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Don’t wait until the last few moments of a meeting to agree on the next actions!

Don’t wait until the last few moments of a meeting to agree on the next actions!

How to maintain momentum in opportunities by ALWAYS agreeing on who will do what and by when.

Peter Button
November 10, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Hello Sales Reset Community

Has this ever happened to you? You’re having such a good meeting with a potential customer that time just disappears!

Especially towards the end of meetings. 😳

Is it only me, or does the clock always speed up towards the end of meetings when we’re trying to bring discussions to an orderly conclusion?

One of the core skills we recommend at Sales Reset is to Conclude Next Actions in every meeting.

The critical question is, "Who is going to what and by when?” This is a crucial skill to develop to maintain momentum in our opportunities.

The big theme for this week’s Weekly Sales Reset is that we cannot wait for the last few moments of a meeting to answer this critical question.

Planning to get to the end of every meeting with agreed next actions

Here are the five stages of getting to the end of every meeting with agreed next actions:

BEFORE each meeting: Before every meeting, try to clarify the most likely next actions that will be agreed upon. The more important the meeting, the more time should be spent thinking through the range of likely outcomes.
START of each meeting: It’s typically best practice to start a business meeting with an agenda outline and expectations of likely conclusions. This is a great time to set expectations about likely next actions.
DURING each meeting, Watch the time closely! The salesperson is responsible for managing time so the meeting finishes on schedule and with everything agreed upon. Ideally, you will finish early, without your meeting participants feeling rushed!
END of each meeting: With all this care, you can expect to reach the end of every meeting with clearly agreed-upon next actions. You’ll need to finish by summarising these agreements and agreeing to what you’ve agreed! 😀
AFTER each meeting: It’s ALWAYS best to confirm what’s been agreed in writing. And, of course, to make sure you do everything you agreed.

If you’re preparing a co-created proposal, it will be best to include all of the most significant of these agreed next actions in your proposal.

In our mid-week newsletter, we’ll expand on these ideas. We’ll add the big idea of connecting short-term next actions to when the customer will achieve their desired outcomes.

Join us in our FREE Workshop this week

Join us on Tuesday, November 12th, at 4:30 pm UK time for this week’s Sales Reset Stories Workshop. We’ll share stories about concluding every selling meeting with agreed next actions.

Learn from the experiences of our community members. They’ll be happy to answer your questions. It will be great to hear your stories and learn from your experiences of planning and achieving agreed-upon next actions.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team