You will be able to tell during discovery that a buyer is not a fit, and say so without losing their goodwill.
Every seller ends up with a deal that should have left the pipeline long ago. The buyer was lovely, and the first meeting ran over because you got on so well. They said "this is really interesting" four times (the numbers in this opening are an example). The deal has now sat in your pipeline for three months. Every follow-up gets a polite reply, and nothing moves.
You keep deals like this for two reasons. The deal felt good, and closing it in your records feels like admitting you failed. The fix is to judge the deal on what you learned in discovery and set aside how the meetings felt. When the evidence says the deal is not a fit right now, you tell the buyer so, in a way that leaves them thinking well of you.
Deals rarely close when one of three things is missing: a real problem, urgency, or access to the decision maker. How well the meeting went makes no difference.
With no real problem, the buyer has symptoms they can live with. Lesson 4.1, Find the problem underneath the first problem, covers this. With no urgency, the buyer has a problem they can leave for another year, which is the subject of lesson 4.3, Urgency: why now, and what if nothing changes. With no access to the decision maker, the deal depends on someone you have never met agreeing to something they have never heard described. Lesson 5.2, MEDDIC for bigger and slower deals, sets out that risk.
A pleasant meeting fills none of these gaps. Buyers are often friendly precisely because nobody is pushing them to decide anything. Your check against a good feeling is the qualification scorecard from lesson 5.5, Build your qualification scorecard. Score the deal on problem, urgency and access to the decision maker. If all three are weak or unknown, the good feeling comes from the conversation and says nothing about the deal. At that point you can decide, on the discovery evidence, that the opportunity is not a fit right now.
Disqualifying means making that decision on the evidence from discovery and then telling the buyer.
Every hour you spend on a poor-fit buyer comes straight out of the hours you have for good-fit buyers. That cost is easy to miss because it never shows up as a loss. It is spread across every follow-up email, every proposal written for a buyer who will not act, and every second meeting spent explaining the same thing again. Prospecting lesson 7.3, Protect a weekly prospecting block, made a similar point about guarding the hours you set aside to find new buyers.
There is a less obvious cost as well. A pipeline full of deals that will never close makes it hard to see the ones that will. Your forecast looks healthy, so you prospect less, and the shortfall shows up months later.
Once you have decided a deal is not a fit, tell the buyer directly what you heard and why you are not the right fit now. Do not just stop replying. Do not keep sending follow-ups you know will lead nowhere either. A good disqualifying message does not blame the buyer and does not pretend their problem is not real. It says what you heard and states the obvious conclusion out loud. It has three parts, in this order:
What you heard, in the buyer's terms. Why that means you are not the right fit now. What happens next, if anything.
Hafiz has the retail chain deal from lesson 5.5. The pain was strong, and everything else on the scorecard was unknown. Two more calls later, he learns that head office is reviewing all its systems next year and nobody will approve anything before then. He writes to Mark, his contact at the chain. He thanks Mark for his time over the past few weeks and says the payroll issues at the outlets are real. He explains that with the systems review next year, nobody can approve a change before then. Given that, he says, it does not make sense for either of them to keep going now, and he would rather not fill Mark's inbox in the meantime. He suggests getting in touch in September, before the review starts, if payroll is part of it.
If the situation might change, end the message by offering one of two things.
A referral means pointing a buyer with a real problem you cannot solve to someone who can. Use one when the buyer's problem is real but you are not the right person for it. Priya, a freelance bookkeeper, meets a cafe owner whose real need is a full-time finance manager. A freelance bookkeeper is the wrong fit. Priya tells the owner so and suggests a recruitment firm that one of her clients used. A referral costs you nothing and helps the buyer, and buyers often remember it for years.
A check-in date is an agreed time to get back in touch, tied to an event in the buyer's world. Use one when the timing is wrong but the fit might be right later. Tie it to something specific on the buyer's side, such as the systems review, the lease renewal or the new financial year, the way Hafiz tied his to Mark's review. Once you have agreed a date, put it in your calendar and actually get in touch then. Sales foundations lesson 6.3, Knowing when to stop and how to leave the door open, covers the longer-term follow-up after that.
Buyers almost always respond well to a message like this. Many reply to say thank you. Some tell you something new that changes the picture. A few come back months later because you were honest when it would have been easier to keep chasing.
Before the activity, open your list of current opportunities and your scorecard, and look for the deal you have been keeping because it feels good rather than because the evidence says it will close.
Go through your open opportunities with your qualification scorecard, pick the weakest one and write them a polite message saying it is not a fit.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).