How to structure your first sales calls to keep deals moving forward
Solve their problems. Qualify demand and frame value through discovery to move your buyer from "interest" to "desire".
“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.
*In Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin uses “decision”, instead of “desire” but principles are the same
How do I move someone from interest to desire?
A common misconception in sales is that people only buy from people who they like.
This isn’t true.
It is true that people don’t buy from people who they don’t like, but the underlying truth in sales is that people buy from people who solve their problems.
To move someone from interest to desire, you need to understand their problem and show that you can solve it. Ideally, you want to quantify the business impact of your solution to a decision maker’s big problem.
You’ll know you’ve reached the desire stage when you can ask these three questions and get the following answers:
Do you want to buy this?
Yes
When do you want to buy this?
(they tell you when)
How do you buy this?
(they tell you their internal steps needed to buy your product)
The way to get here will look different based on your product and who you sell to, but here’s how I would think about structuring the buyer journey.
How to structure your first calls
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.
What does proper qualification and discovery look like?
Qualification ensures you’re spending time with prospects who could actually turn into delighted customers.
You should identify company-level criteria that determines if your product can actually turn them into a delighted customer. This may mean criteria on company size, number of potential users, geographic location etc.
Ideally you’d ask qualification questions prior to meeting with a prospect, but sometimes if it’s unclear you may need to wait until the call to find out these items. If I’m engaging with a prospect over email and they want to set up a call, I may ask something like:
“Hey {name},
Just to make sure we’re a good fit to work together and a call isn’t a waste of your time, we can only work with companies that meet the following criteria:
(Qualification criteria 1)
(Qualification criteria 2)
(Qualification criteria 3)
Can you confirm you meet these criteria?”
When you’re having your very first calls with prospects as a founder, it’s tempting to ignore this step because you realize how hard it is to generate demand and every lead seems so valuable. You may even be tempted to “fit a square through a circular hole” if prospects are on the periphery of your ICP because pressure from your product team and investors are making you feel desperate to get your first customers.
In these situations with prospects on the periphery of your ICP, I’d recommend focusing on long term goals over short term wins. Really ask yourself if a year from now you’d be glad that you spent time trying to make them a delighted customer.
Discovery
You’d ideally like to know everything about your prospect’s business, but you also want to make the buying experience as painless as possible. If you have a simple product and your prospect is ready to buy, they don’t want to sit through an extensive discovery and qualification process where they’re bombarded with questions.
The art of selling is about getting your prospect to see the value they could achieve through your product or service. “Value” could be a number of different things - dollars saved, extra revenue, time saved, lowered risk, personal prestige, etc. Discovery is how you uncover what’s important to your decision maker so you can articulate how you add value or show this through a product demonstration.
There are a number of great resources on how to run discovery and qualification. If these are new to you, consider looking at MEDDPICC or SPIN selling. Regardless of the process you use, you’ll want to understand the prospect’s current situation, why this is a problem, and the benefits they see of changing to your solution.
Discovery and qualification shouldn’t be viewed as a one-time, static, check-the-box exercise. If you have a complex enterprise product, it will take several meetings with different personas before you’ve uncovered every MEDDPICC element, so don’t expect to get everything out of one meeting. In reality, you’re constantly doing discovery on every meeting with a prospect to de-risk a deal, even if you’ve met several times.
Only once you understand these items should you present your solution and price. You need to continue driving the deal forward every meeting until you reach this point.
Final thoughts
In terms of advantageous information asymmetry, you hold two pieces of power over your prospective buyers when you begin a deal: (1) what your product does, and (2) price.
Once they have an impression of what these two items are, they can make a decision on if your solution is a good fit. Proper qualification and discovery gives you the information you need to paint the narrative of what value your product will do and what pain it eliminates.
To continue driving the deal forward, focus on qualification and discovery to move the buyer through the AIDA journey.