboarding technology that we explore in detail in Chapter 27. The use of these types of whiteboards usually precedes—and can easily lead to—a Solution Whiteboard, even in the same sales meeting.

Let's look at a number of different Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard frameworks. After you review these examples, take some time to think about other whiteboard structures that may support your own selling style, map to your sales methodology, and align with the type of solutions and services you offer.

The Four-Quadrant Time and Knowledge Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

Ted McCarthy is a professional consulting salesperson based in Austin, Texas. He's one of the most strategic salespeople you will ever meet. Ted designed a Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard that he uses at the beginning of the sales process with a customer. According to Ted, his Four-Quadrant qualification whiteboard has made him “a ton” of money over the course of his career. And the whiteboard doesn't say a single thing about the products or solutions he is selling.

Figure 11.1 The Four-Quadrant Time and Knowledge Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

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So let's look at a practical way you might use this whiteboard based on Ted's approach. Let's say you are meeting with the CIO of a large contract manufacturing firm. The CIO and her team have been contracted to launch a new product due out by the end of the year. During the meeting you discover that the team knows a lot about the business requirements, tools, and techniques to design and manufacture the product, and they could probably do all the work themselves, but the project deadlines are tight, and the CIO is not sure she can get the work done in time with the resources she has. In this case, the prospect falls into the top left quadrant of the whiteboard: “Knowledge & No Time.” What the CIO needs is services.

On the other hand, let's say it's a new type of product that the team doesn't have much experience with, but there is plenty of time to complete the project. In this case, consulting services would be more appropriate.

The other two quadrant scenarios are self-explanatory.

Ted uses this whiteboard at the beginning of all his sales cycles. It achieves four critical objectives:

1. Positions him as a trusted advisor who is not just pushing products and services down the throat of his buyer.
2. Focuses on the buyer's needs, given their unique sales situation.
3. Provides a launching point into a more detailed discussion that may include another Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard, or even a Solution Whiteboard.
4. Acknowledges it's possible there may not be an opportunity to do business with the customer if there is not a fit.

The Don't Waste My Time Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

Three out of four of the quadrants in Ted's Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard signal an opportunity to do business with his prospect. Another possible Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard focuses on whether any type of opportunity exists at all. This is the Don't Waste My Time Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard.

Most often, this whiteboard is an internal qualification tool that can be used during a phone conversation or following a meeting. It is a diagnostic tool to help you evaluate the quality of a sales lead or opportunity.

Figure 11.2 The Don't Waste My Time Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

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Here is a six-step example of how you could use this whiteboard during a phone conversation.

1. State that the goal of the meeting is to find out more about your prospect's current situation and see if there is a fit to do business.
2. Draw the arrows (without the labels).
3. Draw the “Identified Project” label and ask your prospect if an actual project has been identified or sponsored, or if the interest is purely information gathering. In the preceding whiteboard, the prospect has communicated there is a near-term business need and compelling event(s).
4. If a project exists, find out if any other vendors have been or plan to be evaluated. Knowing whether the prospect is evaluating specific vendors helps you understand if this is a good opportunity to spend time on. In the above example, no other vendors are being evaluated. You may interpret this in two ways. It could indicate the project is not a high priority. Or, you could view it positively as an indication you are either the first vendor being evaluated, or there is an opportunity to create the need for a solution. At the very least, you will be in a position to influence the decision criteria. A follow-up question might be, “Do you plan on evaluating other vendors, and if so, when, and which ones?” On the other hand, if other vendors are being actively evaluated, and your competitors are among them, it is most certainly an opportunity worth pursuing.
5. Next, is there a solution fit? It's time to break out your list of qualification questions around typical challenges your solutions can address. If these resonate with your prospect, taken together with positive readings on the other dimensions in the whiteboard, this is a great sign. In the above example, more discovery is required to determine if there is a fit (see the Are We a Fit? Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard next).
6. Are you at the right level? You could get terrific readings on the first three dimensions only to find you aren't talking with the right person in the organization. In this specific example, you are speaking with someone in the right department, but this person lacks sufficient influence or budget authority to make a purchasing decision.

