Creating a Sales Call Plan: Frameworks, Templates, and a Real-World Example

Proper planning prevents poor performance. Say that 10 times fast.

In this episode, John and Mark break down the elements of an effective sales call plan, sharing insights from real-world experiences and highlighting the importance in driving better business outcomes. They walk through the crucial elements that make up an effective call plan and emphasize the significance of preparation, especially for those new to sales conversations. In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• The components of a sales call plan and why planning prevents poor performance.
• How setting a clear objective for the call enhances focus and direction.
• The role of thorough research in understanding client needs and anticipating questions.
• Why a concise agenda keeps the conversation aligned and productive.
• The art of telling a compelling client success story

Read the blog post from Mark and download the Sales Call Planning template: https://www.wainwrightinsight.com/creating-a-sales-call-plan/

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

Transcript

John Tyreman: 0:19

Welcome business developers to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. As always, I'm joined by my trusty cohost, Mark Wainwright.

Mark Wainwright: 0:27

Trustee, as always, John, I am here and truth be told. People in the audience out there, John's the trustee one, you know, he is on time, dialed in, prepared. And, it is worth mentioning, you know, he's not an overtly self promotional person, but if you didn't know it, John does this as his biz, right? He does these podcasts things. So, if you or your organization is lacking a fantastic podcast. Look no further. So there you go. There's your, there's your promotion for you, John.

John Tyreman: 1:00

Thank you, Mark. Thank you for those kind words. It's a,

Mark Wainwright: 1:03

You are

John Tyreman: 1:03

I wasn't expecting that. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 1:06

neither was I, so there you go. It just kind of came to me.

John Tyreman: 1:08

it's fun, honestly, I love, audio rigging up mics and I've been doing it since I was a kid. So it's, it's, it's fun. Well today, we're going to break down what you refer to as a sales call plan. And I think this is, this is going to be a fun one because, you know, you wrote a blog post and, uh, I love the title. That call with your new prospect, you should wing it.

Mark Wainwright: 1:32

yeah, yeah. There's

John Tyreman: 1:34

And I heard that right in your voice and your sarcastic voice. And I loved it.

Mark Wainwright: 1:39

yeah, sarcasm doesn't really come over really well and sort of a professional blog post on your website, tried to kind of underscore that I was being sarcastic, but, all too often, that's the case, you know, and this episode today, like you said, is, All about something that I call a call plan and, very few people actually use them, or even think to use something like this. And these are all about, preparing for those important high stakes conversations that we often have in the world of selling your services.

John Tyreman: 2:20

Failing to plan is planning to fail. And so this blog post, uh, the links are in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, go to your device and check it out and give it a read. we're going to kind of break down why it's important to plan for these sales calls. You're going to outline like what's included in this sales call plan. Also in that blog post, you have a template for a sales call plan. So if people want an actionable thing that they can use and fill out right away., shoot, mark, and email, check out the blog posts to find that.

Mark Wainwright: 2:51

Yeah. hit me up for that. we will have links, et cetera there, but I encourage anyone who, wants a template. you know, we'll run through it. This isn't rocket science here, but, it's super important. And, for everyone that just I rolled again and said, oh, John and Mark are going to talk about. Templates and process planning and all that kind of stuff. Look, I got to tell you, here's the thing planning these approaches being more organized, being more prepared in the world of sales is super important for all of the people out there in the audience where sales isn't necessarily second nature. To you, right? Because all these bad things happen when we're unprepared or underprepared, for important sales conversations, you know, finding and winning new work, whatever else it is. So preparation gives you the comfort and confidence that you need to be. Successful, right? And there's no guarantees in any of this, but, I truly believe that the more comfortable, confident, i. e. prepared people are in sales conversations, the higher the probability of success. So, yeah, this is an important one.

John Tyreman: 4:01

I liken it to, you know, prepping for a gig, right? I'm a part time musician and I've been in, in many bands where it's like, ah, we don't need to practice. Let's just get up and jam. Don't get me wrong. I love jam bands and I love jamming, my house in college a drum kit and guitar amps in the living room. But as in someone in the audience, you can really tell when

Mark Wainwright: 4:24

Oh, yeah.

