Developing Qualification Criteria
Start Improving Your Sales Process NOW!
(old version of this book) |
How to Develop Qualification Crieria
That Will Help You Find and Win Customers
This guide is part of the Sales Process Improvement Series. This volume is a prerequisite for designing effective marketing and selling processes. It shows you step by step how to map what your customer values, and how to develop questions and value propositions that you can incorporate into sales training, proposal writing, and presentations. |
| This book is being rewritten. The updated version will be released in early 2009. Owners of this product will automatically receive a pdf of the new book. |
The new book will be titled:
How to Develop Sales |
You probably have salespeople working overtime right now trying to gain customers your company does not want.
The temptation for salespeople to “chase anything that moves” is strong, especially when the market is tight.
When that happens, activity substitutes for results. And when that happens, things have little chance of improving.
To deploy selling resources effectively, it is critical to know:
- How well your salespeople choose their prospects?
- Is expensive sales talent trying to compensate for a poor (or poorly defined) market?
- How do your salespeople decide what to do once they are in an account?
- How do they decide whether to spend time prospecting, or trying to close current deals?
Developing the right qualification criteria is a fundamental of sales process improvement. Unfortunately, getting salespeople to use them can be problematic.
Basic Common Sense
Sales organizations typically understand qualification. It already is important to them. Trouble is, they treat it as some remedial thing between the salesperson and the sales manager.
There is a lot more to it than that.
Production managers learned long ago that they needed to control the quality of the raw material coming into their production facilities. Otherwise they might be adding value to scrap.
The same thing applies to sales and marketing, except the raw materials are people in the market.
- Why is it that the marketing department segments the market, and then acts as if “every lead is a good lead?”
- Why is it ok not to know “which 50% of the marketing budget is well spent?”
- Why do we celebrate last-minute discounting efforts to close business, when it might be avoided with the right planning and preparation?
- Has anyone in our sales department ever walked away from a sales opportunity? Shouldn’t they have?
The answer to these questions is in the nature of the prospects your salespeople are trying to sell to. You can help salespeople analyze and articulate the observable characteristics of their prospects, and study them scientifically.
Or, you can ignore this subject and it will remain a black hole.
Every client I’ve worked with who has gone down this road never looked back. The power of this kind of information to galvanize the sales team, to drive communication with distribution channels, and to help salespeople get their bearings in complicated account situations is incredible.
When I began writing about these experiences, I began receiving emails from people all over the world. Here is an example:
“I was reading your articles and postings on iSixSigma. Great info. I have worked with sales a little in my previous Black Belt role, but now I am working with the sales group extensively in my current role. Your article, ‘Generating Support for a Sales Quality Initiative,’ was a very good read.” D.H.
Now, I have developed a complete guidebook for the approach that was only hinted at in that article. It presents the sequence and the technique for helping people to agree on the fundamental qualification criteria for marketing and selling in your company. It has helped literally dozens of companies to look at the work of their own organizations very differently, and create sustainable improvement as a result. Here are just a few:
American Express
MailWell
Replicon
Rock-Tenn Corporation
Boise Paper Products
Merillat
Target Corporation
Carlson Wagonlit
Personnel Decisions, Inc.
VERITAS
Marriott
This information is now available to you through this website for a fraction of the fees these companies gladly paid for this information.
Given confidentiality requirements, I can’t share specific details about these company’s projects. However, here are a few general examples:
- An engineering firm was struggling with a low close ratio. They hired a sales training firm with the expectation that they needed to teach salespeople how to close. Instead, they discovered they had actually failed to identify exactly what a qualified opportunity was. Once the criteria were clarified, and salespeople were persuaded that it was actually “OK” to walk away from poorly qualified deals, the close ratio went from 9% to over 40% - in two months.
- A medical devices manufacturer was struggling to forecast revenue accurately. After a Sales Kaizen initiative, they devised more than 20 individual issues they needed to assess about their prospects. After a few months of gathering data, a statistical analysis revealed that only 8 of the 20+ questions were statistically relevant to whether their deals would close or not (and they were NOT the ones sales management thought they would be). The result was a forecast indicator applied at the beginning of their sales cycle that was more than 90% accurate at forecasting closed deals.
- A Midwest manufacturer was suffering from a low close ratio and a high cost of sales through its distribution channel. After bringing the marketing and field sales team together to develop qualification criteria, they performed a test to see how effective it really was. Through a statistical technique they discovered that high scores on the qualification scorecard were strongly correlated to successfully closed orders. Subsequently, they were able to ask distributors to use the scorecards in their requests for quotes, and prioritize the quotes according to the scorecard rankings. Their account managers were able to train and coach more effectively around the lower scoring opportunities. Close ratios increased significantly. Yet the most important outcome was that precious engineering resources were no longer wasted on low-quality deals.
