Recalibrate Decision Gates During Every Call

Every complex sale involves multiple stakeholders and multiple decision gates before a company authorizes a sizable purchase. In addition, the business owner or even procurement may not be aware of new steps in the authorization process. Therefore, it is essential to take time at the beginning of each meeting to review the project checklist and ask what has changed since we last spoke. This open-ended question will yield valuable insight into the timing of a decision and help you understand which other teams, committees, or processes are required to move forward with a purchase. In addition, it is helpful to demonstrate the due diligence your business sponsor has taken. As you complete each gate, it is beneficial to line through the step showing progress toward contract signature. As you near the end of the project checklist, this visual will give your prospect comfort that all the I’s have been dotted and T’s crossed. This is critical to give your business sponsor the confidence to push internal teams to move forward with approvals. Next, as part of the standard meeting agenda, it is essential to take 10 minutes at the end of each meeting to review calendars and block time. Getting this done on the phone, when both parties can look at their calendars, will save you hours of back-and-forth finding a time. Finally, there are certain gates in every sales cycle that involve extended teams and invite more risk. Often, we are not included in discussions to obtain financial approval, IT implementation estimates, IT Security or Data Privacy approval, or legal authorization to negotiate T&C’s on the supplier's agreement. Waiting to address issues that come from these meetings can be disastrous and put you in a defensive position. A better approach might be to proactively discuss each of these gates with your business sponsor before that meeting. The goal is to prepare your coach for what probably won’t happen, but would you mind if I share some context just in case? We will dive deeper into this topic, which I call defusing the bomb before it goes off.