Breaking BizDev

8 Elements of Sales Choreography: Turn That 'Maybe' Into a 'Yes'

• John Tyreman & Mark Wainwright • Season 1 • Episode 67

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Sales doesn’t fail because of bad stages—it fails because of missing behaviors.

In this episode, John Tyreman and Mark Wainwright break down the eight elements of sales choreography that help professional services sellers build trust, maintain momentum, and guide opportunities forward without being pushy.

From curiosity and synchronous conversations to mirroring, permission, and guiding the process, this episode focuses on the actions you can control—regardless of where a buyer is in their journey.

If you’re tired of stalled deals and vague “maybes,” this conversation will change how you think about sales execution.

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Mark:

For many technical professionals, comfort zone is process. like frameworks, we like checklists, but very few things, including new business opportunities and the associated relationships. follow straight lines. They move because of these consistent underlying behaviors that make clients feel understood, supported, and confident as they move through this whole ambiguous sales process today. Let's talk about all of that.

John:

Alright everybody, welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I am John Tieman, and as always, I'm joined by my trusty co-host, mark Wainwright. Mark, how you doing? I.

Mark:

Good. And John, we're gonna talk a little bit about trust today. So yeah, I, appreciate that you have seen me be a trustworthy partner on this whole journey here.

John:

Hey, I've got your back. You've got mine. takes two to tango, right?

Mark:

The tango thing. There it is. There's, we're bringing it, we're bringing it all in. So, so today, John, we are going to revisit something that we touched on Heck, at least a year ago. and it was part of a three part series Create. Choreograph contract and this episode today focuses on some key elements of choreograph. If you wanna go back and listen to that full three part series. Great. The reason we are revisiting part of that series is over time I have recognize the importance of these elements. And there's, eight of'em.

John:

what I like about this mark is We're taking the process and we're, zooming down on the actual activities that people can use to put into place. So folks that are listening, that listening to this episode, they're gonna get a variety of tools that they can start to use to today. So Mark, let's, let's list out these eight elements and then let's dive into each one of them.

Mark:

Number one is curiosity and inquiry. Number two is low self-orientation. Number three is seeking and building understanding. Number four is focusing on results. Five is synchronous conversations. Six is mirroring and reflecting. Seven is seeking and gaining permission, and eight is that catchall. That includes guiding, confirming, advancing, and connecting. These are important behaviors and activities and actions that we need to incorporate into how we sell. To move these new business opportunities from maybes to, to contracts. And I wanna differentiate the sales stages or the sales conversations that we've referred to in the past, is that they are woven together. These elements, I think, support sales stages. But I used to spend a ton of time talking about sales stages, the various sales conversations as we move through the whole buying and selling process. I spent a ton of time on that with my clients. But I would tell you as time has gone on, I have spent more and more time on these elements because I really think if people can master these, then the sales stages from qualification, discovery, proposals, negotiation, all that is more efficient, more effective, all that sort of stuff.

John:

these are things that are within your control, right? The sales stages. They're more or less it's at the pace of the buyer. But these activities, these are within your control and I guess it's like those input metrics, whereas the moving through the processes is a result of these input metrics.

Mark:

Great. I, I hadn't even sort of looked at it from that, perspective, but I, I love it. I think that's spot on. So, so yeah, there is the eight John, and let's wander through.

John:

So let's start with curiosity and inquiry. So if we're thinking about those activities, those input metrics, what are some examples? I know we've talked about inquiry and curiosity in the past, but how does that manifest itself In the process, what does that look like?

Mark:

Right. So if we can use sort of those sales conversations as our touchstone here. Qualification, discovery proposal. Negotiation. And if we are constantly exhibiting this sense of curiosity and inquiry, we are using that throughout all of those steps. So obviously qualification is when we're curious and qualification, we are coming in open-minded into our early conversations. We are not making too many assumptions fit about whether a client is going to be, a good match, a good fit or not. We're being very curious. We're asking great questions. You know, and as we are moving, throughout the whole sales process, if we are maintaining this deep sense of, curiosity, we are gaining greater and greater information throughout the entire process rather than exhibiting our typical behaviors of we're the expert, we're the smartest person in the room, and we're just doing all the talking. So curiosity and inquiry lets us be the listener, lets us ask the great questions. It lets us infer our expertise throughout the whole sales process rather than being explicit about it. And. I've said that in the past, but to clarify what that is, is that we infer our expertise through the act of asking good questions and being curious rather than needing to show the slide deck and being explicit and showing our expertise, right? So Curiosity Inquiry helps us show up as the expert without, talking about ourselves the whole time.

