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. 2:09

   So there's my favorite nugget. So here's my second tactical thing. You take that summary email, say that's on a Monday, and then you and I have a follow up on Friday. Friday comes and goes, and lo and behold, you don't show up, right? Instead of Monday the next week saying, hey, touching base and checking in, so you know the weekend went. What I do is I take that summary email, just reply all to it and say, hey, Nick, not sure what happened on Friday. “When you want to reconnect, do your typical follow up, okay?” And do that three or four times, okay? Call, hey, what's going on? You don't want to reschedule, that type of stuff. And if they've straight goes to do, then after three or four times of doing your basic, hey, what's going on? Take that summary email, you got to keep replying all to it, because you want to show them that you've been coming at them, right? Like the third or fourth one, after about two weeks of ghosting, you reply all and you

   In Rescheduling after no-shows

2. 6:21

   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 you want? 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 too, too deep on, right? Yeah. This sounds interesting. Why don't you send me information? Follow me next week. The most critical thing that any rep can get at any stage of the sales process

   In Discovery and qualification

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. 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

5. 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

6. 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

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