HOW TO IDENTIFY BUYERS

It’s not an easy thing, parsing interest from need.  

If we can accurately parse, i.e., qualify, then we can spend more time with people who are ready to buy.   And allocating our time wisely is how salespeople make quota.   

Here’s a good self-diagnostic:  how many sales are you losing to the competition?  If the deals you lose are due to competition, congratulations!  you’ve been spending time with buyers.  

So how do you know if someone is just kicking the tires, or whether you are just in a really long sales cycle?

A buyer does these kinds of things:  

- identifies a real, meaningful, material pain or goal;

- indicates that, to some degree, time is of the essence;

- involves you with more than one person at their company;

- takes a test drive;

- reveals their full shopping list (perhaps an RFP); and/or

- has tried or at least fully investigated other solutions.

The first one is the most important.  An initial qualifying question to ask is, “how did you become interested in us?”  

If they just read an article about you in TechCrunch that’s nice, but it says nothing about whether they have the kind of toothache, or ambition, to buy anything from you.

Window shoppers look more like this:

- their primary (or sole) inquiry is regarding price;

- there is no driver for their inquiry:  no pain, no incident, no project, no RFP, nada;

- they demand information immediately, i.e., they are facing a deadline for filing a report, not in the process of making an informed purchase;

- only one person seems involved in the sale (most companies don’t buy in a vacuum); and/or

- they have not looked at any competitive solutions.

Making quota is not about forcing as many square pegs as you can into round holes.  It’s about qualifying prospects, and allocating more time to those who intend to buy.