Very often, presales managers are asked to qualify sales opportunities before assigning a presales resource for a demo. This often takes the form of reviewing the information entered into a CRM system by a sales person or submitted by that sales person on an internal form. There are typically only two answers:
“Yes” – you have provided enough information/the opportunity is sufficiently qualified (or senior management has decreed that it is…!) and yes, we’ll schedule a presales resource for your demo.
“No” – the opportunity is insufficiently documented; no demo resource for you. [“No soup for you…!” – my apologies for the Seinfield reference…]
“No” answers often cause trauma in the organization. Sales people may run to their managers to complain, etc.etc. Here’s a wonderful alternative to consider: “Not yet”.
“Not Yet” – you don’t have enough information yet; please go back and do a more complete effort of qualification/discovery. Here are a few questions we need answered – then we should be able to provide you with a demo resource…
A wonderfully gentle, but firm way of accomplishing the same objective!
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