A short Getting to Club podcast episode (host Adam Kay) recorded around early September where the host recounts an end-of-quarter sales anecdote: on Sept 5 he received a VP of Sales email requesting a contract for a $40,000 deal. After calling to ask the precise next steps he learned the buyer still required legal and procurement sign-off and that procurement often takes 3–4 weeks — likely too long to close within September. The episode's advice: avoid "happy ears" at quarter end; always ask what remaining steps/processes are and the realistic timeline before adding deals to the forecast so you can act appropriately and forecast accurately.
Questions this video answers
September 6th
September 5th
$40,000
3–4 weeks
VP of Sales
Chapters
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Getting to Club podcast, which is this show where you learn to become and stay a President's Club winner by stealing the skills and playbooks and techniques of the top 0.01% of tech sales practitioners. Today is going to be super short. I'm going to tell you a story, and at the time of this recording, we're approaching quarter end, at least for most people. It's September 6th right now, Q3, at least on a calendar year, ends in. I'm going to tell you a story that's going to help you stop getting happy ears, stop missing your forecast, and these are the questions you need to ask your deals on the final stretch. In fact, maybe we'll call that the episode name Final stretch or something like that. But let me tell you a quick story. Yesterday, on September 5th, I got an email from one of the prospects in our business pipeline, and it was the VP of Sales. She said, hey, can you send over the contract? And this was for a $40,000 deal. So not massive, but certainly not an insignificant deal. And immediately when I got the email, the dopamine's like, hitting. And I'm like, hell yes. I pinged my team and I'm like, well, I actually got ready to ping my team, but my co founder knows how to grill me on pipeline. So I kind of paused for a second. I was going to tell him to add another deal to the September forecast, but I kind of felt myself getting those happy years, mainly because I'm so used to getting questions from him. He's the most just savage CTO ever. He knows way too much about sales for my own good. Not his own good, my own good. Before I did, I decided to just pick up the phone and call the VP of Sales to confirm a few things. So after a few minutes of small talk, right, we're on a texting basis, we're on a phone call basis. After a few minutes of small talk, I said, so it sounds like you want a contract. Can you help me understand the series of next steps that happen after I sent this? And she said, well, we need to get it through our legal process. And then we're a big enough company now where we have not an insignificant procurement process, so it needs to go through procurement as well. I said, okay, that makes sense. Is there anything else? She said, no. We checked out customer references, all of those checked out. Good. Once the contract gets through those two processes, legal and procurement, then I'll be good to sign. And I said, okay. I don't know if this is overstepping my boundaries. Right. I'll use some softening language in situations like this, but can you help me understand the possibility of us being able to execute a commercial agreement within September based on your experience doing this before? And she said, well, I've only bought a couple things, but based on what I've seen, I wouldn't get your hopes up for September. Right. Procurement usually takes between three or four weeks. We're about three weeks away from the end of the quarter or the end of September, and so it could happen. But if I'm you, I wouldn't count on it. Okay, so that's not what I wanted to hear. Right. That was kind of a stab in the gut a little bit. Or maybe a less violent analogy is just ripping off the band aid. But imagine if I didn't ask those questions. Imagine if I didn't pick up the phone and ask the what series of next steps still needs to happen before we actually move forward? Well, I would have put this in my forecast, which for me, as the CEO of the business, that doesn't matter that much. But if you're an account executive and you and you pop something like that in your forecast and your manager is now relying on it, you're just asking for a world of trouble. So I would have popped it into my forecast, and even worse, I would have been pestering the buyer over the next few weeks inappropriately to get the deal signed. Right. I've been pushing them, and I wouldn't have any hope of actually closing that deal. Or maybe if I did have hope, I would be approaching it wrong. So I haven't given up on this deal. Right. This all happened yesterday. So I'm still working on this. I'm not writing it off for September, but I'm certainly approaching it differently based on this new set of information that I have now than if I didn't ask those questions, right, If I didn't ask the hard questions, the questions that you probably don't want to ask your buyers, I would have just been pestering. But now I can be a little bit more tactful, a little bit more strategic, and I can get a sense of when September becomes impossible. So I can back off or if I quote, unquote, smell some blood in the water, then I can push a little bit. I wouldn't be empowered to take those actions, though, if I didn't ask a hard question. So the short lesson from this quick story is to don't get happy years at the end of the quarter. Even if you get a verbal, there is a life after verbal and it's not always an immediately signed contract. So the call to action for you is when you get a strong buying signal. Right? They're asking for a contract. They say they're ready to move forward. They're asking for customer references, something like that. Your automatic reflex move should be, I'm so excited to provide that. I have to ask, though, once we accomplish that, or once we accomplish that, what are the series of next steps that still need to happen before we move forward and start getting you live on our platform or whatever it is you sell? Okay, that question has some magic in it. It helps you manage your own expectations. It helps you manage the rest of the buying process from there. Right? If you didn't know that information, you're not empowered to act on it. And so that's it for day or for today. Ask the hard questions, even though you might not want to hear the answer. It's going to increase your odds of closing the deal. Counterintuitively, it's going to help you design a more appropriate buying experience and more accurately avoid a really bad buying experience. And it's going to help you forecast more accurately. Now, I know a lot of account executives don't care about forecast accurately or forecast accuracy, but your manager does. And your relationship with your manager matters, particularly if you want to rise through the rinks. So that's everything for today. I hope you got value from this and I'll see you in the next episode.
