Managing every part of the deal process from first calendar invite to close (John Barrows, Host of Make it Happen Mondays)

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1. 4:20

   up Chrome so you can auto load all the bookmarks. And those five bookmarks show up and including feedly. So F E E D L Y, it's a free resource, it's an RSS aggregator. And that's where I follow trends and topics of people who are smarter than me. And I read those. So those five tabs show up every single morning. And all I do is I scan through data feeds and I find two or three things to fire off “a really tailored email to say, Hey, I saw this just happened.” Whatever that trigger was, love to have a conversation. I read a few articles, I share a few things out on social, build my bigger brand. And I do that in an hour a day. So those are my three tactical, go do them, they'll work. You do something that a lot of sales reps try to do, but they don't do super well. And that's perception management in your sales cycle.

   In Trigger-based personalization

2. 6:09

   so I started thinking about it and we're starting to leverage it now. So here's upfront contract on a call expectation setting, right? Hey, thanks for taking my call. Do you got a couple of minutes? Well, not really. Who is this? What do you want? This is John with JB sales. And the reason for my call today is blah, blah, blah. And I was just wondering if I could get 10 to 15 minutes on your calendar, have a conversation about that. Now you can say tomorrow at three o'clock, but most of the time you're going to say, well, you caught me now. What do “Here comes the expectation. I know you weren't expecting my call. So I'll be brief here.” I got about three or four questions for you about your sales team and that type of stuff. And after that, I'll share with you the components of my solution that I think might be able to address that. And then from there, you could tell me whether it makes sense to take a deeper dive. If you want. Now you do the, Hey, I'm going to send you the information, that type of thing. Now, when somebody says, send me information after that initial call call that you didn't go

   In Permission-based cold call openers

3. 7:45

   is you do this, you go when next week, and then you have to say, and you do this with a really nice tone of voice. You go, actually, you know what? You got your calendar in front of you. And then wait for it. There'll be that real awkward pause where they realize that you got them. Cause if they say no to that, they're blatantly lying to your face, right? Hey, “I'm on the day before our meeting. I'm going to send you an email. Not are we still on for tomorrow,” but Hey, I'm looking forward to our meeting tomorrow in order to get the most out of our time together here. I put together a brief agenda. Cause you do me a favor and email me back to let me know what else you'd like to add. And I put three bullet points on what I want to talk about. Then the meeting starts. Hey, I'm on it. Thanks so much for your time today. Don't say dumb. Like, is this still a good time? That's a dumb thing to ask. Like, why would you give me that

   In Reminder timing and channels

4. 11:32

   What technology do you have in place? Like all that stuff. And if they fill it out, I know I'm in for a good meeting. I know you've had Keenan on your show before and we just had Keenan on too. Oftentimes it's really hard for junior reps to hear like this over the top, stop going through the situational questions and immediately just go to the pain questions and the impact questions right away. “I usually prepare my questions based on the intel that they give me.” You know what I mean? And also I have a checklist that I go through for every meeting that I go on. And in that checklist is all the stuff. Did they fill out the meeting efficiency survey? But then it's, all right, I'm going to go to their website. I'm going to look at their news and events. I'm going to see what recent stuff happened within their business. I'm going to go to that person's LinkedIn profile, see what's going on there.

   In Discovery question design

5. 12:22

   And then I'm going to frame my conversation around that. The best sales reps base their entire conversation around three to four problem oriented topics. And they ask 11 to 14 questions within those topics. And so what I do is I walk in, I was like, okay, who's the persona I'm talking to? What industry are they in? Let me go do some homework. “Now, based on what I, my perception is of their situation, what are the three to four” problem oriented topics that I want to build my conversation around? And then I actually come up with two or three questions, impact questions associated with each one of those. And this is a nugget for everybody out there. At the end of every one of your qual calls, if it turns into something that seems like there's some meat on that bone and that you've talked timeline and stuff like that, they're

   In Pain-point messaging

6. 14:24

   Because you have a healthy close ratio and you got bad pipeline. Yeah, it's a pipeline problem, right? But if you have a decent pipeline and bad close ratios, it might not be a pipeline issue. You might be. And by the way, you might waste all this effort filling that pipeline with legit opportunities for people that can't close, right? So do me a favor before we dive into this, because I can talk prospecting all day long. “Could you do me a favor and go back and find out what the conversion ratios are from a” close rate standpoint? She came back and she was almost embarrassed to tell me. She goes, we have a problem. And I don't think it's a prospecting thing. And I'm like, okay, talk to me. And she goes, well, let's talk about reps who acquired attainment, right? Like who hit their quota. She's like, we have 45% of our reps hit quota. I was like, all right, that's good.

   In Outbound funnel conversion assumptions

7. 14:24

   Because you have a healthy close ratio and you got bad pipeline. Yeah, it's a pipeline problem, right? But if you have a decent pipeline and bad close ratios, it might not be a pipeline issue. You might be. And by the way, you might waste all this effort filling that pipeline with legit opportunities for people that can't close, right? So do me a favor before we dive into this, because I can talk prospecting all day long. “Could you do me a favor and go back and find out what the conversion ratios are from a” close rate standpoint? She came back and she was almost embarrassed to tell me. She goes, we have a problem. And I don't think it's a prospecting thing. And I'm like, okay, talk to me. And she goes, well, let's talk about reps who acquired attainment, right? Like who hit their quota. She's like, we have 45% of our reps hit quota. I was like, all right, that's good.

   In Win rates

8. 18:06

   priorities was this. This is the aspect of our solution that addresses that. Could you explain to me how that compares to what you're doing now? So instead of saying, does that make sense? You say, could you give me an example of how you see that fitting into your existing workflow? Because the way you explain to me how that fits into your existing workflow or how it compares “to what you're doing now tells me everything I need to know on whether or not it made sense.” This has been a tremendous time here, John. And we can keep riffing on the disco, the demo, and all that stuff. We have one last question. And if there was one thing that every rep on every sales floor needed to stop doing immediately to be more successful, what would one bad habit to break be? Still to this day, reps call to touch base to check in with no reason,

   In Value proposition testing

9. 18:30

   This has been a tremendous time here, John. And we can keep riffing on the disco, the demo, and all that stuff. We have one last question. And if there was one thing that every rep on every sales floor needed to stop doing immediately to be more successful, what would one bad habit to break be? Still to this day, reps call to touch base to check in with no reason, “no purpose. Have a reason every single time you reach out. You can use the cheat code of” the reason for my call is right to fill in that blank. Because if you can't finish that sentence, you shouldn't be making the phone call. So I think just stop. And that leads to a bigger one related, which is just stop going through the motions. So many reps just go through the motions. They hit their 50 dials. They make they send their stupid emails. They blast out their dumb

   In Relevance-led cold call openers