Customers Paying for the Sale is the final qualifier

Customers paying for the sale is the ultimate objective of what we do. The sale isn’t truly closed until the customer pays the bill, and in my book also buys the lunch. So knowing how the customer intends to pay is critical for qualifying the sale.

But asking how the customer will be paying for the sale can be difficult, especially for sales guys under pressure to close the deal.

“OK, but have you got the money to pay for what I’m selling?” That’s a tough question to ask when the prospect has invited us to present a solution. S/he recognises the need, agrees our ability to meet it and now wants to talk about price. Now we ask whether there’s enough cash around to pay for it.

Does that sound to you like a great way to get thrown out? It will to a lot of people.

Perhaps counter-intuitively this is the best time in a sales process to ask that question, for these reasons:

1 – Why waste selling time on a customer who can’t pay?
Very few of us get paid to make sales calls. We get paid to make sales. Beware the Serial Prospect.

2 – Prospects expect sales guys to talk about money and how they’ll get paid.
They know there’s a cost and are rightly suspicious when it isn’t up front.

3 – Setting sales in the context of money and payment makes the rest of the process easier.
After that we’re only working on cost justification – not price AND reasons the deal is worth it.

4 – If the customer likes our stuff, but not our price s/he’ll tell us.
Lets focus on selling the value and the cost will take care of itself. The customer will tell us how to sell it.

So much is obvious. The big question is how we handle the discussion of price and how it’ll get paid.

That takes philosophy, and more than a little practice.

Inspiration for this post came from Michel Chiasson
who kindly commented on Questions to Qualify the Sale

Michel’s company CVU Software builds solutions to help businesses refine sales processes.