John:

So Mark, let's talk about, uh, the next, part of this dance that happens in the sales process. Um, having a low self orientation. So what do you mean by that?

Mark:

So, this leverages some fantastic, wisdom from David Maister and Charlie Green who wrote the book, the Trusted Advisor, the Trusted Equation. I've talked about it a handful of times. It's out there. people can look it up but it's literally an equation. And it's, focused on trustworthiness, So trustworthiness equals credibility, reliability, and intimacy, and the numerator. And in the denominator, it's all divided by self-orientation. So just to translate that. Is we can show up more trustworthy. We can present ourselves as being more trustworthy. If we have, a high level of credibility, we can do what we say we're gonna do, reliability. We actually follow through and do it. And intimacy is professional intimacy. Do people feel to our clients, to our connections, collaborators, do they feel that they can be open and honest with us? Do they feel some sort of relational closeness to us? And in the denominator self orientation, do we stay focused on the client and others or do we yak and talk about ourselves? All the time. That self-orientation denominator can kill everything if that score's too high. So there you go. There's the, trust equation and hence the need to show up with a low sense of self-orientation throughout the entire process.

John:

So if we were going door to door selling office supplies, that would be one thing. I don't think that this trust equation would probably matter as much, but since we're talking about selling professional services.

Mark:

this is one of these elements that, in practical application is sometimes a little hard to understand, but. Screamingly obvious when it's pointed out. If you're involved in professional services, particularly on the sales and marketing end of things, you've been involved with or written a proposal, right to a prospective client. And one of the easiest exercises to do is just look through that proposal and understand whatever word by word, page by page, however you wanna navigate your document is just, have we completely lost track of the client in the document? Right? Go to page six. Who are we talking to? Who is the client? Where are they? Do they show up on page six? Do they show up on page 10? Has this whole thing been completely. Oriented around them, or have we created this basically glossy brochure of a proposal that is just about us and anyone that has been involved in professional services. we can sheepishly go back and look at one of these things we've created and like, oh my gosh, yeah. On there, it was on page two, we suddenly lost track of the client. We just went off on four paragraphs here talking about ourselves, and we could have replaced all of that. A really meaningful articulation of our understanding of the client and their needs, or, you know, just something that was hyper specific to the client where they read it and said, oh yeah, these guys are completely focused on up on us and not themselves.

John:

that's a great segue to the next bullet point that you've got here, mark, which is, seeking and building understanding, right? And so understanding the client, you're able to have a lower self orientation because you're more focused on how are they going to achieve their goals and objectives, and how are they gonna overcome their challenges? So let's talk about different ways that, doer sellers, people that are in a business development seat can seek and build understanding with their prospects.

Mark:

So the, the one that's top of mind, I think for a lot of technical professionals is sure. We, work to understand the scope, schedule, budget stuff and the technical aspects of the work, or, everything that we need to, respond, create a proposal, recommendations, whatever else. So that's frankly the easy stuff. The hard part is really. Going further to seek and then develop an understanding of the client, their people, their organizational needs, their goals, their visions of the future. This is typically just one puzzle piece in a much larger picture of some future state of success. What is. that look like? So we can endlessly seek and build understanding. and again, the screamingly obvious example, is when we are writing, scopes of work or when we're writing proposals or whatever else, we all of a sudden find that our responses to our clients or prospective clients is all based on. Guesswork. It's based on assumption and it's not really based on, I heard you say this,, thing was important or these three things were important and here's how we're gonna respond to those.

John:

eventually we under, understand what our prospect is trying to achieve. We understand what results they're trying to go out and get. And so that's the next bullet that you have here is maintaining a focus on results.

Mark:

this number four is focusing on results. Like you said, it's, it's understanding the bigger picture and the bigger story around what we're doing together and everyone aligning, around or frankly towards that. So focusing on results. Which in complex professional services is sometimes pretty far away'cause there's a lot going on. And these projects, can be a long duration. Focusing on results keeps our eyes focused on the horizon and prevents them from wandering down to the desk in front of us, which is the weeds, right? And when we are in the weeds, we can lose track of the big results. And then start making day to day decisions based on the immediacy of things rather than this long term we're in this together, trying to achieve these big goals, and if we're making even incremental, wrong decisions, every decision we make throughout the whole process is either leading us, in the right direction. Towards these, this big picture or kind of away from it. You've seen the horror movies, John. I mean that's where the problems come, you know, when you're wandering through the weeds, people are walking along the nice road and they're like, oh no, let's cut across the field. And you're like, dude, do not cut across the field. Do not walk through the cornfield don't do that. So yeah, just stay on the big road. Keep going straight. There you go. That was a funny analogy.

