Article

How to Get Deals Unstuck - Second Meeting to Proposal

14 November 2022

Jake Dunlap

“My number one tip for driving deal momentum from meeting to meeting is laying out the next steps on who needs to be involved and communicating that proactively.”

The number one spot deals get stuck…

There are many things we do in sales that cause issues that are self-inflicted. We often cause our own delays, or the actions we take aren’t proactive and cause deals to stall out.

Consistently, from the hundreds of companies we work with a year, we’ve seen that they aren’t too bad at driving from discovery to the 2nd meeting. They can get some spark of interest in the initial meeting and maybe add XYZ departments to the next.

Instead, we see the number one spot pipeline gets stuck after the 2nd meeting when multiple stakeholders are involved.

60% of sales teams say they struggle to create momentum, and this is where momentum gets complicated, and you have to manage more people with various priorities.

In today’s session, I’ll talk about how your team should be wording and driving next steps, setting the right agendas, and positioning separate solutioning correctly.

1. Laying out the next, next-next, and next-next-next steps
2. How the agenda makes or breaks the call
3. Creating separate solutioning
4. Sending weekly progress reports

Recap: How to Get Deals Unstuck – Second Meeting to Proposal

The important bits:

- 3:25 – if you’re struggling to get from meeting one to meeting two or meeting two to meeting three, it could be that you’re doing a very poor job of putting buyers into the process in the first meeting. (Aka laying out the steps clearly.)
- 4:57 – 27% of people said that deal momentum was one of their top bottlenecks
- 5:29- The one thing to never say is, “Hey, what are the next steps?” That puts the responsibility on the other person, who probably doesn’t know what to do.
- 7:20 – You should know the next step, so instead, say, “Let’s talk about the typical next steps. They are XYZ.”
- 9:50 – Let’s fast forward to meeting two. More people are in the loop. The first of two make-or-breaks is…the agenda. Not just having an agenda but what the agenda is.
- 12:30 – Number two is teasing separate solutioning in meeting two.
- 13:52 – It is your job as a seller to coordinate for the buyer.
- 14:35 – The number one reason that companies are terrible at driving momentum is that they don’t provide separate solutions to each individual in the sale.
- 16:47- Even if it’s a smaller project, there are usually at least a few people involved in it.
- 17:10 – Separate solutioning is the concept that you need to go out and build a solution for each relevant group, so it feels customized to them. If you are losing deals later in the game, it’s because you’re not doing this.
- 18:32 – Send weekly recaps out on the progress. It shows buyers that if you’re doing this in the sales process, you will do the same thing and manage the project well once you go live.

Lay Out the Next, Next-Next, and Next-Next-Next Steps

If you’re struggling to get from meeting one to meeting two or meeting two to meeting three, it’s most likely due to a poor job of pulling buyers into the process and laying out the next, next-next, and next-next-next steps.

You never want to ask, “Who should we add to the next meeting?” or “What are your next steps?” That puts the responsibility on the other person, who probably doesn’t know the next steps.

But you should.

As the seller, you should know the next steps in the process and who typically needs to be involved. As a manager, if your team doesn’t know, you need to coach them.

This simple trick alone will get more people to attend future meetings. That’s why setting the tone in the first meeting is so important. If you go back and listen to your calls, you’ll see that your deals have stalled post second-meeting because you’re not laying out the path forward early on.

You’re essentially putting momentum into the hands of other people who don’t know what to do.

A recent study by Zippia said 86 percent of people in leadership positions say lack of collaboration is one of the top reasons for workplace failures.

As a seller, if you’re turning momentum over to someone else at the end of the call and saying something to the effect of, “What are your next steps?” The response you’ll get 9 times out of 10 is, “Why don’t you send me some information, and I’ll circulate it internally, and then you can follow up with me next week.” And guess what? Most likely, they’re not going to circulate it and then begins the follow-up nightmare.

