CHAPTER 8
Are They Prospects or Merely Suspects?
Not all prospects are prospects. In fact, I will argue that you and everyone else have a percentage of prospects or leads that aren’t going anywhere. For one reason or another, you haven’t come to grips yet with this reality.
Are You Gaming the System?
Thinking you can trick the system to succeed will ultimately catch up with you. Let me tell you about Wylie, an account manager I used to work with and his approach.
Our sales manager, Bob, required each of us to meet with him weekly to review business and, in particular, how we were doing against our quarterly goal. Some quarters the meetings would go smoothly, because we were all having a good quarter. Other times it was ugly. During the bad quarters, we would dread sitting in the conference room waiting to be called into Bob’s office to be jumped on and forced to listen to a litany of phrases to describe our incompetence.
One quarter in particular was far more painful than any other. Business had gone soft, and with each passing week, the tongue lashings became louder and more intense. Well, that was the case for everyone but Wylie. He would come out of the meeting and walk back into the conference room with a big grin. In fact, he would come back into the conference room as if nothing had happened, and then point to who Bob wanted to meet with next. It took us only a couple of weeks of seeing Wylie walk back from his meeting not feeling any pain before we asked what the deal was. Wylie was hesitant to respond, but then he confessed he wasn’t giving Bob his real number. He stated he packed his pipeline with a lot of business that simply wasn’t going to happen, but he didn’t want to remove it.
One of the other salespeople challenged him on the logic, and his answer was amazing. He said how he knew the business wasn’t going to occur, but if he took it out of the pipeline, Bob would chew him out week after week. His logic was to wait until week twelve of the quarter to take it out, and that way he would only get chewed out once. From his perspective, the way to avoid Bob chewing him out each week was to keep the pipeline full of bogus numbers.
I hope you’re not like Wylie, although I do admit the guy was clever. I can’t tell you the number of other salespeople with whom I’ve shared that story who have said they too have done something similar to game the system as a way of avoiding pain of one type or another.
What’s in your pipeline? Are you stuffing it with leads or prospects that have little-to-zero chance of ever becoming customers? Are you holding on to them as a way to keep yourself from getting discouraged? Are you keeping them to make yourself look better than your peers? It’s time to get real and treat your pipeline as sacred. You don’t have time to play games with it, and you don’t have time to use it as an ego builder. Your pipeline is your key to success. It’s your key to making your number, so treat it as such!
I know I’m being blunt, but I’m tired of salespeople complaining they can’t prospect. Let me share one more situation that, unfortunately, is going to hit home for many of you—especially those of you who are in a B2C business. When I was meeting with a team of salespeople recently to discuss prospecting, the topic of “bad prospects” came up. Every salesperson mentioned how they were guilty of having prospects who had little chance of ever becoming customers.
I asked, “If they have little chance of becoming a prospect, then why should we even think they’re a prospect?” I love asking salespeople this question. The answers from the group varied, but the general overall answer was they were keeping them around because they were easy to talk to and they didn’t have any better prospects to chase after. Think about that for a moment and the impact of what it means. To me it says salespeople are happy to go through the motions of spending time with bad prospects and not expecting results, all because they’re too lazy or too ill-equipped to get real prospects. No wonder so many salespeople struggle to make their numbers! If you don’t have good prospects, how do you expect to have good customers? If you don’t have good customers, how do you expect to make your quota? It’s not going to happen!
The answer is to focus your time to allow you to move prospects through the process faster, so you can determine if they truly are prospects or merely suspects. In the end, your goal should be to spend more time with fewer prospects, particularly prospects who have the best probability of becoming customers. Take a look at your CRM (Customer Relationship Management software). How many “prospects” do you have in your system who are anything but legitimate? Keeping those names in your system to give your boss the impression you’re doing your job is not going to put food on the table!
I have a feeling there are those reading this book who suddenly want to put it down, pull up their pipelines, and determine what names they know they need to move out of their pipelines. If this is you, go ahead and do it now. I’ll wait. When you finally realize you need to wipe out some of the stuff in your pipeline, remember one key thing: you’re not removing the names from your CRM system or whatever tools you and your company use. What you’re doing is taking them out of your active pipeline. The names and information are still valuable, but just not now.
You might have a marketing list, an email list, or whatever, and that’s where the information should go. The lead that isn’t going anywhere today may very well wind up being next year’s hot new mega account. At the end of the day, it’s important to realize how success as a salesperson is far more likely when you’re allocating your time effectively and spending as much time as possible with those people most likely to buy now. I would much rather spend the day with three hot prospects than thirty leads that are going nowhere.
You’ve Got Suspects, Not Prospects
Too many prospects are nothing more than suspects pretending to be prospects. Prospects who are suspects don’t walk around with a big sign around their neck saying, “Don’t talk to me. I’m only a suspect!” No, they hide who and what they are for any number of reasons. Many times a suspect will engage with you repeatedly for no other reason than to gain information they can use elsewhere. Other suspects will engage because their bosses told them to meet with you. And still others will meet with you only because they don’t have the courage to say “no” to your requests for a meeting. The absolute worst suspect is the one who engages with the salesperson just long enough to warrant a couple of free meals or box seats to a game or some other form of entertainment.
How many times have you spent too much time with what you thought was a great prospect, only to have them wind up being a suspect? If you can’t tell the difference, there is no way you will ever achieve any level of success in sales. The sooner you can validate the intentions of the person with whom you are talking, the sooner you’ll be using your time efficiently. Never forget the most valuable asset you have is your time, and the more time you spend with suspects, the less time you’ll be able to spend with prospects.
