7 Steps for Effective Sales Call Planning

As a sales rep, running meetings with prospects is a big aspect of the job. It’s easier said than done because an engaging meeting requires proper sales call planning.

Unprepared and unproductive meetings with prospects can lead to disgruntled buyers. They may even look at your competitor’s solutions instead.

A prepared and productive meeting can ensure all expectations are met, great discussions, and a mutually beneficial action plan.

Before every sales call, there’s one crucial thing you need to do: plan for the meeting. That means spending time documenting your sales call plan, agenda, questions, and research.

Here’s everything you need to know about sales call planning to engage your prospect in the need meeting. Try these best practices in preparation for your next sales meeting and see what a difference it makes.

The importance of sales call planning

When buyers compare multiple suppliers‚ the amount of time spent with any sales rep may be only 5%. With such little time with your prospect, it’s essential to have an effective sales call plan.

The primary importance of a well-planned meeting is engagement.

Your prospect needs to know their time is productive with you and that they’re being heard. Therefore, when sales calls are thoroughly planned and organized, prospects feel they are working with a trusted consultant.

A well-planned sales call also has a significant influence on the success of a deal. It gives time to establish the relationship, gather more information and communicate your product’s or service’s value.

Here are several benefits of sales call planning:

• Build confidence: Being well prepared during a sales call will instill confidence in yourself. You won’t need to contemplate what to say on a call and hope for the best. Instead, a sales call plan can build you up and give your prospect confidence in your ability.

• Have a fluid conversation: We’ve all sat in meetings that seemed to go nowhere. It’s the result of a poorly organized agenda. As counterintuitive as it sounds, a call plan helps guide the conversation more organically.

• Understand objections: Prospects often have sales objections such as pricing, timelines, or interest. By planning for the objections before the sales call, you can prepare answers so you’re not caught off guard.

• Follow the sales process more seamlessly: Additional time with your prospect during a call will give you a moment to ask questions and gather more information. By preparing a sales call plan, you can write out the questions you have or any missing information that can help your sales pitch.

7 steps for effective sales call planning

1. Research your prospect

One of the most important aspects of a sales call plan is research. You’ll understand your prospect’s role, company, and industry by researching your prospect.

You’ll also learn about their market landscape, such as competitors and what solutions they provide. It’s important because you may realize that one of your customers is a direct competitor of theirs. This information is vital because it’ll help establish social proof and a sense of FOMO.

By researching your prospect, you’ll also learn more about how your product or service can help them.

To research your prospect, here are several sources to use:

• LinkedIn Profile: Social media provides an excellent overview of your prospect’s professional history and what content they consume. Review your prospect’s LinkedIn profile and their job,  responsibilities, and what others have said about them in the recommendation section. Learn how to build rapport quickly through curiosity about your prospect’s background.

• Company Website: The company’s website contains valuable information, such as the vision and mission statement, history, customers, and solution overview. You can uncover many insights about how the company functions, which can help you with sales calls. Learn more about the company through its website and write out any tidbits of information that could be useful during the sales meeting.

• Industry Publications: Industry-level content can provide a bigger picture view of your prospect’s industry. Information about growing trends, market conditions, and the competitive landscape are valuable, especially for executives. By learning more about your prospect’s industry, you become a consultative seller and a subject matter expert. All of which ensures your conversation goes more smoothly.

• Competitors: by understanding their competitors, you can gain a holistic view of their industry. Additionally, you can determine if any competitors are your current customers, which will help with social proof. Here are several questions to determine competitors:
  • Who do they, directly and indirectly, compete with?
  • Which competitors are your current customers, and what is their use case?
  • What are competitors currently doing to get ahead?

2. List out all attendees

If you’re selling a B2B product or service, you’ll likely sell to a buying committee of multiple stakeholders. All of which can influence the deal.

Ensure you know each stakeholder joining a sales call and understand their role in the company. Then, understand what their role is in the deal. Are they potential users or the main decision-maker?

Understanding their role allows you to prepare a different value proposition each time.

Review LinkedIn to find out their job titles, responsibilities, and experience. Then, write notes down on each person within your call plan. List out several questions to interact with each person.

If your main prospect has spoken about their colleagues before, map out the company’s relationships. Use a sales prospecting tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify the organizational chart to understand the key decision makers.

3. Run a pre-call meeting with your main champion

Always look for a champion who can help you sell within the organization.

A strong champion will help you sell internally and involve all the right decision-makers.

MEDDIC qualification will help provide you with key questions to see if you have a true champion:

• Why is this person a champion?
• Does this person have the influence?
• Can they accurately explain my product’s benefits and how it benefits the company?

Here’s an example of how a champion can significantly make the selling process easier. If multiple stakeholders attend the next call, ask your champion for a pre-call meeting. Get your champion’s perspective on each person, their role in the buying process, and how to pitch your product or service.

They will also inform you about deal blockers and how to overcome them.

4. Have clear objectives

By setting expectations, you and your prospect will be fully aware of the purpose of the call and how you’ll spend the time, which gives your prospect confidence in you as a sales rep.

During your sales call planning process, write out your agenda for the call. An agenda will keep the sales call on track and give your prospects visibility into what they can expect during the call. Once you have an agenda outlined, insert it in the calendar invite for your attendees.

