This sales call review reveals exactly why most deals fail…

Today I am reviewing Lithuanian call, and you’re going to ask like, what the hell? Do you speak Lithuanian?

Well, aside from Labas, I don’t know anything else, but I have my sales career experience. There was one way how I’ve reviewed the calls of the people, the languages that I don’t speak. Obviously, not the best way, not the perfect way. Why? Because most probably somebody with the knowledge of the particular language would do it much better.

But anyways, it was my ask in one of my previous sales training videos to comment and send me the video. So I’m transcribing. So I’ve used like a transcriber to transcribe the whole conversation. So I translated it to the English.

The Challenge: Sales Call Review of a 90-Minute Conversation

Now you’re going to see me reviewing like more than one and a half hour call. That’s like 26 pages. And we’ll see, is it worth doing it? And can I see something that I can point out, highlight, and possibly help Christina to improve with her sales process by just reviewing the transcription of her call?

It actually took a full hour to review this call. Some of the things that stays on the top of my mind, obviously the thing that I see with this call is in my own opinion, there was like talking too much about the things that is not relevant to the offer or the problems that the prospects is having. So this conversation could be shorter.

Sales Call Review: The Biggest Problems I Found

First of all, there is almost no talking about the emotions of the prospect that they’re going through. And it seems to me that the problem is like really surface level. According to HubSpot’s latest sales statistics, 82% of sales calls fail because salespeople don’t properly understand their prospect’s emotional drivers. And we could probe a little bit deeper by understanding what exactly the prospect is going through and what they want to fix and how they see that fix and how their life would look a little bit different because of that.

And that would possibly allow us to close the deal with the client for the offer that was presented the highest level offer. Because based on the transcription, it seems to me that the deal should be done, wasn’t closed in the call, but with the downsold product.

Actually I’ve marked down like 27 comments in this file here with the things that could be improved. So I want to go over them and then highlight some the most important ones. Right. So you can learn by watching this video what exactly I mean and how I would phrase something that was said like differently in this conversation.

Critical Sales Call Review Insights

The Opening: Wasted Time on Rapport Building

It looks like both of the client and Christina were late. Right. So I would use this as an opportunity to disarm the prospect by saying, well, straight after she says like, well, I’m sorry, I’m late, I’m a little bit late from another call. And this is what the client says. I would say, well, why are we going to deal with you over there? Right. So should we forget you? So it’s a little bit of a laugh.

So it seems to me it was like a couple of minutes of the report building, talking about the things that it’s not relevant. Right. So I would go into the questions faster. Right. I wouldn’t like waste two minutes talking about it.

There’s some introduction about like how’s the conversation going to go might be a little bit salesy when you try to set the boundaries, the regime for the conversation. Right. So that might trigger this health resistance. So what I would do, I would just replace it with the one liner and asking, so it seems to me that you booked the call to possibly find a way how your Instagram can generate you more or better clients. Yeah. So well, tell me what’s happening right now with the client acquisition. Right. And that would be something that I would go straight away. I would simplify, I wouldn’t need, I would remove this possible sales resistance here.

Discovery Phase: Too Much Explanation, Not Enough Questions

There was a little bit like a lot of back and forth, like start from the minute six. The client tried to explain the offer, her offer, and the reason why there’s so much of the explanation, because she’s not still, I’m sure her offer is not dialed in, but it’s a lot of time of her explaining on what she did. There’s too much details, right? To what is she doing?

And it dilutes the prospect when you let them talk so much, because now from the minute nine till the minute even 32, there is a conversation about how the prospect works or how he’s helping the clients. So it’s just the explanation of the business. It doesn’t help. The client here is to talk about her problems of why she can’t get of where she want to be. Right.

So I would be asking her, what’s what is the problem she see? Like, how long is that problem there and what she doesn’t like about it, right? I would remove this out of my conversation by understanding in one minute what is her offer. And I would move forward talking about the things that she was trying to do to actually solve it. And what is the reason why she want to solve it now to create a little bit of internal urgency. Right. So a lot of talking without no possible benefit to nobody on the conversation.

Missing Emotional Depth

I wouldn’t do like a coaching in the middle of the discovery call. Well, rarely I do it like in some places, but it’s more like to challenge the beliefs of the prospect and take the responsibility, not try to help them. Right. Well, I would keep my solutions towards the pitch. Definitely.

So finally, like a minute thirty five, we’re kind of probing into the challenges of the client, but it should be earlier because after 30 minutes prospect could be drained. We should be finishing the offer already, explaining the offer at this time.

So finally, like minute 50, she or maybe that’s the first part time that where I noticed the emotion she talks about the feeling of her feeling empty because of the way of how her business works now. I would definitely probe in by asking empty. How do you mean by that?

The Pitching Phase: Critical Missing Elements

Consequence Questions Are Missing

So it seems to me you kind of finish the discovery. Right. And you jumped into the pitching presentation. So the commitment phase and the consequence questions is missing. And it’s crucial because if you don’t have a if you are not having like a consequence questions, the prospect might never know. And even themselves. How is their lives going to look like if they will do nothing about it?

And without that, if you’re not asking like a questions like, hey, like, I mean, so what is your next what is things going to stay the same like next three, six, nine months is going to look like the same. Have you have you ever thought about it? So let them internalize the consequences of them not fixing the problem and the problems that you have found. And that is going to help you to remove the think about objection and they might move faster and that would help the prospect as well. Right.

In this blog post, I talk about the hidden costs of traditional selling methods.

Presentation Problems

So I wouldn’t use the words like it’s like pitching part right here already. So I would be more assertive when I actually give my offer. Wouldn’t use the words maybe possibly when I’m actually showing you the solution because I need to be sure that my well, I should be sure that my solution is going to help.

And there’s like emotions missing. When you people buy on emotion, not on logic, explain what emotions this particular thing that you’re trying to fix is going to help in their life, what feelings they’re not going to feel, what bad feelings you’re going to dismiss. What good feeling is going to come in. Right.

It seems like a complex explanation. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. Right. So but I would like more stick to the simple formulas like, hey, you told me this. We’re going to we’re going to do it like this. Right. And it’s going to remove like the feeling X from your life. Like, I mean, like if you wouldn’t need to wake up every morning like trying to be like a dead horse with those like low ticket clients and you would have an access to the people, more wealthy people. How would that change your day to day life?

And now they’re thinking about, hey, like I am in the future with my future good clients, more wealthy clients. How’s that going to make me feel? Right. It’s more impactful than explaining like a nitty gritty details in the pieces behind what what are you doing with the with your when you’re helping them. Right.