All this talk about “marketing” is making Craigy cranky (smile). Time to get back to the basics. Time to kick it old school. Time to talk about selling (smile). So let’s discuss what, in my experience, is one of the probably two most challenging aspects of selling for both inexperienced and experienced sales people……………qualifying. The other would be closing (more on this later as saying that a “sales person can’t close” is largely a misnomer. Fact is….they can’t perform any of the previous selling steps properly) and they both have to do with money. That dirty little topic that nobody seems to want to bring up (smile).
Qualifying is largely about determining if you have found the M.A.N. This is the person who has: the: Money to invest in your product or service; the Authority to do so; and the acknowledged Need for your solutions. In this and upcoming posts, we are going to discuss just one facet of this process and that is establishing the budget that your client is willing to invest.
In the sign business, as in many businesses, budget is critical. As I like to say, there are more than 100 ways to build any given sign and they all require a different investment figure. Are you looking for good, better, or best? Sales people who are brave enough to approach this subject will often ask “What’s your budget” to which the prospect will reply “I don’t have one”. End of story. Most of us know the old riddle: “How do you know when a sales person is lying to you? His lips move” (smile). Well, his aren’t the only lips moving (smile). A few years ago when I was in the A/V business we made a call on a church and met with the pastor. The pastor had indicated to us that the sound system in their chapel was just not up to snuff. After doing a survey of the chapel itself and their existing equipment, we asked the question……”What has the church budgeted for these upgrades?” His answer was that they had no idea of what this might cost and had not discussed any budget. So…………..we threw out a number. “Well pastor, depending on how extravagant you folks want to get, we could spend anywhere up to $100,000 on this project.” “Holy moly” he said…. “When we met with the committee to discuss this we decided that we could only afford to spend $15,000!” True story. His “lips moved” in front of us, his church, and you know who (smile). And, we designed him a $15,000 system and all were happy.
This is going to be a multi-part post (stay tuned) so let’s just look briefly at the above scenario. The pastor was unwilling to share a budget with us so we gave him one to think about an respond to. And we went big. This is fact…………….everybody has a budget. Some might not be willing to state it or may not even recognize it (and we will talk more about this) but………….everybody has a budget (smile). In the next post we will discuss how to make this a topic that both the client and the sales representative will happily engage in.
Thanks!
Craig
