You will produce a scorecard that turns your discovery notes into a clear go or no-go.
Ask most sellers how a deal is going and they will tell you how they feel about it. "Good, I think." "They seemed keen." "Not sure, hard to read." Feelings are not useless, but they are a poor basis for deciding where to spend next week, because the deals that feel best are often the ones where the buyer was friendliest, which is not the same as the ones most likely to close.
A qualification scorecard replaces the feeling with a short list of things you either know or do not. This exercise walks you through building one, using lessons 5.1 to 5.4. Allow twenty-five minutes.
Pick BANT, MEDDIC, or a short mix, based on how complex your sales are.
If most of your sales involve one buyer, one or two meetings and a modest price, BANT from lesson 5.1, BANT: budget, authority, need, timeline, and its limits, is enough. If they involve several people, several meetings and approval from someone you rarely meet, start from MEDDIC in lesson 5.2, MEDDIC for bigger and slower deals.
Many people end up with a mix. Hafiz, who sells payroll software to firms of twenty to two hundred staff, chose six items:
Pain: is there a root problem, in the buyer's words? Impact: has the buyer put a number on it? Urgency: is there a deadline, event or growing cost? Budget: has the buyer reacted to a real price range? Decision process: do you know the steps, the people and the dates? Champion: is someone inside arguing for the change?
Keep it to between four and seven items. More than that and you will stop filling it in.
For each item, write what a strong answer looks like, what a weak answer looks like, and what counts as unknown. This is the step that makes the scorecard honest, because it stops you scoring on hope.
Here is Hafiz's definition for budget. Strong: the buyer heard the range and said it was in line with what they expected, or named a figure within it. Weak: the buyer heard the range and said it was well beyond what they could spend, even after agreeing the impact. Unknown: price has not come up, or the buyer said "no idea" and you have not followed up.
And for champion. Strong: your contact has taken your material to the economic buyer and told you how it went. Weak: your contact likes you but has done nothing between meetings. Unknown: you have not yet asked them to do anything.
Notice that unknown is its own category, separate from weak. A weak answer is information you have. An unknown is information you have not got yet, and treating it as weak or strong is guessing.
Decide which unknowns must become known before you write a proposal. A proposal built on unknowns is a guess with a price on it, and it is where most stalled deals stall.
Hafiz's rule: no proposal while pain, impact or decision process is unknown. Budget and champion can be unknown at the proposal stage, but only if he has a plan to find out at the presentation meeting. A small firm with one decision maker gets a lighter rule: no proposal while pain or budget is unknown.
Write your rule at the top of the scorecard, where you will see it every time.
Pick three opportunities you are working on now. For each, go through your notes and score every item as strong, weak or unknown. Be strict: score strong only when you heard it from the buyer, as lesson 5.1 explained.
Then, before you look at the scores, write down your gut feel for each deal in one word: likely, possible or unlikely. Compare the two.
Hafiz scored three firms. The logistics firm with Rachel came out strong on pain, impact and urgency, unknown on budget, and weak on decision process after Kelvin and finance appeared. His gut had said likely. A food distribution company he had felt lukewarm about came out strong on five of six items. A retail chain he felt good about had pain as the only strong item, with everything else unknown.
The gap between gut and score is the useful part. It shows you which deals you are overrating, usually the friendly ones, and which you are neglecting.
Last, for each of the three opportunities, find the largest unknown and write the one question you will ask next to fill it. One question, specific to this buyer, ready to ask at your next contact.
Hafiz's next question for Rachel: "What would Kelvin want to see before he's comfortable approving something like this?" For the retail chain: "Who else would be involved in choosing a payroll system, and how did you choose the last one?"
You have a scorecard with four to seven items, each with written definitions of strong, weak and unknown, and a rule at the top for which unknowns must be filled before a proposal. You have scored three live opportunities, compared each with your gut feel, and written the next question for each.
Gather your notes on three current opportunities before you start the activity below.
Build the scorecard, score three live opportunities, and write the one question you will ask next in each to fill the largest unknown.
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