Ask The Tough Questions
You have got to qualify people so you spend your time making money and not educating and entertaining people.
There are two basic rules to qualification:
1. Qualify High. This means you need to speak candidly and directly with the people that can actually make decisions. They are busy and won’t waste your time. So if you ask them a direct question, you will get a direct answer. You might not like the answer, but at least you’ll know and can move accordingly.
2. Ask the difficult questions. Many sales people shy away from asking the difficult probing questions (what I call poking them in the eye) and accept vague “kind of optimistic” responses. They are concerned about “offending” the prospect. If the news is bad you want it direct and as soon as possible. Unfortunately, people are nice and don’t like to give bad news, so you have to probe for it. Ask the tough probing direct questions. You would rather have bad news than waste your time. This is about your income! Just do it.
Remember there are two winners in a sale. One is the person that wins the deal and the other is the competitor that got out earliest, and didn’t waste time on a deal he couldn’t win. He moved on to a new deal he could win. Coming in second is going broke.