How many times has it happened to you that some of your sales leads went through your Q-course (qualification course as it’s called in US Special Forces training) to become clients to quickly?

Yes, on the one hand this looks like a good thing because we can quickly collect the down payment and start the project, but realistically, it’s not. It must take some time to qualify for in-person meetings with you, and prospects who shoot through your lead qualification programme must be treated with some scepticism.

In many cases the reason they can shoot through so quickly is because they skip some vital steps of qualification and your salespeople are too eager to rush the process

So, in this article we look into the lead qualification process.

We also assume that you run a salesperson-free operation, in which highly qualified buyers can meet your real experts.
Lead qualification is a mix of human and automated efforts. The mistake I’ve seen many IT companies make is that they try to make the process 100% because they don’t want to bother to develop a system to perform the automated part.

So, their salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time meeting prospects who are not yet ready to make decisions. The other problem is that using only human effort, what prospects meet first is the sales pitches from the salespeople, so prospects instantly position the company as a fungible vendor.

However, if you run a salesperson-free operation, as I often encourage my clients to do, an automated system can spoon-feed prospects with the kind of valuable information they are looking for in order to make decisions. And then prospects request meetings with your experts not with salespeople.

When I have a legal problem, I want to see a lawyer not one of the law firm’s salespeople.

Look at all salesperson-free business structures, like law firms or medical establishments. They are highly trusted, respected and blazingly profitable. Maybe we have something to learn here.

I believe one of the secrets of running a “respected expert” type IT company is by not having salespeople.

Instead, have a great lead generation and lead qualification system that allows buyers to “experience” your company’s expertise through valuable content.

Your company can only be perceived as respected experts if your market “meets” lots of your content before talking about working together.

So, the qualification process is a mix of automated efforts and human efforts, we have to decide what percentage of which offer we design into the system at what stage.

Lead Generation Continuum

At the beginning, when your prospects have just entered your system, your lead qualification is 100% automatic. There is no need for human touch because these prospects are merely interested. They’ve entered your system by requesting your lead generation white paper. They are still at the very beginning of the decision-making process, so no human touch is required at this point.

If you humanise this point, you can scare prospects away with your salespeople’s early eagerness to close the sale.

As buyers move down in your sales funnel, at one point their interest becomes commitment to improving their situation and start searching for the right company that can help them to pull off the change initiative.

But now they’re committed to making the change.

And the good news is that through your valuable content prospects have read so far, you are now positioned as a respected expert as opposed to a fungible vendor. Buyers know they can’t relegate you to their purchasing departments because your people wouldn’t even talk to them.

And since the process has been automatic so far, you don’t even realise that prospects come and go. It all happens in the background while your people are doing other types of paid work.

At one point, buyers decide to take the next proactive step and start requesting meetings with your experts.

And this is the key here.

During these meetings, instead of presentations of capabilities and sales pitches, your subject matter experts do diagnoses.

But diagnoses of a different kind.

Yes, you do IT, but your buyers are looking for business solutions not IT solutions. Boardroom-calibre people are looking for business solutions to business problems.

So, instead of smooth-talking salespeople you need technical people who are cross-trained in business, and feel at home both in the boardroom and the server room.

And after this initial “general practitioner” level diagnosis, the first project with this new client can be a detailed “specialist” level diagnosis.

The project ends with a diagnostic report and an action plan of how to improve the situation. And clients can decide whether or not they want to retain your company for that change effort.

But I like the diagnostic project because clients have a chance to start with you, the new guys in the block, on a small scale and get to know your capabilities.

And you can do these diagnostic projects for a smallish fee that is fairly easy to accept but it’s still profitable for your company.

Many IT companies make the mistake of expanding the scope of their projects, but in most cases, fees don’t expand to the same extent.

So, you soon have a significant number of clients who’ve already experienced you though your diagnostic projects and are likely to re-hire your company for you know their situations much better than anyone else.

So, start small, and watch out for prospects who request your personal time too soon. Make sure they go through every stage of your lead qualification process.