Sales Brew: Use this Scorecard to Qualify Your Prospects

Items on your prospect scorecard ought to include:

  1. Is the buyer an active buyer?
  2. Are you in the mix during their consideration stage?
  3. Does the buyer have to fix the problem, take advantage of the opportunity or are they just interested?

And more…

Here is a sample of the Prospect Scorecard.

Play The Sales Brew:

Transcript:

By Tony Cole, CEO & Sales Development Expert, Anthony Cole Training Group

What do you remember a lot from your high school years? The activities you participated in, the first love and heartbreak, the winning performance, the friends, the report cards?
Hello this is Tony Cole and I will ask you to bear with me as we take a minute to stroll down Memory Lane.

I remember my high school years fondly: The Hammonton Blue Devils. Most of my time was occupied by sports but I did dabble in the theatre. My senior year I was the giraffe in a play that I don’t even remember. Theatre was not my strong suite! Athletics was my opportunity to go on to college and play football at the University of Connecticut which was a result of my success on the field, on the court in basketball and on the track as a runner.

But getting to UConn wasn’t just dependent upon the letters I won, the trophies and my success as an athlete. You probably don’t remember much about your report cards but for me they were the difference maker. The work I did in the classroom was reflected on the report card. The grades on the report card, as well as the test scores from the SATs, where predictors for success in getting into UConn or any school. And predicting success in converting an opportunity into a sale is what I want to talk to you about today.

We’ve developed a scorecard process that helps you determine what the likelihood is that the opportunity in your pipeline will actually become a sale. The scorecard is reflective of the work you’ve done in your meetings with the prospect prior to making your presentation. If you do the right things right, you get a good score. You get a good score, you’re chances of landing the sale improves.

Items on your scorecard ought to include but are not limited to the following:

  1. Is the buyer an active buyer – in other words have they become aware of a problem or opportunity and are actively looking for a solution?
  2. Are you in the mix during their consideration stage? When buyers go through their buying journey they go from awareness to consideration.
  3. Does the buyer have to fix the problem, take advantage of the opportunity or are they just interested?
  4. Can you be a solution (not THE solution) for them within the specifications of the buyer and the budget?
  5. Do you have the solution and how well can you present it?
  6. Are you talking to and presenting to ALL those people that are integral to the selection phase of the buyers’ process?
  7. Do you have an agreement for a decision once you present?

What you would do is give yourself a score from 1–10 in each of these 7 areas. Your perfect score would be 70. You then take your score and divide it by 70. That will give you a ‘probability index’ score based on what you know and what you’ve done rather than the arbitrary percentage assigned by the stage in your sales process. Set up your process so that unless you score at least an 80 you don’t present a solution. You improve your scores in the various items to get as close to 100% and you will close more business, more quickly at better margins.

As always thank you and have a great day.