Adam Carroll: Sales Masterclass on Deal Health Checks and Champion

Do you actually care? Do you give a shit about the people you're going to be managing? If you don't, that's okay. Not everyone does really care and want to invest in people. But if you do, then that's a great sign that you should be a leader and you could be a really great leader. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between. We've guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Adam Carroll. Adam is the founder of Carroll Sales Consulting, which helps their clients adopt actionable sales playbooks and accelerate great.

Previously, Adam has 12 years of leadership experience in SaaS sales, building sales teams from the ground up, spearheading international expansion and driving revenue growth that has led to successful exits for all companies. This is a cool conversation. This is actually a timely one. We're going to try to release this one right before the end of the year here because it's all about forecasting and deal reviews and coaching and how we can leverage them far more effectively. So we started the conversation with defining the difference between coaching, deal reviews, and then deal inspection. And I think the deal inspection is what most managers do, right? They inspect the deal. But with coaching being the number one thing that managers should do but don't have a lot of time to do it, it's actually the best way to do it.

So we talked about that and started really with the manager. Like what does it take to be a manager? What are those characteristics that you need? And it's funny, Adam has a very similar, I mean, he actually used the give a shit factor, which you've, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know, I love that one. And then got into the difference, like I said, between coaching, deal reviews, and forecasts, and how to create some objectivity throughout the process as opposed to the subjective opinions that a lot of people have. And also removing story time, which is what I always call deal reviews when reps just start telling stories about all the deals and we have to sift through that crap to figure out what's just real.

And then dove into things like he's got this four-step deal health check that is pretty fundamental. But it's a great way to prep for your forecast review and then execute it and coach to it. So walk through that and he's going to put those in the show notes if you want to download those. Oh, also one of the key things that everybody should be looking for in every deal and then how to game plan for how to get them and what's a primary, secondary, and tertiary get. There's a lot of similarities with what he talks about in my sales training when it comes to negotiations. So hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I do. Let's make it happen. Adam Carroll, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend.

How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic. Yeah, really looking forward to this, sneaking one in before the holidays. Yeah, I love it. Now, are you in Australia now or are you in San Diego now? No, I'm based in San Diego. So I'm married a Californian, but as you can probably tell, I'm originally from Sydney. So I've been out here for about eight years now. Cool. Very cool. Well, let's talk about that. So I think the topic for today, everybody listening, is going to be forecast deal reviews and how to be way more effective than they are right now. But before we get to that, Adam, give us a little backstory here. Again, not just the... I always like to hear people's origin stories, not just the LinkedIn stuff that we can all read, but where are you coming from, family, like kind of how'd you get the sales bug, the entrepreneur bug, all those fun stuff.

So talk us through a little bit about growing up and where you came from. Yeah, for sure. So I guess kind of what's relevant to personal stuff and work. About 15 years ago, I had an opportunity to work in New York and I was in Sydney at the time. I was single, didn't have many responsibilities and I thought that'll be fun. I'll go and live in New York for a year or two and then I'll come back to Sydney, which is where I grew up and all my family and friends are. And when I was leaving at the airport, my mom and dad dropped me off and my mom said, just don't fall in love with an American and not come back. And of course, a year into the work, stay in New York. When I was starting to thinking about moving back, I met my wife who was Californian, but also living in New York.

And then, yeah, one thing led to another. And now here we are 15 years later, living in San Diego. So that's kind of from a personal perspective, have a couple of great kids. From a work perspective, I actually started out in marketing and really enjoyed that, but was doing a lot of work, working with a marketing agency, working with clients and really loved that side of things and selling the business and had a couple of friends who said, why don't you kind of, have you thought about going into sales? So I went into sales, had some success and then had some opportunities relatively quickly to go into sales leadership. And I was in sales leadership for 12 years at a variety of companies, had a lot of success, success building and scaling teams and really loved the coaching and development aspect of it, particularly around deal strategy, deal coaching, deal mechanics, those kinds of things, and drove a lot of success based off that.

