How do you know which enquiries are worth your time today?

Twenty open enquiries. Your salesperson has time for six properly today. Which six?

In most businesses the answer is whoever called most recently, or whoever has been most persistent. Neither of those is a signal of how likely somebody is to buy. They are signals of who is loudest.

Meanwhile the serious buyer who asked once, clearly, and is quietly comparing three suppliers, waits.

What actually separates them

You do not need a scoring system. Four questions do most of the work.

• Did he tell you what he actually needs, in some detail? People who are serious describe the problem. People who are browsing ask for a rate list.
• Is there a date? A requirement with a deadline is real. One without is an idea.
• Is he the one who decides? If he has to ask somebody, you are earlier in the process than you think.
• Has he asked about anything other than price? Price only questions usually mean he has already chosen somebody and is checking.

Three yes answers and he deserves your morning. One yes and he deserves a quick reply and a follow up next week.

Why writing it down matters

Experienced salespeople do this in their heads already, and they are good at it. The problem is that nobody else can see their reasoning, so the list cannot be checked, handed over or learned from.

Write the judgement against the enquiry. Hot, warm, cold, and one line saying why.

Then when a hot one goes cold, you can look back and see what was missed. That is how a team gets better at this, and it cannot happen while the reasoning lives in one head.

Take your twenty open enquiries and sort them with those four questions. Does the order match where your time went last week?

Making that judgement visible, so a team can be taught it instead of guessing, is one of the first things we set up. Ask us what your open list would look like sorted.