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Sales Process - How to Avoid Wasting Time on Prospects Who CAN'T or WON'T Pay
by: Alan Rigg
Do you have blind faith that, if you can somehow convince a prospect to engage in a sales cycle, you will eventually make a sale? If you do, watch out! This belief can waste your time, effort, and company resources.

Unfortunately, time and resource investments do not inevitably produce sales. How many of the opportunities in your pipeline have been stalled at the same step in the sales cycle for weeks...or months? In how many opportunities have you and your company invested enormous amounts of time, energy and resources (conducting product demonstrations, writing lengthy proposals, providing product evaluations, etc.), only to have the prospect decide they don't WANT to buy, or prove INCAPABLE of funding the purchase? Even when you make sales, how many turn out to be "nightmare" customers who are always dissatisfied and consume huge amounts of post-sale resources?

All Prospects Are NOT Created Equal

You DO need to help your prospects explore whether their business problems are substantial enough to justify investing time in a sales cycle. However, you also need to figure out whether each prospect is WORTHY of your time and resource investments! If a prospect is not a good fit, gracefully exit from the opportunity! (Why not refer them to a competitor and let the competitor burn some cycles?)

How can you determine whether a prospect is worthy of your time and resource investments? Many sales skills training courses teach an acronym, M-A-N, that stands for Money, Authority, and Need. The basic idea is to determine whether:

1. The prospect is willing to commit enough budget dollars (MONEY) to pay for the product or service

2. The key decision makers and influencers (AUTHORITY) have been identified; and

3. The prospect's pain (NEED) is severe enough to justify investing in a solution.

Unfortunately, even when you do a good job of M-A-N qualification, you can be "blindsided" by issues that delay sales cycles or destroy opportunities outright. For example:

* Some prospects prove incapable of securing financing. They may have a budget, but they are not "credit worthy", so they can't FUND the budget.

* Some decision makers need to have specific information provided in a specific format before they can authorize a buying decision.

* Sometimes you invest considerable time and effort in troubleshooting complex problems and designing solutions, only to be informed that the prospect must take the proposed solution OUT TO BID. This can lead to the opportunity being lost to a low bidder or the profitability of the opportunity being pummeled.

To avoid these issues, add additional questions to the M-A-N qualification process. The acronym that I have assigned to this revised process is M-A-I-N BP, which stands for MONEY, AUTHORITY, INFORMATION, NEED, and BUYING PROCESS. Here are sample M-A-I-N BP questions:

MONEY

* How will your prospect pay for the product or service?

* Has a budget been established?

* Are they credit worthy?

AUTHORITY

* Who (in the prospect's organization) needs to approve an acquisition of this nature?

INFORMATION

* What information do the decision makers require before they can make a decision?

* What format does this information need to be in?

NEED

* What are the prospect's business problems?

* How compelling are they? In other words, can you quantify (associate dollars, percentages, and time frames with) the pain the prospect is feeling?

* Are the quantified business impacts substantial enough to warrant investment by the prospect's organization (and YOUR company) in identifying and fixing the problem(s)?


BUYING PROCESS

* What is the prospect's buying (procurement) process?

* What impact might this process have on the profitability of the transaction?

* What competitive advantage will you receive if you invest your time and resources in designing a solution that goes out to bid?


If you decide to add M-A-I-N BP qualification to your sales opportunity qualification process, here are some final thoughts to keep in mind:

* If you don't know the answers to ALL of the M-A-I-N BP questions, it is highly likely you are wasting your time and resources!

* Opportunity qualification is NOT A ONE-TIME EVENT. As an opportunity advances through the sales cycle, you should frequently ask whether any of the answers to the qualification questions have changed. If an answer changes, it could impact the length of the sales cycle and even destroy the viability of the opportunity. At minimum, an answer change will probably require a change in focus and/or a reprioritization of planned activities.

* Never feel bad about disqualifying an "opportunity". The amount of opportunity in each territory is virtually unlimited. If you carefully qualify and re-qualify each opportunity, and only invest time and resources in qualified opportunities, you will maximize your return on time and resources invested.

About the author:
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don't Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers DOUBLE sales by implementing The Right Formula(tm) for building top-performing sales teams. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com


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How to Find the Best Low APR Credit Cards
 by: Morgan Hamilton

Low APR credit cards are much more prevalent than in years past. Competition is stiff and credit card financial institutions offer many nice perks, rewards, points, low annual percentage rates (APR) and other inducements. They want to capture new customers who've never had a credit card but also those who already have a credit card and might like to save money by transferring that card's balance on to their new low APR credit cards.

Of course, there is nothing lower in an APR than zero - and those exist too, although sometimes for a limited time period. It may be that the lowest, or even the zero percentage APR is for an introductory period, after which the rate is higher. The permanent APR is what you want to watch out for, of course. Although if you're not opposed to doing a lot of switching, you can always purchase a low APR credit card, or zero percentage APR credit card, transfer the balance from your current high APR credit card, and then, once the introductory time period has expired and the APR is about to go up on your newest credit card, transfer the balance yet again to a brand new low APR credit card.

Let's look at a few of the low APR credit cards out there, so you know what kinds of options are typically available to you.

Citibank, for example, offers low APR credit cards that give you five percent cash back on any purchase you making at grocery stores and gas stations with your low APR credit card, and one percent back for any purchase elsewhere. The APR on transfers is zero for the first year. If your transfer transaction is at least $1500 you will earn $5 cash back with the low APR credit card. There is no annual fee and the APR after the first year is 12.24 percent.

Discover has a platinum clear card whose low APR is continual. The first year the APR is zero, but after the first year it's still a very competitive 9.99 percent. And there is no annual fee. With these low APR credit cards you earn a five percent cash back bonus on purchases made from hardware and home improvement retailers, restaurants, book vendors, and gas stations. If the retailer doesn't qualify you for the five percent discount you will always get one percent back no matter what you buy and from where with this low APR credit card.

Chase Bank offers low APR credit cards as well. Its zero percent APR is good for six months, after which you will pay 10.49 percent. These low APR credit cards have no annual fee, and offer rewards at the rate of one point for every dollar spent with your Chase card. You can get free airline flights and hotel rooms, as well as cruises and auto rentals. This card also provides $500,000 worth of travel insurance for worldwide vacationing. You can also take advantage of a fifteen percent discount off a Hertz car rental with these low APR credit cards.


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