Course 2: 60-Second Deal Reviews for Sales Leaders

I can predict the outcome of your deal in just 60 seconds with even more accuracy than your CRM. Now, I know that's a bold claim to start off with, but here's the thing. I don't actually need to understand your product or your industry. Why not? Well, because your prospects don't understand your product either. So, that executive that you're trying to reach, well, they'll spend at most 60 seconds entertaining your message. And that's assuming that it even makes it to their inbox in the first place. So, if I can understand why your deal matters in just 60 seconds, so can they. And if I can't, neither can they. Which means that deal is already dead. We just haven't admitted it yet. Now, the problem with most deal reviews is that they are way too long, completely aimless, and totally unproductive. You spend 30 minutes talking about a deal, and then you walk away knowing less than when you started. Now, here's something that I learned from the entertainment industry, and it changed the way that I looked at deals forever. Thousands of screenplays get written every single year, and they take months to write, but only seconds to die. When a screenplay gets submitted to a studio, they read the first and the last page. Now, the first page sets up who the main character is at the beginning, and the last page shows you who they've become at the end. And together, these pages show you how much they've changed. If there's enough contrast, it's interesting. If not, it's too boring and they just delete it. Now, the exact same thing happens with your deals. That executive is thinking, is this project interesting? Is there enough contrast between the problem today and the payoff tomorrow to make it? If not, delete. This is why I have a saying. The deal is not real unless it's in writing. You should be able to pull up the script, a simple written record of where any deal is at any point in time and get the headlines in just 60 seconds. Not a cluttered CRM opportunity record, not a long pipeline review meeting, just a simple narrative that your champion would remember, repeat, and forward around internally. So, when I'm running a 60-second deal review, I'm always looking for five very specific things. Number one, it's the big idea. Can I understand why this matters in three sentences or less? Because if you can't explain the big idea quickly, your champion definitely can't remember and explain it to their team. Now, number two, direct edits from our champion. How many changes did they make to our messaging? I want to see red lines, comments, completely rewritten sections. No changes means you're not yet there. It's not a true partnership. Now, number three, unique language. Does this sound like it's written for a persona or does it this specific person, this company? I should see their internal language, their phrases, their project names, their priorities, all written out. Now, number four, numbers and dates. Are we using specific data from their environment or some type of generic ROI calculation? Deals with numbers in the problem statement close at three times the rate of those without numbers. And finally, number five, contrast. What's the gap between the current state and the future state? Is it wide enough that we're going to get above a director level in the deal? Or are we just kind of stuck in some type of workflow process efficiency that's only going to get us to a manager level meeting? Qualified pipeline. Now, that's the next level metric. That's going to get us to a VP, but cost to acquire a customer. That's going to get us to the CMO. And what you'll notice about this approach is that it's going to reveal the execution gaps in your process. If the written narrative is weak, deal execution, discovery, it's also likely very weak. And if there's no narrative at all, there's no deal. Now, let me show you how this all works in practice. I pull up a business case from one of your deals, and in the first 20 seconds, I'm reading the headline and the opening paragraph. Does this grab my attention? Can I understand what's at stake immediately? Now, in the next 20 seconds, I'm scanning for their language versus ours. Did they edit this? Is it unique? Is it specific? Does it sound like some type of corporate jargon or vendor speak? Now, in the last 20 seconds, I'm looking for specific numbers and dates. Is this built from deep discovery or from a template? And now, here's what I am not asking. How's the relationship? What's the timeline? Who's involved? Those are important questions for sure, but they don't actually predict an outcome. the written artifact with the unique, the specifics, that's what's going to get us to the outcome. So, if I can understand the first and last chapter of the story that we're building with the customer, the current problem, the future outcome, and there's real contrast built with their words, their data. Now, we've got a deal that's worth forecasting. Now, if I

can't, you've probably got a sheep that has fallen through the bridge. It's fallen out of the pipeline, and it's not going to make it to the other side. Closed one. where we go from the buying journey to the customer journey. To make this even easier, we put all five points from the checklist into a simple 60-second deal review template. You can use this in every single one-on-one in deal review that you do starting this week. So, stop asking your reps, how's it going, and instead start asking the right, thoughtful, detailed questions to inspect the health of your deal. Not only will your deals and your reps thank you, so will your forecast accuracy.