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Six Greatest Ideas for Selling Big Ticket Items - Business to Business • 81

Some would regard this part of the planning process as the most important.

The qualification process never stops. Professionalaccount managers and salespeople

are constantly assessing the changing position in the campaign. They are listening

for signs, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, which tell them how they stand

against the competition.

What follows is the description of a checklist which probes into the areas where

salespeople need to ask hard questions and acknowledge the answers, even

those that say that all is not going well. There is a

Let us assume you are selling a complex solution to a complex prob- Chinese prov-

lem and that you have a team of technicians and business knowledge ex- erb that states,

perts involved in the campaign. We will look at the process under the 'Before you

following headline questions: decide where

you want to go

• customer need; and how you

• finance; are going to

• key people; get there,

• timescale; make sure you

• solution; know exactly

• basis of decision; where you are

• implementation practicality; and now.' In busi-

• competitive position. ness-to-business

selling you

Taking each of these one by one, we will look at the subsidiary questions have to add,

in each heading and use examples from a number of situations. 'and make sure

everyone

involved

Customer need agrees'.

In this section the team examines what progress has been made on the completion