Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

Every now and then it’s a good idea to re-visit one of those “everybody knows that” concepts and do a hard-nosed self-assessment regarding our personal sales performance. Always, always pre-plan every sales call, right?

Scheduling and getting a face-to-face call with a decision maker is a non-trivial exercise. Well executed calls on decision makers are the stuff of which sales “living legends” are made. Poorly executed sales calls (i.e., those that accomplish nothing and therefore waste a decision maker’s time) are the main source of “former sales reps” now embarked on a new – less challenging/rewarding – career.

Those three facts, along with plain old common sense demand that we plan out every call beforehand. Here’s one format that’s simple and gets the job done:

• Who? Name, company and title of the callee
• What? The main topic of the call
• When? Obvious, but significant (First thing Monday morning requires a different approach than last thing Friday afternoon, for example)
• Where? Ditto (Customer’s office or conference room? Your office or conference room? Neutral site?)
• Why? This is the biggie… What is your objective? What actions do you want the customer to take as a result of this call?
• How? One-on-one conversation? PowerPoint? Sales Aids? References?
• Major Points? What are the three to five major points that you must make?

Personally, I have the above outline saved in a Word document named “aashell.doc” in a folder called “CallPlans.” Every time I plan a call, I pull it up, rename it something like “JoeCustomer0704.doc” and then type out and save my plan.
Also, as always, no best practice is worth beans without a metric or two to measure its and our own effectiveness. Classify your calls. For example:

• Doughnut Drop – Any call with a primary objective of “relationship-building”
• Routine Call - Calls that are necessary, important or required, but if screwed up, won’t kill me
• Critical Call – I better be good on this call, or I’m in deep yogurt.

What % of your calls fall in each category? Is the trend what you’d like it to be?

One last thought; question really… How much planning time is appropriate for each type of call? A doughnut drop might not require any. (So tell me again why you’re making that call in the first place?) A routine call might deserve a 1 to 1 ratio. That is, allocate one hour of planning time for a one-hour routine call. A critical call is probably at least 4 to 1. Four hours of planning for a one-hour call.

Yeah, I know. You already knew all of the above. But do you practice what you preach regarding pre-call planning?