“As long as it seems pretty natural to bring it up, I think it’s good.” – Mike Simmons & Jacquelyn Nicholson in today’s Tip 1809
How do you prepare for 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 in another of their joint tips. Here they are:
Mike Simmons: How do you prepare for a sales call?
Jacquelyn Nicholson: I love this. Well, you’ve taught me this lovely phrase, It depends. Now, that being said, there’s two different types of meetings. There’s more of an introductory discovery meeting And then there’s something where there’s a whole lot of meat and potatoes in the meeting. So for a general discovery call, typically I’m going to do the research that is maybe it’s obvious, but you know what? I’m learning that not everything that’s up in my head or your head are obvious to everybody else. So let’s get it out there. So I think the first thing is being thoughtful around your research, around the person and the company and the type of role that this person is in, because what you should come to a call with, and this could even be used in an interview, right? Let’s face it, because an interview is you selling yourself. So go into that meeting with a point of view around the industry that they’re in, the particular company that they’re in, and perhaps any background that you can glean about them without looking like you’re super creepy when you talk about it, right? So if they’re a person who’s vocal on LinkedIn and always talking about things, you should definitely bring up something that you found interesting and something they said recently. It has to be authentic. It has to be a little bit organic and not fake because people can spot that fake stuff a mile away. So as long as it seems pretty natural to bring it up, I think it’s good.
Now, on the company or the industry, if it’s a publicly traded company, you should be ushered to the door if you haven’t at least done some basic research on the company from their 10K, their proxy statement, anything that you can get your hands on that gives you a point of view around the company, press releases, LinkedIn stuff. So anything around what are their biggest priorities, where are their biggest challenges? You should never get on a call with somebody and say, so what do you do? What’s your biggest challenge? It’s like, okay, you didn’t show any. You’ve shown no respect for that person by doing that. So 7, 10, 15 years ago, it had been totally fine to ask that question. It’s no longer fine. So try to find some commonalities, too. If I see somebody who’s a fellow Big Ten school, or maybe you see somebody who went to ASU or what have you, it’s a fun thing, or they post a lot about golf or about hockey. So they would be our people.
I was just going to say for the big meetings, it’s very similar, but there’s going to be more orchestration. So if you’ve got a room full of people, there’s two tips I would think of that we can go into in a short sales tip like this. One would be to have as many conversations ahead of time with attendees as you can. So if you can do a pre-read on the room, what would be a win for you in this meeting? And then really having some time to prep with your team. Hey, this is where I’m going to handle things. This is where you’re going to handle things, especially if it’s a new team and you’re not comfortable in the cadence for how you all hand things off. People I meet with all the time. People that go to bed with me all the time, I don’t worry about that. But I’ll still give them a prep document saying, Here’s who’s going to be on the call. Here’s what I’d like to accomplish.
Mike Simmons: For me, and what you’re getting into there is the call plan. A call plan is not an agenda. The agenda is the structure, the order that things may happen in. The call plan is ultimately, what have we anticipated about the person’s objectives or groups of people objectives that are going to be in the meeting? What is our objective and what are our desired next steps? And I like to always have three desired next steps because I can manage the call and operate the call around moving toward those next steps. And if once we’ve accomplished them, I’m comfortable with ending the call. I don’t need to take 45 minutes on a 45-minute call if I’ve been able to accomplish everything that we needed to in 25 minutes or something like that. And the call plan framework that I use, it’s a square. At the top, it’s who, who’s going to be in the room. On the left side, it’s what do I anticipate or their objectives. On the right side, it’s what are my objectives or our objectives. And then at the bottom, it’s desired next steps. And if any of those lines are dashed or dotted, we haven’t answered those questions, now our call is at risk. That call, that plan, that shape can no longer hold water. Those are the big things for me. Who? Objectives on both sides, and desired next steps.
As far as starting a conversation, I always like to start a conversation what the context of wherever it is that they happen to be. And it’s not necessarily, Hey, how’s the weather? Where you’re at? Or whatever. It could be something like, Hey, what’d you do this weekend? What are you excited about? What are you working on? What’s getting in the way? All of those things which are more genuine rapport building icebreaker type things, where if I’m listening, I usually can connect the dots between that person, first time I meet them, and somebody else I know who’s interested in that thing and say, Do you know so and so? Can make it less about us and the conversation that we’re having more about connecting others. Or I might be able to share a specific story that I’ve got. So a lot of people will talk about rapport and want to start with the, How’s the weather? And all of that other stuff. Just be a freaking human being and ask a question that you genuinely would like to know the answer to. And if you really are into the weather, it’s okay to ask the weather question, I guess.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with both Jacquelyn and Mike, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1809. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!