One of the greatest things you can do as a salesperson is to disqualify prospects. Because if are unable to disqualify them, then by default you've qualified them.
I've been through dozens of huge sales programs where that was never taught! Until, of course, I got involved in Sandler.
It reminds me of one of my jobs before I got into sales. I was a transportation manager for a warehouse distribution company that worked with McDonald's.
As a result, I got to learn some really cool things about how McDonald's runs, and got to tour a lot of places that supply McDonald's. One place I got to visit was one of the regional facilities where they processed french fries.
It's a crazy cool process, especially when you think of it in terms of disqualifying.
First, the potatoes are harvested, and they go into a big truck. Then that truck goes into a garage bay, and dumps all the potatoes into a big machine in the floor.
At that point, the disqualification process starts. McDonald's has very high standards for their french fries, and for the potatoes that become their french fries. So at every step of the highly automated process, potatoes are being rejected. Those potatoes then go on to become the french fries at other restaurants.
Think about that in terms of your world. If you have a system in place that looks for reasons to disqualify prospects, it helps for multiple reasons. You end up saving tons of time, and as a result only have highly qualified prospects.
Let's look at my world as an example. I know that if the average transaction someone has in their business is under $1,000, Sandler is typically not a good investment. If you sell a widget that's $25, you have to sell an awful lot of widgets to justify working with Sandler Training.
So one of the first questions I ask a business owner is, “What does your average transaction look like?”
McDonald's knows what a good potato looks like, and what a bad potato looks like. So you have to learn what your good prospects look like, and what bad prospects look like. Then you have to integrate that information into your sales system, just like McDonald's integrates it into their french fry system.
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