John Tyreman: 4:25

bands are just getting up there and winging it and then when they've practiced a bit, they know all the stops, they know all the different transitions and everything. And so may, as a musician, think that you're, you know, playing really, really well. But the audience knows,

Mark Wainwright: 4:38

Yeah. so true. I enjoy. live music a lot, and it just never ceases to amaze me that, you show up in the venue and you enjoy listening to music and everything else. and, you know, it's live music and, you know, there's going to be some flubs here and there, but man, these people are professionals and they nail it every time. Constantly just, joyfully amazed at professional, musicians ability to just deliver. It's so cool. I love it. And it's because they practice the hell out of it.

John Tyreman: 5:07

and your buyers may not overtly understand and appreciate that in the moment when they're having these conversations with you as a seller, but that feeling that they walk away with that clarity of, you know, what are next steps, is this a good fit? do they understand me, them walking away is. Just like you walking away from that live venue saying, wow, that was a really good performance.

Mark Wainwright: 5:31

Yeah, these, sales call plans, are just these really great little tools. And I will tell you, client after client individual after individual that I work with find a ton of value in these just because they move from a place of confusion, ambiguity, Lack of clarity to like, Oh. Oh, this all makes sense now.

John Tyreman: 5:56

So we, touched on the importance of planning for these sales calls, right? it gives you confidence. It gives you clarity and that's translated to the buyer. It gives the buyer clarity. so that's why it's important. And especially in professional services where many folks that are in a sales. Situation they probably didn't, intend to be there when they started their career, right? It's not like you got into architecture to be a an architecture sales, you know business developer, some folks find themselves in that position but again, that's why it's important to plan for these things because, it's a critical part of your role within the organization. So mark What is a sales call plan? Can you lay it out for me? What are the different bits and pieces of it?

Mark Wainwright: 6:38

sure. It's, prior to, one of these, important high stakes, sales conversations, and I'll do the caveat on that. Hold what I just said there is that I do in fact think that a larger percentage of these, interactions that people have are high stakes than they believe, meaning that, this is more useful and probably you need to do this more often than you actually think you do, right? Some people think, Oh, no, this isn't a high stakes. Conversation. This is just this initial sort of hello introduction, you know, with this new perspective client. Oh, no, I don't need to be prepared for this conversation. I'm, just going to send them the proposal by

John Tyreman: 7:16

Or this is a client that we've been working with for 10 years. I don't, I don't need to prep for it. Yeah. So I, point well taken.

Mark Wainwright: 7:24

right. So it's intentional deliberate, 20 or 30 minute exercise prior to these important calls, which, like we said, there's more of than you think, you can do it by yourself. Ideally, when you first start doing it, you should do it with a partner because, you know, four eyes, two sets of ears, two sets of eyes always better than one. So, to sit down and kind of run through this. This call plan and, I have a template. You can do it however you want. I've gotten to the point now where I don't need a template. I can just sit down, in front of my computer and just type up, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, move through all the steps in it, but to run through the steps for everyone. first and foremost, when you sit down and start creating your call plan, you want to articulate your objective for this conversation. what's the goal? What do you want to get out of this? What's the reason for this happening and we'll dig into the, the nitty gritty behind the objective because the objective in every sales conversation is not to close the deal. That's not it. You know, we have steps in the process and we have incremental objectives along the way. right. That's important to understand. Next, once you've, defined the why, you know, and the objective, what you're trying to achieve here is that, oh, by the way, you should be doing some research to support all of this, LinkedIn research to your prospective client, them as an individual, their organization, you know, whatever information you can find, there's an abundance of information available to prepare you for the organization. And this is not research necessarily like, Oh my gosh, we, you know, We share the same birthday, you know, whatever, that kind of stuff. this is business research, right? This is, Yeah. this is important stuff, right? We want to know, we want to know about them. We want to know the world they exist in. We want to know some, potential sort of situations they have found themselves in, et cetera. So we want to, do some research, not hours and hours. We want to do research. You want to always create an agenda for the conversation and agenda for the call. And this is not a 20 point agenda and it's not a one point agenda. it's a handful of things that you need to kind of write down. It's like, Oh, this is the natural flow of the conversation. You know, there's some hellos in the front, build a little rapport, you know, et cetera. And then we're going to kind of move through this kind of thing. The reason we set an agenda is that, all too often these conversations. That don't have an agenda, just wander, right? We don't get anywhere or they just take a hard left turn. So we want to have an agenda. And when I recommend organizations have an agenda, they should be a two part agenda. When you're creating an agenda, maybe it's something that here's my bullet point list of stuff I want to achieve. And then, okay, maybe here's what I'll share with the prospective client prior to our call. Maybe it's the exact same thing. But maybe they're a little bit different, you know, you're not going to tell them all the questions. You're going to ask them probably, but you know, you can have your agenda internally. Maybe you can share that. Maybe share a slightly edited version of that with your prospective client. Good to Let them know What you're expecting to happen in the conversation and, you know, when you do share an agenda with your prospective client, the person you're going to have this call with, it's always good to say, yeah, heck, you know, feel free to edit whatever you want to put on that agenda. So objective research. Agenda next part is questions, questions, right? And questions is way before and frankly, radically more important than the stuff I'm going to say. Right. Most people think, okay, I'm preparing for a call. What am I, what's the slide deck I'm going to show? What's the stuff I'm going to say? What are the 10 bullet points? No, we do questions first, right? And questions help us, show our level of interest and curiosity in them. Right. And they also let them do the talking.

