Ryan Dohrn answers Katie from Illinois on structuring sales calls. He recommends a playbook covering time confirmation, agenda-setting, success stories, pricing, and questions. Use a 1-to-10 soft-close scale to gauge commitment and push toward higher levels.
Hey friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. We get a lot of them, so we do our very best to get them all answered here. All right, next one comes from Katie in Illinois. Ryan, I'm always looking for a next step as you suggest, but I don't always know what a good next step is. Any advice is appreciated. Katie, it's not uncommon at all for us to— I'm not saying you're doing this, but it's not uncommon at all for us on sales calls to wing it a little bit. to really not have sort of, if you will, a roadmap to follow. So what I have here right next to me is I've got a bunch of little cheat sheets that I have. And so on these little cheat sheets, I've kind of got a step-by-step guide as to what it is that I need to do on every sales call. Now, why do I have it? I've been doing this a long time. Well, very often if I'm missing that playbook, then I skip some steps or I forget some steps. So having a next step is normally the next logical Progression forward. So let me give you an example. When I'm doing a sales call, first thing that I do, validate time. Hey, do you have 20 minutes? Thanks for the 20 minutes. Do you still have 20 minutes? Appreciate it. Second thing I do, so my next logical step then is setting the agenda for that call. Then the third thing that I'm gonna do is share success stories. Then the fourth thing I'm gonna do is recommend products, share pricing, ask questions, things like that. So one of the things that you might wanna do, Katie, is just kind of map out, if you will, What does your meeting need to look like, or what's the optimal way that it would look? And that'll kind of guide you to the next logical step. Now, one thing to consider is when I get to the— towards the end of my sales call and I'm doing my soft close, is I like the 1 to 10 soft close. So I would say, hey Bonnie, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 you're not interested, 10 you really love it, you know, kind of where are you at? And so when they give me like a 5, then I guide them towards a 6. So, I like that 1 to 10 close, and the reason I like it is because it sort of establishes what that next step will be. So, a lot of it is road mapping or kind of planning it out. And the second thing is practicing and really kind of knowing and reading the room and feeling, Katie, like, hey, this is kind of the next logical step that's really going to make sense. Listen to your clients, have a bit of a roadmap, and Katie, I think that you'll be very, very successful out there. Good. Good luck, Katie, in Illinois. Hey friends, keep your questions coming. ryan@ryandohrn.com. D-O-H-R-N. Love to speak at your sales meetings and things like that. I'm on the road quite a bit these days. Hey, and don't forget, we're raising money for the Golden Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America. So everybody that buys a copy of my new book, Selling Forward, guess what? We're donating 100% of the net proceeds to the Golden Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America networks. You can find that over on Amazon Kindle, Audible, you name it. And friends, don't forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. Okay, they're not. We're not crazy, friends. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, we'll see you next week.
