How to Effectively Manage the Sales Lead Follow-Up Process

Editor's Notes

1. Hopefully by now you can see how important it is to screen and qualify prospects. Now let’s get into how to effectively do that. We provide you with a 2 step qualifying process. Step 1 is called soft qualifying and it is focused on primarily determining whether it makes sense to meet and keep talking. The main thing that we look at here is, at the most basic level, are there any level of open needs in the area where we have something to offer. We are trying to eliminate those No Need to Purchase prospects as if there is not even a need, let’s not waste each other time. This soft qualifying takes place in the first conversations with the prospect. For example, this level of qualifying takes place on the cold call, or could also be on an inbound call from a prospect, and we softly qualify to identify if it makes sense to continue talking or put a meeting on the calendar. Step 2 is hard qualifying and this is where you dig deeper to identify how the prospect measures up in of the four key areas. The ideal time and place for this is when you are in the first meeting with the prospect.
2. When a gatekeeper answers your call, he or she is instantly trying to screen you out and determine if you are a friend or a foe. A friend would be someone who is already connected with the company in someway like a current vendor or business partner and a foe would be someone who is an outsider trying to get in, like one of those cold callers that is calling to try to get in and sell something. What we want to do is try to get the gatekeeper to see us as a friend so they will less likely to screen us out and one very easy way to do that is to use a tactic of name dropping. For example, we can say something like, I spoke with Tom White in accounting and now I am trying to reach someone in HR. This presents the image that we are already engaged and not a complete outsider and this minor tweak can often be the difference in the gatekeeper letting you in. And if we have not met with Tom White in accounting, we could still name drop his name by saying something like, I am planning on meeting with Tom White in accounting and before I do that, I would like with someone in HR.” Nothing misleading there as we likely are planning on meeting with Tom at some point and by sharing his name and our plans, we give off the image as we are not a complete outsider. We can also name drop external clients that we work with to establish some level of credibility. That is not going to be as strong as sharing internal names and is probably only going to really help when talking with more senior gatekeepers like executive assistants.
3. Once you have soft qualified and have identified that the prospect is enough of a fit to spend time continuing to talk or schedule a meeting, you can then begin to hard qualify. This is where you want to really dig deep to validate that there is a need to purchase, an ability to purchase, an authority to purchase, and an interest to purchase.
4. The soft qualifying will skim the surface in terms of identifying the prospect’s needs. No we want to dig deeper to identify is the prospect’s need a true need or is it more of a want again to try to identify if the prospect is a No Need prospect. Some questions that you can ask here are: What happens if you do not do anything and do not make a purchase or make any changes? What improvements will you see if move forward with this purchase? Is there at date when this purchase needs to be made? What happens if the purchase is not made by that date? What is the time frame that the project needs to work along? The way to assess the information collected is, if there is a noticeable negative impact if there is no purchase, the prospect is very qualified in this area If there is a noticeable positive impact with the purchase, the prospect is a medium level of qualified If the prospect can really keep doing things Ok without purchasing anything, they are less qualified and may be a No Need Prospect
5. You will want to identify if the prospect that you are talking to has the ability to purchase from a budget, money, or funding standpoint when hard qualifying to make sure the are not a No Ability to Purchase Prospect
6. Before we go any further, let’s clearly discuss what objections are. Objections are a prospect’s best weapon when they answer your cold call. They are statements or questions that the prospect will throw at you and they are like mini stops signs that the prospect will hold up. They use to try to take a control of the call and take it in a direction of their choosing. And if they begin to feel like you are selling something when they are not looking to buy, they will want try to end the call and will use objections to get there as soon as possible. Now let’s take a look at common objections and ones that you are just about guaranteed to run up against. I am busy right now. Who are you with? What is this in regards to? I am not interested. Just send me some information. We already use somebody. We are not looking to make a change right now. We do not have any budge to spend. Those are eight objections that consistently come up. You could maybe tweak those for your situation, and add a couple that are specific to your products, you would have a complete list of objections to be prepared for. As part of this training, we will explain these one at a time and show you how to get around them.