John Tyreman: 10:59

and it depends, the questions that you ask will largely depend on what stage you are in your sales process. and I just want to call that out. And we talked about this on earlier episodes. If you're in a discovery phase, the questions that you're going to ask is going to be wildly different than if you were in the recommendation stage.

Mark Wainwright: 11:18

Yep, very true. Very true questions will change the nature of this conversation entirely. Your call plans will alter as they, as they go along. So, yeah, so questions to ask and hopefully that takes up the vast majority of the. Conversation, because your goal, typically in a sales conversation is to find out more about them. We're not here to convince, cajole, whatever, you know, that we're the best out there and, that's not a sales conversation. Sales conversation is based in inquiry. So questions to ask next part of a, good call plan is to have a brief client success story to share. And I usually say, we want to kind of keep that in your back pocket. Because that's not the thing you want to lead with if the conversation finds itself to a point where, they turn to you and they say, wow, Mark, I've done the, vast majority of the talking here in the conversation, which you're saying, great. That was the plan, you know, they say, why don't you tell me a little bit about you and then you say. Well, let me give you an example or heck even better yet. John, let me tell you a story, right? Right. That's a little power here of these, these client success stories is like, rather than whipping out the slide deck and running through the 20 different bullet points and the resumes and the experience and all that other stuff, you're able to tell them a really quick 60 second client success story. You know, two minutes client success story, and then they get it. They're like, Oh, great story. Very memorable. Thanks for telling me that good after that next steps, right? setting next steps is super critical. We want to create this daisy chain of events, in our sales conversations. One leads to another leads to another, when we break that chain by not setting next steps, we head into what I call the fog. You know, we head into a world of lack of clarity, ambiguity, lack of direction. Don't know who's leading, what do we do next? What's our next decision points? You know, all that sort of stuff. So next steps help us navigate

John Tyreman: 13:19

Stay out of the fog.

Mark Wainwright: 13:20

Yeah. Yeah. So set, set next steps. and then there's other detaily things that you can include in it. obviously who's the client, who are the attendees, that sort of stuff. So that's the template and that's kind of, that's some of the content that's incorporated into that template there, but yeah, real quick, again, number one, objective number two, important research and background number three, the agenda for the conversation, maybe part of what you'll share with them, who knows how that plays out, but I think sharing some sort of an agenda ahead of time is good. Number four questions to ask most important part. I think number five, that client success story to have in your back pocket. Okay. Number six, did I get that right?

John Tyreman: 13:59

Desired next steps.

Mark Wainwright: 14:00

Does our next steps good. I lost track of my counting there. Good.

John Tyreman: 14:03

I

Mark Wainwright: 14:03

So they're

John Tyreman: 14:04

had my fingers

Mark Wainwright: 14:05

Yeah. 1, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, good. There you go at six. And I just, like I said, I can just do that, you know, cause I've been doing it for so long, it's, I just walk, right through it and I can put together a reasonably well sorted call plan, you know, in 10 minutes, some people take a little bit longer. this again, it's one of those things where you practice, and you get better at it.