And then a year ago, I thought, I want to do something different. I don't just want to be a sales leader for the rest of my career. So I started a consultancy and yeah, I've been very fortunate to work with some really great clients and I do different things for each of my clients, but typically it's around helping them adopt playbooks, training sales teams, coaching frontline managers, and those kinds of things. Nice. I'm excited to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process.

Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. So before we get into for, you know, deal management and forecasting and those type of things, let's talk a little bit about the management piece, right? Cause you said that, you know, relatively early in your career, you got kind of the opportunity to be in management and then you stayed in there for 12 weeks. You know, there's a lot of reps out there who, um, you know, think that that's the natural progression, right?

It's like, uh, I'm an inside sales rep, then I'm a field sales rep and I then get to be an enterprise rep. And then I go into management and then, you know, leadership VPs and that type of thing. But not everybody's cut out to be a manager and manager. Every time somebody comes up to me and says, I think I want to be a manager. I'm like, are you sure about this? Because it's less money, way more of a pain in the ass. And you know, there's a lot more stress involved than just being a solo sales rep who's out there killing it. And the other thing is, is that most companies promote their best sales reps to be managers, which is usually the worst thing you could possibly do. So if for those people listening out there who are kind of in their early stages of their sales career, maybe middle stages, and they're thinking that management is that next step for them, what are some characteristics that you should look for in yourself and avoid in moving into that role?

If you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, the, this one might sound a little bit, uh, or say cheesy or fluffy, but I had the top rep at one of my previous companies come up to me one night after a happy hour. And so I want to, you know, go into sales management. And the first thing I said to him was, well, he's, if you know, you want to do it or not, do you actually care? Do you give a shit about the people you're going to be managing and dealing with their problems on a day-to-day basis and helping them get better and then be successful? Because if you don't, that's okay. Not everyone does really care and want to invest in people. Um, but if you do, then that's a great sign that you, you know, you should be a leader and you could be a really great leader.

Um, but on the other hand, you know, it's okay if you're not as well. Yeah. And I, and I think that's, you know, it's, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, you know what I mean? I think some people are just really good at being that solo, you know, let me just go out there and make it rain and, you know, and, and are good for it because they're good for the team and everything else. So they, you know, maybe lead by example, but not necessarily are a leader, if you will, you know, as, as from a management standpoint where others are, I would say like, I want the B plus rep to be a manager, not the A plus rep because the B plus rep is the one who can tell me why they missed their quota and the process and the structure and, and, you know, the conversion ratios.

Whereas the A plus rep, a lot of times is just the artist and they're just really good at what they do and they can't really explain it. And if you can't explain why you're good at what you do, you're, you should never be a manager because you have to be able to articulate that to a group and get everybody else on the same page, right? Yeah, that's a really good point. When I think about some of the best A's I've managed and even working with clients now, the very best, the A plus as you call it, they're usually like fairly unique in their approach. And it's not something that can be, um, you know, repeat, repeated and followed by other people. And that's to your point, why they often don't make the best leaders because they've got a very unique way of doing things that's works for them, but not necessarily something that can translate to other people.

Yeah. So let's talk about, cause the like deal reviews, you know, there's, there's a lot going on right now, obviously in sales with AI and everything else. And I, you know, the, the coaching component has always been something that is, uh, you know, probably one of the most important things that are, that a manager could do, but it's one of the last things they do do because they don't have time for it. They're not coached on how to coach or they're not taught how to coach. Um, so what they end up doing is they end up being deal chasers and getting in involved in deals and forecast reviews. Right. So it's like, okay, like, let me see where the forecast is, but I think there's a unique opportunity here to obviously coach while doing the deal reviews.

Right. So it's not like either you do a deal review and, or you coach, you can coach within the deal reviews. So what's your thought process on, on, first of all, let's define the difference between, you know, coaching and deal reviews and forecasting, you know, could you just kind of highlight the differences between those and then talk to us a little bit about how we can use these deal reviews as a really valuable exercise, as opposed to a check off the box scenario where reps are scared to death to come in and come up with all their stories. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that's really important, I'm glad you brought up is to make a distinction between, uh, what I would call a deal inspection or a pipeline inspection or a forecast and a strategic deal review.

