Are you tired of pulling teeth and being on the defensive during qualification calls?

Follow these tips on your next call and your prospects will ask you to set up the demo, request to invite decision makers, and will enthusiastically attend feeling privileged to have access to your amazing product.

Before the Call

1. Adopt the Selector Mindset. Think of yourself as a doctor running tests for a unique treatment with amazing benefits. You can only accept patients (clients) that meet certain conditions. Your goal throughout the call is simply to determine whether the prospects meet these conditions. If they do, you award them the privilege of moving down your pipeline by seeing a product demo. This is probably the hardest tip to follow as it can be counterintuitive to the buyer-is-the-selector mindset. But it will go a long way to turning the tables and having the prospect see you as the selector.
2. Be Prepared to Give an On-the-Fly Demo. If a prospect says you are one of their last demos/they need to make this happen ASAP, or if they are an influencer who will need to sell this internally in order to get other stakeholders to a demo, be prepared for—and open to—a quick walkthrough. Note: if you are an SDR working with Account Executives, always try to have your AE’s on Skype/chat so you can quickly message them for availability when needed.

During the Call

1. Frame the Conversation. Briefly outline why you are both on this call. Though this may be obvious (they responded to your outbound effort/are your inbound lead, etc), doing this establishes you as the leader in the conversation and creates a favorable context. For example, “Before we jump into this, I’d like to summarize why we are talking: We reached out to you via email because we work with companies in your space and think you might also have a need for our solution. You responded that you’re in the market and want to setup a call. So, here we are… Is that a pretty accurate description of why we’re talking?”
2. Cold Read. If the opportunity arises, demonstrate that you are an experienced authority in their field who has high business acumen by cold reading safe assumptions about them and their needs. For example, prospect is a 50-200 size company that just hired a large marketing team and is shopping for a marketing-automation tool. It’s safe to assume they are in aggressive expansion mode, your contact was tasked with shortlisting 2-3 vendors, and they are looking to implement ASAP. Even if your assumptions are slightly off, this will give the prospect opportunity to ‘correct’ you which is a smooth way to get them talking. This tip is especially useful if the prospect is being closed-mouthed and giving one-word responses to qualification questions.
3. Adopt a Casual Tone. Attempt to keep a pretty casual tone of voice throughout the call, especially if it is with higher-level people at larger companies (translating as a chance for bigger business.) This is a very hard tip to follow, but if you can pull it off, you will be a lot more appealing compared to the super-excited sales person whose excitement over the possibility of a large deal can be off-putting to the prospect.
4. Ask Smart Questions. One or two very smart open-ended questions is all you need to get their mouths moving for a while. This one tends to do the job: “So,I’d love to hear more about your needs and how you envision a tool like ours helping your team” Bonus: The latter question not only tends to get your prospect talking, but sets them up to speak in future tense about how they envision using a tool like yours. What’s better than having a prospect sell themselves on using your product a couple of minutes into the call? ☺
5. Then Be Quiet and Listen. Pay close attention to who is doing most of the talking; the prospect—NOT YOU—shouldbe doing most/all of the babbling while you sit back and take notes, with the occasional chiming in or digging deeper when needed.
6. Artfully Introduce Yourself and YourCompany. At some point in the conversation, it will make sense/the prospect will ask you to talk about yourself and your company. It’s helpful to do this with an interesting narrative format. For example: “So, John, to give you a little background about myself and my company: I’ve been in this space for 5 years, I actually heard about this company while I was looking for new marketing tools at my last job; ended up connecting with the CMO and that’s how I got here. We’ve been around since 2010 and we didn’t come into existence to re-invent the wheel, rather we found…” The point here is to tell a story.
7. Level the Playing Field. Shoppers will often try to commoditize you and your product in the subtle form of name-dropping your competitors, and mentioning having several similar meetings set up. They are testing to see if you’ll get defensive or thrown offfrom a mention of competitors or allusion to their buying power, as many salespeople do. Do NOT fall for this. It’s perfectly ok to reply with something like “so yeah, you must be exhausted from all those meetings ☺” and move on with the call. By responding in such a manner, you will be perceived as higher value by your prospects.
8. Get Them to Qualify Themselves to You. Describe an ideal customer that is slightly more successful than your prospect. It often gets them to start explaining why they think they can still be a good fit though not quite your ideal customer, making them do the qualifying. For example: If selling an email marketing tool to a company with a smaller marketing team: “typically our ideal customer has a sizable marketing team already running a significant amount of weekly emails, and is frustrated with the lack of integration and time-intensive manual effort involved. However, we also have customers with smaller teams like yours”Caution: avoid causing offense by saying it gently and casually.
9. Neutralize the Know-it-All/Free Trial Requestor. If your prospect tells you how they already know everything about your tool, have demoed with your competitors, and just want a free trial and pricing, try something along these lines: “Happy to hear that you did your research, we might be able to arrange a trial and can definitely cover pricing, but first I have to determine if you meet our criteria, as not everyone is a good fit for our solution. So, I need to understand how YOU envision a tool like ours fitting into your current process.”
10. Pay Close attention to Tone and Mood. Throughout the call, notice if your prospect sounds stressed or annoyed and don’t be afraid to call them out on it. Here’s a way to gently do this: “Hey, John, sounds like you’ve been through a few of these calls today, am I right☺?”
11. Bonus: if this is their 5^th demo of the day and they seem tired of the process, don’t hesitate to get straight to the point by asking what they liked and disliked about the previous product demos. You’ll be able to position yours differently and be appreciated by busy decision makers.

