Salespeople are often fooled that the opportunities in their pipeline are more qualified or closer to closing than reality suggests.
In this article, Tony Cole will breakdown the activity of post-call debriefing and why it is so critical for improving results.
Back in my playing days, we had to wait a day to get the game film developed and delivered to the coach's office, so that we could review each player and how they performed. A couple of weeks ago, our Defensive Coordinator at Moeller HS used a tablet to coach his defense based on what had just happened on the football field. With today’s digital technology, you can get your game or practice video feedback immediately. What a difference this makes!
You can do the same with salespeople.
The reason the game film is crucial is because the film doesn’t lie. There are no opportunities for excuses, laying blame, or hiding from the truth. In the film room, fierce conversations take place about converted opportunities, missed opportunities, the amount of effort given on a play, the outcome of a certain play, and so much more. It can be intense because there is nowhere to hide.
Your post-call strategy sessions must work the same way if you are going to accomplish the following:
- Improve skills
- Change behaviors
- Close more business, more quickly at higher margins
In order to do this effectively, you must know what should be done in an effective sales process by going through a checklist and marking those items that were accomplished so far in the process. A salesperson can, in reality, lie to themselves about what did and did not happen. The good news is that eventually the truth comes out in the results.
In other words when we teach out EPAS – Emergency Pipeline Analysis System – we look at several opportunities in the pipeline and calculate the probability of an opportunity closing. If we examine 5 opportunities and the average closing probability is 75% or greater and none of the opportunities close, then we have a clear indication that something is wrong:
- Either the producer is making up the data
- The producer is failing in effectively executing the sales steps they are taking credit for accomplishing
In the end what you are hoping to accomplish is to help salespeople clearly see what the opportunity is, help them when they are chasing bad or unclear opportunities, model success for others and help your salespeople realize when they should walk from ‘opportunities.
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