They're very different things. And like you said, managers that get, that are overwhelmed, that are rushed, that don't have time kind of put it all into that first bucket. Now a deal inspection, the purpose behind that is to serve, you know, leadership. What's in the pipeline, what's going to close, when it's going to close, what's the amount. And there's very little, uh, you know, strategy around that. There's very little analysis and there's certainly very little coaching. Um, a deal review, what I call a strategic deal review, um, is where you're actually collaborating with the salesperson to do some analysis on the deal. Where are the gaps? Where are the blind spots? Where are the opportunities to move the deal forward?

And then prompting problem solving and planning to like, what are your, how are we going to move the chess pieces forward? What are our next three or four moves? What do we need to think about? And the third part is coaching. So, but the coaching can also happen in that deal review. If you're talking about moving the chess pieces forward, um, let's take an example, multi-threading. So you can coach your team and individuals on multi-threading and here's how you should be mapping out the stakeholders and here's some tactical ways to getting engaged with them. Deal reviews is where that brings that to life. Cause you're actually talking about a real life scenario and what's your plan to get, you know, more multi-threaded or more strongly engaged with key stakeholders.

Um, how are you going to do that? Um, all right, well, let's talk about plan A. What, what if plan A doesn't work? What's plan B? Um, what are some best practices? So the, the, to, that was a long winded way of asking a question, but coaching should be standalone. There should be planned coaching. Um, but the best way to actually ensure it's getting adopted and reinforced and coming to life is by sprinkling in coaching in your deal reviews. So coach, you know, I think when it, when it comes to coaching, the biggest challenge I think so many people have is the subjectivity of it, right? Where it's, it's based on my experience. It's based on my thought process as a manager and how I'm going to coach you through this.

How do you, where, where do you insert objectivity into the process versus subjectivity, right? Because there has to be some common baseline. I mean, whether it's a sales methodology or, you know, various stages or exit criteria or whatever it is that help lay the baseline. So it can be objective to a certain degree. And you can highlight the areas where the rep needs help. And then there's the subjective piece of this, which is, okay, now let's talk about this, you know, tell me what you're feeling and thinking about the deal. So how do you balance that in a, in a deal review and a strategic deal review of, of, because I'd love it if everyone was a, you know, I had time for everyone to be a snowflake and I could really be thoughtful about each one of them, but realistically I have to have some sort of baseline to measure against.

Yeah. I think a key there, and this is a very practical and actionable kind of, uh, best practice is to, when you're doing deal reviews is to have some kind of standardized template or framework that you use. And it's going to be different for every business. Um, I build these for a lot of my clients and it's different for each one, but what are the, you know, it could be anywhere from eight to 12 critical aspects of the deal that tell you, you know, is the deal healthy or not? And also help you identify gaps in the deal. So, you know, it's basic things like, is there pain and impact? Is there urgency in what's driving the urgency? Do we understand the prospects evaluation process? Are we aligned with it?

Multi-threaded, um, you know, commitment to the deal, all those kinds of things. But if you have something that's standardized and it's very tailored to your unique sales motion, then you can have the, uh, the account executive do pre-work before any deal review and do a self-analysis and score themselves in each of those areas. Are they strong, medium, weak, unknown? And then you can go through it with them. And you can see that this particular rep always seems to do good discovery and they've got really strong pain and quantified impact on most of their deals. But when it comes to, you know, multi-threading or aligning on the, the buying process, you know, that's usually where there's more gaps and more unknowns and they're weaker.

So that's where you can pick certain areas to a strategize with them on a deal by deal basis, or what do we need to do to better understand and align with how they're going to buy the solution? Um, but also give them, um, coaching on those things What would you say the, across the board, you know, are the indicators for you that you're like, either this one's in real trouble or this one's in pretty good shape? Like, are there one or two that kind of stand out regardless of kind of the customization of everybody's process and that type of thing? Are there one or two kind of indicators that you're like, if you don't have that, the likelihood is you're not going to get this deal. But if you do have that, there's a, it's usually an accelerator.

