Qualified Prospects

From among this group of prospects, your last prospecting activity involves identifying which ones are qualified prospects. Qualified prospects exhibit four characteristics, in addition to the two that made them prospects, that make them especially worthy of your time and attention. Qualified prospects:

Recognize a need to buy your product: Different from your realizing the person or organization can benefit from your product, in this case the prospect has come to this realization, either as a result of actions you take, or as a consequence of changing circumstances in his or her life.

Have the authority to buy: He or she is authorized to place the order, write the check, sign the purchase order, or in some other way approve the purchase. The authority to buy can be spread among a variety of people or departments. For example, as the only instructor teaching Personal Selling (MKTG 220) at Penn State, I have sole authority to select the textbook for this course. Another course on the other hand, might be taught by a number of faculty members as well as graduate students. As a result, a committee of interested faculty is responsible for choosing a textbook for that course, and all instructors must use the book chosen by the committee. In a course such as calculus, where students from engineering, chemistry, and physics join mathematics majors, the committee appointed to select a textbook may be made up of professors from the mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and physics departments.

Learning who has the authority to buy is an often difficult, but necessary, part of prospecting. Even something so straightforward as selling a man a suit becomes clouded when he is accompanied to the store by his wife. The salesperson has to figure out who is really going to make the purchase decision: the man, the woman, or both of them together? If you fail to learn who makes the ultimate buying decision, you may waste time presenting to someone who cannot buy, or wind up having to count on that person trying to do your job for you with his or her boss. In this latter scenario, you can be sure the employee does not know your product as well as you do, is not a trained salesperson, will not fight for the sale with the same level of assertiveness as you might employ, and, if he or she comes back to you with a “no” answer, will feel alienated when you have to go over his or her head to start the sales process anew.

Have the money to buy: Learning whether the prospect has the money to make the planned purchase, or can make arrangements to borrow the money if necessary, is a delicate but critical aspect of prospecting. Were you to go car shopping, for example, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and driving a 1985-model car, when you drive onto a Ford dealer’s lot and ask to look at and test drive a new Focus, you will not raise an eyebrow on the salesperson. But when you later wheel your car into the Mercedes-Benz dealership, step out, and ask to test drive a $100,000 automobile, among the things the salesperson is going to have to decide is, “Can this person afford the car he’s asking about or is he just a test-driving car hobbyist?” If the prospect does not have the money to buy, there is little to be gained from your making a sales presentation.

Want or need to make the purchase now: Timeliness is an important aspect of qualifying prospects, but one often overlooked by textbooks. If you call a car insurance company’s 1-800 number to inquire about their rates, you will be asked your “X date” (jargon for “expiration date”). If your existing insurance doesn’t expire for five months, you will be sent the information you requested, then contacted at a later date. If your X date is within 60 days, the representative you’ve called knows you’ve probably already gotten a renewal notice from your established carrier. He or she will gather enough information to work up a price/coverage quote, you will be sent the requested information, and someone will call you within the week to ask for your business. If your X date is within 30 days, you will no doubt be transferred to a sales unit where a quote can be worked up right over the telephone. (The company you’ve called knows there is not enough time to apply a more leisurely pace to these proceedings you are apt to just write a check to your existing insurer and be done with it.) Learning when a purchase decision is going to be made is an important aspect of prospecting and planning your follow-up.

Taking this lesson to heart, you try to make appointments with each of the eight prospects for baby portraiture that your first calls identified. As you make these calls, you learn that:

One couple doesn’t want to take pictures of their newborn; they prefer to wait until the child’s first birthday.
One couple decides $150.00, your lowest-priced basic package, is too much for them to spend right now.
Two couples are going to rely on the newborn’s grandparents arranging for, and paying for, the pictures, and the grandparents live in another town some distance away.
Four couples are glad to hear from you and make appointments with you for next week to discuss the details and prices of your various packages.

Congratulations. You are now going to spend the bulk of your selling time with four couples who are very likely to buy from you. That’s all prospecting is. To make effective use of your time, you want to call only on those people who are likely to buy from you. You want to call on qualified prospects only.