Sales & Sales Management Brew

Effective sales call debriefing is a not only a skill required to be an effective coach but it is also a sales management process that MUST be part of your daily life of a successful sales manager.  Day in and day out, you have sales people on sales calls.  In a B2B world of selling, there are many variables that need to be handled if your sales professionals are going to turn a suspect into a prospect, into a qualified buyer and into a client.

The key to effective sales call debriefing actually begins with effective pre-call preparation.  Again strong coaching skills are required and this has to be a process that is standard operating procedure for all calls your sales people have.  Every call should be preceded by a pre-call planning session.  This can be done individually or as a team depending on the size and complexity of the sale but you should expect this to be done on every call.  The important sales strategy steps to a pre-call are:

1. What powerful discovery questions is the sales person prepared to ask?  What are the anticipated answers and how will the sales person deal with those answers?
2. What are the questions we can anticipate from the prospect and how will the sales person deal with the questions?  (Remember that when you role play this with your sales person you should expect them to answer questions with at least one additional qualifying question)
3. What curve balls can we anticipate and how will we deal with those?
4. What has to happen, what is the expected outcome that would cause everyone involved to say that the meeting was a great meeting?