# Qualifying a deal: four honest questions > Need, budget owner and process, timing and the cost of doing nothing, and the alternative: four questions that tell whether a deal is real, asked about the buyer's past and present. - Course: [B2B Marketing and Sales: Win Your First Company Customers](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales.md) - Module: The pipeline - Lesson 10/32, ~22 min - Source: https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/qualifying-four-questions ## Is this deal real? **Alex Tutor:** Back at Klasna for Teams: after the first meeting, Veloria sits in discovery. To move it to qualified, you need four answers, and you get them by asking, not by guessing. **Marta:** Leo calls Veloria a sure thing. Pavlo loved the meeting. **Alex Tutor:** **Deal qualification** checks four things. Need: what problem, and what it costs today. Budget owner and process: who decides and how they buy. Timing: why now, and what happens if nothing changes. Alternative: what they'd do instead of us. **Sofia:** That's a lot for one call. Won't it feel like an interrogation? **Alex Tutor:** Not if you ask about their past and present, not about your deal. Pavlo agreed to a short follow-up call. Let's listen. > **Exercise:** Match each question with the part of qualification it covers. **Alex Tutor:** Before Pavlo joins: how would you find out who owns the budget? > **Exercise:** You need to know who owns the budget at Veloria without putting Pavlo on the spot. Which question works best? ## Need, and what it costs **Sofia:** Pavlo, what happens today when a dispatcher gets a call from a foreign carrier in English? **Pavlo:** Honestly? They pass it to one of two colleagues who speak well. When those two are off shift, the call waits, and sometimes the load goes to another company. **Sofia:** How often does that happen? **Pavlo:** Stepan counted last month: a few loads a week. He didn't put a price on it, but he wasn't happy. **Alex Tutor:** That's a need with a cost attached, in their own words. Note what's still unknown: the money. Don't fill it in yourself. > **Exercise:** Pavlo says lost loads happen «a few times a week» but nobody has put a price on it. What is the best next question? ## Who decides, and how they buy **Sofia:** Last year Veloria bought a safety course. How was that approved? **Pavlo:** I proposed it, Yaryna signed off the budget, procurement compared three offers, and legal took the contract last. Three weeks for legal alone. **Sofia:** Would English training go the same way? **Pavlo:** Probably. Although training above a certain amount, Yaryna has to present to the owners. **Alex Tutor:** Now you know the budget owner and the path, plus a new fact: a threshold. Ask what the amount is. It decides whether the owners join the committee. > **Exercise:** **True or false:** once Pavlo has said that Yaryna signs off the budget, there is no need to ask about procurement and legal. ## Why now? **Sofia:** You mentioned starting early next year. What makes that the right time? **Pavlo:** Two new contracts with Polish carriers start in March. More calls in English, the same two people. **Alex Tutor:** That's a real reason for timing: an event in their calendar, not ours. It also gives you the cost of doing nothing: lost loads grow from March. **Sofia:** And if March comes and nothing has changed? **Pavlo:** Then we keep losing loads, and Stepan asks me why we talked about English all winter. **Alex Tutor:** Write that down in his words. The buyer's own description of what doing nothing costs is worth more in a proposal than any figure we could estimate. **Marta:** Better than any deadline we could invent. > **Exercise:** Which of these are honest timing signals for a deal? Select all that apply. **Alex Tutor:** One more check on Pavlo's «what if nothing changes» answer. > **Exercise:** **True or false:** in a proposal, the buyer's own description of what happens if nothing changes is worth more than a figure Teams estimates itself. ## What they would do instead **Sofia:** If you didn't work with us, what would you do? **Pavlo:** Maybe hire one more dispatcher with good English. Or a free app. Our IT lead says apps are fine if they pass the security check. **Alex Tutor:** So the competition is a new hire and a free app, not another school. That changes the proposal: compare with the cost of a hire, and plan for the security check. **Alex Tutor:** What does that mean for the proposal? > **Exercise:** Pavlo says that without Klasna, Veloria might hire one more dispatcher with good English or use a free app, if it passes their IT security check. What should this change in the Teams proposal? **Sofia:** Four answers. Is Veloria qualified now? **Alex Tutor:** Almost. The cost of lost loads and the approval threshold are unknown. Write what you know and what's missing; it moves when the gaps close. > **Exercise:** After this call, what is the honest status of the Veloria deal? **Marta:** Send me a summary. Four lines, one per question. **Sofia:** Including what we don't know? **Alex Tutor:** Especially that. Every «unknown» becomes a next step: who to ask, and by when. **Marta:** And thank Pavlo. Twenty minutes with him told us more than a month of notes. > **Exercise:** From the follow-up call with Pavlo (HR and learning at Veloria): dispatchers pass English calls to two colleagues, and when those two are off shift the call waits and sometimes a load goes elsewhere, a few times a week (Stepan, the operations director, counted); the cost per lost load is unknown. Last year Pavlo proposed a course, Yaryna (finance director) signed off the budget, procurement compared three offers and legal took three weeks; above some amount, still unknown, Yaryna must present training to the owners. Two new contracts with Polish carriers start in March. Without Klasna, Veloria might hire one more dispatcher with good English or use a free app that passes its IT security check. Write Marta the four-line qualification summary for Veloria: one line each for need, budget owner and process, timing, and alternative. For each gap, add the next step. > **Key ideas** > > - Qualifying a deal means four answers: the need and its cost, the budget owner and buying process, timing and the cost of doing nothing, and the alternative. > - Ask about the buyer's past and present («how was the last training approved?»), not about your deal or their authority. > - Write the buyer's numbers in their words; if there is no number, mark it unknown and ask who knows. > - Real timing comes from the buyer's calendar. Invented deadlines are pressure, not qualification. > - The alternative may be a hire, an app or doing nothing, not another vendor; prepare the comparison. > - A deal is qualified when all four are known; each unknown becomes a next step with a name and a date. **Alex Tutor:** Next: once deals are qualified, how do you turn the pipeline into a forecast Marta can take to Leo? - Previous lesson: [Pipeline stages that mean something](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/stages-that-mean-something.md) - Next lesson: [Forecasting bottom-up: key accounts, renewals, new business](https://productovi.com/courses/b2b-marketing-and-sales/forecasting-bottom-up.md) --- Productovi Learning. Free, no sign-up needed to read.