Be a Smart Wheeler and Dealer.

Even if it’s clear from the conversation that there is not a fit, try to leverage this interaction towards getting an introduction to another team or a referral to another company that might be a perfect fit.

1. Do NOT Start Selling. If the prospect asks detailed product questions (that you know can be answered during the demo) do not go into detailed answers. Doing this on an initial call risks diminishing their desire to see the demo later. Keep your responses to simple yes and no, followed by some variation of ”that’s something we cover in our product demos.”
2. Pay Close Attention to Feature Questions. This is an easy way to determine which of your competitors a prospect is evaluating without having to ask directly. If they ask whether you have the ability to do xyz, you can know there are only one or two major competitors that do. You can even show you are a seasoned pro by mentioning it: “Based on that question it sounds like you just had a demo with competitor X, am I right?”

Bring it Home

1. Summarize the Call & Get THEM to Request the Next Step. Recap that you think you have the solution based on the problems they just described, and say you’d be happy to show them how it works so they can make an informed decision. Usually they’ll respond excitedly asking for the next step/demo. It’s far more effective than asking if they want to move forward.
2. Do NOT Offer Too Many Scheduling Options. Keep it simple with up to 2-3 choices. Example: “Klara, you have you calendar in front of you? Great, we have some availability this Wednesday at 1pm EST and Thursday around the same time. Works?”
3. Put Something on the Calendar NOW. If they want a demo, try to not let them leave the call without scheduling something. Even if it’s just a placeholder while they sync with their colleagues on a definite date/time. Just having a placeholder is always better then leaving the call with a mere verbal agreement to send over time slots later.
4. Get Off the Call. Confirm your agreed-to date and time, say something along the lines of “ok so you’re all set, hope you’re excited, this is something else ☺” then get off the call.

These steps when implemented will seamlessly set your prospects up to request a demo and be well on their way to purchasing your product.

About the Author:

I have been in sales my entire life; friends and family tend to agree I was articulating benefits of products or services I wanted from age 4 or 5. Professionally, I started my career as a B2C eCommerce adviser for a mail-order firm during summer breaks in high school. I ventured into B2B SAAS sales two and a half years ago and spent a year smiling-and-dialing as anEnterpriseSDR, and—mostrecently—doing full sales cycle for a SAAS lead-gen tool with the average deal size between 6k-25k. This advice can be easily applied to a complex enterprise deal or any sales qualification interaction with just a few common-sense adjustments.