John Tyreman: 14:26

Yeah, well, let's give our listeners a real example. So the other day when you, talked about this and you talked, and this was a great topic for, a podcast episode. At the time I was reflecting on a sales call that I had, with a current client. And I remember just fumbling a little bit. And when you, when you brought this up as a topic, I was like, okay, well, you know what, this is a great opportunity. I've got a sales call with a different client coming up in a few weeks. let me put together a sales call plan and Mark rip it to shreds. Uh, hopefully you,, you don't, hopefully it's,, you know, I've been, we've been doing this podcast and I've been subscribing to your, you know, your, your thoughts and insights. And hopefully I'm not too far off.

Mark Wainwright: 15:07

No, this is, this is so good. And, the steps of the call plan that I think we're walking through with you is going to be totally fun. The steps exist because, you kind of reverse engineer it. The steps have this kind of painful logic to them that, if you remember the last terrible sales conversation, sales call, you had, and again, maybe I should, maybe this is a good point to clarify. I use the word call. This could be a zoom conversation. It could be a live conversation. It could be any thing at all. It doesn't have to be, quote a specific sort of literal call. It can be anything. meeting conversations, zoom call, like we said,

John Tyreman: 15:42

but it should be synchronous.

Mark Wainwright: 15:43

Yeah, it should be synchronous. Absolutely. this is all synchronous, right? Yeah, we're live. So the reverse engineering part of this whole thing is that number one, didn't have an objective. it wasn't really clear about what I wanted to get out of this thing. Other than a contract, right? Bad, right. Number two, didn't do my background research. Wasn't prepared. Number three, had no agenda. Things went off the rails quickly, right? Number four, didn't have any questions to ask. So I just whipped out the deck and talk for most of the time, you know, didn't really share a client success story per se. So it really wasn't memorable at all. And then didn't set any next steps. Right. That's there you go. I just painted the picture of a disastrous, right?

John Tyreman: 16:25

yeah, that's the worst you could

Mark Wainwright: 16:26

terrible. And that happens most of the time, right? Most of the people are saying, Oh my God, that happens. Yes. I just had one the other day where we didn't have an agenda and there wasn't a background research and we didn't know what we're doing. And we talk all the time. We showed the deck and then we didn't set any next steps. And it's just like, yeah, like that happens all the time. Right. So hopefully the big aha moment is like just the, Oh, a little bit of planning makes a radical difference in the outcomes. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 16:52

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 17:06

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 17:16

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 17:22

and now back to the show. okay, you have an example.

John Tyreman: 17:27

Yeah. So I'll, I'll set the stage a little bit. so I have a sales call coming up with a client She's an existing client, and there's an opportunity to expand my current service offering with her. She's a solo consultant. She offers community services and fractional COO services, and so what I did, Mark is I, just went bullet by bullet with each one of these steps. And I thought what we could do is, well, let's label the bullet and then I'll give you kind of like my bullet points. And then I would love to get your reaction.

Mark Wainwright: 17:57

Yeah. Good. And I have, read through what you have put together here and let's, go for it.

John Tyreman: 18:02

Awesome. All right. So my objective for this conversation. So I currently offer guest podcasting services for her. So I help her pitch her to other podcasts to get her on as a guest. And recently I sent a client feedback survey. She gave me some good scores and she expressed interest in wanting to learn more about how I could support her. She's friends with another client that I have, and we were on a synchronous call together and she brought up that she wanted to launch a podcast. So there's, interest in launching a podcast. She expressed interest in learning more about my services. So my objective for this conversation is to just better understand her goals and objectives. For marketing her business that's my objective for this call.

Mark Wainwright: 18:45

Yeah. This sounds to me like a discovery conversation where you've already had to get to know you qualification conversation, right? Because you already have some type of a relationship, but you're not at the proposal conversation, right? The proposal conversation is where you're presenting recommendations with associated options and pricing. Right. Right. Not there. So we are discovery and you've nailed it perfectly there. The goal of any discovery conversation is to gain a deeper understanding. Well done.

John Tyreman: 19:10

All right. So got the objective there. All right. So the next step, important research and background information. She just launched a website a few months ago. For her firm, she's building a collective of other fractional executives. And so my. Assumption is that just based on these conversations that I have these,, primary research, you could call it that, is that she intends to grow in that direction where she's packaging up service offerings for this group of, a new kind of target client other than her, a different type of target client that she's historically been working with.

