One of the keys to designing any successful business process is to carefully delineate what people can control and what they cannot. In selling, this is usually overlooked to the frustration of all. Yet, identifying these factors is critical to helping people learn how to sell effectively and to elevating the performance of the team.
One excellent way to do this is to work on clarifying people’s qualifying criteria. These criteria should be worked out in great detail, ideally in the form of questions salespeople can score on a five-point Likert scale. The idea is that each salesperson understands the ranges of observable facts in a variety of areas such as:
1. How do we know there is an opportunity?
2. What is the pain/value to the customer?
3. What is the value to us?
4. Can we win the business?
Completing these Likert scale questions helps salespeople (and their managers) focus on the facts rather than on what they or their boss wants the truth to be.
We have found in our work with clients that the effort to develop those qualification criteria systematically and to use them in every deal offers dramatic payback. It provides a more precise language for understanding their opportunities and account situations.
This enables salespeople to discern what they can and cannot control and to improve their chances of winning a deal by designing their strategies around what they can control.
Further, it standardizes the way the organization prioritizes its pursuit of opportunities, elevating thepredictability of the whole system. Furthermore, it becomes possible for deal quality scores to be used as feedback for the effectiveness of lead generation campaigns.
Finally, the data this type of approach provides can be priceless. This technique enables your company to avoid the blunt instrument approach, and instead elevates your sales team’s ability to perceive and adapt to facts in the customers’ environment. There are many other ways to improve the design of your sales process, but defining and clarifying your terms and qualifying criteria should be the cornerstone.
