“The impending event is a key qualification tool that is often overlooked and yet can be one of the most important ones to getting a deal done.” – Tom Burton in today’s Tip 1204
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Tom Burton. Tom has over 30 years of experience helping forward-thinking businesses develop and implement innovative, technology-based strategies and solutions that drive sales and predictable revenue growth. Tom is currently a co-founder in LeadSmart Technologies which has developed a unique CRM platform. Here he is:
Tom Burton: Very overlooked qualification tool and sales, yet maybe one of the most important ones on a B2B sales cycle is what I call the “Impending event.” In other words, what event or what situation would cause a prospect to actually make a decision one way or the other and move forward. So that may or may not be a decision for your product or service, but it’s making a decision for a product or service and moving forward.
And an impending event could be really anything, could be a project deadline, it could be a budget deadline. There’s budget that needs to be spent by a certain date. There could be something that needed to be done by a board meeting or some other, again, date-driven deadline. All of those things are what are considered impending events and the objective is to understand as early as possible in the sales cycle.
Number one, is there an impending event? And if so, what is it? And if there is not an impending event to determine whether an impending event could actually be manufactured or created by yourself as the sales representative and common impending events are created by end of quarter or end of month for discounts or other things, you have to do something by a certain point. And while those can be effective, nothing is more effective than an impending event that is actually a real impending event within the prospect’s organization themselves.
So the goal is to look quickly or early and find out if there is an impending event, what it is. And if there isn’t, is there a viable way to come up with a manufactured impending event that will really be effective. If none of those things are true. In other words, there is no impending event and it doesn’t look like it’s probable to create a manufactured impending event, then you really need to take a step back and determine whether or not this is a qualified prospect. And by qualified meaning that there is a real opportunity for them making a decision and moving forward versus just sort of an ongoing research and evaluation process that never comes to a conclusion which we’ve all, of course, run into as sales professionals. So to summarize, the impending event is a key qualification tool that is often overlooked and yet can be one of the most important ones to getting a deal done.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Tom and to get on the list for his upcoming book: The Revenue Zone, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1204. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come right back for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!