I always attend sales meetings with another person. I have spent many years selling software development services which is a very complex sale. Each meeting is attended by a technical person and a sales person.
The sales person is good at understanding the business requirements and building repore with the prospect, while the technical person is able to map their business pains to technical solutions.
The sales person is there to lead the meeting, guiding the conversation down a specific path to lead the prospect to the next stage of the sales cycle.
After each meeting we always have a debrief called a retro. Retro is taken from the word retrospective which is a meeting that is held in the scrum methodology of software development. It is a meeting where software developers and the client all answer two questions:
- What went well in the current week?
- What didn’t go well in the current week?
So we ask each other the same questions after a sales meeting. What went well and what didn’t go well? I have found that I have learnt more and been able to train my staff more in these simpe informal meetings as we talk and drive back to the office than any other occasion.
Our culture is we love feedback. The good and especially the bad because we are always trying to improve. Many times I am told I made a mistake, or didn’t read a client well from a technical person who is not in sales, but in that moment they noticed something I didn’t.
I have also had the opportunity to impart the same feedback to my non sales staff and bring them up a level. Some have become amazing sales people as well as technical people. All because we consistently ask those two simple questions of each other at the end of every sales meeting.
What went well and what didn’t go well?
