What do you do when you get a message in the inbox saying, "do you sell men's shoes and how much?" or "hi I'm interested in XYZ, how much does it cost to do it for 250 people by October 6th?"

If you've been following the thread for the last two days, you now know that your next step should be to ask qualifying and discovery questions.

The goal of these questions is to figure out who this potential customer is, how you can help, whether you are speaking to the right person, if you guys have the same expectations around product and service delivery, and also to be sure that this person thinks they have a problem worth spending money on to fix today.

If you want more details on what "qualification" and "discovery" is, then scroll back two or three posts and you'll be caught up to date.

With these scenarios above, some basic qualifying questions will be around the individual.

You will want to ask to be sure if he's buying the shoes for himself or for some other person. How old is he? What does he need the shoes for? What are his colour and style preferences? Does he like to wear shoes often? How come he is reaching out for shoes now?

You need the answer to questions like these before you can start negotiating and giving price quotes.

Nike shoes don't cost the same as Oxfords and Brogues. Oxfords made in Asaba won't cost the same as Oxfords imported from Denmark.

If he is not particularly fond of shoes and he is only buying them to fulfil all righteousness (because every man needs to have shoes) then perhaps even talking about shoes styles like Oxfords and Brogues is going into too much of a "long thing" with this guy.

On the other hand if he is a middle aged exec who wants "a correct shoe" because of a business meeting he has to attend next week, then the range of shoes you will discuss (and the price) get's narrowed down considerably.

These are the reasons and the implications for why you should go straight to "qualification" and "discovery" when potential customers hit you up in your inbox.

What about the second scenario? What kind of questions should we be asking? What kinds of information should we be looking for?

We will continue with that tomorrow!