John:

There you go. Yeah, that was a good one.

Mark Wainwright:

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman:

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:

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

John Tyreman:

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

Mark Wainwright:

and now back to the show.

John:

So, the next bullet point you have here is synchronous conversations. And I know that we've talked about this in the past and the importance of synchronous conversations. it seems like people these days are very used to email exchanges and some even like sending videos back and forth, but why is having synchronous conversations so important, especially in the sales process?

Mark:

Yeah, one of the common refrains is that meeting could have been an email. You know, we hear that. We hear that a lot, which is, a little bit opposite from the direction we're headed right here. So, but yeah, I really insist on people prioritizing the steps in the sales process and making them conversations, the initial qualification conversation, discovery conversation. All these things need to be happening live. There are all of the obvious benefits, right? We can hear tone, we can see body language, we can sense hesitation, if people have questions in the moments, we can recognize those and address them. are elevating each step in the process to the level of importance, because we're both taking time out of our busy schedules to have a live synchronous conversation. And it's not going to be, three people misreading an email they were CC'd on, and then communication just completely blows up and goes sideways. We're in a room either literally or virtually having a conversation, interacting, reacting, to what's said, what we understand, et cetera. And, a lot of people assume that this whole need to have a series of synchronous conversations throughout the whole sales process will slow things down. But in reality, John, it speeds things up because you don't have to deal with the meeting after the meeting or you send the email, the proposal over as a PDF, attachment with your fingers crossed, hoping that. they don't misunderstand it. We don't deal with that'cause we're having a live synchronous conversation. We're, sharing, we're reacting, we're addressing questions, concerns, et cetera, live. So it actually speeds things up. Sure. It front loads some effort, some time. But it saves time on the backend because we don't have to go back and forth 16 times with all these different revisions and adjustments because we didn't communicate something clearly enough, through that random email or whatever else. So this is the whole literal, don't send the email, pick up the phone, have the conversation. it's critical.

John:

Well pick up the phone and have the conversation, but this expectation could also be set at the onset of the process where it's, we're gonna have a series of conversations. I guess to your point, you've advocated in the past Mark for don't send that proposal in an email, have a synchronous conversation and review it. I suppose in doing that, the prospect is more attentive in those conversations because they don't have that safety net of Oh, yeah. Just, just email that to me and I'll review it later.

Mark:

The time and energy and effort that you invest in putting together your proposal, your recommendations, your ideas is more than worth your client's time. So do not ever take, that terse little, note, they send to you and says, Hey, I don't have time. Can you just send it to me? It's like, actually I can't. Because there's gonna be a lot of questions, and this is going to speed up our process if we're able to have this conversation. If you can't meet on Tuesday, let's reschedule for Thursday. you're also making sure that everybody, yourself included, understands the value of the information that you are, you know, communicating, right? You're like, look, there's a lot of really useful information in this proposal. You know, we've worked really hard to build a really good understanding. We wanna make sure we're right there and we've made a series of recommendations with prices, et cetera, and we spent a lot of time and energy on this, and it's well worth your time to sit through this conversation 20 minutes, 30 minutes or so to really help you navigate the information we're communicating. And, you know, if they, they don't, if, if they're just doing the, you know, just send it over in an email thing, they're thinking this is a transactional process and it is not.

John:

They're probably shopping around. Yeah.

Mark:

They're shopping around, right.

John:

Well, when you're in those synchronous conversations, there are some hand-to-hand tactics that you can use that can really help help you navigate those conversations. And that leads us to our next bullet point on the list here of choreography. Mirroring and reflecting. I think this stems from never split the difference. Do I have that right by Chris Voss?

Mark:

Yeah, he uses mirroring and reflecting a ton. It's all over the place. So mirroring and, and reflecting, yeah. It's, part and parcel at hand in glove with, understanding. And this is, a technique, so it's probably a little more, tactical than sort of strategic, but it's, constantly, reflecting back. Not just in person, but also after the fact, you know, in your followup and everything else, you're reflecting back what you, what you've understood what was said. you're constantly clarifying, look, did I miss anything? Can you make sure that I, you know, heard this correctly? and the word mirroring has a, you know, a bunch of different terms. I think mirroring can even happen live in a synchronous conversation that you are mirroring someone's. Posture, tempo, cadence, tone, you know, whatever else it is. So yeah, this is a common technique used in a bunch of different ways, in a bunch of different situations, but super important to use in the sales process because it's critical that we as experts, we as consultants, are open to hearing all this information and that we're constantly. Checking and rechecking that we heard it correctly, um, that we understood them. Right. because yeah, we're gonna take the information we're gaining right now in this conversation and we're gonna turn it into some recommendations. And if we didn't hear you right then our recommendations are gonna be off the mark.