Mark Wainwright: 19:45

Got it. Got it. Good. Okay. Good. Objective check. Plus important research

John Tyreman: 19:51

Check minus,

Mark Wainwright: 19:51

check minus, but nevertheless, nevertheless, we're, we're, we're, we're getting there. Okay. Next one

John Tyreman: 19:57

All right. So the, the agenda for the call, I've got four bullet points here, small talk and an icebreaker. So let's just, not dive too fast into. The call,, second one recap of why we're having this conversation in the first place.

Mark Wainwright: 20:09

Good,

John Tyreman: 20:10

And then the third one, I want to discover her marketing goals and objectives. So that's where the questions will come in. And then lastly, is to set another synchronous call for further discovery or to review the recommendations that I put together as a result of this call.

Mark Wainwright: 20:24

good, good. I think that's great. And this, speaks to exactly what I was saying before is that you have a four point agenda right here. You're probably not going to share all four points with her prior to your call. Like you're going to leave the first one off. That's a small talk icebreaker, right? You're going to leave that out, right? But what you are going to share in an agenda is, maybe it's okay. And number one, I want to be clear with you, my understanding of why we're meeting, because you mentioned da, da, da, da, da, step two is I really want to understand more about you, your needs, that sort of stuff. You're setting the stage for the conversation, right? if your bullet point is, I want to understand, I want to dig deep. You are setting the stage for questions. Right? You're not saying, Ooh, great. Now I,, this is where I show you all the stuff, Right. You're, you're setting the stage is like, and I'm going to have questions. and then the last one is that, yeah, and setting a next step. I think it's totally legitimate in your pre conversation agenda that you send off to your, prospective client and the person at the other end of the call to say, and at the end, we're going to set a next step. anything you do ahead of time just sets the stage. Just helps them be prepared for that. Like, Oh, okay. The person you're meeting with is thinking, okay, we're reaching the end of the call. John's agenda said, we're going to set next steps. Let's go.

John Tyreman: 21:45

Let's make sure that we leave time for that

Mark Wainwright: 21:47

Yeah, totally. Oh, these are

John Tyreman: 21:48

because we don't want to end up in the fog. So after the agenda you have, okay, so what are, questions to ask during this conversation?

Mark Wainwright: 21:54

the good ones. Yeah.

John Tyreman: 21:55

Yeah, actually I really love writing good questions. so she's bought into the idea of using video. And a video podcast, just based on my work with her previously and some of the things that she's been doing to market her business. So I need to understand how to best position the show, the podcast that would have a maximum amount of impact on her business, because that's the biggest lever in podcasting and professional services is how you position the show. So the questions that I have, and I've got four of them, number one, what new offers are you bringing to market this year? And so that'll help me understand kind of where her head is at in terms of how she plans to grow in the direction of this new target audience. question number two, what are some common challenges shared by your target market? And so this is, just trying to understand, what are the pain points, what are the trigger moments? What are, the common challenges that they face that she can or cannot address?

Mark Wainwright: 22:52

Things that could be content for the podcast itself.

John Tyreman: 22:55

Could be content for the podcast. I'm more interested in what are those trigger moments and how does that lead to revenue? Because if she can figure out, how to talk in position, her, her services, position, her show position, the value that she creates with the podcast, the content around those trigger moments, and that'll better position the show for it to have an impact on revenue generation. and then how much time per week or per month are you willing to invest towards the podcast? Because, you know, there's two resources that podcasters can invest. It's time and money. If you don't have enough time, then you'll probably have to, you know, balance that equation out., and then lastly, how long do you envision these conversations? 30 minutes, 45, 60 minutes plus, because that has a direct impact on my operating expenses.