Are there a couple that Yeah, there's probably three. And the first two are pretty obvious. Like pain and impact is the impact is the first thing I look at. And a lot of AEs just get stuck at surface level. And, you know, prospect says we've got a manual process. It's, you know, taking us time. It's the really good AEs that go much deeper and understand the exact process where the breaking points are, what's going to happen to the business if they don't solve this and tying that to business initiatives and company goals. So that one's fairly obvious pain and impact. The next one is having a really strong champion again, which has been talked about so much, but it is critical that you have a champion or champions often now across different departments that want to get it done and they need to get it done.

So there are two fairly obvious ones, but they're always critical. And then the third one is commitment or what I call exchange of effort. So if that, that to me indicates the health of a deal, if the prospect is just going along with it and maybe hopping on a call or a demo or something like that every couple of weeks and maybe responding to an email here and there, that tells me they're not super invested in it. On the flip side, if you've got a verbal commitment from them that they're serious about allocating time and resources and effort to the evaluation, and they're proving that by doing certain things along the way, those deals are by far and away, that's the biggest kind of litmus test of whether it's going to close or not.

And that might be that exchange of effort might be bringing new stakeholders into the fold every couple of weeks. Maybe they're pulling data or insights that's, you know, required for the evaluation. You know, it could be a whole range of things. It could be getting going on a security process or a legal process, but it's those things that you want to see them happening frequently throughout the deal that tell you that there's momentum and there's effort behind it. And probably a fourth, a bonus one is just knowing that leadership is across the evaluation and there's ways you can coach reps to understand, you know, is there leadership across the evaluation? What's in it for them? How is it going to impact company level and leadership level goals?

Love it. What's, let's go back to the champion one there. Because I think I always say, you know, I'm talking about negotiations and just deals in general, I think champion is probably the third most overused phrase in sales, right? I would kind of joke touching base and checking in or one and two, but champions is the third. Oh, I got a champion. I got a champion. And so many reps, like it, it, let's be honest, it feels good to say that I got a champion, right? Just the word champion. I feel like a champion. I, you know, I got a champion, but in my, from my perspective, there's, there's fans, coaches and champions, and they're very different. Fans are people who love your shit, but would never actually have almost no bearing in the decision process.

Coaches are good. They tell you who to talk to, right? But again, they're not behind the door when the, when the doors close, they're not there making the decision champions. And I don't believe everybody needs to have the exact same definition of champion. I just believe that it should be defined within the organization so that when reps use it, that everybody knows exactly what it means, but usually it doesn't. So what is, what would you, what would your definition of a champion be? Yeah. Well, firstly, I don't let AEs use the word champion until they're a champion. So use the term key point of contact or key stakeholder. That's like at the beginning of a deal, they've got to use that word.

And if they say, oh, my champion said this, then it's like, okay, you said your champion. Why are they a champion? So that first of all, like you need to be, language is really important and having consistent language and definitions because then they very quickly know, oh shit, I need to, this person may not be a champion or I need to tell my boss that why this person's a champion. The most important thing is like in kind of the hierarchy of, are they a champion or not? Have you ever heard them on a call you've been on, for example, going to bat for your solution? Maybe there's a scoping meeting or a stakeholder alignment and someone asks a question, a stakeholder from the prospect and your champion jumps in and explains, you know, how your solution works, why it's solving a certain problem.

To me, that's like number one, that they're prepared to stick their neck out. However, that scenario doesn't always happen. So the next thing is to something you said, what's happening behind closed doors? Are they able to tell you what their conversation was like with a, with, you know, their leadership or their, you know, executive sponsor or economic buyer or whatever it is? Because, and coaching your reps to ask those questions of their, you know, potential champion. What have your conversations been like with, you know, the, your leadership? Because that's a hard question to lie about, um, to, to the champion. So they can come back and tell your salesperson, you know, my leadership thinks this, but they're concerned about this.

