Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

For new customers transitioning from sales to onboarding can either be a delight or a nightmare. One leads to repeat customers, the other will cost you customers before their time.

And the difference can be as simple as expectation management and effective communication.

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Today we’ll cover:

• Story Time
• Late Stage Losses
• Script the End, it is the Beginning
• Your Script
• Example

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Story Time

In 2022, I was selling to a champion from a company I had always wanted to work with.

Needless to say, I was excited.

Everything was going well, we had:

• A quantified, deep, and expensive pain (6 figures a month in lost revenue)
• It was their number 2 priority for the year
• Without change, they were going to continue to lose a lot of the money, and
• The buyer agreed that, with our help, they would solve the pain.

The champion emailed me, “Yep, let’s move forward, send the contract” (<< this was the whole email, not me paraphrasing for brevity).

So I emailed the founder a DocuSign and CC’d the champion for visibility.

And… crickets…

I heard nothing until:

Ultimately, the deal died after that interaction. I can blame the champion for poor communication, or I can blame myself for misunderstanding, or a little of both. Either way, a solid win-win deal died.

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Late Stage Losses

Many late-stage deals are lost for preventable reasons.

And one of the most painful places to lose a deal is when you send the contract, or straight after they sign, during the transition from sales to onboarding.

To prevent this from happening, both the contract sending and the transition to onboarding should be 100% scripted and planned out in advance.

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Script the End, it is the Beginning

Often, when a customer agrees to work with you and signs the contract, it is the point of most love.

Just like the honeymoon phase at the beginning of a new romantic relationship, you can do no wrong, and they only see the good side in your working relationship.

Founders often forget how important the end of the sales journey is, because it’s the last thing before you get paid, but it’s not the end of the buying journey.

The buying journey ends when the pain is solved.

If anything, signing a contract is just the beginning of a future, hopefully long-term, relationship.

Therefore, making the final steps and transition as quick, painless, and enjoyable as possible for the buyer is crucial for long-term, repeat business.

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Your Script

Once a contract is signed, expectations are everything.

Customers might not notice when you get it right, but they will never forget if you get it wrong.

And, like a great movie script, remember to “show, don’t tell”. The best scripts use decks or a visual PDF to support them. Even an email follow-up is enough, just make sure you send something.

Your post-close script should include:

• Who needs to be involved
• What happens next
• When each step will happen
• Where it will happen - phone call, Zoom, in-person, etc
• Why in that order, and why not alternatives
• And, How they’ll start to see changes

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Example

When I sold MINDBODY software to yoga studios and gyms, the final sales piece was to collect details such as address, login email, and credit card.

Then I invested time into setting expectations with the buyer, something like the following:

Then I would run the credit card, and everything else was relatively automated.

It was all about managing expectations.

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Ultimately, the ending should be entirely scripted so you never lose late-stage or even closed deals when it should be a time for celebration.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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