Podcast episode
Keeping Reps Accountable to Their Forecasts (John Sherer, Growth Assistant)
30 Minutes to President's Club23 May 202432 min
Description
FOUR ACTIONABLE LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS Do a bi-weekly "pipe squeeze" (pipeline review) with each rep share your screen and take notes as you go to save time & maintain control Discounts drive velocity, when a deal has stalled or there is no next step, use a manager email to see if a pricing incentive will move the close date Ask the same 5 questions in deal review - Deal size, deal close date, buyer buy in, next step, and any incentives on the deal. Send the update to your leader for upward transparency Only have reps forecast deals in pipeline for the month then run the historical math to see what may change both positive or negative PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB COO @ Growth Assistant VP of Sales @ Lattice Sales Director @ Lattice VP of Sales @ Appcues RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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But guess what? Like their boss leaves the company and they go into a panic for a month. You lost the deal, right? I don't want to play that game. And so in order to avoid that risk, I would literally have the rep send an email saying, hey, my boss noticed your account, thought you'd be a great fit, wanted to know if you'd talk about pricing incentives with us. “Get them on the phone. Confirm that they can actually buy on the timeline. Off the deal. Lock it in. Move on.” My question or concern even would be if I am a rep and I have an early stage deal, or even if I'm a leader and I'm poking a new reps pipeline, and I get the sense that it's not price that's going to get this deal done. There are other issues.
Well, the next step is I'm meeting with the champion on Tuesday because they're talking to legal and procurement over here. And their boss looked at a competitor last week. If I hear those things, I'm going to pause on giving the discount because that deal isn't late stage. We're not in a closing motion for that deal yet. And so what we're going to do there is we're going to discuss the next step. “We're going to walk through that and then design our cadence on what's going to get us to a conversation that we're happy about.” But if we get them on the phone and they tell us, hey, yeah, we'd really like to work with you, then I want a discount on the deal. Talk to me about the other elements of the pipeline squeeze. So you have these five questions and then you mentioned that you're going to highlight the next step based on its quality.
What do you do when you see a bunch of orange on the calendar? OK, contract is out waiting for red lines. They said they were going to get back to me. How do you act on those deals? So typically what I do is I make them come up with a cadence of today. I will call them at three. If they do not answer, I will email them at four. “If they do not answer that, I will multi-thread in here and I make them type all or I'm typing that out.” I walk them through it. And now everybody in the leadership team sees the accountability on that deal. Guess what? It all happens. I'm kind of interested in this philosophy of so you're on the pipe review with your rep, right? You're both on a zoom and you can see each other's faces and you go, hold on.
You've got eight deals. Get on the deals. Hell yeah. You've got a great company that you're selling to. Get on the discovery call. Be there on the whole process. Obviously, don't jump in and talk over the rep, but be a team. Plan together. Win these deals together. It's hard to win right now. No shame in co-selling top to bottom. “Yeah, the three or four activities that any manager has are number one, you work across” deals. That's things like the pipeline squeeze. Number two, you work in deals and that's being on the calls. Number three, you work directly with your reps and those are the one-on-ones. And then number four is you're working with the team and those are team trainings, bigger development activities, but even just the pipeline squeeze and the one-on-ones.
Be there on the whole process. Obviously, don't jump in and talk over the rep, but be a team. Plan together. Win these deals together. It's hard to win right now. No shame in co-selling top to bottom. Yeah, the three or four activities that any manager has are number one, you work across deals. That's things like the pipeline squeeze. “Number two, you work in deals and that's being on the calls.” Number three, you work directly with your reps and those are the one-on-ones. And then number four is you're working with the team and those are team trainings, bigger development activities, but even just the pipeline squeeze and the one-on-ones. If you have eight reps on your team, that's 16 meetings in a week. That's a lot. And then you add customer calls on top of that. That's a lot too.