Common Definitions Help Prospectors Meet Sales' Expectations

By Barry Lieberman
Advantage Plus Marketing Group

That's where a well-defined Prospecting process comes into play. Prospecting is a business process, with distinct procedures and very specific goals, just like any other mission-critical company process. Importantly, the prospecting process spells out definitions for the stages a potential customer or buyer of a product or service goes through as they enter and move through the system.

Marketing and Sales need to agree on common terms

Everybody in your Marketing, Sales and Prospecting organizations have to understand and agree on the terms used to describe the stages of prospecting. Calling an inquirer or potential buyer a "lead" is too generic. The terms "lead," "inquirer" and "prospect" should never be used interchangeably to describe people at various stages of the prospecting process. This practice is confusing and nonproductive.

You need to establish a common language for the terms your organization will use to name the steps from inquiry to sale. Universal labels for defining sales targets allow you to specify what steps to take to further each type along in the education, nurturing, and buying decision process. Mutual understanding fosters better communication, coordination and cooperation between the marketing and sales functions in your company.

Here are four terms for defining the stages of prospecting that I've found work well in every case:

How do most Sales departments define a prospect as "truly qualified" for hand-off?

How do you know when a prospect is ready to finalize a sale? The traditional guideline called BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) has worked well for years to define the characteristics of a ready buyer. Salespeople want to meet Prospects with all four; usually it's the ‘T' (timing) that turns a Prospect into a Qualified Prospect. Different products and/or markets may have a different ‘T' or timeframe constraint for this prospect qualifier.

Adopting a common nomenclature is extremely practical in an organization that sells a variety of products and services. Many successful marketers use broad common terminology as a training and motivational tool. Commonly used terms also allow you to focus everyone involved on how your company defines a "real" opportunity. For example, IBM uses "BANT" (defined above). Using common definitions helps bridge the gap between what Marketing sees as a "lead" and what leads Sales will "really take action on." Too many times these two areas are in conflict instead of alignment. Recognize the nuances in definitions that work for your organization.

By using subsets of an organization-wide set of definitions, you can get more specific for a given product and/or market. Every type of contact, from simple literature requests (Inquiries) to Prospects with a purchase timeframe six months out, can be assigned a very specific designation with a pre-determined follow-up routine.

You might classify Qualified Prospects as A and B, and only those are sent to the Sales organization for conversion. Typically, C and D designations are for those contacts that still need more education and nurturing, or where the timing is unclear or not set. C and D contacts need to be moved into an appropriate nurturing process until they reach A or B classification. I will explore this aspect of Prospecting more thoroughly in the next newsletter, which will help you answer the question: "Okay, you've determined that a Prospect is not ready for Sales Rep follow-up… now what?"