Mark Wainwright: 23:44

good, good. Got it. Got it. So the, 4 questions you asked there, the last 2 are what I consider more detailed questions about doing the work, you know, you're getting into the weeds a little bit. You're starting to talk about the work to be done. So that could roll into your scope a little bit. Some of the other questions that I like to ask, probably earlier on in the conversation, some of the ones that really set the stage. The situational and need questions. I like to ask questions, about stuff like why do you think a podcast or a video podcast is a great solution for your business? and that tees off the five whys, you know, that's the, yeah, why? Yeah, but why? Yeah, but why? Right. So my hope in a discovery conversation is to absolutely clarify for myself and for the person that's on the call with me, why this is so important and, to the degree at which it's important. Is it a nice to have or is it a have to have right? You can get there through a series of good, straightforward, curious questions. why do you want to do this? You know, I mean, really you want to almost be trying to talk someone out of it. In a discovery conversation. One of the first big hurdles you need to get over is that, is this nice to have, is this a maybe, or is this a got to have this, right? This is the key. To our business, why do you need to find this out? Because fast forward, when you're presenting options and pricing to them, they are reviewing that with the sort of, understanding that this is critical, right? If this is critical. We walked through our discovery conversation and we both got to the understanding that this thing is really important to the success of the business. This is the key. Then that doesn't say that you can charge endless amounts of money, but it does. It does lessen the pressure. The downward pressure on price and scope and everything else, right? It's just, if you're able to say this is a half to have and not a nice to have, and your prospective client is nodding their heads, then you're able to price openly, you know, and not, be totally concerned about, Oh, she's never going to say yes to this big number that I'm going to put in for these big numbers that I'm going to put in front of her. You're going to say, she said, it's mission critical.

John Tyreman: 26:09

Yeah, because there's, there's clarity on the expectation of,

Mark Wainwright: 26:13

Yeah, everybody's clear. Everybody knows the stakes are sitting there right out in front. Everybody's like, this is the thing that's super important. Okay, let's go. All right. This is, this is big stuff. So that's, those are fantastic questions to weave into. I would say the earlier part of the discovery conversation is to really make sure that this is not a nice to have it to have to have, and then you can get into the detail stuff of it, but that's just sets the, that just sets the foundation.

John Tyreman: 26:39

thank you for that feedback. That's great

Mark Wainwright: 26:40

Good. Got it. Good discovery. And then if you set 60 minutes for the conversation, John, we're already 45 minutes into 50, 50 minutes into it, because you dug into the why, the person on the call is just thinking, Oh yeah, this is really important. I understand how big of a deal this is. Now you talked about some detaily things, whatever else, and you're already three quarters away through the call and now there's not a whole lot of time left. And she turns to you and say, John, I've done all the talking here. Can you just share a little bit about it? And you say,

John Tyreman: 27:13

Well, let me tell you a story.

Mark Wainwright: 27:16

Nailed it.

John Tyreman: 27:17

So I've got this client, driving transactions and Ken is the business owner, he and his partner offer financial analysis, right? And they, he offers strategic consulting services, M& A advisory services for specifically for transportation companies. And Ken is he, gosh, he's just flying around the country. He's speaking at these different speaking engagements where it's pay to play. And he wants to leverage his speaking skill on digital mediums, just so that he can, he doesn't have to fly all over the country so that he can sit in his office and he can present his research. He can talk. and so we teamed up with a player in this space, a friend of his that offers complimentary. Non competitive services. This guy, James offers driver training services, because they, they both focus on the chauffeur transportation space and they launched the ground transportation podcast and it, features interviews with owners and operators in that space, and, What we saw is that within the first three months, we hit a thousand audio downloads and the YouTube channel had its first a hundred subscribers within that first three months, before the podcast, Ken would get three or four inquiries a month. And since the podcast launched that number is more like three or four per week. He's, he's in talks actually with one of the biggest players in the space. So that's just one example of, one of the shows in my

Mark Wainwright: 28:43

Perfect. Perfect. Well done. That was check plus plus. Right. so situation, the need, the challenge that arose, the work you did together to solve it and you know, the results you absolutely made sure you hit on the results. Results are super important. And frankly, the most important part of that story, cause that's really the first time I've kind of heard you say that most important part is the results. And so often we leave it off. We'll leave the results at the most important part is you want, who's the person you have this call with let's say it's Julie

John Tyreman: 29:10

Let's say it's Julie.

Mark Wainwright: 29:11

that's Julie, whoever, yeah, with Julie, yeah, you want Julie to remember results, right? That is the most important thing about your story is the results because Julie's now going to take those results and sort of overlay them on, the proposal and everything else. And you're going to come to her and she's like, look, if I can just get those results. That that story had that transportation guy, if I can get those results, you know, John, this is a, win. It's worth every penny and more. Right. So that's super critical. Great timing. You did it probably 2 minutes or less,

John Tyreman: 29:45

I need to tighten it up a little bit

Mark Wainwright: 29:46

super, super easy. easy to say. So that happens in the very end of the conversation, you know, Julie's got this, these visions of, you know, fantastic outcomes in her head. So cool. and then you're teed up and she's like, Oh, okay. Now comes the next steps part. Now comes the next steps.

