Sales qualification - MANDACT - the key to sales efficiency.

Sales qualification is key for a sales manager, rep or situation. We need to understand of the prospect is worthwhile. Does it fit our business, can they afford us, is it worth putting the effort in. If we are winning deals we are also losing them , but we need to make sure we put effort into the deals we can win, and less or none to those that are borderline. The worst thing is to put serious effort in a deal we then lose.

We use a qualification acronym – MANDACT to help us remember what information we need to obtain from the prospect.

1. Sales Qualification - MANDACT – (M) - Money, not always easy to get a straight answer to this question, but useful if you can. Ways of asking the question are:
• Where is the money coming from?
• Is there a budget authorized?
• What budget is available?
• Can you give me an indication of the range of the budget £55, £5000, £25,000?

Our clients often want projects with an identified budget but this can be naive. Especially if you are selling a new solution or approach. In that case the prospect may not have even thought about the problem or solution, let alone put together a budget. In some organizations can this can lead to a long sales cycle, but in others can lead to business with no competition where the budget is created specifically for your solution - works especially if you can show a clear return on investment.

Where there is a budget, fine, we now know what we are working with. However, we still need to understand more about that budget – where is the money coming from, why is there a budget, what is the issue that they are looking to solve – some of these questions are uncovered by the other aspects of MANDACT.

Next installment - "A"

Excerpt from our sales training course:Selling is just a conversation