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Today, practice how you’ll get your buyers to open up and share insights about your competition.

Write these two questions down:

1. “Hey, who’s nailing it for you these days?”

2. “So, which vendor killed it for you in Q2?”

The next opportunity you get, start with one of those two questions because asking “Who messed up for you this quarter?” won’t get them talking.

Your job isn’t to persecute your competition, it’s to gain insights and get your buyers to crack the door open with intel. The door never opens on its own.

Today, write down the top three objections you hear about your offering.

Next, create your script that presents your solution.

Memorize the script.

Here’s the next, most vital step: get a friend and role-play the objection.

DO NOT PRESENT YOUR SOLUTION.

Huh?

While you need to understand what your solutions are, you need to focus on how you get customers to work with you on developing the solutions. You will not win if you simply “press play” and shove your solution down their throats.

Practice questions that get them talking…and thinking with you.

At the end of your next 1:1 with your manager, ask her/him for their opinions on the weekly group sales meeting. Keep it simple…”How satisfied are you with our weekly group sales meetings?”

Hear your manager’s answer before offering, “Personally, the meetings would benefit me a lot if we spent more time on strategic selling issues, common objections, and tricky selling scenarios.”

If there’s an opening, you might want to help your manager by suggesting that the meetings are not the best time and place for individual pipeline reviews.

Do you sweat over preparing for your account reviews? That’s not entirely a bad thing, after all. It means you care.

How much do you sweat?

1. Ensuring your “account objectives and KPIs” section is accurate is important…but don’t sweat it too much.

2. Projecting revenue for each target account? Yeah…sweat the details.

3. Understanding the specific Objections and Obstacles that exist on every key account? Sweat like you just ran a marathon.

As you focus this weekend on slowing down and having some holiday fun, ease up on your judgments too.

Your prospect is not a bastard, and your peer has co-created some darn good proposals for you in the past. Actually…s/he’s pretty darn talented.

Give ’em all a break. And yourself, too.

Commit to mindfulness this weekend. Schedule the activities that bring you peace of mind and joy.

Running and controlling pitch meetings requires meticulous preparation, which includes creating tight agendas.

Today, schedule a practice session for your next big pitch meeting…and invite your manager. In your practice session, assign roles to everyone for the meeting and also lead a discussion on how derailers can be neutralized.

If your manager is unable to join the practice – but will be there in the client pitch meeting – make sure you review the agenda with them.

Today, work on your account and skill goals for Q3…get ’em locked-n-loaded this week. Ensure that you include specific measurement metrics for each.

Which of your top accounts needs a specific goal to stretch you? Is “Grow ACME by 20% in Q3” a big enough goal?

And which skill do you want to improve? Pick one! Probing? Listening? Qualifying? Revenue projecting? Objection handling?

Write the specifics down for both your key account(s) and skill.

Today, create a few qualifying and objection-surfacing questions you’ll ask in your customer meetings. (You’re more likely to ask the questions if you first script them.)

Here’s your first qualifying question that focuses on closing: “You’ve said ‘we’re looking good’….how good are we looking to get your business?”

As for surfacing objections, how about, “How big are the obstacles that may prevent us from doing a deal?”

Think about what scenarios will come up in today’s meetings, and prep your questions.

Practice brevity and clarity today!

Govern your words in your verbal communications. Can you say “more with less”? Can you get your point across faster and easier?

What about your writing? Are you proofing, editing, and using AI to help you condense your messages?

More importantly, how’s your “ask”? Are you direct and specific with what you want from your customers?

Pare it down, today.

And then work on it again tomorrow.

You’ll get there.

You’re not alone if storytelling doesn’t come naturally to you. But practice will help.

Start by thinking about a recent experience on another account that might interest your customer (omit the account and buyer names, of course). Try to frame the story so it presents your company’s service proposition….or bolsters your value proposition.

Practice your story with a friend and keep it to about 90 seconds or so.

Then…try it on a customer and see where it takes you.

Even if your client doesn’t jump out of their seat, that’s okay. You got thick skin…keep telling and refining that story until it’s where you want it to be.