B2B Sales Pillar #4: Close sales calls in 30 minutes

In my first month at McKinsey, I shocked a Partner.

Another new analyst and I were assigned "client interviews.”

This is where you have to call various employees of the client and ask a bunch of questions to try and understand why something is going wrong at the company.

The client team was very anti-consultant, so getting these interviews wasn’t easy.

This other analyst had graduated from a "college in Cambridge" and was whip-smart.  But within a week, I did 20 interviews and he did only 2. 

The partner on the project was blown away by my speed and insights.

"How did you get SO good at sales, Jesse?" the partner asked me.

Over the next 2-3 minutes, I’ll tell you.

As a reminder, I’m spending 6 days giving you the 101 version of what we teach in our B2B Sales Accelerator.

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #1: Booking Meetings, The Only Metric That Matters
  Book meetings that lead to real revenue
  

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #2: Defining (+ refining) your ideal customer profile
  Find customers who can’t wait to work with you
  

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #3: Creating a Killer Offer
  Create an offer so good, it sells for you.
  

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #4: Mastering your sales calls 
  Mastering sales calls—even if selling feels uncomfortable
  

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #5: Creating your sales system
  Building a repeatable system you can scale
  

• B2B Accelerator Pillar #6: Hiring a salesperson to scale to $5M+
  Making key hires that take your business to $5M+ 

Yesterday we covered creating your killer offer. Today? We're talking about what actually happens when you get on that call.

I didn’t learn sales in business school or from books. 

My “big moment” in front of the McKinsey partner came from shoveling snow with my brother when we were kids.

We sold $20 snow shoveling packages up and down every block of St. Louis. 

Between knocking on doors, we'd give each other brutal feedback: 

"Your energy was off." 

"You asked too many questions." 

We got hundreds of reps over the years! 

And so, when I started ‘selling’ professionally, I had 0 nerves and didn’t feel like I was selling at all. 

I noticed a ton of nerves amongst the 50 founders in our first Sales Accelerator in October.

Many of them are afraid of being “too pushy.”

In many parts of their sales process, they get to hide their fear:

They used our email scripts. 

They wrote their offers based on our templates. 

If there was a question about how to follow up with someone, they texted me and I’d tell them what I’d do.

But on a sales call, they’re on their own. 

And if they can’t get past their insecurities, the customer will “smell it” and lose interest.

In the early days of GrowthAssistant, I knew our salespeople might be a bit shaky since the company was young and unproven. 

So I gave my team an outline to guide them.

We still use it to this day — and so did our Sales Accelerator members. You can too:

• Small talk (1-2 mins) - Connect human to human

In the world of Zoom, an easy question is to ask is “Where in the world are you today?”

Andrew likes to mention something about his land in Austin or his kids and transition to what the other person does when they’re not working.

• Magic question (2-3 mins) - "What made you want to talk today?"

This works magic because it leads them to tell you why they need you. 

• Your story (5 mins) - Share why you care about solving this problem

We practice this a lot in the Accelerator because, when done right, you create a compelling story that both 1) tells them about you, and 2) explains why you’re the right person to solve the problem they have.

• Show, don't tell (5 mins) - Show what you built and how it’s used

Andrew used to spend time preparing slides for sponsor calls. On a call, I noticed a sponsor lean out because the slides felt like a sales pitch.

After I suggested he share his screen and show what we did for other sponsors, he noticed that sponsors leaned in and asked for more details.

• Discovery (5-10 mins) - Understand their specific situation

This is where you ask questions. Don’t use your questions as a way to push the purchase. Focus on real understanding.

• Close (1-2 mins) - Either help them now or set clear next steps

At GrowthAssistant, the close might mean putting a credit card on our site. At Aux, it might mean booking a meeting to see our preliminary research.

When You Master This Framework, Four Things Happen:

1. Your nervousness vanishes - because you're focused on helping, not selling

2. You lead - because you have a clear plan

3. Prospects open up - because they feel your genuine desire to understand them

4. Your close rate doubles - because you're solving real problems, not pushing product

The Sales Accelerator goes deeper into sales conversations. We cover:

• Our feedback loop system saves you from compounding your call mistakes, making every sales call better than your last

• The exact words (I call them sentence stems) that turn nervous energy into authentic confidence

• How to tell your story in a way that makes prospects lean in (and we drill it, to ensure it’s done well)

• The framework that will help your prospects see you as a thought partner instead of a pushy salesperson

• Prehandling objections before they even come up

• Creating ‘train tracks’ for your sales process so prospects stop ghosting you after a call

Join me for a free workshop where I'll show you our exact sales system. You’ll leave excited for sales calls and feel significantly more control over your sales motion.

(We don’t plan to have a recording, so register to learn live.)

Tomorrow, I'll show you how to turn these conversations into a repeatable system (Pillar #5: Building Your Sales Machine).

Talk soon,

jesse

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