3 Ways to Fix your Lead Qualification Process

The first step to fixing your lead qualification process is figuring out whether your lead qualification process even needs work. We can do it in the spirit of comedian Jeff Foxworthy – just not as funny. You might have a qualification problem if you have customers that make you think, “Someday I am going to get rid of this guy.” You might have a qualification problem if you have clients who are disappointed in the work that you do, even though you go out of your way to take care of them.

Bye bye, BANT? A round-up of new qualification frameworks

BANT. You’ve heard it a million times. It used to be the go to acronym for prospect qualification – failing to clearly establish a potential customer’s budget, authority, needs and timeframe early on would result in long sales cycles and low win rates.

Our Customers Can’t Afford For Us To Wait Until They Are 70% Through Their Buying Cycle!

There are lots of posts around the popular research that indicates, “Customers aren’t engaging sales until they are, 57, 70, 90 (depending on the research you read) through their buying cycle.” As usual with the posts, there are the usual doom and gloom announcements about the future of selling and the “death of the traditional sales person.” Depending on the point of view being promoted and the services or tools being sold by the writer, things are shifting to social, marketing automation, content, inbound inside sales, and any other configuration of whatever is being promoted.

Why sales squander leads – and what to do about it

Here’s an exercise - ask each person on your sales team to explain how they manage their leads. Whether it’s an inbound lead from marketing or someone they met at last week’s conference, there should be some type of system in place. Right?

How many different answers would you likely receive?

A CRM alone won’t fix your sales management problem

It seems that I have been in many conversations lately about Customer Relationship Management Systems, or CRMs. I have spoken with a variety of business owners and sales team leaders who are inquiring about the “best” CRM for their situation. What most are really looking for is a magic bullet to make their salespeople do the right activities to generate enough business.

Social Selling or Antisocial Selling?

I was talking with my niece, who’s in her early 20s, about how technology has changed how people communicate. She came up with an interesting anecdote: The first line many guys use when approaching her in a bar is, “Are you on Snapchat?” Her reflection was that they are more comfortable going around the corner and sending a chat message than talking to her face to face.