John:

We're getting a little tactical here, but we've talked about this in the past too, is having a statement of understanding in your proposals is just kind of like this big reflection of everything that you've heard throughout the process.

Mark:

Right. That's sort of, you know, the culmination of all these conversations, all this information we've gathered, because that, that forms this big statement of understanding, again, it ties to another one of these elements here. It's the statement of understanding is the, is the culmination of all this, the, the gathering and the collection of all this information, and it is what? Our recommendations are based on what they are founded on, and if we're not correct, if our foundation has cracks or is missing information or there's too much guesswork, then our subsequent recommendations aren't gonna be, complete or accurate or whatever. So,

John:

So that those are a couple, you know, macro and micro ways that you can use mirroring and reflecting. The next bullet that we've got here under this umbrella of choreography is seeking and gaining permission. Why is this so important, mark?

Mark:

This, this is so important that somebody wrote a book about it, called Permission-Based Selling, it's that important and it is. Hyper tactical, and if you. Don't recall hearing it live. I think a lot of people can maybe think back on situations when they were in a buying selling situation or maybe any other situation where people are using this technique. So yes, it's very tactical and it is constantly, sort of just asking them to opt in, asking the person on the other side of the table or your prospective client or whoever we're talking about here. Getting their permission, getting their buy-in, you know, for a typically it's sort of a next action or a next step, right? So it's, it's not a, you know, I'm gonna send you a proposal. is it okay or does it make sense for me to send the, proposal over to you, and then you get a response, right? Hyper tactical, it's like, yeah, yeah. Great, great. So now they've agreed to it and they're expecting it. Those are the two huge components is that, you know, anything you send over to'em isn't gonna drop into their inbox or the phone call you make to them is not going to be unexpected. Is it okay if I follow up with you via phone on Thursday? Yes. Okay, so now they've opted in, they've given you permission and they're expecting it. The power of getting someone to opt in and sort of open the door and give you the green light on a next action is super important because, you're not gonna use it as this big lever, so if you're constantly seeking and gaining permission and people start, reneging or not following through or whatever else, frankly, those are signs that might, this might not be a really fantastic client to work with if they're, saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get back to you on Thursday. Absolutely. Is it okay? Yeah, yeah. Great. and then nothing happens and then it blows up.

John:

I'm, I'm just thinking of different times where this has happened to me and it's, I'm, I'm, it's, it's happened quite a bit, but I think that this is, it's, it's such a small thing, but it's, and it's subtle, but I can see why that's so effective. Right. would you mind if I added you to my newsletter? Would you mind if I sent you that podcast episode we were talking about?

Mark:

Yeah,

John:

mind if I Yeah, I, I I love that. I think that's a, that's a great little tool that folks that are listening can put in their tool belt.

Mark:

yeah. And, understand when and how it's used and put it in your own language and make it yours and make it your own. it can be overused, even the slightest hint of, you know, any sort of sales technique can be a trigger for a lot of people. and this is one that is used by people who are professionals. So, use it appropriately.

John:

Yeah, I, I like that because especially if you're doing it in little bite-sized chunks, because then that, that reinforces trust. Because you're doing what you say you're going to do. We talked about that trust equation

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Good point. Good

John:

Awesome. Um, so let's talk about this last little catchall category that we've got here for choreography guiding, confirming, advancing, and connecting. And to me, this seems like, you know, if, if two people are are dancing, someone's gotta take the lead, right? Is that kinda what we're going for?

Mark:

Yeah, and these could be split out who, who knows, but I saw them as, as all kind of close siblings, you know, so I, added them into this sort of last point, number eight, catchall. But yeah, guiding is yes, a lot like dancing. There needs to be a leader. There needs to be. A guide. And I think lot of people, particularly when they're thinking about sales and what it looks like and feels like to be salesy, it's pushy, but the best salespeople are the best guides. So we're not pushing, in a pushy way. we're guiding, we're, showing the way, right? We've got the flashlight out it's a little mysterious'cause sales can be a little ambiguous. So it's important that we as the skilled sales leader are guiding the process and we're, we're laying it out very clearly. We're being very communicative about what our next steps are and where we're headed. Um, so, you know, it just shows them that we know the way, we know the path. we know how this works.

