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.
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.
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:
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.
Here is a six-step example of how you could use this whiteboard during a phone conversation.
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.
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.
ACTIVITY—Develop an Are We a Fit? Whiteboard for a Current Prospect
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:
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.