Post Sales Meeting Checklist (5 Minutes to Success)

Rob  00:00

I want you to think back to the last time you lost a sale. Do you know the exact second that it happened? Do you know when they decided they weren’t going to buy from you? If you don’t know when that happened, you’re bound to repeat that. So, I give you a five minute routine that you can do after every time you win or lose a sale, so that you can be flawless the next time. Let’s get into it, you

Rob  00:23

So, just like pilots, pilots have a pre checklist and a post checklist. Pre checklist, we’ve gone through before, but I want to talk about a post, like a post mortem, if you will. When you’re finished with a sales meeting, what you’re going to find is that there’s probably a moment in time that you just totally missed, or that there’s a moment in time that you did something perfectly well, and that’s something you should capture and keep track of, so that you know what happened.

Rob  00:47

A pre-check list for a pilot is critical before you take off, right? You want to make sure you get all the levers, knobs, everything in place, so that you know you’re going to be able to take off. That’s really important.

The post-checklist may not seem like an important detail, but it is probably just as important as the pre-check list, and the reason why is, is when they get done with their flight, if something went wrong, something wasn’t behaving correctly, they monitor that, they record that, and they report it, so that it gets fixed for the next pilot that comes in, can actually look to see if that is still a problem or not. Those are critical steps.

Rob  01:18

Now, you’re not a pilot, right, but it’s kind of the same thing. It’s just as critical. The post checklist is also very important. So, let’s imagine you’re finished your meeting, you sat down face to face, you went through all the stuff. What did you do that was really good?

 

Rob  01:32

I don’t, you should pull out a piece of paper, and I want you to kind of think about what did you say that was really good and effective, that when they said this, you said that kind of a moment, write that down when, when you asked a question and they reacted in a certain way, that was probably a good moment for that sale.

Rob  01:50

Write that moment down too. You’re going to want to kind of track those moments that you could sense something shifted, something changed. That’s critical. What if there was a moment during your meeting that you were like, man, I wish I had an audience, they could have seen how brilliant that was, right? Write that moment down too. So you’re writing down all the important pieces, everything that happened that swayed it to the positive for yourself.

Rob  02:12

Now, at the same time, I want you to write down all the things where you missed something. If you missed something that was really important, that’s a bad thing. So take a moment, look at the things that were, they said something, and you just kind of glazed by it, and you were like, oh, that was the point that they probably were trying to tell me this is not going to happen.

Rob  02:27

The other moment that might have happened is where you got flustered during the meeting, so all of a sudden they said something you couldn’t think straight. Write that moment down. There was a point, maybe, where you were embarrassed about something, or something that you just completely couldn’t answer. Write that moment down. Those are the things that will make a difference in the future.

Rob  02:43

Because if you weren’t ready for that moment, that’s okay. What you should do is write that down, so that you’re ready for the next time that comes around. It’s something like it’s just something you messed up, that’s okay. Write those things down.

Rob  02:54

Next, did you really determine that? What’s the next step when you get done with all of that? Did you say, “Okay, I now I know what my next steps are. At the end, do you know your next step? If you didn’t have that, that should be one that you wrote down too, right? That’s the one that you have to have before you walk out. You should always know what your next steps are.

Rob  03:08

If you didn’t close that deal, or if they’ve been signed, when sometimes there’s moments where you just get blindsided. There was a question that came up, you’re like, I didn’t even see that coming, I had no idea they were going to ask that question.

And you need to know, was that a normal routine? Does that happen to you often? If it doesn’t happen very often, then maybe that’s just an exception, but jot it down just so you have it.

Rob  03:27

But if it starts to happen more frequently, where you start getting the same questions you’re not ready for, those should be things that you should be writing down and being ready with an answer the next time, and you’re going to have that answer at your disposal.

Rob  03:40

Were there moments that blindsided it maybe caused you a problem, so in other words, they started asking you a question, you started to answer it, then it went a correction, where they made another comment or question, and things kind of went back and forth, and you never resolved their question.

