The two most forgotten portions of the sales process: preparation and reflection

Since I’ve been focusing on productivity these last few weeks, I thought it would be good to look at what pieces of the sales process are most neglected because of multi-tasking.

Preparation does not just mean reading someone’s LinkedIn profile for 5 minutes and checking out their website for the same five minutes. Real preparation requires understanding a prospect’s background at a minimum, but we also need to think through the different directions a meeting may go. Prepping for the not-so-positive is one the most critical components of a good sales meeting.

Prep does not mean preparing rebuttals…it means preparing and executing your meeting so that objections come up less and less

This typically doesn’t relate to better explaining your product, but instead better phrasing your questions to reposition how they view the industry and what you do. How can you ask a question or phrase a statement in a way that stops that person from voicing a concern later in your call? If you prep for who this person is and where they might object, then you may be able to handle those sales objections by doing a better job of discussing ideas earlier in your sales process.

There is no such thing as over prepared

There are many slides or scenarios that seem unlikely and therefore are not worth exploring, so you may be tempted to just spend more time preparing for the more likely scenarios. When I lose a big deal or have a less than ideal meeting, this is typically why it went south.

It doesn’t hurt to take the time to discuss possible integrations they may want, or to address the tension you sensed in a previous call.

Reflection probably gets less love than preparation as typically reflection gets pushed over to preparation in future meetings, instead of capturing the moment immediately after it happens.

Reflect within 1 hour of the meeting and focus on key areas of the meeting (instead of how you think it went)

The only way to grow rapidly as a sales person is to reflect on your meetings and diagnose the good, bad, and the ugly. Without reflection, we ramble from meeting to meeting making marginal progress based on fragments we vaguely remember from a few meetings back. Take the time after your meetings to go through each step of the sales process, and diagnose areas that went well and areas that need work IN WRITING!

By focusing on how well you executed specific steps in the sales process immediately after your meeting, you will be able to quickly access key areas of improvement for future meetings. Over time, you will begin to notice these areas in meetings and will be able to course correct. The better you become at diagnosing issues in process execution, the more aware you will become in current conversations. Then you can course correct in real-time.

Let your pride go and take feedback

The amount of people that I meet who say they are coachable vs those that actually are is staggering. It is my #1 issue with hiring sales professionals and the one area I still miss from time to time.

We all want to feel that we are coachable and malleable but many of us have locked in on ways of doing things that are tough to break out of or just don’t realize that we aren’t taking feedback effectively. Very few people want to give you feedback simply to be mean.

Being able to truly receive feedback is one of the most critical components of reflecting. You have to be able to both take feedback and give yourself feedback so you can improve with each meeting and interaction. If there are skeletons in your sales meeting closet, deal with them and move forward. Sitting in failure will lead to continued frustration from yourself, and from your leaders who struggle to find ways to motivate and push you with coaching. This obviously applies to more than just sales meetings and can be used in almost any situation where you are interacting with others.

Prep and reflection are truly the beginning and end of any interaction where you need to do your best. By becoming a student of these two activities in addition to what most consider the actual sales process, you will not only close more deals but will also feel more comfortable with the sales process. This is another reason that a sales process is critical and a plan of execution…. without it, it’s tough to know what to prepare for or reflect upon. Use all three to grow the quality of your interactions over time.