12 Most Valid Reasons You Should Disqualify a Prospective Client
You
need to improve your sales. You need new clients. You found someone who
is receptive to your message and willing to meet with you. You have a
prospect! Maybe.
Doing exceptionally good work means disqualifying prospective clients
for whom you cannot do good work. It isn’t easy to do so when you are
hungry, but being an effective salesperson—and a good
businessperson—means eliminating and disqualifying prospects that aren’t
right for you (and for whom you aren’t right, either).
This list of 12 Most important reasons you should disqualify a prospective client will get you started.
1. You Can’t Create Value
If you cannot create value for a prospective client, regardless of
how badly you may need the sale, you must disqualify them. Selling well
is about creating value for your clients and customers, and when you
can’t do so, the prospect must be disqualified.
2. They Don’t Value the Value You Create
Sometimes you can create value but your prospective client doesn’t
value the value that you create. You are never going to do brag-worthy,
raving fan work for someone who doesn’t believe what you do is valuable.
Disqualify them.
3. They Are Low on the Business Maturity Continuum
Some prospective clients are low on the business maturity continuum.
They are adversarial, driven by conflict, and believe that they need to
beat up their vendors to get the best out of them. Life is too short to
spend with people who mistreat you and your team. Say goodbye.
4. They Believe You Are a Commodity
If you aren’t a commodity, you shouldn’t allow yourself to be treated
like a commodity. If you are treated like you are expendable and easily
replaced, you will never have the opportunity to do your best work. You
will also never capture any of the value you create for yourself and
your company.
5. Protect Your Focus and Sweet Spot
The best way to make selling easy and fulfilling is to stick to your
sweet spot. It is easier to make deals where you can create a massive
amount of value. It only feels easier to sell to receptive prospects
outside your sweet spot. Protect your focus on disqualify prospects who
are only receptive.
6. The Business Is Unprofitable
Some natural laws govern our universe. One of them is that there is
no way to lose money on every transaction and make it up on volume. You
must disqualify and reject business that isn’t profitable for you and
for your company.
7. Avoid Receptivity Traps
Some prospects are so receptive to you and your message that they
feel like they are good prospects. They are interested and they ask a
lot of good questions. But they don’t really use what you sell and they
aren’t going to buy. They are simply receptive and like talking to
people. Be nice, but disqualify them.
8. Make Time for Better Prospects
Your time in sales is short. You move from quarter to quarter, always
working against the clock. It is critical to disqualify prospects that
are wrong for you and your business so that you can make time for better
prospects.
9. Make Time to Nurture Long Term Dream Clients
Your dream clients are the clients for whom you can do breath-taking,
jaw-dropping, earth-shattering work. They already have someone who does
what you do. You need time to nurture these relationships so that when
they become dissatisfied, you get and opportunity to compete for their
business.
10. Protect Your Reputation
When you take on work that doesn’t allow you to create real value,
you risk your reputation. These clients tell other clients that you are
“okay” or that “there is nothing special” about what you do. Worse, some
will say you don’t do good work. Protect your reputation and disqualify
them.
11. You Don’t Know Them
Lots of things that look like opportunities aren’t. The unsolicited
RFP, the referral from your networking group, your best friend’s
brother-in-law. If the prospect isn’t really a prospect, you can’t treat
it like one. You don’t win RFP’s when you haven’t laid the groundwork.
The referral is too small. Your best friend is trying to be helpful,
nothing there.
12. Face Your Real Problem
The real reason most salespeople don’t like to disqualify is because
they have to few prospects and a too shallow pipeline. The real
underlying problem is almost always a lack of prospecting, or a lack of
effectiveness when it comes to opening and creating opportunities.
Dealing with these two factors does more to help you build a pipeline of
qualified opportunities.
It’s not always easy. It is not always fun. But to protect your time
for real prospects and dream clients, to protect your reputation, and to
do meaningful work for clients who love you, you have to mercilessly
disqualify everything else.
Posted by Anthony Iannarino on Aug 4, 2011
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