John Tyreman: 30:04

yet. So the desired next steps for after the call would be to schedule another synchronous conversation. So that would be like, okay, Julie, let's schedule a call in two weeks. And. We'll have another conversation and we'll dig into some of the options and recommendations.

Mark Wainwright: 30:21

Yeah. So I'll play devil's advocate here. Right. Just because

John Tyreman: 30:24

It could be another

Mark Wainwright: 30:25

occurs to most people right after this call is like, they say, Oh, this is great. John, send me a proposal. Right. wouldn't you say that, but you say. Time out.

John Tyreman: 30:33

Yeah. So where I would go with that is let's schedule another call in a couple of weeks, I'll put together a few options for us to go over on that call. And I would love to get your feedback on the direction that we intend to go.

Mark Wainwright: 30:50

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing I would add to that would be, Julie, this has been a great conversation. Let's get, a call scheduled right on the calendar so we can review some options and recommendations and everything else. But in the interim, I'm going to follow up with you right after this call and just regurgitate, reflect back to you, everything we talked about, right? So Julie is going to get this fantastic message drop into her inbox, which is. a retelling of this conversation and including the little, oh, and I remember I told you about the transportation guy. I did the thing and got the, 3 to 4 leads kind of those results sort of thing. And you indicated those are the types of results you're looking for. Fantastic. So. In the interim between this call and your next one, this great email drops in, that's a summary of everything you talked about, you're understanding everything else and that understanding then forms the foundation of the proposal, right, Julie, here's what I understand to be the case situation need all that other stuff. If this, in fact, is right, you can edit, you can add to it. Please do, in fact, respond to this thing. And, you know. Comments in red, you know, just go do that. then that becomes the understanding. And that's the very first thing you do in that last proposal recommendations conversation. You're just like, all right, Julie, this is great. I'll do a quick rehash before we get into the recommendations. I just want to make sure that we are totally aligned. Here's my understanding, blah, blah, blah. You say that Julie's nodding. She's like, Oh, this is so great. Yes. He understands. He understands. And then the proposals and recommendations come and it's good, better, best time eating low, whatever else it is, you know, all with varying, not just work, but results. Right. So there you go. Fantastic. You, you, you teed it up perfectly.

John Tyreman: 32:31

Well, Mark, this has been really fun. and it's been helpful too. There's, there's a few areas that, you know, going over that case, the client success story, I can tighten that up. I need to do better in terms of researching for this specific call. The follow up, I liked how you laid that out and I'm going to, I'm going to swipe that language you used.

Mark Wainwright: 32:49

swipe it,

John Tyreman: 32:50

Yeah, and then also just the, the work in those options, but also the anticipated results. That's something that I hadn't really kind of like put together, but I'm definitely going to try to apply that to this opportunity.

Mark Wainwright: 33:01

Yeah. The, the results are so, so critical because otherwise, you know, we're just looking at, we're just talking about some level of effort and some scope and you know, that that's boring. That's bad stuff to talk about. Your client really wants to talk about results. So if you stay focused on talking about results, then the detailey stuff of the scope and everything just. Diminishes in importance. You know, now you're talking about, Oh, business results. Great. Let's talk about that. And, hopefully we get Julie to the point. She's like, look, John, it's not really important what it costs or what's involved or whatever else, if we can get those results. that's everything, right? Because the results will mean many, many multiples of whatever price you put in front of Julie, right? If it's Julie, I'm going to charge you, you know, 50, 000 or whatever else. Julie's thinking, Oh, this is a million dollars worth of potential upside. if we do this over the next two, two years or whatever else, that's a million dollars on the plus. And if I pay John 50 grand, that's pennies. You know, so don't charge 50 charge 75.

John Tyreman: 34:12

Wise words. Uh, well, Mark, this has been fantastic. Uh, hopefully our listeners found some value out of, the call plan, the sales call plan that you outlined, they can check out your blog post, it's linked in the show notes and if they want that template, there's a call to action to send you an email, it has your email address right in there. so get that template from Mark, everybody, and we'll catch you next time

Mark Wainwright: 34:36

Yeah. Great conversation, John. Until next time.

John Tyreman: 34:40

until next time.