“The first calls always seem to go well, but I can’t seem to move the conversation forward after this. What should I be doing differently?”
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. I get asked some variation of this question all the time by founders and sellers at early stage startups.
The key is to not judge meetings based on pleasantness. You should judge meetings on desire. Any experienced seller can share stories of introductory calls that seemed unpleasant but eventually turned into deals - this is because there was desire.
Any buyer journey moves from Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action. If they’ve shown up to the meeting, they have an interest. Your job as a seller is to either move the prospect to the desire stage, or disqualify them.
When deals fail to move beyond the first calls, it’s because they don’t have a desire to continue the buying process. This is because they don’t see enough value, and if they’re a qualified buyer it probably means you didn’t do enough discovery.
Your goal as a seller is to convert demand into revenue and delighted customers. You do this by qualifying demand and framing value through discovery. In this article, I share how to structure your first calls to drive the deal forward.
Know where on the AIDA journey your buyers are in your first meeting with them. With this context, qualify them and frame value for qualified buyers through discovery in as simple of a process as possible.
Should I have separate calls for qualification, discovery, demo, and presenting terms?
Maybe. Time kills all deals, and if you’re selling to a busy person then setting up 4+ calls means that the sales process will take weeks or months. This might be okay. If you’re selling an expensive, complex product then this is normal since you’ll need to get consensus among multiple personas.
One item I challenge startups to ask themselves, especially if you have a simple product, is if you actually need to run a demo. Especially if you’re the founder acquiring your first customers, you may be able to get away with just a slide deck (or even just a vision) before sending over the MSA with your terms and conditions. Can I qualify, do discovery, do a demo, and present terms all in one call?
Maybe. If you have a simple, inexpensive product and you know your prospect is the decision maker with purchasing power, this can work.
If you’re in this situation, this process is probably fine for your first customers - but I’d ask yourself if you can build a self-serve motion into your product so you can reduce sales cycle time and CAC (assuming at scale you’d have a sales rep take these calls, which adds cost). How should I run each call?
Everyone hates meetings without agendas. Set an agenda in the meeting invite, and start calls with an upfront contract to agree on it. This might sound something like:
“Hi {name}, great to finally meet you! Like I mentioned in the agenda, my goal with this call is to explore if we’re a good fit to help your team. To do that, I’ll ask some questions to better understand your business, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of questions for me so I’ll leave time for that afterwards. At the end of the call, things typically go one of two ways - we’ll either align on the next steps to scope what working together would look like, or we’ll part ways and stay friends if it doesn’t look like we’re a good fit for each other. Sound fair?”
Some sellers take a few minutes upfront to build rapport, while others dive right into business. I think you can be successful either route as long as you have gravitas, respect for their time, and are earnest in trying to help them solve their problems.
Regardless of how much progress you make in qualification and discovery in your first call, to move the deal forward you need to align on next steps. Ideally, this means that you should leave time at the end of the call to ask them to look at their calendar and book the next meeting. Can you still close deals without doing proper discovery?
Yes - but probably only smaller deals. If you don’t do proper discovery, it means that your deals are at a greater risk of not closing since you don’t fully understand your prospect and haven’t fully agreed on the value you’re bringing.
