Lever 2 of 6 · Deal qualification
Decide which requests really deserve a detailed quote.
Not every request deserves a full study. I help your salespeople and engineers commit the right effort at the right time, with qualification rules linked to your pipeline.
Electrical engineer · Solvay Executive MBA · 5 years at AGC
You may recognise these situations with quote requests
Every request becomes a mini-project.
The need arrives vague and gets distorted between sales and the engineering office.
It is hard to turn down a request, especially when it comes from a key account.
A quote sent is counted as progress.
What the work on deal qualification covers
01
Discovery of the need and the decision
Clarify the problem, its consequences, the expectations and the people needed for the purchase.
02
Qualification linked to the pipeline
Define what justifies pursuing, investing more in, clarifying or stopping a deal.
03
Proportionate responses
Plan several levels of response: order of magnitude, bounded technical check, full offer, postponement or reasoned refusal.
04
Arbitration and adoption
Get sales and engineering to use the rules, with explicit exceptions.
Deliverables
- Discovery sheet
- Stage criteria built into your existing stages
- Decision tree and response templates
- Arbitration log
How to judge progress in qualification
We track pre-sales hours, rework, commitments obtained and good deals wrongly set aside. Fewer quotes is not, on its own, a success.
Frequently asked question
Do we risk losing customers?
Qualification serves to give a proportionate and understandable answer, with room for justified strategic exceptions.
A useful question
“Does your customer want to validate a budget or choose a solution ready to order?”
Think of a request that took up a lot of time or led to several rounds of rework.
Is your situation closer to one of these?
“The need is clear, but our offer is still hard to defend”
“We answer every request because we have not chosen our targets”