Creating Opportunities > Qualifying Opportunities

What if qualifying isn’t the most important thing you should be doing right now? What if you are supposed to be creating opportunities?

Qualifying Opportunities

What are your intentions when you are qualifying? If you still believe in the BANT process, you might be trying to make sure your prospective client has the budget, first and foremost. That isn’t always the best place to start a conversation, but then neither is starting the conversation with the question, “do you have the authority to make this purchase.”

. These are different times, and they call for a different qualification process.

Qualifying is still important, especially in low dollar, simple sales, where there isn’t a lot at risk. In more complex, more expensive, and more risky sales, this kind of qualifying isn’t very useful.

The questions that you would ask to qualify don’t create value for your prospective client, and they don’t do anything to create opportunities.

This is why SDRs and BDRs struggle.

Qualifying has nothing to do with opportunity creation in sales where your prospects are known, targeted, and pursued over time. When your strategy is largely competitive displacement, you already know your dream clients are qualified. They’re already spending money with your competitor.

The real challenge in sales now is opportunity creation.

Creating Opportunities

• Your intention in above the funnel communication and when prospecting is to create opportunities.
• Your efforts at nurturing those relationships need to be built on creating a compelling case for change.
• The discovery meetings you have with your dream client are about exploring that change. You are going to qualify them as you determine whether you can create the requisite value and wether they are willing to make the investments necessary to change.

It is more likely that your sales numbers aren’t what you need them to be because you aren’t creating enough opportunities than it is that you aren’t doing a good job qualifying.

Opportunities are created by salespeople who are value creators and who have the business acumen and situational knowledge to help make the case for change. Opportunity creation is greater than opportunity qualification.