Sales Training: Sniffing Out a No from a Prospect

Sales Training: Sniffing Out a No from a Prospect:

Sales Training Article: How to Sniff Out a Polite "No" from a 'Qualified' Lead

Originally published by Vince Koehler, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)
The quantity of leads passed to the sales force is irrelevant if leads aren't any good. Speaking with hundreds of reps around the country and across many industries reveals the common thread of poorly qualified leads as a major problem.
One of my roles at SBI is coaching managers of Lead Development teams. Unqualified leads returned by the sales force are routinely analyzed. This is done to learn from mistakes through continuous improvement. Often the root problem of unqualified leads is false interest. Lead development reps can have 'happy ears' and accept interest without vetting true interest.
What's difficult about this situation is that the lead development representative who qualified interest is usually adamant that they did their job right and the sales rep blew it. The sales rep gets frustrated because the lead development rep is wasting their time with bogus leads. This dynamic can produce disunity between the Lead Development team and the sales force.
You have to squash this problem with a dose of reality. Validate interest.
Painful Civility
A big part of the problem is the civility of the business world. People are just too damn nice. Not so much in the Northeast of the country, where you find prospects who are refreshingly blunt. Everywhere else you can find prospects with a sickening level of civility. When prospects aren't really interested they can often find it less painful to use indirect methods to send a rep on their way. The classic line "Send me some information" is almost always a polite way of saying, "leave me alone and don't let the door hit you in ass."
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