Qualifiers can be used in both Sales Projects and Prospects, but often for different reasons. They can identify potential problems in sales projects before they become an issue, help you filter out Prospects that might not be worth pursuing, and pinpoint the ones that have potential.
This is done by using qualifying questions, designed by you to encourage the salesperson to dig deeper and gather important information (eg. industry type, budget, customer pains, etc) about the Prospect or Sales Project. Once you have determined what answers you would like to see, as a good fit for a customer or lead, you can build your qualifying questions and add them to a Prospecting Campaign or Sales Project to be answered during the course of the Process.
How Qualifiers works
A qualifier can be added to a step in the Process to indicate visually if the information you are gathering about the company or stakeholder is positive, negative, or somewhere in between.
Importance
Some qualifiers may be more important to highlight than others. For example, competitor strength is an important piece of information that may significantly impact the success of this project, whereas the urgency may not be such a big concern, but still worth being aware of.
And once the information is added, the step icon will turn blue, yellow or red, or green based on the importance assigned to the qualifier. This gives you a clear indication of how serious a problem may be.
- Green - All Good
- Blue - Coaching advice
- Yellow - A warning that something needs attention
- Red - A serious problem that needs prompt action
Examples of use
- Urgency - Identify how acute the requirement is. Does the client have a deadline where they want to see the solution or product in place? No deadline at all could indicate a potential issue in closing the deal.
- Competition Strength - What competitors are the Stakeholders of a Sales Project looking at, and what is their current strength? Are you up against your main competitor that historically has resulted in losing deals? Adding a qualifier to a Sales Project here may indicate that this Sales Project may not be suitable to pursue any further.
Qualify/Disqualify recommendation
According to the qualifiers' importance and color that is tied to that, you will receive a recommendation on whether you should qualify or disqualify the prospect you're working on.
- When all of your qualifiers are of green color, the Qualify button at the top right of the prospect will light green.
- When one or more of your qualifiers are of red color, the Disqualify button at the top right of the prospect will light red.
Setup
Add a qualifier to a step by following these steps. In this example, we will add a Qualifier to the step which records the level of urgency for products or services to be delivered. We will qualify this step if the product or service is required within 12 months, and disqualify if it is 18+ months, or has no deadline identified.
- From the process editor, click on the step you would like to add a qualifier to.
- Click on the Add Details/Tools button to the right.
- Select Qualifier from the list of tools available.
- If there is more than one Field in the step, select the field you wish to add the Qualifier to.
Qualifiers can be added to custom fields which are a Number, Scorecard, Single-Select, or Multi-Select lists.
- Set the criteria for how you want to either Qualify or Disqualify this step. In this example, if the Urgency is set to either 3, 6, 9, or 12 months it will be qualified. However, if 18+ months or no deadline is selected it will be disqualified.
- Set the importance of this Qualifier. Select if you want this Qualifier to show in the process as Blue, Yellow, or Red, depending on the seriousness of this Qualifier.
- Click Save and Save again for Step details.
- Remember of course to Publish the Process to see your new Qualifier in action.
