Today we are going to continue our sales training guide, and we are going to look at the qualification process.

Qualification? Don’t worry, I am not going to ask you to take some exams… instead, I want you to focus more on a popular sales area that is often overlooked.

Qualifying the customer.

This is a fairly simple process… it goes a little something like this:

Hero: Good afternoon Mrs Jones, may I ask if you own a car?

Mrs Jones: No I don’t

Hero: Ok, thanks for your time.

See how our hero saved valuable time by using a qualifying question to learn about the customer. Ok, to be fair, in this instance the hero was selling peanut butter, but it was his first attempt, so I don’t want to be too harsh on the lad.

You can qualify a lead without being too direct simply by trying to blend it into the conversational opener. Combined with some good rapport skills, you can often qualify the customer without putting them on guard.