“Keep time, have next steps, repeat those next steps, and if it all possible, when appropriate, get that follow-up meeting scheduled.” – Mike Simmons & Jacquelyn Nicholson in today’s Tip 1786
How do you end a sales call?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip features both Jacquelyn Nicholson and Mike Simmons. Here they are with a great tip as we wrap up the week:
Mike Simmons: Jacquelyn, how do you end a conversation or how do you end a sales call?
Jacquelyn Nicholson: Oh, good one. Well, first and foremost, you’ve got to be a good timekeeper, keeping your eye on the clock, and of course, having done your business upfront in a call where you make sure that you understand when the person who’s on the call with you has a hard stop. So always, always, always do that. I have broken my own rule and not been a good timekeeper and not been a good steward of the time or even checked with the person. So don’t get lazy, don’t get sloppy. Make sure you confirm how much time you’ve got. And then at least five minutes before the end, preferably a little bit longer, maybe seven minutes, is when I start to point out like, Hey, I know we’re about to wrap up here in the next seven 10 minutes. I love to get your take on how this was received or something like that. So a lot of times what I’ll do, depending on if it’s a discovery call, depending if it’s a more in-depth solution overview, maybe it’s a negotiation, whatever it is, I’ve taken some good notes and I reflect back some things, and I’ll usually formulate along the way a few good questions.
And so I’ll insert that question around 7 to 10 minutes left, at the bare minimum 5 minutes left, but it’s preferable to do it a little earlier and just say, what were the big takeaways for you? In a perfect world, what would you like to see happen next? And I think it’s okay to also have a point of view. From my read, these are the action items we’ve agreed on. I recap the action items. Here’s what I’m going to do. Here’s what you’re going to do. Is that jive with what you heard? Yes. And then I do always try, if it makes sense, to say, Would you like to look at calendars real quick and get that 15 minutes on the books for next time? And there’s people that that doesn’t land well with, or people that don’t like to do that, or situations where it’s obviously not the right call. But if it is, if you’ve given yourself at least five minutes and up to 10 minutes, and the 10 minutes only really works in a much longer meeting where you have more recap, things like that, but that’s how I end it. And then I try to walk away with understanding where we both would like to take it next, if at all.
Mike Simmons: So I was looking over here at some of my markers so I could get all four colors in front of me. And if you’re not watching the video, I’ve got a blue marker, a black marker, a green marker, and a red marker. And whenever I’m taking notes, I will use these three colors or these four colors. Typically, Specifically, it will be black, green, and red as the three primary. The black I use to just keep general notes. The green, I keep track of things that were interesting that I am going to ask a follow-up question on, but not do it in that meeting because it’s not specifically related to that meeting. So green is interesting and red are next steps. So that when we get to that piece at the end, I can clarify and look really quickly at my notes, note card like this, really quickly, what are the items that I want to remember as far as next steps, what highlights are important? And if there’s time, we wrap everything up, we get through our agenda, we’ve hit on all of my desired next steps. If there’s time at the end, I might ask a question around one of those things that was interesting.
The reason that keeping things, having that interesting piece is important to me is I want to have something to follow up with them on where I’m not saying I’m following up or I’m checking in. I want to go back to them and say, Hey, I was thinking about you. There was something you said in the call that I thought was really interesting. And I was driving around, I was thinking about you. I’ve got some questions around this. Can we discuss it if we don’t have another meeting on the calendar? Jacquelyn nailed it. Keep time, have next steps, repeat those next steps, and if it all possible, when appropriate, get that follow-up meeting scheduled.
Jacquelyn Nicholson: Love it. I love the colors, and I love how you do it. My visual cue in my notes, there’s a big star with a circle around it for action items.
Mike Simmons: Very cool.
Jacquelyn Nicholson: But I might try colors. Okay.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with both Jacquelyn and Mike, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1786. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!