Sales coach Brian LaManna shares a tactic for late-stage calls with decision makers: open with a slide listing every evaluation activity completed so far, like number of demos and technical sign-offs. It makes your internal champion look good, shows how much work you've already done together, and moves the deal forward.
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I'll never go into a late-stage call with a decision maker without this explicitly written out. Every step we've done so far in the evaluation to date, and I leverage that to kick off the ensuing conversation. My goal here is simple. It's to highlight the time investment and due diligence their team has already put into the evaluation of us so far. So it might sound something like this in a live conversation. Hey Sharon, we appreciate your time today. First off, your team has been wonderful. We wanted to highlight how thorough an evaluation they've ran in the past 6 months that's included 28 calls, 7 demos, 3 scoping calls, and even a technical validation sign-off. Then I'll pull up the slide. I'll give them 30 seconds to read through this. Then I'll ask, do you have any questions on the evaluation up until this point? Now I have 3 goals behind this whole process. Number 1, make your champions look great for what they've already accomplished. 2. Highlight the massive time investment put in by that team thus far. And 3. Hope to accelerate this deal or minimize additional steps required by reminding them of what has already been accomplished. Would love to hear in the comments below, does anyone do anything similar today?
