Sales and Deal Velocity Plays
There are more than three dozen plays in a fully developed Revenue Acceleration Playbook. Every single play you put in place will have a positive impact on your revenue outcomes.
The best Sales and Deal Velocity Playbooks focus not on your product, but on continually confirming and refining buyer success. Managing deals around buyer- defined value can lead to 35%-40% gains in sales-win rates.
Three-Part Meetings
The best sales meetings have three parts. They start with discovery, further discovery, or confirmation on a buyer’s goal. The second part of the meeting maps a product presentation to specific buyer goals. The third part or “the last 10 minutes” is used to confirm where they see the most value and next actions.
Agenda Setting & 60-Second Commercial
The best early calls start with a goal-oriented agenda and a 60-second commercial. Your agenda should focus on the goal of exploring fit. The 60-second commercial allows the buyer to self-qualify by responding to a menu of goals and challenges your company helps solve.
Value Discovery Strategy
Most buyer discovery is shallow discovery. It never gets beyond high-level questions on goals and priorities. Value discovery, on the other hand, uses several levels of questions to help you and your buyer identify exactly what they care about most and what will motivate them to purchase.
Buyer Success Statement
Envisioning a more successful future different than the current state brings emotional energy into a sales conversation. The buyer success statement should be captured, refined, and reiterated throughout the sales process. It avoids the pull back to product pitching.
Decision Roadmap
Use the “last 10 minutes” of each sales conversation to focus on intentionality – letting the buyer confirm where they see value in your partnership. Don’t focus on closing before direct confirmation on fit. Once you confirm fit, then focus on aligning questions on decision-making, funding, timeline, and competition.
Authentic Follow Up Email
The pull back to product pitching is strong throughout the sales process. To stay focused on an authentic buyer journey, change your follow-up emails. Differentiate your sales process by starting each follow-up email recapping the buyer’s success statement and ending with the buyer’s next committed actions.
Sales Stage and Exit Criteria
Sellers often focus on their own actions during the sales process, but the strongest deal qualifiers are the actions we ask buyers to take to confirm value and build buying readiness. The best sales processes identify two or three buyer actions for each sales stage that act as exit criteria and propel deal progression to the next stage.
Authentic Sales Deck
Sales presentations can go one way or another. Your team’s sales deck can reinforce product pitching or they can reinforce an authentic buyer journey. An authentic sales presentation starts by recapping buyer value, tailors product discussions and success stories to buyer goals, and ends with an explicit discussion of the path to partnership.