Based on your particular sales methodology, you can substitute any other labels, dimensions, or concepts into this whiteboard. You can use this template in any order and substitute whichever qualification dimensions you feel are most relevant to your specific selling approach and style. You can interpret the responses you get in a way that maps to your selling style and length of sales cycle.

The Are We a Fit? Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

You can use several Qualification and Discovery whiteboards together. Let's say you get a good reading from the Don't Waste My Time Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard, and it is clear that both parties would benefit from a continued dialogue. You can now go to a deeper level using the Are We a Fit? Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard to evaluate if the prospect's current situation, goals, and objectives are aligned with your capabilities. While the focus is on your core competencies, there is room to accommodate customer-specific objectives that may or may not be a fit for your offerings.

The following example shows how you would use this Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard in front of a prospect to assess whether they are a good fit. For this example we'll use the Cool Road Trucking case study. The idea is to identify where the prospect believes they are today across a number of core disciplines or current situations, and where they want to be or anticipate being over time, on a scale of 0 to 10. In this way, the prospects are in effect self-qualifying themselves, with a powerful subconscious impact. By the end of the whiteboard, if there is a good fit, it is hard for them to argue that you cannot help them get to where they need to be.

 

Figure 11.3 The Are We a Fit? Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard

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ACTIVITY—Develop an Are We a Fit? Whiteboard for a Current Prospect

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This whiteboard is simple to use and most effective with a prospect, whether in person or over web conference with a tablet PC or digital paper. You should use the following six steps:

1. Number the top of the board 0 to 10 from left to right.
2. Draw out the various core competencies enabled by your solutions or services, as depicted, with horizontal right arrows between each. These items could also be qualification criteria that would indicate a good fit, such as “size of chain” or “percent of revenue from fresh foods.”
3. Save a couple of rows at the bottom for custom qualification criteria that are specific to each prospect. This is where situational fluency is especially valuable to map your solution's capabilities to the unique business needs of your prospect you may not yet be aware of.
4. Working interactively with your prospect, have them assign a value to their current situation for each core competency or qualification criterion, working top to bottom. Make sure you capture each current situation value before asking them what numeric value they aspire to reach.
5. Next, ask them to assign a value to where they aspire to be or anticipate being for each criterion, drawing an arrow from the current situation value to the value they assign.
6. Finally, draw a dashed vertical line coming down from the number 6 on the scale. Your solutions and services are designed to bring your prospect “above average” in each of the criteria, at a minimum. Any prospect that wants to be just average is not open to the type of improvement you can offer, or has not yet been convinced they need to change. If you find yourself in this situation, it is a good indication that it is the right time to use one of your handy Why Change Whiteboards, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

In the figure above, the specific Cool Road Trucking opportunity is worth further investigation. The prospect is experiencing a high degree of fresh food spoilage; they want to improve delivery times; they are a growing chain, albeit modestly; they anticipate growing the percent of revenue derived from fresh foods; more cost controls are being put in place; and they see room for improvement in shipment visibility. Even though only “fresh index” and “timely deliveries” are above a 7, these are two of the most important indicators of a good Cool Road Trucking opportunity.

Assuming you get positive readings, this whiteboard can create a high degree of buy-in on the part of the prospect to continue through the sales process. The whiteboard is also an excellent tool to help you prioritize your sales activities by focusing on opportunities with the highest readings.

Whichever Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard you choose to use—or perhaps one that you've “home grown”—keep in mind that the purpose is not to get into product and solution detail until you know you have a real opportunity. We all love the products and solutions we sell. Holding off on sharing these details can often be the “bait” to reel in your qualified prospect for a second meeting.

ACTIVITIES
Up until now you've been reading, which is a good way for you to learn about whiteboards. But if you are going to really use whiteboards, you have to start trying out what we are talking about. Throughout this section of the book we have Activities. And we literally mean that you should grab a pencil and try them out. Here is the first of these sections.

 

ACTIVITY
Select an early stage opportunity, or an account that you are prospecting into. Use your available notes or account plan and, using the blank template opposite Figure 11.3, develop an Are We a Fit? Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard that you can use with your customer. For now, just supply the qualification criteria or business objectives that define a good fit for your solution or product offering. Later, you can use this whiteboard in front of your prospect to complete it.
In the next chapter we'll look at a possible follow-up to the Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard: Why Change Whiteboards.
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