Then again, that to me is that person's a champion. Um, and then as it goes down, other things like, you know, does your champion have skin in the game and those kinds of things. Number one, are they going into bat for you? Are they having conversations with leadership and can they prove it? Love it. So that brings up another one, which is, you know, I call forecast review story time because that's what they are. I kind of joke in the sense that I, you know, anytime I, when I was a manager, a VP, you know, anytime I heard a rep say, well, John, let me give you a little background on this one. Like I knew the deal was in trouble, right? I was like, shit. So, and, and reps have gotten very good.

And I was too, when I was a rep telling really good stories, right? And, and making it sound way better than it actually is, than it actually is. So, so how do you confirm what the rep actually has? So I'll give you a perfect example. Like you ask them, okay, what's the decision-making process, right? And they're like, oh, it goes from this guy to this guy, to this guy, to this guy. Okay, cool. Well, there's your decision. So most managers be, okay, you understand the decision process, but you and I both know that usually the way that the rep maps that out, oh, it's from here to here to here. It's kind of a vague thing. It's not defined and it's really not the decision process. So how do you, A, get, help understand in the deal review what they really have?

And then how do you coach the rep? Like say that example, right? Oh, decision. And you kind of like, that doesn't really sound like, did the client confirm it? And then how do you coach them on how to go get it and make it tangible, whatever they're talking about? Yeah. And I love that expression story time. And I've experienced the exact same thing. So the most, the biggest piece of advice I can give to a manager is treat deal reviews the way you would want an AHE to treat discovery. So don't just take that first surface level answer and go, great. Oh, you're multi-threaded. Oh, great. We know who the decision maker is. It's going to be not even the next layer of question. It's going to be the third or fourth layer of question.

That's going to tell you as a manager, oh, are they really multi-threaded? And then if they're not like, all right, now we need to talk about strategy and coaching around what's the process to get multi-threaded. So, you know, an example of that is, you know, you might ask them on a deal, how strongly do you feel you're multi-threaded and engaged with the key stakeholders? And they might say, yeah, it's been great. There was six people on a demo last week. My champion says that everyone's kind of engaged and all those kinds of things. And so then the next level of questions go, of those six people, which ones have you, you know, interacted with in a meaningful way outside of that demo or even maybe on that demo?

And so then the whole start to appear. And who are the, you know, out of those people, who's, you know, a detractor? Who's positive about our solution? Who's kind of like not as engaged as they should be? So starting to kind of like pick out the layers. And in doing that, you're asking questions. So they're going to have to reflect and they'll realize, oh yeah, just having six people on a demo doesn't mean I'm actually, you know, meaningfully engaged with them. And shit, I don't know, you know, who's kind of the detractor that we're not thinking about. And I don't know of that buying group who's got the loudest voice. So it's like, all right, let's talk about ways that you can now go back to your prospect and start to validate who the key people are and tactical ways to get multi-threaded.

And then you go to the salesperson. What do you think of some ways we could go about this? Because that's really important as well. Not just telling them, hey, go back and like share an org chart and get them to validate it, but actually ask, you know, always make sure that the AE is making the recommendation and then you're guiding them. And then I won't go into all the weeds on it, but then, yeah, you're going to kind of come up with a plan with them, coach them and kind of help them put in place a multi-step plan to address that gap. Yeah. I mean, cause that's, again, I, I like the idea. Oh, excuse me. I like the idea of kind of treating the forecast review, almost like a qualification call with a client, right?

Where it's just like, you got to keep digging layer after layer after layer until you really get the answer that you want. Again, I think this goes back to the challenge of, you know, managers don't get coached on how to manage, right? So, you know, maybe they're good, but they don't know the depth of really how to get that answer. You know, maybe the best rep do, do because they can just inherently pick up on those indicators and say, ah, nope, that's bullshit. I've heard that before. It's not going to happen. But for junior managers and managers who might not have been the best rep, but are just really organized, taking that surface level. Oh, okay. Yep. Oh, okay. You're multi-threaded. Good.

