Sales Managers – The most valuable success behavior for salespeople

After accumulating the experience of literally hundreds of 1:1 meetings and deal reviews with Account Executives over the past 13 years as a sales leader, I think I have finally figured out the single most important predictor of success – Knowing exactly what is going to be done in order to close a deal.  I know this sounds like a trite truism, but what I am talking about is the quality of the close plan (often recorded as ‘next steps’) for a given opportunity.

There is a tonne we can focus on in terms of opportunity qualification and strategy, but the biggest thing to move the needle I have found is the existence of a clearly defined close plan.

I have found 3 consistent behaviors during deal reviews:

The detail of what to look for is below and my call to action is as follows:

1. Focus on the time-bound, specific…