It goes without saying that your customer should be able to afford whatever you are trying to sell them. A basic check for budget means that you try to sell and have the budget to afford your item. Make sure that the price of your product matches the budget of the person who is a prospective buyer. If your buyer’s budget exceeds that of your item, it may yet be better, since they’re in a much more comfortable position to consider your offer. For example, a poor assessment of budget would be attempting to sell high-end laptops to students. You can also price point a few different options to help customers feel more flexible. By having three different options, your products or services will then be offered to different budget conscious clients. You also need to check for authority; this means that you are talking directly to whoever is actually going to buy your product. Whoever is going to buy your product is the person whose needs or problems you mean to address. For example, if you were selling spices and herbs, you would not be discussing your sales and products with the buyer’s child, because he does not have either the authority or the budget to complete a sale with you. He also has no probably need of your spices and herbs, as these are meant for the use of his parents. Make sure to always check if your prospective buyer is indeed the buyer, and if he or she has the money to buy any of your items. We illustrate with a few different examples how to identify and utilise the information from the skills learned.

Assess Revenue and Timing

You absolutely need to be making your selling time worthwhile in order to turn a profit. You can’t afford to spend a lot of time on a prospective buyer just for them to give you minimal return on investment (ROI). An example of this is if Cory, a salesman, has two prospective buyers whom he feels may be worth his time in trying to fill a $2,000 quota. However, he assesses the potential revenue from each first to determine who deserves more of his time. Prospect A will probably give him $500 once a month over four months, and is relatively quick and easy to sell to. Prospect B will definitely give him $2000 for the first sale, but will not need to buy from Cory for several months afterwards. The question of which buyer he should pursue also depends on Cory’s needs as a salesperson in the way of timing. If he still has time to pursue more buyers, it may be a safer overall macroeconomic bet to take Prospect A, but if he’s short on time and needs to finish his quota immediately, Prospect B is safer, and will allow him to start from scratch in the next month. Sales is a game of revenue, and knowing which customers you can qualify as capable of offering it is a crucial skill. Further, some buyers won’t make decisions about your sales for months, even if they definitely will. Don’t forget to check up on them from time to time to remind them that you’re still ready and waiting for their purchase, but don’t be annoying, or you’ll turn them off on your product. Understanding your own time management and timeframe will help you make better decisions about how to invest your time and which buyers to invest it in.

Confirm Value

Probably the most crucial step to do as a salesperson is make sure that the product or service that you are offering actually offers a relevant solution to the prospective buyer’s needs or problems. You need to be the one to make sure that your product has actual value to your prospective buyer, or you’ll never really qualify your buyer. For example, let us say that Cory is selling high-end gaming computers. Prospect A is an elderly woman who lives with roughly a dozen cats, and needs a computer to check her emails with, or get on social media. Prospect B is a relatively young single adult male, who clearly likes to spend his free time playing online games. Obviously, Prospect B has more relevant needs for Cory’s product than Prospect A. It won’t always be that clear-cut or polarised, but the point is that the good salesperson has to be capable of qualifying which your product is actually any kind of solid answer to the prospective buyer’s needs or problems. In, short, make sure that your product will always be useful to your prospective buyer, or it won’t matter how much time you invest into persuading them, or how high their budget is; they probably won’t buy it. We provide advice and lectures and a few activities for participants to work out value.