3 habits to make you better at sales 

Good morning Predictable Revenue community,

I got a reply to my ‘you are in sales’ email from Stephanie and she was struggling to get motivated to send follow up emails. She knew that she should but didn’t want to be a bother. 

My advice? Don’t bother. 

Nobody ever forgot to spend $50k to solve a problem. If you can’t get in touch with someone, it’s probably because it’s not a priority for them right now.

This doesn’t mean you should never follow up. I do it all the time and have a very regimented approach. 

The difference between my follow ups and Stephanie’s is that I probably have more context about why it’s not the right time right now. If I am following up, it is because I believe something significant has changed in the prospect’s situation that makes my email more relevant now than when we last met.

There’s an ever more helpful answer to Stephanie’s problem.

#1 - book the next call while you’re still on the call with a prospect

Don’t ask if they want to. Suggest that you all regroup in a few days or a week and then suggest a few times. 

There are a few things that might happen next:

• 70% of people will agree and open up their calendar’s. 

• 20% of people will push back and ask you to send something first. 

• 10% of people won’t agree. 

Not only do you save yourself the follow up work but you also learn something about where you really stand in the deal. 

Bonus points for asking if there’s anyone else they should add to the next call. This helps you get other decision makers involved in the process early. 

For the 70% of people that agree right away, these are the ones that are most likely to move forward with you. Congrats, you just saved yourself and your prospect a bunch of time emailing back and forth. 

For the 20% that push back, you’ve learned something. Either they don’t think it’s a top priority OR they have a super busy calendar for the next few weeks. If their calendar is hectic, it’s ok to schedule something a few weeks out. Think about what would have happened if you didn’t ask. You would have left the call thinking it went well, followed up a few times when the prospect was super busy, and thought you lost the deal because they never replied. 

For the 10% of people that won’t take a call, they either have no intention of buying from you or are difficult to work with. Either way, this is a great way to filter out people that are going to waste your time. 

Now is not always the right time to solve the problem you want to help with. It’s ok to be respectful about your buyer’s journey. If I’m talking to a prospect and the timing isn’t right for them this quarter, I’ll still book a next meeting but it’ll be in 3 months. 

The most important piece of setting a Nurture meeting like this is to understand what needs to change between now and then in order for the conversation to make sense. When you have this, you can send much more impactful follow up emails. This is the reason I suspected I have better follow up emails to send than Stephanie. It’s not that I’m better, I’m just better prepared. 

When you schedule a Nurture meeting, it’s a good idea to drop the prospect an email a few days ahead of time to see if now is the right time. If it is, great. If not, I’ll move the meeting out. 

#2 - plan your next action while the context is fresh in your mind 

My favourite part of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done was the idea of Mind Like Water. 

“A mental and emotional state in which your head is clear, able to create and respond freely, unencumbered with distractions and split focus.”

—David Allen

When you have a system of organization that you trust, your brain gives your subconscious permission to forget about all the deals you’re working on. The hardest part of sales, especially for founders that are new to it, is that they don’t have a great system of organization. 

Next time you get off a call with a potential customer, I want you to write down two things: 

• Your next action - the thing that you need to do in order to move the deal forward. 

• The next action date - when this thing needs to be done. 

Here’s what one looks like for a deal I’ve been working for a while: 

The more details you give, the better. 

I have a next action and next action date on every opportunity in my CRM. Every day, I sort my pipeline by date (today at the top) and work my way down the list. 

The beautiful part of this is I don’t need to load every opportunity into my mental RAM in order to figure out the best use of my time to move my deals forward. Every day I look at the top 3 or 4 opps I need to action and follow my own advice. 

I trust my habits and they take care of me. 

#3 - stop answering the question, “so… tell me what you can do for me”

We’ve all been here. You show up to the meeting, and the first question the customer asks you is some version of this question. You start talking, and suddenly 45 minutes go by, it feels like you nailed it but the deal never closes. 

If your talk patterns in calls look like the below, you might want to try this on your next call.

Why? 

When you’re talking you’re not learning. 

Prospects don’t care about what you do until they know that you understand what their problem is and believe you might be able to help. It’s not that the information you’re sharing is bad, it’s probably great, it’s just the wrong time to share. 

The reason humans are involved in a sales process is to provide a tailored buying experience to the prospect. When you show up and throw up, you might as well be a pre-recorded video. 

No judgment if you’re doing or have done this, I can almost guarantee that I’ve done it more.  

Here’s how you prevent it from happening. My mentor Howard Olsen taught me what he calls Catch and Release and it was a game changer. 

The next time a prospect says, “so… tell me what you can do for me”, here’s what you say: 

“I’d be happy to, do you mind if I ask you a few questions first?” 

Feel free to make the language your own. The most important part is to judo flip the conversation from talking about you to getting them to talk about themselves. Most people want to talk about themselves, their company, and their product anyway. 

These three ideas might feel scary to try for the first time and that’s ok. I’ve been selling for nearly 20 years and they are the 3 highest leverage pieces of sales advice I’ve ever received. 

Here they are again: 

1. Book the next call while you’re still on the call with a prospect

2. Plan your next action while the context is fresh in your mind 

3. Stop answering the question, “so… tell me what you can do for me”

Happy selling. 

Collin