Which Comes First: Budget or Solution?

In the post "Sales Trainers I've Known and Loved" I provided a list of the top sales trainers that I've interviewed over the year, and asked you readers for suggestions about whom else I should interview.

The name Mark Sellers came up so frequently that I suspect he asked some of his clients to campaign for him. If so, it worked, because I interviewed him last week and I now have his book "The Funnel Principle" on hand. Interesting stuff.

The interview covered a broad range of his thinking, which I will be sharing with you over the next few months. There was one of his observations, however, that was so interesting that I didn't want to wait to tell you about it.

Mark says that an opportunity isn't really an opportunity (and doesn't deserve significant resources) until the customer has committed budget dollars to the project.
He says that until this takes place, it's crazy to write proposals, make multiple business trips, or put the revenue from that "opportunity" into your forecast.

Instead, your priority at the beginning of the sales cycle should be to simply help the customer realize that there's a problem and a dollar value to that problem. Then you should focus on getting a specific budgetary commitment -- BEFORE you define a solution. (You can give them ball-park what a solution might cost, for planning purposes, but no more.)

Needless to say, that's a very different approach to the standard consultative selling model. In most cases, experts recommend customizing a solution early in the sales cycle and then selling the solution in order to get the budgetary commitment.

Mark says that if you take that traditional approach, you're only providing free consulting and there's a very good chance that you'll get into an expensive sales cycle with a "customer" who never really intended to buy.

READERS: What do you think? Is Mark on target?