A key concept in sales is not to make decisions for other people. That's especially true when it comes to qualifying and disqualifying prospects. It's true, you do want to disqualify bad fits as early as possible to avoid wasted time and resources for both parties involved. But you don't want to do that by making decisions for other people.
A client of mine shared something with me that illustrates that.
This particular client works in an industry that's constantly changing. So he and his team are always performing services for the first time, often as a result of selling that service to a client.
Before he worked with our team, our client didn't want his clients to know when that was happening. He wouldn't ever lie to them, but he would act as if his team had performed the service for other clients before.
As a result, he lived in a constant state of fear and worried that his clients would find out his team had never actually done the task before.
Shortly after he began working with us, he shared all that with me. Then he added, "This is stupid. I'm just going to tell everyone if we've never done something before."
He was true to his word. Soon, he was in a sales meeting with a prospect, and it became obvious he was in that situation once again. Once he realized that, he stopped himself. "And just so you know, we've never done this before," he shared with the prospect. "Is that important to you, or does that not matter?"
It didn't matter! So he continued to ask that question of other prospects, and it continued not to matter.
In fact, it was a full three years later that someone told him it did matter, and they didn't want to work with his team on a project as a result. Fortunately, it wasn't a big project at all.
During those three years, he made thousands and thousands of dollars worth of sales because he stopped making decisions for other people!
Obviously, he had head trash around that concept for a long time, and it wasn't founded. How many sales had he lost prior to making that change?
Are you guilty of making decisions for other people like my client was? How many sales have you lost as a result? Stop doing that, and you may find your concern was unfounded.
