Summary

• You want customers to qualify themselves first on whether they chose the right goals and have the ability to achieve them.

• You qualify your own products on their ability to achieve customers' goals before you mention any specific ones to customers.

• If you find yourself disqualifying customers more than qualifying them, you should review how you defined market segments.

• Starting sales calls with a focus on making customers' goals measurable puts them in control and motivates them to share information with you.

• Filters allow both customers and you to perform a test of reasonableness on whether you both achieve their goals.

• Filters fall into two categories: prerequisites and influencers. The four prerequisites must be satisfied for sales to occur. The five influencers can sway customers' purchasing decisions and the goals they seek to achieve.

• The filters are as follows:

  • Goal motivation (I)

  • Current situation (I)

  • Plans (I)

  • Alternatives (I)

  • Decision makers (P)

  • Complete, start, budget, and decision dates (P)

  • Funding (P)

  • Past keys (I)

  • Attainment measurement (P)

• A customer's positive, neutral, or negative status determines its willingness to share information about filters—unless you make goals measurable.

• Use the create-and-wait strategy to win over satisfied negative customers.

• Locate the FDM by looking at the contact positions in similar-size organizations and market segments in which you have successes and failures. Adjust your contact level according to whether they are positive, neutral, or negative customers.

• Moving funding from a capital investment to an operating budget expense lowers the decision-making level and shortens the sales cycle.

• Attainment measurement is the most-important filter for both customers and you because it determines whether they can achieve goals via your products.

• A person qualifies as the FDM if he or she determines the specifics of the four prerequisites and releases or allocates funds.

• Make sure you focus on the goals customers want to achieve, not on how they are using features of competitors' products.