Sales people rarely have enough time in the day to manage all of the activities expected of them. Whether it’s making prospecting calls, going on sales calls, creating proposals, or manage existing accounts, sales people are busy. But being busy doesn’t necessarily translate into better sales results. The difference between high performing salespeople and average performers often comes down to basic time management skills. High performing salespeople are able to consistently allocate the majority of their time to the most promising sales opportunities, while average performers invest too much time in bad opportunities.
It's easy to see how salespeople fall into the trap of working on bad opportunities. Assume you are below quota this quarter and your boss is pressuring you to make a sale. It's human nature to want to hold on to as many sales opportunities as possible. Who knows? Maybe some of the long shot opportunities will close. But that common mindset ignores the significant opportunity cost associated with pursuing bad opportunities. In the time you spent working on unqualified opportunities, you could have been focusing your efforts on more qualified opportunities and rebuilding your sales pipeline.
How much discretion you have to select which opportunities you focus on of course varies by industry and company. However, even where sellers are required to call on a customer or prospect they still can choose how much effort to expend.
You should begin qualifying a sales opportunity by considering whether it satisfies the basic BANT conditions:
Let’s assume, however, that after 1-2 meetings you have determined that the opportunity meets these BANT qualification conditions. Is that enough? No. While BANT is a great starting point, it misses two fundamental issues that go to the heart of a qualified opportunity: (1) Is the opportunity worth pursuing in the first place? And (2) Can you win?
The criteria outlined below will help you assess whether a sales opportunity is worth your effort. Typically, these criteria are best used when after your first meeting where you are uncertain or something just doesn’t feel right about the opportunity. When assessing an opportunity against these criteria you must be brutally honest with yourself and also acknowledge where you have knowledge gaps.
Assuming you have determined that your sales opportunity is worth pursuing, you are now ready for the second question, Can you win?
Typically, you should consider how competitive you solution is after the second meeting or later, when you have an in depth understanding of the buyer and his or her organization.
The criteria below will help you assess your competitive position. It's essential that you conduct this analysis before investing significant resources in such time and effort intensive sales activities such as configuring a solution, writing a proposal, or making formal sales presentations.
Not all of these criteria for either question will be appropriate for every selling situation. Nevertheless, consider an opportunity where you have had one or two meetings and think how would these questions impact your qualifying decision? Maybe they confirmed what you were already thinking or perhaps made you realize where you have gaps in your knowledge and need to ask more questions.
For many salespeople walking away from an opportunity, even a long shot, is a complete anathema. But remember, your most precious resource is your time. Your sales success depends on making decisions on how best to allocate your time, including when to deem an opportunity as unqualified. So rather than mourn the loss of the opportunity (it likely wasn’t a viable opportunity in the first place), focus your efforts on your qualified opportunities and building your pipeline.