While in traditional sales we talk about qualifying prospects, I think it's even better to start disqualifying prospects.

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	Since 1994, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan has been working with technology companies on all aspects of business development and helping them to acquire the cream of the crop of their target markets and sell their services at the highest margins.

I can't remember the exact words of Gill Wagner, author of Honest Selling, but the essence of his article was this: "Throughout our interactions with buyers, we're looking for a reason why we can't do business together. The sooner we find the reason, the sooner we can go home." He even used this phrase with prospects: "I guess we've just found a reason not to do business together. Would you agree?" 

I loved his approach, and, being true to his company's (and book's) name, Gill's approach sounded honest to me.

Disqualification is a great way of finding committed buyers, but only if we can detach ourselves from the outcome. Of course this is easy for independent consultants, but it can be an uphill struggle for consultants who work for a firm that pressures them to turn every piece of warm meat into paying clients.

So, what is disqualification? I believe it's the opposite of memorizing closing techniques, pushing hot buttons, overcoming objections, and asking manipulative questions.

Disqualification helps us to weed out tire-kickers and plate-lickers that would take any amount of value for free but would have a serious problem with making even conditional commitments to work with us.

In the traditional qualification model, we have to "escort" prospects all the way to the end of the sales funnel to discover whether or not they are serious about their intentions to hire us. It's a long and costly process, involving proposals, multiple modifications to proposals, several telephone calls, and in-person meetings.

The way I see it, the qualification model is about tricking our ways through the roadblocks prospects have erected to protect themselves from new knowledge and improvement entering their organizations (which is what good business developers bring to their clients). And yes, it's possible to penetrate, but we may bleed to death in the process.

The disqualification model is the exact opposite. Since we're looking for a reason to not do business, in many cases, we will find one. After all, most prospects are not "Ready to Act" buyers, but collectors of information. And while I'm all for sharing information, I want to make sure that the sharing process doesn't involve my personal time and effort. We can share information through informative websites, reports, white papers, and other sources, but they are all parts of an automated lead generation and lead nurturing process.

It's your automated lead nurturing process that will uncover those buyers who are tire-kickers.

When Requesting Your Personal Time

As some prospects come through your lead nurturing process, they decide they to want to meet you in person or on the phone to move to the next stage. For a few of them, the next stage is a strong possibility of hiring you. But for many of them it's some personal brain-picking to gather information for internal implementation.

And I believe this is the point where you have to erect some strong barriers, so that only committed buyers can have access to your personal time.

A while ago, I started setting three strong conditions that must be met for in-person meetings.

Bring all your business documents. When we start working together, I want to review clients' documents, including business plans, marketing plans, financial documents and every other document that is relevant to the project clients intend to engage me in.

I know these are confidential documents, so I explain to buyers that I don't look at these documents until, and unless, we decide to proceed to work together. But when we do, I'd like to move fast and bring myself up to speed on clients' issues. These documents give me a pretty good start, and then I can start speaking with individual members in clients' organizations to learn more about their operations.

Bring a signed check of $1-5,000. This is a good-faith commitment deposit and an indication of being serious. The way I see it, money is the walk of the talk. When you ask people to invest in their own futures and successes, you will quickly learn how serious and committed they really are. People vote with their purses depending on whether or not they truly believe in their initiatives and their own abilities to pull it off. And this message becomes crystal clear whether or not they cough up the dough.

So, when we start our sample session, during which we both experience what it feels like working together, we put the check on the desk.

After 1-2 hours we stop and two things can happen:

If we decide we do not want to work together, buyers take the check and their business documents and leave.

If we decide we do want to work together, we start the project, and I will take the check and lump it into the last payment of the buyer's investment for the project the buyer has just sampled.

Make a yes/no decision by the end of the meeting. I'm all right with an honest "no," but what I can't tolerate at this point is an, "I have to think about it." One of Napoleon Hill's Success Principles is to be decisive in nature. So, I think I'm reasonable to expect buyers to make a decision by the end of our sample session.

If they can't make a simple decision like this, how can I expect them to make major decisions that can make or break the success of our engagements? This criterion screens out procrastinators.

These are three serious requests, and they create drastically different responses from people: Tire-kickers start gasping for air and get outraged and sometimes verbally abusive: "Who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to talk to me like that?"

Real buyers respond differently: "All right. I accept your terms. Let me know where and when to meet."

What Does This Approach Achieve?

Since I work with consulting firms, I run the sample gigs for several partners of the prospective client's firm.

During our sessions buyers establish whether I'm an idiot or someone knowledgeable who can help them to go through the change process with higher speed and a greater probability to succeed.

Similarly, I establish whether or not prospects fit into my "Ideal Client" profile. Under "Ideal Client," I assess the buyer, the firm, and the project. If one of them is not to my liking, I walk away.

With this approach I also aim to avoid the "Show me what you have, hotshot!" scenario.

I recently received an email from a consulting firm's partner who was outraged about my "meeting criteria," and basically demanded that I provide him with a detailed and guaranteed roadmap to doubling their revenue within 6 months. When I emailed him a few questions, he refused to answer them and retorted, "Well, you're the expert, aren't you?" Just imagine the disaster of wasted time and energy when a buyer like this meets you in-person.

What I've found is that that most buyers who reach this meeting point are ready and willing to proceed. I've been using it since 1999, and so far I've never had a buyer who has back-pedaled.

I don't say this is the best approach, and I keep perfecting it, but it's a good start. At least it's a better start than investing my time and effort in every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to meet me, but hasn't yet made even a conditional commitment to proceed.

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