Sales Essentials: Ramp-Up Course

Where We Are in the Sales Process

We've finished our communication, bonding, and rapport work. This phase is all about creating equal business stature, and it functions like a pressure release valve. When we're doing a good job with bonding and rapport, and we're doing a good job setting up front contracts, we create an environment where our buyers are actually a little less guarded going into the qualifying phases. We've already let them know we're trying to meet them where they are, and we've already given them permission to say no - and that allows us to have a much better qualifying conversation around whether or not there's enough pain, whether or not they're willing and able to make the necessary investment, and whether we can work within their decision-making process.

This qualifying conversation is really difficult to have well - and to get good information out of - if we don't do a good job creating equal business stature, releasing the pressure, and setting that upfront contract. So now that we've gotten through qualifying, the next phase is that we finally get to tell them how we're going to solve their problem.

Contrast that with the traditional selling model: "Tell me what's going on. Okay, I hear some surface-level pain. You're open to an alternative. Let me tell you about all my stuff." Instead, we hold back. We get really curious. We ask really good questions. We qualify. And then, if and only if we determine that this prospect is qualified around pain, investment, and decision, do we decide to put together a proposal, a presentation, a demo - whatever "sharing our solution" looks like in your world.

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Why You Must Qualify Before Presenting

Before I share a proposal or run a demo, I want to know the answer to this question: if we present our solution, all of your questions are answered, and you like what you see - what happens next? This seems really simple, but it can be a radical shift. Before Sandler, I used to share proposals all the time without knowing what the prospect was going to do once they received it. When am I going to hear back? How are they going to make this decision? Is this investment range even within their ballpark? Is doing nothing an option? Am I a price check?

If I don't know the answers to those questions before sharing a proposal, I lose all my leverage once I present. Think back to day one, when we talked about how buyers have a system just like we do. Their goal is to act motivated until they get the information they want - how we're going to solve their problem and how much it's going to cost. Not because they're bad people; that's just what buyers do.

If we don't take the reins and lead them down a different path, they've got our information, they know how much it costs, and they have zero incentive to continue talking to us. We end up dealing with objections around the same three buckets: not sure they have enough money, not sure they need it right now, and "I really like it, but I don't know what our CRO is going to say." We deal with objections around these three qualifying buckets if we don't address them ahead of time - and it's a lot harder to handle those objections once they have our proposal in their hands than it is before.

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Building the Ultimate Upfront Contract

When I'm preparing for the proposal step, the first thing I want to establish is an upfront contract for how we're going to run this meeting. I want to know who's going to be looking at the proposal and what they care about. If I'm doing a demo, what do they need and want to see? How much time do we have? One big mistake is preparing a 60-minute demo for a 60-minute meeting - because if I don't wrap up by 45 minutes, I have no time to find out what they thought, what they liked, what they didn't like, or what happens next. We just get "Great, thanks for sharing this. We'll be in touch."

When the upfront contract leads into a final meeting where they're going to give us a yes or no, we sometimes call this the "ultimate upfront contract." Here's an example you can try on and adapt:

*"Our purpose today is to share our recommendations, address your issues, answer any questions, and ask for feedback. We talked about one hour - does that still work for everyone? Before we jump into the proposal, I'd like to first review our prior discussions and make sure I've understood what you told me about your project, and that nothing has changed on your end. As I walk through our recommendations, I'll periodically pause and ask for your feedback - are we on the right track, what do you love, did we miss the mark somewhere? Are you okay offering feedback throughout? And finally - I don't think this will happen, but if we've missed the mark and you aren't comfortable moving forward, would you let me know? On the other hand, assuming we listened well and put a recommendation in front of you that you're comfortable with, we had discussed that the next step would be to work up the contract and begin the approval phase. Any reason why we wouldn't be able to come to one of those two decisions today?"*

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Why Each Element of the Upfront Contract Matters

Every piece of that draft is there for a reason. Why do we review the situation as we understand it - the pain - before we share the proposal? It reassures you that you're on the right path, it keeps you in control of the process, and, as someone pointed out in the chat, it makes sure the target isn't still moving. I know I'm not the only one who has given a full presentation only to hear at the end, "This was really great - that said, earlier today we found out X, Y, and Z," which materially changes everything. If something's changed that affects this conversation, I want to know that before I present, because I may want to pivot, or I may decide not to present at all.

We also want to remind them why they need the solution - because buyers have a little bit of amnesia. We're talking about the problem and everyone's fired up about fixing it, and then the proposal lands on their desk a couple of weeks later and they're thinking, "Eh, maybe that's not that big of a deal." So we review the pain to make sure we heard correctly, and if there are emotions around that pain, we want them sitting with us again during this conversation. I'm going to use their words and the stories they told me to describe the problem back to them.

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Calibrating Your Permission to Say No

Now let's talk about the "permission to say no" piece. How strong you make it depends on the relationship, the length of your sales cycle, and how the conversation has gone. In a first call of a six-call sales cycle, my permission to say no is really strong - I need to bring those walls down as fast as possible. The purpose of that first meeting is to figure out whether we should even have a second conversation. My "yes" at that point isn't well defined because I don't yet know what yes even looks like.

By call six, though, if they're still at the table, there shouldn't be any surprises. At that point, saying "It's possible we've completely missed the mark - if this doesn't make sense, we don't have to talk again" starts to feel a little awkward, because we've been in conversation for months. So the "no" gets softer - "I don't think this will happen, but if somehow we've missed the mark and you aren't comfortable moving forward, would you let me know?" - but the "yes" becomes extremely well defined: "We had discussed that the next step would be to work up the contract and begin the approval phase." That is specific. We're agreeing not to leave with a think-it-over.

