The Sales Funnel Based on Contact Type

The Sales Funnel concept is based around ‘people’ or contacts being of a particular type: Suspect, Prospect, Lead and Client. An important mistake to avoid is the confusion and therefore a lack of appropriate prioritization around whether a contact type is a Suspect, Prospect, or Lead.

Suspect

A suspect is an organization name or a target account at this stage a “name” is all you have it may only be the company name. You may not know the contact name of the person who is responsible for their buying decisions, or, if you have a name, it may be a reader of a publication, an attendee to a technical update or another type of trade event. It may be just an interesting person, or a business card that you acquired whilst clover leafing in an area. You don’t know if this person is the appropriate buyer. You only suspect this “entity” is a target for your products or services.

Prospect

A prospect is a suspect that has engaged with your business in some way, whether it is an action taken on a web visit, from a technical update, a telephone enquiry, etc. Your goal in this stage is to qualify this prospect to the point that you know the decision-maker and you have identified an interest in your product or service.

This is when the Art of Discovery comes into play.

Lead

A prospect becomes a lead when you have established a need for your product or service with the prospect.

The more immediate the need, the greater the reason why the decision maker wishes to deal with you - the more hot the lead.

Before we can move the lead to the “assess phase”, we must determine what information we most need to know. For example, what is their decision-making process/timeline, do they understand our offering and value proposition, does our solution align with their business and expectations, etc?

Client

A client is a person or organization who has entered into business arrangement with you or your business to supply the agreed products or services. The dictionary defines a customer as “a person or company that buys goods or services” or “an individual with whom one must sale”

The same dictionary defines client as “a person or entity helped by another: a person or entity dependent on the protection or patronage of another person or entity” and “The party for which professional services are rendered” therefore you wish to develop client relationships rather than acquiring ‘customers’.