You’ll see what’s behind these and other successes in the “Qualification Criteria Guidebook.”
This guidebook is written for sales managers, marketing managers, and process improvement managers. It enables you to learn how to lead your team through the maze of qualification criteria (not an easy thing to do). This is a critical step, because it positions your team to elevate its performance and gather critical sales process data. You’ll learn:
- The categories essential to all possible qualification issues
- How to lead the qualification development project
- How to avoid the critical mistakes that have derailed other similar projects
- How the right qualification criteria can cause salespeople to implement better tactics and strategies
- How data from qualification scorecards can be used to dramatically improve effectiveness of marketing promotions
- Why qualification is the single most critical link to your organization’s business strategy.
The Developing Qualification Criteria Guidebook provides you with the specific materials you need to lead a successful project. It includes over 100 pages of tactical how-to instructions and examples:
- how to select the right participants for your project, and keep them motivated
- a strategy for making qualification quick and easy, and for documenting the results
- illustrative examples from seven different industries to help you make sure you are covering the bases
- a fully scripted presentation to use in leading a qualification development workshop with your team
- examples of how to use the qualification criteria as an invaluable measurement tool
The guidebook also contains free access to MS Word© and PowerPoint© template files to get you started fast! Qualification Criteria Development is an efficient, time-compressed engagement that typically requires only a few days to complete. Here’s what people have said:
- “When we began implementing, our distributors feared that if they got a low rating we would use that as an excuse to not support them on their deals. Some of them were so afraid they began to fudge the numbers. Our account executive went in and had a talk with them, explaining that these scores were really in their interest, because they gave indications of what needed to be done to win the business. If there was no way to increase the score, the salesperson was probably spinning their wheels on that particular opportunity. He helped them understand that wasn’t in anybody’s interests. I had no idea this qualification effort would have such a powerful impact as to drive that kind of communication. Great job!”
Six Sigma Black Belt, Industrial Manufacturing Company - “This qualification criteria scorecard is a super way to encapsulate an entire account situation. I like it.”
Account Executive, Financial Services Company - “Finally, there is a common standard for comparing and prioritizing sales opportunities. What a great way to get a quick handle on people’s account situations!”
V.P. Sales, Fortune 500 Company
The guidebook contains more than 100 pages of tactical how-to instructions and examples for applying these powerful principles in your environment. It also contains free access to MS Word© and PowerPoint© template files to get you started fast!
Easy-to-use templates help you put what you know into a useful format. They also reveal gaps so you can zero in on the information you need to fill out the picture. In every case, the structure, templates, and examples give you what you need to develop grabber headlines for advertisements, sales training that sticks, and tools salespeople will actually use.
The “Qualification Criteria Guidebook” provides everything you need to conduct Qualification Development Sessions sessions with your staff, colleagues, or clients. This manual provides:
- Background on qualification criteria
- Practical applications of qualification information
- Ways to prepare your organization for a qualification development session
- Qualification development templates and presentation script
- Common mistakes in qualification development sessions, and how to avoid them
- Reference library of qualification criteria assessments from five different industries
To see the quality of the materials for yourself, follow this link to the table of contents and the introduction from the book.
Act Now!
With the qualification criteria guidebook, you’ll have a procedure for leading your organization. You’ll learn the key questions to get them thinking in the right direction. You’ll learn how to capture your people’s best intentions, and get everyone pulling in the right direction. You’ll have salespeople (and customers) thanking you for helping them so effectively.
You’ll also receive free access to MS Word and PowerPoint template files to get you started fast! Then, depending on the options you choose, within a week you can receive that same material in hard copy, packaged in a three-ring binder. You’ll have over 100 pages of tactical how-to instructions and examples for applying qualification criteria across your sales organization to help both the marketing and the sales department.
NO RISK Thanks to This Guarantee
Every guidebook comes with a full 100% money-back guarantee for 90 days. If you are not completely satisfied for any reason–or no reason at all–simply return the book and you will promptly receive a full refund. No hassles, no hard feelings.
Something you might like to know: It is common for people selling information products to have a 10% return rate for their products. In fact, some marketers believe that if your return rate isn’t close to that, you aren’t selling hard enough.
Well, you might like to know that in the five years since these guidebooks have been on the market, hundreds have been purchased, yet I have processed only one refund. I know what I’m talking about, and these guidebooks contain valuable information that will help your organization. (The coming new editions will be even better!)
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Every guidebook comes with a full 100% money-back guarantee for 90 days. If you are not completely satisfied for any reason–or no reason at all–simply return the book and you will promptly receive a full refund. No hassles, no hard feelings.
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