Yesterday we explored how most of us can grow our profits by simply responding in a timely manner to phone calls, text messages, direct messages, emails, Facebook messenger enquiries, and whichever other medium your potential customers choose to reach out to you.

If you accept this premise, the challenge then becomes looking for ways to sort through your inbox and to sort through the enquiries so that you are only dealing with "serious" and "interested" customers.

There in lies the quandary!

How do we do this?

The traditional way of referring to this "sorting" activity in sales is called "discovery and qualification".

Just in case you have any difficulty in remembering the terms, remember that the goal of "discovery and qualification" is to DISCOVER who among these people has the kind of problem you can solve, and who is QUALIFIED enough for us to treat as a serious person to talk to.

You want to be sure you are talking to the right person, that they have a problem you can solve, and that you people have the same expectations when it comes to money, delivery, and other obligations that will come with the business relationship.

Back to our example from yesterday! You have received a message in your inbox which reads...

"hi I'm interested in XYZ, how much does it cost to do it for 250 people by October 6th?"

Where do we go from here? How do we perform "discovery and qualification" on this kind of message?

More on that tomorrow.