4.05 (V) Qualify

You've been to a bunch of networking events and you found a bunch of leads, and you're moving them into your sales process. あなたはネットワーキングのイベントに出かけてきました。あなたはたくさんのリードを見つけました。そしてそれらをあなたのセールスプロセスに移しています。 Now what? Now you have to qualify them. Qualifying simply means finding whether someone can and will do business with you or hire you. There are three qualifying questions that are most important. And as salespeople we need to start with these. They are budget, timeline, and decision maker. You need to establish whether a prospect has the budget, whether he or she is the decision maker, and whether he or she will make a decision in a timeframe that makes sense for you. There are lots of different ways to ask these questions but they must be asked. There's the direct method. 直接的な方法があります。 Are you the decision maker? 意思決定者ですか？ This is pretty direct. Or the softer way tell me how would a decision like this get made? あるいは、より柔らかい方法で、このような決定がどうなるのか教えてください。 Or do you have the money? Again this is a pretty direct budget question. 繰り返しますが、これはかなり直接的な予算問題です。 Or you could ask does this initiative have an established budget? あるいは、このイニシアティブに予算が設定されているかどうか尋ねることができますか？ That's a softer version of the same question. Once you get through the answers to these three critical questions, you can move on to other types of qualifying questions. Whether they be fit, technology related questions, or other buyers who might need to be included in this decision. Qualifying is both a skill and a discipline. It's a skill because you need to determine when to ask these questions. And a discipline because you just have to ask them. What's interesting about qualifying is that, once it starts it never really stops. You should always be asking qualifying questions as you move through your sales process, to ensure that your prospect can do business with you. The risk of not qualifying properly, is that you get to the end of your sales process, and you find out that your prospect can't do business with you. He isn't the decision maker. She doesn't have the budget. These are nasty surprises. So make sure they don't happen to you.