Business lead generation is one of the most basic functions of the sales and marketing staff for any business without which no business could hope to last even a month. Wasting your company?s efforts in the wrong business leads can cost you thousands of dollars that could have been better used for identifying more qualified leads.
How does one identify a qualified business sales lead in the first place? How much information would one need before one is able to identify and pick out the qualified business leads from a long telemarketing or business list?
A lot of sales people identify the BANT standard as the basis for identifying qualified business leads for their business. BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. First of all, to successfully implement BANT, your sales people must be the ones controlling the conversation right at the beginning of the business appointment. This is important because if it was the business lead who controlled the conversation, then most likely he/she will be the person asking the most questions. This scenario would put your sales people in a disadvantageous position because they would assume a defensive stance and wouldn?t be able to learn anything from that lead during that appointment. In fact, it turns the whole situation around: it is the business lead who finds out if your business is qualified for them or not!
A great strategy for questioning whether an inquiring business sales lead is indeed qualified is from Paul Cherry of Performance Based Results:
? Ask about the decision making-process of the business to identify the decision maker.
? Ask about the decision-making criteria of the business to determine if the lead is sales ready.
? Ask the criteria for the vendor that they need to identify the value of the business lead.
A note worthy of mention: BANT-qualified business leads do not simply happen and arrive fully prepared on your sales people?s laps. BANT-qualified leads are created rather than expected. The chances of finding a fully BANT-qualified business lead on even multiple business sales lead generation campaigns is absolutely slim, and your sales and marketing staff would be relying on false hopes if these are the leads they were expecting to find. The usual business prospect usually presents itself with one or two BANT qualifications, but of these four (budget, authority, need, timeline), the most important quality of all is the need. Once the need has been identified, it is the sales person?s responsibility to create the three other qualifications. Helping your business leads identify their need would eventually lead to the question of whether they have the budget to address the need or not. This is also the time to identify whether they have the authority to provide the budget and implement your solution or if you need to approach another corporate executive in the company. Determining the budget and the authority of your business leads brings up the question of how long must the solution be implemented. Your (or your sales person) must determine if there is already a necessity to implement the solution or if it can be created.
By not simply jumping with a sales pitch at every business opportunity, your sales people will be able to concentrate their efforts on the most important business leads and achieve a higher success rate with every business lead generation campaign.
live with regis and kelly heavy d funeral christopher walken ok state ok state kurt budke regis philbin
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.