Sales Tip: Don't prequalify a person before you get to know them

Have you ever walked into a shop and there, before your very eyes, is the technician with a brand new toolbox he purchased from the competition? Not long ago, you had convinced yourself that this guy could not afford to buy his own lunch, let alone a $10,000+ box.

Or worse, you pull into a small, two-bay service station that is always in need of a good cleaning and paint job, and there, staring you in the face, is a new $15,000 piece of test equipment with all the bells and whistles. You had convinced yourself that this was a shoestring operation that could go belly-up at any moment.

Another story that many of us have heard before is the one about the old guy in the beater pickup truck driving around Bentonville, Arkansas. This elderly man was treated like a hobo by most of the people he met. In fact, he was Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart and one of the wealthiest people in the world. Walton just loved his old pickup.

In each situation, either you or the people of Bentonville had negatively prequalified someone, and in your case it cost you money – maybe a lot of money.

We all prequalify situations and people in our own mind, often because of previous experiences, bias, or for no real conscious reason at all; we just do it. Unfortunately, very often this prequalifying mindset has negative consequences or is flat wrong, but we do it anyway.