Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 2.5 minutes.

Instead of trying to "always be closing," elite sellers work on losing fewer deals at every step of the buyer's journey.

That's "Next Step Selling".

Today we'll cover:

• Story Time
• Lose less to win more
• "Next Step Selling"
• Never skip steps

Story Time:

When I sold MINDBODY software to the fitness/wellness industry, I made over 25,000 cold calls and closed deals involving nearly 1,000 locations.

One-Call-Closes (1CC), when a customer bought on a cold call, was so rare I remember the single time it happened to me. It was a pole fitness studio in Sydney, near the house I grew up in.

The only other time it almost happened was with a not-yet-open Crossfit Box in Canberra, where I didn't ask for the sale on the first call. Instead, I followed my process to set up a pitch call, and they bought in the first 5 minutes.

~0.1% of my MINDBODY career sales came from 1CCs, while the vast majority came from a traditional process of:

So, instead of risking the 1CC, I improved my results by two things:

• Book more demos via cold outbound and warm follow-up, and
• Every week, increase the number of prospects who move forward by one step

In other words, once a prospect agreed to a demo meeting, my goal was to lose fewer deals at each stage by Next Step Selling.

Lose less to win more.

Assuming you have:

• A decent product
• A mini-brand in your niche, and
• A half-decent sales motion

Then:

• ~10% of your deals should close
• The next ~10% require more but are within most sellers' capability
• Anything higher than an aggregate ~20% close rate requires a different approach.

Instead of constantly trying to close, flip the script and focus exclusively on moving every deal forward, one step at a time.

The idea is that if you lose fewer deals at every stage, you'll ultimately win more.

Next Step Selling

Most buyers aren't ready to buy your product. If they were, they'd have already done it.

When sellers push buyers to say "Yes, I'd like to buy" before the buyer can give that answer, the buyer is backed into a corner and has no choice but to say "No".

However, most buyers can agree to the next step.

Therefore, sell the Next Step:

• On a cold call, don't sell the product; sell the value of the discovery meeting
• During the discovery meeting, don't sell the product; sell the value of a pitch meeting
• During the pitch meeting, don't sell the product; sell the value of understanding the business case
• During the business case presentation meeting, don't sell the product; sell the derisked Proof of Concept
• During the Proof Of Concept, don't sell the product; sell the outcomes you uncovered during the discovery meeting

Ultimately, elite sellers never really sell the product; they sell the Next Step.

Never Skip A Step - A word of warning

Every deal I have been involved in goes wrong when the buying journey jumps to the end before we've fulfilled each step.

Therefore, a key component of Next Step Selling is to ensure that every step of the buying journey is done before moving forward.

For clarity, I am saying it is better to slow down and tick boxes rather than rush and risk a catastrophe post-sale.

And the temptation of skipping is enormous because you'll know Next Step Selling is working when the buyer asks,

If you lost 10-20% fewer deals per pipeline stage, how many more deals would you close each month/quarter?

Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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