The Next Call

I’ve said it before: everything is sales, distribution is everything.

Within sales (particularly B2B, enterprise sales), I’ve found the tricky part isn’t really getting the 1st meeting. It’s getting the 2nd or 3rd.

The sales process might look like this:
- some sort of outbound (cold email/DM) or inbound (signup form)
- they book a discovery call to learn more
- after that you send them some info about your product/service
- then you try to get a second call to align, demo, handle objections
- after that you send them a proposal/SOW
- then you might meet a couple more times to finalize (add stakeholders, review details)
- finally you agree, sign the docs, and do the work
- (add in a recursive loop somewhere in middle if there’s a trial period involved)

When I first started doing B2B sales this past year I was really good at getting the first meeting, and bad at getting the second.

We’d do an intro call, ask them a bunch of clarifying questions to understand their business and purchasing process, tell them a bit about all the cool important stuff our product can do for them. They’d ask us to send over some more info after, I’d send it right away, then circle back 7-10 days later and ask if they’d “be willing to do another call to discuss their thoughts”. The result… no response.

I’d send a couple “following ups” and “just checking ins” to no avail, eventually clients would forget about us, lose interest, or other stuff would simply come up that took precedent and buried my email to the bottom of their inbox.

After many reps of this I began to realize something wasn’t working correctly. Eventually, it hit me: I wasn’t setting proper expectations up front.

The genius solution? Simply book the next meeting during the first meeting. That’s it. Don’t leave the meeting without setting the expectation that there should be another meeting in some agreed upon number of days/weeks.

No one told me this ahead of time. I had to learn it empirically. So I’m telling you now.

As you are wrapping up the call - after you’ve finished your questions and decided what you need to send them - make sure you confirm two questions:
- how long will it take for you to review this info and be ready to discuss
- is there any else on their side that needs to be involved

They’ll say something like they need their boss or data person to take a look and give feedback, and that it typically takes 1-2 weeks. From there you hit them with:

“Sounds great, let’s plan to reconnect in [2 weeks] on this once you’ve had a chance to socialize and discuss internally. I’ll send across a placeholder invite for you and [your data person] now, and we can adjust as needed.”

Then you send the calendar invite right there, say your courteous goodbye, and follow-up after the meeting with your promised precious information.

This wins for a few reason:
1) it sets expectations and maintains the momentum early (urgency)
2) they’re now incentivized with a due date to get answers internally
3) you establish other vested interested on their side
3) worst case: the move the meeting, send an update and you reschedule
(much harder to take something off the calendar than to put it on!)

I close 2-3x more deals this way vs waiting to schedule the next call until after the meeting based on our experience. Such a simple change that makes the difference.

Now… as with all strategies, sometimes this doesn’t work.

Maybe you run out of time at the end of the 1st meeting, maybe it doesn’t make sense in a particular situation (ex: it’s so exploratory that they have no clue how long it’ll take to review internally), maybe you just forgot to say it, maybe you didnt realize until 7-10 days later.

Now what do you do? A few solutions:

A) You ran out of time at the end of the 1st meeting or forgot:
- in this case, in your reply email when you send over your info, simply say that you’d “like to schedule a follow-up once they’ve had a chance to review, is there anyone else who should be on from your side?”
- while doing it live in the meeting always converts better, this is still your second best option. The sooner you can reply after the meeting the better (within 24hr max)
- if you are bold you can even just send across the second invite for 2-3 weeks out anyways, and state in the email that ‘its a placeholder and you can adjust as needed’

B) “They dont know how long itll take to review interally”:
- Give them an incentive. Say that you have a demo you want to walk them through, or even a methodology for delivering the ‘solution’, any sort of reason you can think of
- If a demo doesnt make sense and they really do need to review the info you send internally, redirect with something like like “lets put something on the calendar for a few weeks out to check in and answer any new questions that come up”
- Again, ideally you can address these things live on the call, but can be done via the follow up email if you must

C) Its been over a week and you still haven’t booked the 2nd meeting
- After a week you must resort to the dreaded game of checking in’s and follow up’s. For the first one, I tend to keep it simple “Checking in on this, have 30 min this/next week to discuss?” - you can do this 2-3 times before its worth sending a “break up”
- If you are able, again you should give them an incenctive. If you are within the 1-2 weeks timeline you are still within your right to propose a demo, proposal review
- If it’s been more than a few weeks without correspondence, then you might start thinking of new incenctives (ex: announce new feature, send relevant blog post, new-conversation spurrers)

More to say but no more words today. Maybe will append to this some more on the art of writing proposals, handling objections, signing agreements if interesting.

Peace for now,
Ramsey