When sales leaders should spend less time in buyer meetings
Executives and senior leadership will be familiar with this scenario. A sales team member sends a request for you to join a call with their customer or buyer. Sometimes it shows up as just a calendar invitation straight to the inbox. The reason? Often, the buyer has invited their boss along, so your seller diligently does the same.
While this type of facetime provides valuable insight into the buyer experience—and can help close a deal—it is not always time well spent. And it shouldn’t be the first thing that sellers reach for.
Sellers should be able to articulate the value proposition to an executive level and be able to have the business conversation without support from leadership. Always inviting an executive to the call means missing out on opportunities to learn how to manage this type of call on their own.
Without thoughtful preparation, the opportunity is wasted even when there is a strategic reason to bring executives and senior leaders in. Businesses must support sales teams to develop the skills to elevate sales conversations independently and understand when to escalate them appropriately.
Principles for strategic involvement in sales calls
There will always be the deal that makes it over the line thanks to the last-minute involvement of an executive or senior leader. But in high-performing revenue organizations, that’s the exception, not the norm. For every other instance, these three principles align salespeople and their leaders—with a focus on open communication to ensure expectations are set and understood.
Set and demonstrate guardrails
Guardrails make clear to sellers when and why an executive or senior leader should be pulled into a call. These should be introduced during onboarding per the organization’s sales process guidelines. Keep this information top of mind by using the professional wins section of the weekly sales meeting to spotlight successful calls that didn’t require leadership involvement.
The approach that works for your organization should align with your sales strategy—not the whims of customers and buyers.
Uplevel seller communication skills
This requires a commitment from both sales teams and leadership; individual sellers must dedicate the time and energy to elevate their communication skills, but the other key to improved performance is for leaders to “create a safe space in which reps feel comfortable sharing thoughts, concerns, and new ideas with the group.”
Foster this space by creating time for sharing learnings, or encourage sales managers to use one-on-ones to role-play the different situations in which sellers may find themselves.
Leaders have the ability to help sellers develop knowledge and expertise. Training sessions with product marketing and sales enablement teams can teach sellers to talk confidently about product value propositions and ensure they leverage the full extent of the sales materials available.
Research has found that thought leadership plays an important role in shifting decision-makers' mindsets toward a company’s products. In another study looking further down the funnel, Gartner concluded that “providing customers with information specifically designed to help them advance their purchase has the single biggest impact on driving deal quality.”
Sellers have the tools and the resources at their disposal to strengthen and advance deals. Upleveling their skill in understanding when and how to use it is an important counter to relying on leadership to carry deals over the line.
Plan for exceptions
There will be deals where no number of guardrails will suffice. Sellers will have done their best, but more is needed to save a customer relationship or win an opportunity.
The first step in planning strategically for exceptions is for sellers to create Opportunity Plans (an addendum to Account Plans that cover the overall strategy for an account) that outline why a sales leader should be brought in. This might be when a specific obstacle is encountered late in the game or when there’s a chance to increase the scope of the deal.
Once the prescribed conditions are met, sellers can follow these five steps to increase the chances of a Closed-Won outcome:
1. Scheduling
Preparation is key to the success of a meeting with a buyer that involves an executive or senior leader. Sellers should collaborate with the individual (or an assistant) on their calendar, working around existing commitments to bring them up to speed on the opportunity and any roadblocks and secure any additional information they request.
Realistically, the buyer will drive the timeline, and all internal preparation steps will be responsive to the meeting in Step 5.
2. Internal preparation
Depending on how the team functions, this can occur as a meeting or asynchronously. Sellers are responsible for briefing the pre-sales team, if there is one on the opportunity, and requesting information or data points from other cross-functional team members like Product or Marketing.
At the end of this step, the seller should have a list of attendees, a draft agenda, and the proposed outcomes for the meeting.
3. Briefing
Scheduling an internal briefing to align internally will dramatically improve the overall buyer experience—defined as how a potential buyer feels after interacting with a brand. This time should be used to provide context on the deal, answer questions, cover roles and responsibilities, and agree on objectives.
Sellers should also use this time to determine if their executive or senior leader has any relevant connections on LinkedIn with the buyer’s organization. This is a good opportunity to determine if any relationships can be leveraged before, during, or after the meeting with the customer or buyer.
Finally, two important roles should be designated in the briefing: Timekeeper and Objectives Monitor. This ensures everyone understands who will intervene (and how) if the meeting goes off-track.
4. Pre-meeting communication
We recommend that sellers reach out to the customer or buyer four business days before the meeting to confirm it and to share a pre-read (agreed upon in step 2) that provides context, proof points, technical documentation, or any other details that’ll be addressed. This gives the buyer a chance to think through questions ahead of time.
Technology elevates this step in the process. Using functionality like SmartLinks in LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Highspot, sellers can see if and when the recipient(s) open the pre-read materials, what is read, when, and for how long, and whether or not the pre-read is shared with colleagues who might be in the buying committee. This is valuable intelligence as sellers continue to work through their Opportunity Plan.
Sellers can take this a step further by sending a short personalized video 2-3 days before the meeting to share their excitement and goals for the conversation and provide background on the executive or senior leader who will be joining and why. This can help foster a positive initial impression and shows the company’s commitment to bringing senior-level resources to the partnership.
5. The meeting
By following this step-by-step approach, the team should be a well-oiled machine for the meeting with the buyer. Everyone will know the meeting’s objectives—and be able to achieve them faster with the help of the Timekeeper and Objectives Monitor.
Enable sellers to elevate the buyer’s experience
In the majority of cases, the best way to enable sellers to run more effective calls is for leaders to step out of them. This is particularly true in an age where recording and analysis technology means that leaders can review calls and coach reps without having to attend meetings.
Empowering sellers to take ownership allows them to develop their strategic selling skills and run more of the sales cycle independently. Those up to the challenge will relish this opportunity for career development.
Revenue Forward
Numentum is a B2B enterprise sales training company that integrates social selling into existing sales processes to engage today’s hyper-informed buyers. Our programmatic approach maximizes the utility of brand, marketing assets, and sales technology to generate predictable pipeline and revenue. We partner with forward-thinking brands to bring focus, routine, and accountability to their sales teams. Our customers include SAP, Workday, Vodafone Business, Verizon Business, Broadcom, and RELX.
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