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Is it a good choice, to talk about Budget in the initial call
Best Answer
I have a lot of experience in face to face sales, and in outbound sales calls. In my opinion, and that is how i train my groups, it depends whether you ask for the clients budget.
If the call has the intention to just make a first contact, an introduction to your services etc. it is not necessary, but not forbidden, to ask for the clients budget. If the intention of the call is more short term scoring, it is necessary to ask, and maybe even discuss the clients budget.
Once the budget has been mentioned, you have ór a big opportunity, or at clear view if you should continue with this client.
As long as the budget stays out of the discussion, your client can always mention it as a no-go reason, even if it is a lie.. to avoid mentioning the real reason!
I would suggest you, if appropriate, mention it in the first contact!
If interested, good reading regarding disadvantages in a trading floor environment (I'm sure somewhat biased but still valuable); http://www.ipc.com/repository/document/200.pdf
I believe this comes down to “Qualify hard and often” No sense in going through the motions of technical interviews, demos and "what if" engineering if the decision maker has not set a budget or has some idea of the ballpark you are going to put them in. In my world this is first meeting material and should be discussed up front.
We are all taught that it is not nice to talk about money, yet this is the primary reason for doing what we do (as sales people).
Try this one... "Hey Mr. Prospect, one of my fears with meetings like this is that I have the cure for your telephone cancer (which is a long and complicated healing process) but no matter how sick you are, your final decision will come down to price. Can we talk about budget right up front so if I need to give the cure to someone else, I can do that today.
Now you know we would never use the same words, but save yourself all the time and effort before you find out they don't have the money... Trust me they wont hold it against you unless they just wanted a bunch of free consulting
Alex Desberg
Guys,
I don't agree you should never start discovery till you have a deal. I also think you are asking the wrong question.
I have been involved with multi-million pound sales for 25 years and in my view you need to find out so many things in the first call the budget should only come up if the prospect wants to talk about it. If you are trying to sell projects or service worth more than $50k then you need to manage markets not cold canvas.
In modern markets there are a few people with budgets today and you have few opportunities to call when you are selling technology. You need to focus on managing your market and that means knowing who will have budget when across the whole market and not if this guy has a budget today. The question is never about budget it is always about business case benefits.
You need to understand basic maths which begs a really simple question .... What are the chances of you talking to the right budget holder on the right day with the right product and the right proposition? The answer is very small. You are more likely to speak to someone in the wrong department who does not know what is going on!
You need to identify the top 2000 prospects in your pipeline and manage contact with them over a year not close your eyes and hope you will bump in to a lead.
Finally you need to get rid of this idea that you are giving stuff away free. To do this you need to map out your sales cycle and work out how to manage your cost of sale. My business makes some of its money teaching companies to manage markets and to change the conversation with their clients.
If you want to understand what the right question is then try www.customerexperienceservices.com
Thank you for all your comments on my question, from the above answers i have chosen few answer that i believe it would be a right thing to move on... based on the answers i am concluding that, asking about the budget in the early calls would be right option in order to put efforts on the particular project assessment.
Thank you
Peter
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Yes. It is appropriate to ask before starting any "free" work. Make sure the customer is not under the false assumption that money will "automatically" be saved by moving to VoIP. IP Telephony still required a Switch(es), Gateway(s), message system, phones (in most cases), etc. All these components still cost to acquire, require upkeep and maintenance. Savings can be found in toll bypass or cabling infrastructure, but tread carefully there. These savings may be offset by new expenses, such as UPS in the wiring closets. Good luck.