Oh, okay. You have the decision process. Great. There, I think it kind of comes back to those key indicators, right? That you mapped out before is like pain and impact, strong champion, exchange of effort and leadership across the evals. It's like, whatever those core criteria that you have, as far as your process is concerned, you have to find the layer questions to get down to how do you know that that's true? Yep. Yeah. And I'll just say one thing there, sorry to jump in, but it's having that criteria or that framework, as I call it, I've got something called a deal health check is important, but like you said, an AE could game it and say, yeah, multi-threaded. So you've, what you've got to do as a manager and be really clear in that framework, when I say multi-threading, or when I say, when we talk about a champion or when we talk about understanding the closing process, here's exactly what the requirements are.

To multi-threaded, you need to have had, you know, meaningful interaction with each individual. Example, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, so being really clear on not just, oh, here's a word champion. Here's a word, you know, multi-threading. What does it actually mean? And if they're going to stand in front of you and say they're multi-threaded, then they need to be able to kind of check these boxes. Yeah. Yeah. I think to your point, or, you know, the, the language matters, right? The words that we use matter, the definition of those words matter, because if everybody just kind of has this, uh, vague idea of what that means, then you can't coach toward it. You can't really understand.

I, I do this little thing where we get this, cause I, I try to take it to the next level with the client where I actually get them to confirm it. Right? So for instance, I use a summary email after the conversation and I'll say, Hey, Adam, thanks so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it. After this, I'm going to briefly summarize what I was able to gain from the conversation and send it to you an email. Could you email me back to let me know if it's all accurate and if I missed anything. And that's where I put your current situation, timeline, priorities, next steps, decision process, those types of things. And if the client says yes to that, it's a huge indicator that, all right, you're in great shape, but if they don't respond to that, it's a big yellow flag that that deal is in trouble because you probably, they were probably just telling you what you wanted to hear type of thing.

Yeah. That, that, that tactic's always been good. The best response you can get is when the prospect corrects you on certain things. Yeah, exactly. Then the next best response, like you said, is them saying, yep, that all checks out. Yeah. And then you're in trouble if they're not responding to that. That's, you know, not end of deal or anything like that, but that's certainly kind of a, an amber alert or orange flag. Yeah. I mean, because what's interesting is I find that executives actually respond to that a lot better and faster than non-executives do because like, so like decision makers and non-decision makers, right? It, to me, if you and I had this conversation, I told you I was going to send this to you.

And then afterwards I, I just, and this isn't, again, this isn't anything that you didn't say. This is, this is, this isn't like, Hey, the Jay Barrett sales train is the greatest sales train in the world. It's, Hey, you told me this, is this accurate? If that happens, usually executives to your point will correct me. Like I'll even sometimes make mistakes in it or leave gaps of things I forgot to ask and say, Hey, could you help me out or get out of that? And they'll be, Oh yeah, absolutely. But people below the power line, they have a hard time responding to it. Cause I think it's mainly cause they just don't want to be held accountable for something, right? Cause they know their chain, their lives change so often.

Do you see that, that, the deal that, that reps, you know, I always look at access to power. Like, did you meet with somebody who is actually part of this decision versus the evaluators here? Do you see that as a pretty common issue with most sales reps out there? Yeah. Kind of getting stuck below the line. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, that, yeah, I mean, that's a, a very common issue. Um, and you want to test that as well, because if you just ask a question in a, in a deal review or a coaching session to a rep, like, have we spoken to, you know, high level stakeholders, have we spoken to a decision maker? It's pretty easy for them to nod and kind of, you know, feel like they're telling the truth, but no, they're not really a better question is like, what's the highest level, you know, stakeholder that's been actively involved in this deal and what's their role.

And then again, going back to like peeling back the layers and then you'll identify with them that, okay, maybe we're like, you know, mid level up, but you know, help them identify who those key stakeholders are and decision makers, and then come up with a plan to get access to them. And that's not easy. Like that's the, that's the hard part is actually how you do those things, but having a deal review where you can come up with a plan with your AE and say, we need to engage these two people. What's our plan A? Okay. If that doesn't work, maybe it's getting introduced to them by a champion. What's our plan B? It might be leveraging an exec on your team. What's our plan C? And like kind of having this, that's exactly what a deal review is all about and why it's so different to a pipeline inspection or a forecast call.

