Despite sales leaders’ best efforts, most forecasting procedures, the process of estimating sales revenue, resemble a blindfolded person throwing darts at the dartboard and seeing what sticks. Sales leaders run through forecasting activities on a mix of instinct, adrenaline and anxiety. In fact, 60% of sales leaders do not have a well-defined or scientific approach to forecasting.

Most organizations lack common criteria to describe and evaluate opportunities, and most sales reps treat qualification as a mere stage in the sales process. What you end up with is an organizational game of “telephone” where insight and information degrade at every step along the journey from account executive to chief revenue officer.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Accurate and reliable forecasting has the power to transform a sales organization — and the credibility of the sales leader.

It begins with a proven framework that enables ongoing qualification. The immediate benefits come in the form of salespeople maximizing their selling time and leadership making more informed decisions about their go-to-market strategy. Plus, there’s a profound impact on the sales culture. When everyone across the revenue function evaluates and discusses opportunities in the same way, you invite more perspectives and level-up skills across teams.

Avoid Wasting Time Qualifying “No Decision” Opportunities
Many sales reps cling to every opportunity in today’s unpredictable economic environment.

Moving an opportunity that had once advanced through the sales funnel back down to a lower stage — or removing it altogether — is a common challenge for salespeople. We’ve all seen a deal stay at the same stage of the pipeline. It lives, and lives and lives. Until it dies.

Teach them how to break this cycle!

Focusing on opportunities that are not winnable is a phenomenal waste of time — and all salespeople get for it is a false sense of security that can prove disastrous at the close of the quarter.

According to ValueSelling’s client feedback, approximately one-third of all opportunities are won, one-third are lost and one-third result in a no decision. A subtle manipulation of these proportions can lead to a big payoff.

Eliminating the no decision opportunities from the sales pipeline sooner rather than later greatly increases your team’s productivity and increases close rates.

4 Key Questions for Teaching a Buyer-Centric Sales Qualification Process

The single most important way to help sales teams eliminate no decision opportunities from their pipeline, is to use a buyer-centric process to continuously qualify and requalify prospects.

Remember: Prospect qualification isn’t an event.

It’s a continuous process.

Things will change. Organizations change. Industries change. Decision-makers leave or transfer to new roles.

Train your sales team to ask these four effective questions to qualify and requalify each new business opportunity:

1. Should the prospect buy?

Most importantly, sellers must think through this question from the prospect’s perspective and honestly evaluate whether their solution is impactful enough to motivate change. What’s driving the prospect’s need to change and to change now? It can only be one thing: a business issue.

Many sales professionals struggle to adequately understand the complex and cross-functional issues that get in the way of key business objectives, i.e., the business issue. Once identified, it’s about uncovering the specific problems that make this business issue challenging to solve.

Can sellers clearly and effectively position their product or service as the unique solution to the specific problems that make the business issue so convoluted? If not, good luck convincing a buyer that this is the case.

Sales reps should have answers to the following questions:

• What is the high-level business issue?
• Is this issue measurable, timebound and related to the business objective
• What are the problems that are getting in the way?
• Does my solution solve those problems?
• Has the prospect shared what they need?
• In the prospect’s mind, is my solution the best alternative?

2. Is it really worth it?

Every customer has to justify the purchases that they make for the business. Often a principal metric is return on investment (ROI), and sellers must set this on unshakable ground — the ROI of your solution must be quantifiable and impactful.

And remember, ROI isn’t always enough — salespeople must connect ROI to problems worth solving, i.e., business issues. Even when you’ve eliminated all competitors, you’re still up against the status quo, and it’s a formidable opponent.

Sales reps should have answers to the following questions:

• Has the prospect identified how they will measure success?
• Have they defined the expected outcomes and time frame?
• What metrics will be impacted?
• Does the prospect think those results are achievable?
• Is the quantified, agreed-upon value or outcome, more than your investment?
• How does your business outcome impact the individual?
• Is there enough personal value to support the change?
• Does the prospect agree to the quantifiable impact?

3. Who can buy?

Ask your sales organization if they’ve ever heard this from someone they are selling to: Perfect. Looks like we’re in alignment on this. At this point, I’ll have to run it by our chief financial officer for approval, I’ll be back to you in a few days.

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, if you’re not talking to the ultimate decision-maker you’re at risk of wasting your time. You can’t sell to someone who can’t buy.

Don’t misunderstand: Sellers need to engage the entire buying group, not only the final decision-maker, and identify who will make the decisions and how they will make it.

Sales reps should have answers to the following questions:

• Does the purchase price logically fit with the prospect’s authority level?
• Do you understand their decision-making process?
• Who is involved in the decision?
• Who is the final decision-maker?
• Once the decision is made, who executes the decision?

4. When will they buy?

Any of the below sound familiar?

We’ve already won! I’m only waiting on the chief experience officer to sign, and she’s on vacation for two weeks.”

It’s with legal, and they have a deadline for reviewing contracts that no one knew about.

We got the verbal, but procurement has taken over the decision.

What do all of these have in common? They’re all examples of what a salesperson might hear when they lack insight into the prospect’s buying process. It’s vital that sellers understand every step along the way if they want to avoid costly surprises. To build knowledge and mitigate risk, sales should work with the buyer to outline a two-way understanding of a company’s crucial business issues and the activities required to resolve them — and put it in writing. This mutual plan is a powerful tool for building confidence in buying decisions.

A critical component of the plan is a timeline that the buyer agrees to — and one that includes milestones and specificity on what has to happen before, during and after the purchase to realize the value they expect. Sales reps should have answers to the following questions:

• Does the timeline map to the timebound business issue?
• Does the timeline include the timing of expected outcomes or value?
• Does the timeline end with the positive outcome expected by the prospect
• Does the timeline include all of the necessary departmental reviews (e.g., legal, procurement and data compliance)?
• Are these departments aware of the timeline?
• Is the timeline agreed to in writing?

When salespeople combine answers from the four key questions, they’re left with one powerful framework for prospect qualification — we call it the Qualified Prospect Formula® and it breaks down as shown.

Notice this equation is based on multiplication — that’s because if one of the elements above equals zero, the whole equation equals zero and the opportunity is unqualified. Use this process to evaluate all opportunities to build an accurate and reliable revenue pipeline.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, this checklist is the most crucial at the times when sales is the most convinced the opportunity will close. This is when salespeople must be the most vigilant. When the focus is on qualified prospects with a defined timeline, forecast accuracy improves — and a qualified prospect must have a timeline that maps to the forecast period.

Letting Go of Low-Potential Deals Improves Odds of Closing Real Deals

Instead of hanging on to every opportunity, train your salespeople to use a consistent, buyer-centric process to qualify and continually re-qualify prospective customers. When you remove the bloat from the pipeline, your sales team can spend more time working winnable opportunities. The result is higher win rates.