John:

I want to contrast this real quick with the high self orientation pushy salesperson, right? They're trying to push the process through, whereas the choreography elements that we've outlined on this podcast episode, really we're, we're seeking to understand, we're showing that we're listening. We're getting buy-in at every step of the way, so we're not really pushing. But we're gently moving everything forward when the buyer's ready at their pace.

Mark:

and even, one of the things we talked about earlier about, you know, those synchronous conversations, sometimes we're even putting the brakes on to say, no I'm not going to just email this thing over to you for the sake of time. This is important, so we're gonna have a conversation about it, and if you can't talk today, we're gonna talk Thursday. So we're actually slowing things down and not being pushy, we're. walking through this appropriately, and you're acting like a, good guide. You're saying, look, that's not the way, that's not the way this is gonna be successful for either one of us. This is the way. So there you go next sort of sub-bullet in this one is confirming. And confirming is just that little simple move that says, okay, we've had these two conversations to date. Here's the information we discussed. Did we get that right? Great. Is everybody on board now? Let's move ahead. Right. And sometimes this comes into play when they're, adding a new person into the conversation. Maybe it's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna bring in two other people into the conversation. So it's right at the outset of the conversation. We're saying, did everybody read that follow up summary email about the first two conversations? If not, let's take a moment to do that. You'll give them five minutes to read it. Everybody is up to speed, so we're not constantly circling back Confirming. Means that we're all at the same place together.

John:

that's what makes most productive use of your time,

Mark:

Right, right, right. We can't constantly be looping back, so we're not gonna loop back. So that then leads us to the next one, which is advancing. And advancing says that now that we're all up to speed, let's move forward. Whether it's a little bit or a lot, let's advance, let's move forward. And that advancing to me is all about, you know, momentum. It's all about the energy and the engagement and the attention being paid to, you know, what you're trying to achieve together. It's that thing. It's, it's like, even if it's a little baby step forwards, let's keep moving forwards to keep the momentum moving in the right direction. so the last one is connecting. And connecting is this thing that says every step in the process, whether it's a big one or a small one let's just have a quick conversation to make sure we're on track. Every step in the process is connected. So we've got a plan, we've got an agenda for this next conversation. We execute the conversation. The conversation goes well. We take our notes, we have good conversation, whatever else we set next steps, we ask permission. We gain buy-in. Everybody opts into our next step. We execute the next step. At the conclusion of the next step, we set another next step, right? So this is a chain of activities and this can apply to anything in our lives, But in the sales process, we have to make sure everything connects because as soon as we see a break in the chain, as soon as there's a dip in the conversation, as soon as the momentum grinds to a halt, anything else? The probability of, success for us, the consultant drops. The probability of the client actually achieving these visions of success drops, right? So it's not just us, it's them, right? So if we're truly client oriented, we're, if we have a low self orientation, it's like, look, if we stop now, you are not gonna get what you need. You're not gonna achieve what you need to achieve here. So let's keep going. Let's set our next step. So we're, we're connecting all these activities together.

John:

We know from, looking at, I think it was the, was it the SPI research that showed that being organized and process driven is one of the big factors of growth in professional services. And how you implement your process matters, right? And so that's, the key focus of this episode. So Mark, I think this has been a fantastic conversation. Any closing thoughts?

Mark:

the one thing that comes to mind is that these are all things that are within your control to execute and practice throughout the whole sort of seemingly ambiguous sales process. People just think it's completely up to the client. Actually we have a number of different things that we can use throughout this whole process to make sure it's moving, make sure it's on track, make sure that we're constantly having these synchronous conversations that are advancing things forward. So there's a ton of tools in your toolkit, tool belt, tool shed wherever you keep your tools, there's a ton of stuff that you can turn to and use throughout the process to, in order to turn these maybes a yes.

John:

Alright, well I think maybe a good reflection question for our listeners that we can part ways with is, what is one of these elements of choreography that you can put into practice right now with your, existing clients, with prospective clients, new opportunities, anywhere in your sales pipeline, in your sales process, you can apply some of these key elements. Of choreography. We'll, mark, this has been a fantastic conversation. Until next time.

Mark:

Thanks, John. Until next time.

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John Tyreman, Founder & CEO, Red Cedar Marketing

Co-host
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Mark Wainwright, Principal Consultant and Founder, Wainwright Insight

Co-host