Six Ways to Separate Prospects from Suspects
Here are some quick tips for determining who’s a prospect and who’s not.
1.Have they told you when they are going to make a decision?
Nothing is a bigger waste than spending your valuable time dealing with someone who only winds up saying they’re not going to make a decision for months, or even years. Just because they’re not going to make a decision for another year doesn’t mean you ditch them. They will remain a good lead for you, but because it’s a year away, the person isn’t someone you need to spend time with now.
2.Have they shared with you a piece of proprietary information?
Proprietary information is something you would not be able to find any other way unless the person with whom you are talking shares it with you. The information might be personal or related to their business. I like this as a clue for one reason. A person is not going to share proprietary information with you unless they have confidence in you and feel there is a reason to do so. To put it another way, a person who has no intention of buying from you is most likely not going to share something that is proprietary in nature.
3.Do they have a need you can help them with?
If they’re not willing to share a need with which you can help them, then stop wasting your time. There are far more important people to whom you can devote your time and effort. Don’t get carried away with putting words into the customer’s mouth as to how you could help them. A test I use: unless the customer says it with his or her own mouth, then don’t believe it. Think about this for a moment. Would a person talk about a need if it weren’t real? No. Let them tell you. Don’t go putting words in their mouth.
4.Are you sure they’re the decision maker?
Your ability to close a sale is going to go down dramatically if you’re dealing with someone who is only conveying information to the real decision maker. A question I like to ask is, “How have you made decisions like this in the past?” A question like that is not threatening and will allow the prospect to share. Of course, what you’re listening for are clues as to whether they will be making the decision. I also don’t hesitate to ask, “Is there anyone else who will be involved in making the decision?” Again, it’s straightforward and designed to ensure you’re using your time in an effective manner.
5.Do they have the financial ability to buy?
At one time or another, we all have wasted the time of a salesperson by talking about something we wanted to buy, but had zero ability to actually buy.
What makes this so bad is many times the person wants to buy, but lacks the ability. So, the whole time they come across as being sincere in their intent to buy. A question I like to ask to gain the information is, “When you’re making big decisions like this, what criteria do you consider?”
This is extremely difficult for the salesperson, because many times the customer still will blow smoke in your face claiming a low price is essential. I’m not concerned at this point if they do this, because I’ll be fine if I do my job right and demonstrate value and total cost of ownership. What does concern me are signals that from a financial standpoint, they simply don’t have the cash flow or credit to make the purchase.
6.Has one of your competitors already clearly developed the customer’s expectations?
This could be a request for proposal (RFP) or bid quote to which you’ve been asked to respond. Very simple rule: If you didn’t help write the RFP/bid, what makes you think you have a chance at winning it? If you didn’t help write it, your competition probably did. If you’re being invited to the party at this late stage, the only thing you’re doing is providing the customer with information they can use to wrestle better terms from the salesperson who did help write the RFP. Sorry, but being invited late to the party is a kiss of death. The only thing you’ll do is crank out a lot responses, and in the end you’ll have nothing to show for it.
I do have one final item that I don’t include as essential, but nonetheless it does help validate if the person with whom you’re dealing is serious. Ask the person if they would do something for you after you end the conversation. For example, you could ask them if they would review and comment on information you’ll send them soon. The reason this is a good gauge is because someone who is not interested in you at all will definitely not take the time to do anything “extra” you ask. Not only does it allow you to measure their interest, but it also helps you stay in their mind after the call.
The reason it’s so important to validate your potential prospects is because you want to avoid wasting the most valuable asset you have—your time. Trust me, you do not want to spend a lot of time with people who have no intention of buying. Sure, there are times when you won’t get answers to the previous questions and the lead still winds up being an awesome prospect and maybe even eventually a great customer. And yes, there are times when you do get answers to the above and the lead looks solid, but doesn’t materialize at all. However, I have found when you do have answers to these questions and they line up with your expectations, ninety percent of the time you’ll be well on your way to having a “developing customer.” The questions more often than not work in helping you weed out the suspects so that you can focus on the prospects!
Price Does Not Belong in Prospecting
This issue is a sore spot to me, and although I’ve written about it in other chapters, I believe it’s so important that it’s worth writing about in this chapter, too. Everyone wants to believe they’re going after only high-value prospects. However, far too often the strategy they’re using is attracting low-value prospects. If anything in your sales prospecting strategy is price-oriented, then guess what? You’re naturally going to attract low-value prospects.
You might think that’s fine if business is so slow that low-value prospects are better than no prospects. But know that we will naturally attract what we set out to attract. If you talk price, you’ll get price; if you talk benefits, you’ll get benefits. The key is to focus everything you do on helping the customer with their needs and allowing them to build confidence in you and what you provide. Let me get even more blunt: low price is not a prospecting tool. If you are forced to use price to attract prospects, then you haven’t figured out how to distinguish yourself from the competition. Differentiating yourself through benefits leads to high-value prospects.
A key reason I’m against using price as a prospecting tool is because once you start using it, you and your customers will become addicted to it. The level of profit you lose will be huge, both in the short term and the long term. Sadly, you will become slightly blind to this, because focusing on low price will be your go-to method.
To help keep your focus on the needs of the prospect, make sure you’re asking them questions that get them to expand upon their problem. Remember, your objective is to either help them overcome a problem or allow them to achieve a gain. That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep your focus on the customer’s wants and needs and you’ll avoid having to go down the price trap road.
When you focus your prospecting approach in this manner, you’ll find yourself quickly building up a library of great questions you can ask. You’ll become extremely comfortable and confident in asking such questions. The end result? You’ll find yourself dealing with even higher-value customers than before, all while moving further away from price as a prospecting tool.