The Science of Sales Success: A Proven System for High-Profit, Repeatable Results

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.