What sales calls should you have?

A lot of founders understand they need to demo. But after that? They’re really unsure what to do next.

Most buyers won’t make a purchase decision on the first call, unless it’s a super transactional product where they are both the user and buyer.

In my experience, most deals close in 3-4 calls.

But what should those be?

In this newsletter, we’ll deep dive into how to run meetings, and go over different call options to build your sales process.

Table of Contents

• How to run a sales cycle

  • Components of an effective sales call

• Determining which calls to run

  • Sales calls are about the buyer, not you

  • The buyer’s thought process

  • Designing sales calls that help the buyer navigate …

How to run a sales cycle

Your sales cycles are run purely in meetings and follow-ups. Those are the only two tools you have to help move a deal forward.

You run an effective call. Then you follow-up in the right way.

A sales cycle is when you connect those meetings and follow-ups in a logical flow that helps the prospect buy.

So it’s super important for you to think about what those calls should be. And how you run them.

Here’s a quick overview of the basics of running a sales call.

Components of an effective sales call

How you start and end meetings matters a lot if you want to keep the deal moving forward.

What happens in the middle of the meeting is usually a handful of frameworks coming together for a specific meeting type (like a discovery call or demo call).

But the start and end are always the same, and are required in order to stitch meetings together.

Every meeting has 5 components:

• The Start (relevant bonding and rapport)

• The Kickoff (setting the structure for the meeting)

• Info Gathering (discovery)

• Info Sharing (usually sales story or demo)

• Next Steps (establishing the kickoff for the next meeting)

The Kickoff is the most important thing to nail down in a meeting structure. It’s also the easiest thing to implement in your sales process now that will have the biggest impact moving forward.

• Time check (e.g. are we still good for 60 minutes?)

• People check (e.g. is anyone else joining the call?)

• Purpose (e.g. the purpose of the call today is to get a better understanding of your sales process and see whether or not we could help.)

• Ideal outcome (e.g. What’s your ideal outcome for the call today?)

• Permission to discuss next steps (e.g. If we decide it’s a fit, can we spend 10 minutes at the end discussing next steps, which is usually a team demo?)

You can read this newsletter to learn more about how to start your sales calls.

Determining which calls to run

This is where most founders I work with get hung up. They know they need to do an intro call and demo. They know they need to do some sort of discovery and qualification.

But they’re usually unsure of how to put this together.

And when the first call doesn’t immediately end in a close, they don’t really know where to head next.

Sales calls are about the buyer, not you

The first thing to realize is that you design your sales cycles to help your buyers make an informed purchase decision.

The sales process isn’t about your steps and what you want to show.

It’s about the buyer’s steps and what they need to know in order to feel comfortable moving forward.

The buyer’s thought process

Every B2B buyer goes through the same thought process when evaluating a vendor:

• I have a problem

• Do you understand my problem?

• Do I trust that you can solve my problem?

• How do I get started?

90% of B2B SaaS deals are won because of pain. Not because of something cool, or something they never imagined.

But because they have an immediate burning pain that needs resolution.

And in order to get rid of that pain, you need to understand what it is.

This helps you in the sales process - which is why discovery is important (not just qualification).

But it also helps the buyer, because they need to feel confident that you understand their situation.

So once you do your discovery, you need to summarize it back to the prospect. Then when they agree you summarized the pain correctly, you need to show EXACTLY how you’re going to solve that pain.

And once you’ve done that, and they trust your solution will work for them, then they go into pure doubt mode.

“This might be complex, don’t know if I’ll have the time to get this up and running. What if the team doesn’t use it? How much of my team will need to be involved in setting this up? How long will it take before we’re up and running? What happens if it doesn’t work?”

The thoughts go on and on and on. And this is where most deals are lost - not because the product isn’t good, but because the buyer has doubt.

Designing sales calls that help the buyer navigate their thoughts

So this is where the creativity comes in, and why it’s important to have a modular sales process you can deploy.

Your first call will always have discovery in it (so will all subsequent calls, btw. Discovery is a process, not an event). You need this to map to the first two points of the buyer’s thought process - they have a pain, do you understand that pain.

Then, once you’ve confirmed you understand the pain correctly, you need to show how you’ll solve it, exactly. This can be done through a compelling sales story or a demo, or both.

After you’ve verified that the solution would solve their pain, you need to move to how you’ll make them successful. Usually you start talking about onboarding and implementation - explain how you’re the expert in this, you’ve seen this stuff a lot, you’ve made other customers successful.

At this point, when they’re confident that you can make it work, they should be ready to move forward. And then you project-manage the timeline to closed.

So how do you break this down in sales calls? Here’s a handful of sales cycles that would all help buyers through this:

• A 1-call close: Quick discovery at the top, quick demo, run through onboarding and pricing, ask if they’re ready to get started.

• A 2-call close: Run an intro/demo call. The second call is an implementation and pricing review. Move to close.

• A 3-call close: Run an intro/demo call. Second call is a team or technical demo. 3rd call is an implementation and pricing review. Move to close.

• A 4-call close: Run an intro call, no demo. Second call is an initial demo. 3rd call is a team or executive demo. 4th call is an implementation and pricing review.

You could keep going. Some folks won’t be satisfied with just a demo, so you’ll need to run a trial or Proof of Concept. That’s going to add a bunch more calls.

General rule of thumb for deals around $10k-25k is to keep it around 3 calls if possible. Larger deals will likely need 4-5 calls. Deals less than $5k need to be 1-2 calls.

More calls isn’t always better btw. Lots of buyers stretch things out, which is a waste of both your time and their time. Imagine if you have to do 3 team demos for them. The number of people involved in those calls x their hourly rate x 3 calls = expensive. And usually they’re evaluating 2-3 vendors at a time. They could be putting in $8k of resources in an evaluation for a $12k deal. Doesn’t make sense.

Try to give your prospects all the info they need in the least number of calls possible.

If you find that your buyers are getting stuck, or they’re dropping off after a certain step, then maybe you need to add a call in.

That’s what happened when I was at Proposify. We did an intro demo, then a team demo, then we tried to move to close. We were getting stuck there, so we added an implementation and pricing review call, and it got things moving again.

Just make sure whatever you do, your calls are designed to help the buyer move through their thought process. Often when I see sales cycles, they’re selfish. They’re all about the founder and the product. They’re not about the buyer and their pain.

So your calls need to be designed to help the buyer get through mental humps. The better you are at helping them through this, the more favourable you look as a vendor.

The best product doesn’t win the deal. The best sales rep does.

So spend time figuring out your calls.

I’d love to hear from you! Hit reply and let me know what other topics you’d like to learn about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

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If you’re looking for more hands-on help implementing your first sales process, reach out for coaching packages.