Helping your team members maintain the greatest momentum in their opportunities

Hello Sales Reset Leader

Here’s a highly practical way to improve your team’s results quickly. Coach every team member ahead of their most important meetings about the likely agreed-upon next actions.

You know from experience that maintaining momentum is critical to B2B selling success.

Your team member’s customers have so many other things on the go. Why should they prioritise the actions that will maintain or even build momentum with your team member’s opportunities?

Your team members must develop the habit of concluding every selling meeting with clearly agreed-upon next actions.

In this week’s first Weekly Sales Reset“ newsletter, we introduce your team members to the key things to consider:

1. BEFORE each meeting.

2. At the START of each meeting.

3. DURING each meeting.

4. At the END of each meeting.

5. AFTER each meeting.

Here are the details of this week’s companion newsletter for your team members:

• Title: Don’t wait until the last few moments of a meeting to agree on the next actions!

• Subtitle: How to maintain momentum in opportunities by ALWAYS agreeing on who will do what and by when.

In our mid-week newsletter, we’ll expand on these ideas. We’ll add the big idea of connecting short-term next actions to when the customer will achieve their desired outcomes.

How to improve your team's results this week

• Where to look for evidence

• Expected pushback

• Role-Play Recommendations

• Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! o …

Where to look for evidence

We strongly recommend reviewing the evidence before your coaching sessions with each team member. The evidence you find will make your coaching significantly more effective.

Before you meet with your team members for your 1:1 coaching sessions this week, here’s where to find the evidence you need. 

Have a look at your team member’s most significant opportunities. You’re looking for evidence that each team member is concluding every meeting with clearly agreed-upon next actions:

• Emails: Look for emails confirming the next actions after important meetings. We expect you will find some opportunities where these expectations have not been confirmed explicitly.

• Proposals: Review the proposals your team members are co-creating with customers. Do you see a summary of who has agreed to do what and by when in each proposal?

• Stalled Opportunities: Pay particular attention to stalled opportunities. You’ll likely be able to help your team members see that one key reason for losing momentum was the absence of agreed-upon next actions.

Expected pushback

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members.

1. “My customer won’t commit to their next actions”: If your team member works on well-qualified opportunities, their customers should be sufficiently motivated to engage with their next actions. How effectively has your team member helped customers know the next available and required actions?

2. “It seems very pushy”: Clarifying and agreeing on the next actions with customers requires your team members to be sufficiently assertive. How can you help your team members understand the difference between assertiveness and aggression?

3. “I always seem to run out of time.” Take your team member through the five steps we recommend in this week’s Weekly Sales Reset. Help them take responsibility for planning and making the best use of every minute of their time with their customers.

What are your best responses now that you know these potential pushback areas?

Role-Play Recommendations

1. Best Current Opportunity: Identify each team member’s best opportunity and role-play key moments where everybody’s next actions need to be agreed upon at each opportunity stage.

2. Most Significant Next Meeting: This is where you might gain the fastest results from your coaching this week. Find your team members' most significant next meeting, coach them through their planning, and then role-play critical parts of the meeting.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Invitation to Weekly Sales Reset Stories - LIVE! online

We’re hugely interested to hear how you and your team members get on with these recommendations about agreeing on the next actions to maintain momentum.

You and your team members are very welcome to join us for a 45-minute discussion to share experiences in our weekly Sales Reset Stories Workshops in our FREE Sales Reset Together community from 16:30 to 17:15, UK time every Tuesday.

The session is designed to allow participants to share their experiences and stories about each Weekly Sales Reset theme.

Click here to join the community and learn more about the Tuesday session.

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Do your team members subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Weekly Sales Reset?