Is that the moment that they decided no, that you didn’t realize, because when they asked that question.

Rob  04:01

There’s techniques and things that you should be using to make sure that you don’t answer their question, and you’re clarifying their question first before you can answer their question. If you didn’t do that, write that down.

That’s a moment where if they asked you a question, you answered it and went on to the next question that they asked you. You’re missing an opportunity to get clarifying questions back to them, so that you’re answering the question they’re actually asking.

Rob  04:24

The thing that I want you to kind of keep in mind is that even if you have a good win, you close the deal, you’ve, you’ve got the deal, you got the check, you got the signature, you got that, but is the assumption then that you’re flawless at what you do? You did it perfectly, and there was nothing that went wrong.

Rob  04:38

There should not be that, that assumption, because there’s more than likely something you could have done to improve, maybe you did miss something, and maybe you could have added an extra feature in your conversation to find out if this was something they were entertaining as well.

Rob  04:51

I’ve had it where people will ask me a question, and in my question back I find out that there’s another piece that they’re looking for in addition to what they’re talking to me about, and so when they do that, I now have the opportunity to ask more about that add on feature, or that add on sale that is maybe something that they would not have thought of, and then we start having that conversation, so now we’re talking about a bigger ticket size, so you have to be careful about not answering their question, but also answering their question with some questions, so that you can get some more clarifications.

Rob  05:23

What they’re looking for, if you miss that opportunity, you might be making a smaller sale instead.

That’s the other piece. So, again, this is one of those situations where you write that down, and the reason you do all this is because you want to figure out, did they buy because of you or did they buy in spite of you, and if they had bought, if they bought in spite of you, then this is one of those situations where you can just start to really improve by writing these things down and start to figure out how you can get them through that sales process a little cleaner, so that they can make their decision a little easier.

Rob  05:53

So, I said in the beginning, there’s a five minute routine that you need to have, so that you can improve in your future sales, and so just it comes down to this: imagining you’re back in that conversation, take a few minutes and write down the things you did really well, the things you just didn’t do as well, let’s put it that way.

Rob  06:09

And you make that list, and then you figure out what should I have done in those situations, identify what questions come up over and over again, and things that you should be addressing with questions, so that you can understand where they’re at.

Rob  06:21

The other thing you want to do is make sure that you’re asking questions, and if you forget about something every once in a while, one of your things might be, hey, I forgot to ask this question. Well, that’s okay. What you do is, you write that down.

Rob  06:32

The way you improve on that is something as simple as this. Okay, next time, I go in and I say, hey, you know, I always forget to ask this question, and would you help me remember that I got to ask that question? Write that down for me, and they’ll write that down, like make them make them ask that question back for you, so that as you go through your conversation, was there something else that we needed to talk about?

Rob  06:51

Oh, yeah, that’s right, they’re going to tell you it’s just so you get your question answered. Use the client to help you get that done if you have to, but in the end it’s a matter of addressing the need that you did not do and addressing the things that you did really well and make sure that you repeat it and improve on that.

And then once you have that list I want you to start testing to see if I said this instead of that if I asked this question instead of that how would the results come out differently because the more you test it and do that with low, low-risk sales, too, sometimes, right?

Rob  07:24

The goal here is to test what you’ve done, what went well, and what didn’t go well, and start to figure out how you’re supposed to do it, and then start testing it on future potential clients. That’s when you’re going to start to really gain some information out of this.

Rob  07:35

So, the really, the audit becomes down to where did things shift, what did I miss, and you’re paying attention to something like that, you’re trying to figure out, are you chasing more than you should be, and then what are the next clear next steps that you should be having.

If you didn’t get those three down in your process, then make sure you incorporate that into your five minute routine to learn. Did I get all the things that I needed to get out of that?

Rob  07:57

If you found this to be helpful, like and subscribe, because there’s more content like this coming out in the future, and as always, Slow Down, and you’ll Close More.