Essential Sales Conversations: Beyond Cold Outreach and Pipeline Coverage

Unlock the true potential of your sales strategy by focusing on conversations that drive results and impact.

Overemphasizing Cold Outreach and Calls

We spend a lot of time talking about cold outreach and even more time discussing cold calls. While cold outreach is important, it seems to dominate salespeople's and sales leaders’ time and attention. You will always need to book first meetings, but obsessing over cold outreach may not be worth all the content you find on social media. What works for you may fail for another person.

The Debate over Discovery Questions

Many salespeople talk about discovery. You find people suggesting that you should never ask a particular question. Others will tell you that you must use that same question to win the client’s business. The folks who claim you should or should not ask a particular question assume that every contact will respond to it in the same way. But what if one contact benefits from the question, while another gains nothing from it?

Pipeline Coverage Metrics and Their Variability

We talk a lot about pipeline coverage. Over time, the amount of coverage increases exponentially. These conversations started with 2X, then increased to 4X, then 6X, and now 8X. We argue over the right amount of pipeline coverage, what is enough, and what isn’t enough. You may need 2X to reach your goals, while another person needs 4X to hit their sales targets.

Identifying Viable Opportunities

We talk about opportunities. Which ones will sign a contract, and which will wither on the vine? We want to know all about every opportunity. Even though talking about opportunities may help you acquire the client, the only conversation that tends to matter occurs between the salesperson, their sales champions, and their stakeholders.

The Obsession with Sales Velocity

Some people want to talk about velocity. They want to talk about winning faster. They believe that faster is better. They say things like, “Time kills deals.” They also talk about how going faster means selling more over a particular time period.

Challenges in Implementing Business Changes

We don’t talk much about how difficult it is to make a significant change to a business. We don’t tend to talk about the client’s challenges, and few of us address the challenges that come with any change. Too many salespeople still believe that their solution is the only thing they need to win the client’s business, even though there are often other internal challenges that may need your help.

Addressing Decision-Makers’ Fear of Failure

There is little discourse on your contact’s fear of failing. There is precious little time spent talking about what might happen to a decision-maker when they make a change and fail. They may lose status or an opportunity to advance in their career. If you were in their shoes, you would likely have a set of fears that might require more time and attention than an average salesperson spends.

Evaluating Company Readiness for Change

There is rarely any conversation about the client company’s readiness to make the change. Even though the decision-makers like you enough to buy from you, there is no conversation about the impact of the change on the people who are forced to implement it. Especially in large clients, you often find people who are not prepared to make the change the company is making.

Learning from Past Sales Efforts

We don’t spend enough time asking contacts about what they have done in the past, what went right, and why things went wrong. We incorrectly assume that nothing in the past might help us in the future.

Engaging Operations Teams for Better Execution

For some reason, there tends to be too little conversation about your operations team and what they are going to need to be able to execute for the client. Some sales reps lose deals as fast as they win them because operations wasn’t included in a conversation with the client. When we assume the operations teams have the same information that salespeople have, we avoid conversations that would give everyone a better start.

Assessing the Impact on Clients Post-Sale

We don’t talk about our impact on our clients. We sell and then move on to the next deal without assessing our post-sale impact on our clients, their company, and their business. Despite driving these changes, salespeople don’t talk a lot about the improvement, even though we helped the client move their business and meet their goals.

Enhancing Sales Effectiveness

We don’t talk about sales effectiveness. We don’t talk about what we need to do to improve win rates. If we obsessed over our effectiveness and clients, our conversations would improve. But, alas, this doesn’t show up in our conversations.

Changing the Conversation

This meditation on essential sales conversations aims to remind you of which topics are important to talk about and which create little to no value. Your focus and mine might be better if we decide to talk about the things that have the largest impact on your clients, your results, and your company’s results.

If you are a salesperson, notice what you tend to talk about and with whom. By paying attention to your conversations, you may improve your results. If you are a sales leader, you should encourage your team to talk about their impact and how to improve the client’s outcomes. There is no B2B sales training available for these ideas, but you can do this work by helping your team talk about the right things.