Experimenting with sales calls/discovery—best practices?
I run a content marketing agency for SaaS companies and I know marketing but sales isn't my thing. I talked to a sales coach and he helped me rebuild my process. Before it would look like:
- Initial contact
- Discovery call
- Send proposal
- Get ghosted
Now, it's more like this:
- Initial contact - set expectations for discovery call
- Discovery call, get to know the client and set next meeting during call
- Meeting 2 - Go over options that I think would work best for the client, walk client through the whole proposal options and discuss what's missing/what they were expecting. Set next meeting during call. Make sure other decision makers are on this call.
- Send final proposal 15 minutes before next meeting and walk the client through it. Ask them if it's what they were expecting and if we can move forward. If they have to think about it, ask them what makes them hesitate. Price or something else in the offer?
So far it's working better. What's your process like?
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I done a lot of professional sales on with both customers and executives, drop me a line -- would be okay with giving you my battle-tested framework
my discord is: do#3695
Not sure the value of sending the proposal 15 min before. Either you give them time to review, or you present it at the meeting. I find that sending it marked DRAFT in advance is helpful to solicit feedback and confirm that you understand scope, requirements, timeline, etc.
Also, do you know what the obstacles to saying 'yes' are? Price might be one, but there are likely others. They need to be addressed...and in my experience that has to happen before you give them a proposal.
Hope this helps.
Brendan
I'm presenting it at the meeting :) basically, it goes like this:
Call 1. Discovery call where I get to know the whole situation and needs
Call 2. Going through the draft together, soliciting the feedback and making sure we're all on the same page and understanding what their obstacles are
Call 3. Going through the proposal together
That sounds right then. Well done!
Hi @maevaeverywhere, I like your sales process :)
I think #4 is the most important. What works for us, while I run a dev agency, was if they commit some time or resources to the project early on. For example, I tried to go deep into their project and give them some tips straight away (not for just development). We talked about the design & UI and features and so on, too.
Also, we had designed a proposal template that we were sending to our clients. It looked more professional than just some PDF or Word document. You can create one easily in Canva for example :)
Yes I'm a big fan of Canva and make all my proposals there as well! Thanks for your input :)
What kind of companies do you work with?
We used to build apps mainly for startups or new projects with the target group of B2B and B2C as well.
I focus on my projects only, right now.