Here's what's important: at the beginning and end of every conversation throughout the process, we're setting an upfront contract for the next one. So by the time we get to meeting six, they're expecting it. We've essentially trained our prospects that every time we get together, we know what decision we're making, we make it, no is always okay, and then we move on. When you make this your habit, what you'll find is that the ultimate upfront contract doesn't feel aggressive at all - it feels natural.

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Best Practices for Presenting Your Solution

As a general rule, the "pitch" as we know it from things like Shark Tank is not appropriate in a true selling environment. A pitch has a connotation of "look how great we are - your life will be better if you do business with us." It's very me-focused. Instead, we want to be reviewing their pain using their stories and their data, and checking whether anything has changed that might affect the conversation.

We never want to over-present - meaning we don't want to introduce variables we've never discussed before. The key to getting an actual yes or no is no surprises. If I introduce new variables at the last minute, a confused mind always says no, and I'm going to get a no or a think-it-over pretty predictably. For example, in my advertising sales days, if I was in a closing meeting where everything was aligned and I suddenly introduced a new add-on service we hadn't discussed, I'd derail the whole thing by adding complexity right at the finish line.

We also have to be careful about what we include because we think it makes us look impressive. A slide showing our company's global reach might make us feel proud internally - but if I'm presenting to a 10-person company, I might inadvertently be placing doubt in their mind: "Is this too much firepower for me? Is this more than I need? Maybe this isn't for people like us." You have to run every piece of your presentation through the filter of: is this information going to be valuable to this particular prospect, or does it just make me feel good?

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Pausing for Feedback During the Presentation

Plan your time so you're not talking straight through the entire presentation. If I have a 60-minute meeting, I want to spend about 10 minutes on the upfront contract and pain recap, wrap the presentation at 45 minutes, and use the last 15 minutes to discuss next steps. But I also want to be pausing throughout - not just at the end.

If someone sees something in the first 15 minutes they're not sure about, I don't want that floating in their brain for the next 20 minutes. I want to resolve it so we're good to move forward. And "any questions?" is not the best way to do that - it's not specific enough and it usually results in silence. Better questions are: "Does this make sense?" "Is that a workable solution for you?" "Are we 100% on this?" "Anything you're unsure about?" "Does this seem like it will work in your environment?" You're essentially doing a little close for fit along the way, and you'll gather a huge amount of information to fuel the rest of the conversation.

In fact, all of the presentations where we didn't actually get through all the slides - we won those. All of the presentations where we got through every single slide, we did not win, because the prospect wasn't engaged. We want to make it a conversation, not a performance.

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The Seven Reasons Sales Don't Close

About 96% of the time, when a sale doesn't close, it's for one of seven reasons. The good news is that if you understand those seven reasons, you can be intentional about preventing them. Let's walk through each one.

**"We're just not sure we need it."** This traces back to the upfront contract and the pain qualification. You didn't dive deep enough into their pain to help them truly understand what they needed. Pain qualification also means asking: is doing nothing an option? Where does this rank in priority? Most companies aren't going to invest time and resources into nice-to-haves.

**"We're going to do it, but next year."** This goes back to pain and urgency. Remember our definition of pain: a personal, compelling, and emotional reason to take action *now*. That last word is part of the definition. It doesn't mean they don't have loads of pain - but if they don't feel it has to be resolved right now, you have to ask yourself whether they're truly qualified for pain or whether they're going to kick the can down the road. Also revisit whether your upfront contracts were setting clear expectations about decisions at each stage - or whether you allowed the prospect to passively float through the process without ever really committing.

**"We went with somebody else - we liked another solution better."** This one is painful. It most often traces to the decision-making process, but also to not listening well enough throughout. Finding out afterward that they chose someone else for something that was completely within your wheelhouse - something you never thought to ask about - means you weren't listening. If you're regularly losing on a variable like company size or brand recognition, start surfacing that early: "People have different preferences about this, so it's important we talk about it. Are you more comfortable working with a smaller organization that can really focus on you, or with an established brand name? What's your preference?"

**"We don't have the budget."** This is what I call the "help me, I'm poor" objection - which you find out too late if you skip the investment conversation. Did you have a conversation about the investment bracket this solution is going to require? Did you spend time quantifying the pain and the problem so they could weigh it against the investment? Maybe you could have offered a smaller solution had you known about the budget constraint - but once the proposal is delivered, going back to a smaller number feels like backtracking. That's exactly why investment comes before the proposal phase.

**"I like it, but someone else on my team isn't sold."** This one is short and simple: it traces directly to the decision-making qualification. Did you find out who the influencers were? Who's the ultimate decision-maker? Did you understand the full cast of characters and what they each thought? If you didn't do a good job there, you're likely to hear this at the end.

**"Just not sure it's exactly what we need."** This comes back to not identifying the pain deeply enough, and possibly not connecting with the right people in the decision-making process. When you're presenting your solution, are you explicitly connecting the dots between the pain they described and how your solution addresses it? Or are you expecting them to make that connection themselves? Carry that theme all the way through to the proposal - it has to stay focused on their problem.

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The Core Goal: Surface Objections Before You Close

If I had to summarize what we've discussed over the last eight weeks, it's this: instead of finding out a little bit of information, sharing a proposal, and then putting our fists up ready to fight objections, our goal is to purposefully and intentionally uncover every objection before we try to close. We're seeking them out. We're trying to understand everything that could get in the way of the sale and having those conversations upfront - so we don't end up with that list of seven reasons when we go to close.

Because we've already talked about all of those things. I can either deal with them upfront, or I can deal with them at the negotiating table after I've lost my leverage. I'd rather deal with them upfront.