Many experts consider the most common mistake made by salespeople to be in their choice of poor prospects. Basically, we fail to distinguish between a ‘suspect’ and a prospect through a proper qualification process.

This leads to all sorts of problems, not least to false expectations and wildly misleading sales forecasts.

Poor prospects

Examples of a poor prospect include:

• the value of the sale is too small or unprofitable – ie, even if we win it, the business does not cover the cost of the sale or is uneconomic to service;
• the sale is too big – it’s a very tempting target but simply too large for our organisation to cope with during the sale process, let alone if we win it;
• the buyer is too polite to say no – the ‘prospect’ may be easier to talk to than other more suitable targets but is never really going to place the business with us.

The latter problem is often a welcome distraction – ‘At least somebody’s talking to me!’ – but, if we get entangled in chasing poor prospects, we tend to use them as an excuse to avoid the  more difficult jobs we should be getting on with

Hence, we all need a sound methodology for qualifying our leads.

Source : CIM

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