BizSugar.com › Sales › Which Comes First: The Client's Budget or Your Solution?

According to Mark Sellers, 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.)