An Easy Trap

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An open secret of great sellers is that they consistently turn away prospects who are not a good fit for their product or service.

Most sales processes have some sort of qualification system built into them. They have funky acronyms like BANT and MEDDPICC.

They’re designed to help a seller measure out how well-positioned a prospect is to actually buy what’s being sold.

And what a lot of salespeople will sometimes try and do is shoehorn prospects into their qualification system in order to convince themselves (or their bosses) that they’re pursuing a legitimate sales opportunity.

(Yes, I’ve done this too!)

And most of the time, these opportunities don’t close. Because if a prospect isn’t truly qualified, they won’t be able to buy.

In this instance, what the seller should have done was disqualify the prospect, as soon as it became clear that full qualification was probably never going to happen.

Disqualification is a sales superpower

For salespeople who receive some level of commission as part of their compensation, time management is a required skill when it comes to maximizing earning potential.

If a sales rep is constantly chasing deals that won’t close, they’re burning precious working hours when they could be focused on closing “real deals” that are fully qualified or prospecting for new meetings with folks who could be.

So how does this feed back into job searching?

The Big Trap

Over the years of working with job seekers, arguably the biggest strategic mistake I’ve seen is someone aiming too widely when considering what and where they want to work next.

Either they have multiple functional experiences in their background (ex. they’ve been in web development and IT project management) and they’re open to roles in either function.

Or they have a target role in mind, but they’re open to working anywhere that hires that kind of persona (ex. being an account manager for a digital agency, and a SaaS, and a consumer packaged goods company, etc.)

This is a big trap:

• In sales, if you try and sell to everyone, you’ll usually end up selling to no one.
• As a job seeker, if you try and work for everyone, you’ll usually end up working for no one.

The reason for this is that:

• In sales, your product or service can only deliver its unique value (often called “differentiated value”) to a unique set of prospective customers – ones that will receive maximum benefit from your offering that no one else can provide and are willing to pay for it
• In job searching, your unique skills and background are only attractive to a unique and limited set of employers – ones that are looking for (or will be looking for) your skills and background and are willing to pay for it

For everyone else you encounter that doesn’t meet this criteria, you should disqualify them.

Thinking that everyone you come across is qualified to hire you will only lead to loads of wasted time, applications, and frustration.

Do this instead

Blair Enns has a great golf metaphor when it comes to thinking about a target market.

While he refers to it in the context of selling something like a service, I think this applies to job searching as well. I’m paraphrasing it here:

Aim at the pin, but be happy to land on the green.

In other words, you should aim to have a very specific target role and employer type (the “pin”) in mind when you go looking for a job.

Ex. I want to be a Sales Development Rep for a Series A or Series B startup that will have 50-100 employees and that sells primarily to finance leaders of SMB companies (of which there may be a few hundred of, maybe less).

This is way more specific than someone who just says they’re open to an entry-level sales or customer success role in any given tech company (of which there are hundreds of thousands of in the US alone).

If you’re someone who has a background of working in finance within smaller companies, there’s a good chance you’d be considered for this entry-level SaaS role. Your differentiated value as a job seeker would be relevant in this context.

If a company with 500 employees that sells a similar kind of product offered to interview you, you probably wouldn’t be upset. That would be an example of landing on the “green.”

What you absolutely don’t want to do is try and play all 18 holes on the golf course at once.

Choose a hole, aim at its pin, and score as well as you can when you land on the green.