Use Re-Qualifying To Take Your Qualifying Game To The Next Level
As a brief refresher, qualifying is the process of determining whether a prospect has the potential to become a customer.
This is achieved by asking questions to identify certain “buying” characteristics in a prospect.
Click here to read more about qualifying.
But it’s not enough to qualify just once at the very beginning of the sales encounter.
This is where re-qualifying comes into play.
Re-qualify whenever you have pre-qualified info.
There are multiple scenarios where you might be going into a sales encounter with pre-qualified info:
- Marketing collected info from the prospect on a landing page.
- SDR qualified for you and took notes on the appointment-setting call.
- You already talked to one DM and now you’re talking to another.
- You did your own research before the call.
- You qualified at the beginning of a long demo/pitch.
In these cases, you’ll always want to re-qualify.
Because things change.
So you don’t want to take any pre-qualified info as given.
For each one of the scenarios above, things may have changed:
- The prospect inputted false info on the landing page.
- Your SDR may have misunderstood the prospect.
- One DM could have a different view of things than another DM.
- You did your research on a website that is out-of-date.
- The prospect changed their mind at some point during a long demo/pitch.
For these reasons, you want to make sure and confirm any pre-qualified info you already have.
Ask open-ended questions when re-qualifying.
A leading question is one that assumes the answer within the question.
Here’s an example of a leading question:
“Bob, you wanted to get this started today, right?”
Don’t ask leading questions. That’s the WRONG way to re-qualify.
Instead, ask open-ended questions.
Here’s an example of an open-ended question:
“Bob, when did you want to get this started?”
Asking open-ended questions is the RIGHT way to re-qualify.
Qualifying should never feel like an interrogation.
Whether it’s pre-qualifying, re-qualifying, or any other type of qualifying. You shouldn’t be asking leading questions like your prospect is on the witness stand.
This makes it obvious to the prospect that you’re trying to get them to go in a certain direction, which causes the encounter to feel forced and inauthentic.
Open-ended questions get better answers.
Even if you think you already know the answer, don’t let the prospect know that.
It’s a common expression in product design that users will often “take the path of least resistance.”
It’s the same for a prospect on a sales call.
If the salesperson offers up an easy answer to a leading question, the prospect will say something unhelpful like:
“Yea, that sounds right.”
Instead, an open-ended question requires some thought. One-word answers like “yes” and “no” aren’t valid answers.
Open-ended questions encourage the prospect to give more long-winded and detailed answers, which are more likely to contain updates to any information that was gathered in pre-qualifying.
“Dig in” on any changes that come up in re-qualifying.
If the prospect gives an answer during re-qualifying that doesn’t match up with the answer they gave during pre-qualifying, then it’s time to “dig in” by asking follow-up questions.
Here are some reasons their answer might have changed:
- The prospect really isn’t sure.
- They weren’t telling the truth before.
- They legitimately forgot what they said before.
- Their opinion changed at some point.
In any case, ask follow-up questions to find out for sure what has changed.
Click here to learn more about asking follow-up questions.
Qualifying should be happening throughout the entire sales encounter.
“Top reps spread their questions out across the conversation, curating natural conversations. Conversely, average reps construct conversations that feel like interrogations. This is because they front load their questions in the beginning of the call.”
The truth is: the idea of qualifying and re-qualifying at specific points throughout the sales encounter is mainly used for junior sales reps who are just learning to qualify.
Top-performing salespeople are ALWAYS qualifying.
In other words, top salespeople are constantly involved in the process of determining whether a prospect has the potential to become a customer.