Getting Next Steps Right
- Dan Greenberg
- Jan 10, 2024
- 5 min read
How many times have you heard a sales manager ask about next steps? “What are the next steps?”, “Did you cover next steps?”, “Are there actionable next steps for this client?” You may even be the one asking that of people on your team or even of clients directly. Next steps are incredibly important because without them nothing that was accomplished in the meeting will be executed on. Yet, so often, next steps turn into a checklist item that is not at all related to actual progress.
All too often, Sellers talk about next steps in their own terms and not in the client’s terms. This may be because they are anticipating the questions that they will get from their manager. “When is the next meeting?”, “What is the expected close date?” But clients don’t care about meetings and close dates, so when a seller talks about next steps in terms of ‘follow up meetings’ and ‘close dates’, the client glazes over and stops being engaged with the process. If you are talking about next steps like this, you are not good at next steps. But don’t worry; it is not terminal. In fact, this is one of the easier fixes to make for a seller.
Next steps need to be in the buyer’s terms not yours. They need to establish the goal of that next interaction before ever scheduling it, and the goal needs to be related to the needs of the client. Buyers don’t want to get the sense that they are tools in your journey towards getting pen to paper. The reason why there should be, or will be another meeting is based on the client needs. The next meeting will happen because the client needs to learn something else, or the client needs to involve more internal people in the conversation, or the client needs to build a case or an understanding of the value of your solution relative to the cost. These are essentially the only three reasons for next steps. Any additional reasons for next steps are your reasons and must factor into your calculations but have no business as part of the conversation with the client.
Whether you are in a conversational setting or a more formal presentation setting, the next steps conversation should happen, but it will look different depending on that setting and your goals. If you are still in a heavy discovery phase, and need to learn about the client’s business, or get to know the client, or their business, or their process, it makes sense to plan for a conversational interaction. In these scenarios, you can frame the next steps conversation as a way for the client to learn more about others who have used your solutions and for you to understand their problem better so that you can help them build an understanding of the value and the likely outcomes. However, if your goals are more transactional, or your need is to position your solutions, or demo your product, or to instigate a negotiation, it will make sense to plan for a presentation or similar type of interaction. In these scenarios, you can frame the next steps as a way for your client learn more about the solutions so that they can start to think about the internal process and how they would like to position those internal conversations which will help them gather consensus.
Once you have decided on your goals, and how to frame the next steps conversation, you will have to execute that conversation in a way that keeps the client engaged, develops consensus on actionable and simple next steps, and motivates the client to take those simple actions.
The next steps conversation actually begins long before you might suppose. It begins with your agenda decision before the meeting, and specifically, the things that you decide strategically not to cover. It is important to end presentations, demos, and conversations on a high note. Don’t save red herrings, minor features, tidbits, and details for the end. When your client is engaged, end the conversation. Move to discussion, and then let them know about all of the interesting things you will have to save for next time. Leave your buyer with a positive energetic memory of the meeting, and with interest in what they will learn next time.
This is also an important and appropriate time to dig in on the buying process. Ask your buyer questions about who else needs to be involved, what the next steps are for getting those people involved, and what else they need to accomplish internally in order to be able to move forward if they decide to do so. This is important because it gets them thinking about the process of the completion of the deal, which helps to put their mind in a collaborative place where it is thinking about the steps that should be taken after they have already decided affirmatively to move forward. This is a powerful behavioral tool. It is also important because you need to learn all you can about the process. You can ask some of these questions and frame it in the client’s terms by letting them know that as you present more of the solutions and items that you did not present in that meeting, you want to be efficient and aware of their time and resource lift. Let them know that you want to streamline the process for them by accomplishing process steps and more structural decision-based steps at the same time, and you want to make sure all the right people are present.
As you pivot to discussion and debrief, you are trying to accomplish two very important things. Number one, you are trying to get the buyer to echo in their own words what you have just told them. If they repeat what you have presented, they will be more bought-in going forward. The second thing you are trying to accomplish is to understand if, given the new information introduced, the buyer still has the same priorities, understandings, and goals. You need to know if your planning for the next engagement needs to take into account a new set of understandings, beliefs, or goals on the part of the client or main buyers. This will help you state the next steps in the buyer’s terms as you wrap up. After you have this information, it is important to summarize what you have conveyed in the meeting. Make sure to combine that summary with the summary of what they have just told you in debrief so that you are aligning the consensus between the two parties, and starting to build a subconscious understanding among participants that there is one overall consensus, not two sides.
Lastly, it is time to talk about next steps. The next steps should be positioned as a response to what you heard from the client in the meeting. In other words, based on what they have told you, asked you, and expressed interest in, you should recommend next steps, and then confirm their buy-in. This should be a presumptive confirmation, not an open-ended request for input. If you did your job well in the first three steps, you already probed for more open-ended thoughts on goals and priorities, so you should not need to at this point. Not only should you confirm what the next steps are, you should also confirm the content, and attendees of the next meeting, as well as the expected goals and results from the next meeting.
Your job in this phase of the meeting is to tie the next interaction to a goal and a result that makes sense for the client so that they feel incentivized to make sure it happens and that it happens soon.
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