An effective agenda should contain the goal of the call, time for the prospect’s goals and questions, and end with a clear outcome.

Always ask your prospect, “what would you like to cover during today’s call?” to ensure their objectives are addressed during the call.

Use an upfront contract at the beginning of the sales meeting to ensure the following:

• Timing
• Your agenda
• Prospect’s agenda
• Expected outcomes

5. Bring the right resources

Depending on the objectives of the sales meeting, ensure you have the right people from your company attend.

For example, if you’re selling a complex and technical solution, you may need a sales engineer present to demo the platform. Or, if your prospect is concerned about delivery and implementation, have someone from your customer success team reassure your prospect.

Avoid back-and-forth emails troubleshooting any issues. Your prospect can immediately get an answer by having the proper support from your team on the call. It can instill confidence in your company.

Before inviting someone on your team to a sales call, brief them on the meeting objective and their role in the call. Selling is a team sport; preparation goes a long way in winning a deal.

6. Determine what questions to ask

Every sales meeting is an opportunity to uncover new information.

Write out important pieces of information you need to figure out and what questions to ask before the call.

Write out potential questions you may expect from each stakeholder. List out answers for each one during your preparation. You can prepare answers beforehand by considering what questions or objections come up.

7. Identify the roadblocks

With any sales process, there are often roadblocks or objections, and it’s better to know them upfront than to find out live during a meeting.

Think about what objections may come in during your sales meeting. List them out and prepare answers for each one.

Dig deeper into each objection and think about what’s the cause. Instead of an answer, you can also think about a question to dive deeper and determine the root cause of the objection. A big part of a successful sales call is active listening and finding the truth in what your prospect says.

Now that you’ve learned the seven key components of sales call planning let’s implement them. A common meeting is the initial discovery call, where you get to know what sparked your prospect’s interest in having a conversation. Here’s how you can structure your pre-call plan for a discovery call.

How to structure a compelling discovery call

The discovery call is the most important part of a sales process.

It’s the initial call and sets up all of the sales conversations to follow. This call is an opportunity to uncover a prospect’s key pain points and goals and is the ideal time to build a relationship.

The former CRO of HubSpot, Mark Roberge, says today’s sales reps should act like doctors.

“You know you are running a modern sales team when selling feels more like the relationship between a doctor and a patient and less like a relationship between a salesperson and a prospect.”

The goal of the call is not to sell. Instead, it’s to ask questions to understand the pain, quantify the impact, and determine if your product or service is the right solution.

Pre-call planning for a discovery call allows you and your prospect to have a more natural conversation instead of checking off a list of questions.

Here’s how you can structure an effective discovery call:

1. Pre-call planning

Research the person and the company you have a discovery call with. Use the best practices above as part of your sales call planning process.

Please don’t come to the call unprepared, as it’ll show a lack of care.

2. Upfront contract

An upfront contract establishes the time allotted, your and the prospect’s objectives, and the next steps. Set an upfront contract to address your prospect’s concerns at the beginning of the call.

Here’s a framework based on Sandler sales training methodology:

Appreciate you taking the time for today’s call. We have 30 minutes scheduled to speak today, does that still work for you?

Naturally, you will have questions for me about my company….

Obviously, I have questions for you about your priorities, and goals to understand if we could help.

Typically, at the end of our time today, we’ll determine the next steps in your evaluation, or if at any point you realize this is not going to be a good fit, will you please interrupt me to let me know?

3. Questions

The bulk of the discovery call will be used for questions from you and your prospect.

The goal of the questions is to figure out what pain points your prospect is trying to solve.

Start with situational questions to understand the pain points and how long they’ve been going on. Use your pre-call research to supplement the conversation and show that you understand their challenges.

Transition to pain funnel questions to dig deeper into the root cause and start to quantity the pain. Reiterate any interesting information the prospect has said to them to ensure you understand.

4. Customer story

Once you’ve identified pain and summarized the conversation, share a relevant third-party reference. It should be based on your prospect’s use case, industry, or pain point.

Prospects want to know how their industry peers have solved similar issues.

It’s important to share a customer story or reference-based that is highly relevant to your prospect. For example, sharing a story about a CPG company won’t resonate if they are a business intelligence technology company.

5. Solution prescription

At this point of the call, you would have determined if your solution could solve the prospect’s pain points.

You can share more about the benefits of your solution. Explain how specific features will improve productivity or generate ROI. Tie each pain point to a specific part of your solution to determine the value and benefits.

6. Next steps

After you’ve gone through all of the components of a discovery call, you should have set the next steps.

Ensure you’ve addressed all of your prospect’s questions or concerns. You would have already established the next steps at the beginning of the call. This is an opportunity to continue the momentum by scheduling the next meeting.

For example, set up a demo walkthrough of your product if you’re selling a product.

Final thoughts

Preparation is an important part of having a great sales meeting.

Sales call planning should be a part of your process to ensure the conversation goes well. Focus on understanding your prospects by researching, determining questions to ask, and establishing the meeting objective. You can only have an effective conversation that benefits the prospect and helps you progress a deal.