7. Let’s go back to the I am not interested objection and talk about it in more detail. I am not interested is actually not a legitimate objection for the cold call as you are not trying to sell anything. Our goal is to open the dialogue, so to say I do not want to talk to you would be more fitting, but to say they are not interested in buying your product actually does not make sense. A great place to redirect this objection is to any qualifying questions that you typically ask prospect. Questions about the prospect’s current technical and business environment are often good questions to ask whether facing an objection or not, but when a prospect says they are not interested, you can reply with a response like I understand. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? - Or - I understand. And I want you to know that we are not trying to sell anything at this point. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? Of course, this does not work every time, but remember that we our goal is to keep the call going and using this approach over a large number of calls will typically yield good results in getting around the objection.
8. Let’s go back to the I am not interested objection and talk about it in more detail. I am not interested is actually not a legitimate objection for the cold call as you are not trying to sell anything. Our goal is to open the dialogue, so to say I do not want to talk to you would be more fitting, but to say they are not interested in buying your product actually does not make sense. A great place to redirect this objection is to any qualifying questions that you typically ask prospect. Questions about the prospect’s current technical and business environment are often good questions to ask whether facing an objection or not, but when a prospect says they are not interested, you can reply with a response like I understand. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? - Or - I understand. And I want you to know that we are not trying to sell anything at this point. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? Of course, this does not work every time, but remember that we our goal is to keep the call going and using this approach over a large number of calls will typically yield good results in getting around the objection.
9. Let’s go back to the I am not interested objection and talk about it in more detail. I am not interested is actually not a legitimate objection for the cold call as you are not trying to sell anything. Our goal is to open the dialogue, so to say I do not want to talk to you would be more fitting, but to say they are not interested in buying your product actually does not make sense. A great place to redirect this objection is to any qualifying questions that you typically ask prospect. Questions about the prospect’s current technical and business environment are often good questions to ask whether facing an objection or not, but when a prospect says they are not interested, you can reply with a response like I understand. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? - Or - I understand. And I want you to know that we are not trying to sell anything at this point. Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels? Of course, this does not work every time, but remember that we our goal is to keep the call going and using this approach over a large number of calls will typically yield good results in getting around the objection.
10. Here is a good one – just send me some info. Prospects love this one as it allows them to get off of the phone without sounding mean or hurting your feelings. You end up getting excited because you think they are interested and you spend time writing an email and they end up often just deleting your finely word smithed email. It is important to point out that this objection can come up at two different times on a cold call so let’s first discuss the first. When it comes up early or delivered by the gatekeeper, it is more of a blow off objection. Meaning, there is little interest and they are just trying to get rid of you. Here is the play for the first type, you can reply with, Sure, I definitely will. So that I know exactly what to send you, let me ask you, and then redirect to one of your qualifying questions Are you currently using any automation tools to manage your inventory levels?
11. But this same objection can come up at the end of the cold call when you are going for the meeting and the prospect asks you to send info. This is more of a noncommittal response vs. a blow off. At this point, you may have gone through your pitch and triggered some interest, but the prospect simply does not want to commit to moving forward. Not a horrible place to be, but we do not want to comply and if this is at the end of the call, we might not have any points to redirect to or much time left to keep the call going. One way to try to redirect is by responding with something like Sure, I definitely will. Are there some particular details that you have questions about? If you have a level of interest, it may be easier to have a quick conversation with over the phone on another day instead of me sending over a bunch of information.
12. The objection of We are not looking at making a change right now is realistic to come up since you cold calling the prospect out of the blue and it is very likely that even if they do need to purchase what you have, they might not need to make a purchase when you are calling. But the thing to remember and always keep in mind is that the goal of the cold call is to open the dialogue rather than close a sale, so the objection that they don’t need anything right now is not a legitimate reason to stop. You can still respond with a redirect, but you could add a little message to educate the prospect what angle you are coming from by saying something like I understand. And I want you to know that we are not trying to sell anything at this point as we don’t even know if you are a good fit or not. Our goal is to simply open the dialogue between our two companies so that if you reach a point where you are ready or looking to make a change, you will know who we are and what we have to offer. From there you can redirect to one of your qualifying questions. The play is to keep the conversation going and get to a formal meeting where you can then have an opportunity to build a case for making a change now. And if you don’t then, you can hopefully be there later when they do decide to make a change.
13. The objection of not having any budget or money available to spend right now is similar to not looking to make a change. And the response is same as the not making a change now as you can present yourself as just trying to open the dialogue. You could use the exact same response that we just went through or you could tweak your language to say that, Our goal is to simply open the dialogue between our two companies so that if you reach a point where there is budget available, you will know who we are and what we have to offer.