Instead, this is how you should lay the path forward:

“It seems like there’s some interest here, and you have a team of people in place that would be using this product for XYZ reason. Typically, we’d do a high-level demo for them and ensure it’s something they see value in; assuming that goes well, it sounds like Rachel would have to sign off on any proof of concept. If she gives to OK, we can discuss how we might partner. But let’s make sure this is something that your team sees utility in first. Does that work?”

That’s it.

Again, If you’re setting up meetings post-discovery but can’t move past the second meeting, you should listen to how you were laying out the next, next-next, and next-next-next steps in discovery.

It’s one of those small things that, when executed correctly, will have a massive impact on momentum.

The Agenda Makes or Breaks the Call

Let’s fast forward to meeting two. More people are in the loop. The first of two make-or-breaks is the agenda.

Not just having an agenda – but what the agenda is.

(By the way, I’m calling this the second meeting, but the meeting where you have multiple buyers in the loop could be your second meeting, your first, or your third. It doesn’t really matter what number the meeting is; it matters who is in the meeting.)

What you need to say in this meeting is:

“Hey, John. We’re looking forward to the conversation today. I had a great initial conversation with Bob, and we learned some details about where you’re at in this evaluation process and your key needs.

But first, I want to spend the next few minutes just going around and getting some quick insights from all of you on today’s call. I’ll do a quick recap on the areas we think we should focus on. But I want to ensure we get feedback from each of you on what you see as the most critical issues. Then we’ll all spend the bulk of the time talking about how we can help. And then, if it makes sense from there, we’ll set up a high-level meeting on the tech side of things, integrations, etc. And then, we can set up a meeting with Marketing around XYZ functionality if that works for everyone.

So again, the goal for today is to get feedback and to spend the bulk of the time talking about what we can do.”

If you start your second or third meeting like that, you will get more people in the loop. It may sound dumb to say that an agenda can have that big of an impact, but it can. Sandler calls the agenda the upfront contract.

Setting the agenda lets buyers know this process isn’t going to be more work for them.

Separate Solutioning

Here’s make-or-break number two. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as the agenda, but the more you sell and the longer you’re with a product, the easier it will become.

You have to create and include separate solutions for every type of buyer in a deal. The number one reason companies aren’t great at driving momentum is that they don’t do this.

Separate solutioning means that each individual within a sale will have different parts of this solution that are interesting to them. Each of those separate solutions can make or break the deal. So after you have the big group meeting, solutioning is where the momentum is.

I often see these big proposals that only address big-picture items, and they aren’t detailed enough for each department to say “Yes” because they don’t see a solution that fits their needs.

I’ll give you a good example of this.

Skaled is a 40-plus person’s revenue strategy, revenue operations, and enablement company. We work with companies to help to run their sales organization or augment their current leadership.

When we’re putting together a plan for a big Revenue Operations project, for example, we’ll get Marketing involved, Sales involved, and Customer Success involved. Maybe we’ll even get the CEO involved. And we’ll even have these conversations separately.

That way, when we put the statement of work together, each person sees their piece in it. This works much better than putting together a statement of work with only a high-level overview.

That’s how I would think about separate solutioning. You need to go out and build a solution for each relevant group, so the solution feels customized to them. This may be your issue if you are losing deals between the second and third meeting or later in the game.

Send Out Weekly Recaps

Another quick tip, but can have more impact than you think, is sending out weekly recaps on the deal’s progress.

What does that do?

Doing this during the sales process makes buyers trust that you will manage the project well once it goes live.

Not only do weekly recaps keep everyone on the same page and move things forward, but they also build trust and confidence.

As someone who vets many projects and has been in that seat before, I don’t have the bandwidth to manage someone else’s deal. And I might think your product is great, but if there’s no one to manage implementation, it’s a hard no.

To Recap

So to recap, to drive momentum, and keep your pipeline moving post the second meeting, do these four things:

Lay out the next, next-next, and next-next-next steps at the end of every meeting.
Set the agenda, set the goal of the meeting in your agenda, and have everyone agree to it.
Create separate solutions for everyone/department involved in a deal and make sure it’s reflected in the proposal.
Send out weekly recaps. Manage the deal in a way that builds trust.