In our daily lives we are all called upon to quantify things rather accurately if we expect to have a successful day. How closely should I follow the car in front of me? How many sets of clothes should I take on a trip? How many minutes on the treadmill should I put in today? How long before flight time should I leave for the airport? How much money will I need in my checking account to get through the month? Many of our quantifications are subconscious and done without precise calculation.

 
The need to quantify is no less important in the world of business to business selling. The major difference is that the quantifications need to be more precise and documented. The basis for these quantifications is your interview of your prospect and the quality of the questions you ask. Think about some of the issues that need to be quantified in a B2B sales situation in order to serve a prospect's needs professionally and completely:

• What is the current level of costs that are causing your prospect to either be uncompetitive or inadequately satisfy customers?

• What is the level of cost reduction needed from a solution in order for the prospect to make a purchase?

• What is the level of quality improvement needed from a solution in order for a prospect to make a purchase?

• What costs of ownership is the prospect targeting on an annual basis?

• What do your prospect's customer satisfaction numbers tell you about his ability to serve his customers with excellence?

• If the prospect manufactures a product then what production rates will satisfy the needs of the market, and at what profit level?

• What numeric factors will the prospect use to justify the purchase or investment?

• What revenue and profit can your company achieve by obtaining this order at various price points?

• What are the prospect's current percentages of total cost for labor, materials, supervision, and marketing?

These questions all require answers that need to be quantified. I have worked with B2B salespeople who try to get through the sales process without obtaining specific information about the factors needed to quantify what value is in the mind of a prospect. When this happens these salespeople lose control of the selling situation and the odds of losing the order are multiplied. All the sales person ends up having to show for his efforts are lost time invested with the prospect and lost dollars of company resources committed to chasing a poorly defined sales opportunity. Proper quantification is the necessary step in moving your efforts with a prospect from pursuing a "sales opportunity" to pursuing an "order opportunity". There is significant difference in these two uses of your time. Using the majority of your available time pursuing order opportunities is what separates highly successful B2B salespeople from those who turn in mediocre results. Mediocre performers have not determined in measurable units what the effect of the prospect's problem is on the prospect's profitability. Only when this is known can a salesperson understand what it will take from a solution for the prospect to invest and increase his profitability.

Measuring the full potential of a sales opportunity takes time and determination. It also requires an attitude on the part of a salesperson to know the quantified factors that will determine what makes a sales opportunity become a legitimate order opportunity.

As we have already seen, at the interview stage of any sales process you must have an inventory of well constructed questions ready to ask your prospect. There is a degree of trust that needs to be built between you and your prospect in order for quantifying questions to be asked and for the prospect to answer openly. If the prospect balks at sharing data it may be necessary for you to make a statement such as, "My goal is to provide you and your company with the best solution possible that allows you to outperform your competitors and obtain more profitable and satisfied customers. In order for me to do this I need to have certain data that you may consider confidential. We are willing to sign a confidentiality agreement if you want us to. We are only asking for this information to do our best job possible and provide you with a successful solution you will value highly."

Clarifying these quantified values moves the sales process from one of merely hoping for the best outcome to a process where the sales person has greater control of the outcome. You can design a solution based on the prospect's quantified input. Your ability to ask excellent questions comes into play here.

An example of such a question might be, "How do you measure response time to customer inquiries or warranty costs due to quality problems?" Those are finite values that can be measured if the time is taken to ask for the data or to help your prospect run an audit to determine what those values are. The extra effort of quantification builds a stronger bond between you and your prospect and creates a shared knowledge base from which both you and your prospect benefit.