Power Phone Scripts

Chapter 4You Can't Sell an Unqualified LeadQualifying Scripts to Identify Real Buyers

As I said in the beginning, cold calling (or prospecting) and learning how to properly qualify your prospects and customers is the most important skill you can master in sales. Knowing how to identify who is a real candidate for your product or service, versus who is just looking, or worse, who is just accepting your information to get you off the phone, makes the difference between closing sales and pitching unqualified leads who never buy.

Unfortunately, qualifying skills are rarely taught in sales today. Instead, most sales teams are encouraged to fill their pipeline and then hope for the best. Years ago, when I was among a sales team of 25 other securities brokers, we were taught the same thing—to fill our pipeline. Our sales manager at the time used to say, “Eight and five to stay alive!” He meant that we needed to generate eight new leads (send out information to prospects to close later) and conduct five presentations per day to make our revenue numbers. This turned out to be not only exhausting, but ineffective, as well. Worse, it encouraged us to do a lousy job of qualifying prospects, as our goal wasn't to find interested buyers. It was rather to send out a bunch of “leads” so we had a bunch of prospects to pitch later.

What the team—myself included—ended up doing was sending out brochures to anyone who would take them, and then calling back and hoping for the best. “Throw as much ...