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Strictly Sales- Follow steps to logical process of qualifying

In September's article, I challenged you to create 60 or so questions to use as basic preparation tools for beginning the sales process.

By Tom Barrett,CIC, AIA | Updated on November 08, 2009

In September’s article, I challenged you to create 60 or so questions to use as basic preparation tools for beginning the sales process. We often see producers with full pipelines of useless prospects with a 75 percent failure rate. Why are these prospects in your pipeline? The answer: “Because my sales manager or agency owner is from the old school of activity-based selling, rather than the consultative selling approach. They scream and pound the desk and demand we keep our pipelines full.”

I previously worked as a producer at a large agency. The culture among the sales team was, “Just look busy and walk with purpose and urgency and the brass will leave you alone.” For all of the marginal producers that shouldn’t have been hired, it worked. Everyone was busy going nowhere. Old-time agencies operating under these dynamics have above-average marketing costs, strained relationships with their carriers, a below-average profit margin and their revenue per producer is below a long-term survival rate for the producer and the agency.

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