Cause you're, you're moving the chess pieces around and making a plan and in doing so coaching. Do you, do you integrate like role playing or anything like that in that scenario? So example, right? I'm not a huge role play guy when it comes to training. Cause it's always some manufactured bullshit and it's always the trainer, you know, doing stuff that they're an expert at and they're, you know, whatever. Um, but I, I actually really, I really enjoy it when it comes to a deal review where it's like, when we're talking about this deal, it's like, okay, well plan A, plan B, plan C. All right, now let's kind of role play this out. Like I'm going to be the customer. You asked to go to my boss, that type of stuff.

And how do you, like, how do you integrate role playing as part of that to kind of, as part of the coaching piece? Yep. It's, it's critical for a start. Um, I'm probably a bit like you role play can be, especially in groups and stuff can be awkward and clunky. And I don't know that it always, unless you're doing it like, you know, religiously and military, like it doesn't always have an effect, but in the, um, context of an actual deal and a deal review, and let's say you've got strong pain and impact on a deal. Let's say that you, you know, you're pretty confident your salesperson has got, um, a champion and the deals on, you know, early stages, but now how do they get commitment from that champion to pulling in others, to the evaluation and a mutual action plan?

So, um, it's one thing to say, okay, next step, you got to get a mutual action plan in place with your champion. It's a much better approach is kind of what you're getting at, which is role play. Okay. Talk to me about what the next call is with your champion. And what do you, how do you feel is the best way to introduce a mutual action plan and get their explicit commitment to multiple steps? Um, how are you going to go about that? And may not necessarily have them like role play the scenario, but I want them to walk me through in detail, like, all right, here's the conversation that I'm going to have. Here's how I'm going to position it. Here's an example of the type of question I'm going to ask.

And then you go back and forth with the sales rep and just fine tune that like, okay, that's a good question. But have you thought about maybe this is a better question or this is a better way of positioning the, the timeline or the mutual action plan. And if they push back on it, then what do you, what's your response going to be if they like, you know, push back on it. So it's, it's definitely, I'd say it's kind of scenario. I don't even know what the word for it is, but like working through different scenarios in a dynamic way with kind of like some role play, but less kind of stage role play, I guess. Yeah. I think that's right. Like, and again, it's situation specific. It's like, cause that's where I think role play falls down.

It's like, okay, it's this made up scenario, but where it helps is like, no, no, no. I'm working on this deal. Here's the person I'm talking to. Here's the situation. Here's the background of the deal. And, and this is what my plan, you know, I have a meeting with them next week or two days from now. And I need some, some guidance here on what to do. It's, it's kind of like playing any sport, right? Like you're not going to just jump on the court and start playing ball. Like you're going to stretch out a little bit. You're going to take a few layups, that type of thing to, to then get on in on the court. So that's where I think it really has a high impact. Yep. And just one more thing on that.

It's, it's, it's really important to like, all right, you've got this scenario. How do you think you're going to tackle it? And what happens if this happens? So that's all great. We discussed that, but the really important thing is as a manager and for coaching purposes, if they've got that call on Tuesday, make sure that as a manager, you're not, you've taken a note that you're either going to check in with them, or maybe even you're scheduling in advance, a 15 minute call with them on Tuesday afternoon. So they can debrief. How did that call go? And then you're kind of instilling like, great. Cause you asked this question at work really well. So, you know, what did you learn there? Um, and again, you might need to kind of, you know, pivot and re-strategize on the deal.

Cause there was a curve ball, but that's what, that's how you, a deal strategy and coaching and then enforcing it or reinforcing it. Sorry. That's where reps learn. And that's where behavior change happens rather than giving them a piece of advice and not ever following up on it. Yeah. And then saying next week, let's talk, right. Versus no, like, cause by the time, you know, if it's on Tuesday, by the time Friday comes around, the amount of stuff that's happened between Tuesday and Friday is pretty significant. So it's not going to be fresh in my brain to say, to explain how the call went. And unless you're going to listen to my call, the whole thing and listen, listen to yourself as a manager, we're not going to be able to have a good conversation about this.

Yeah. And you also set a precedent that every time you give them coaching or together, you come up with a plan that they're going to, they're accountable for it. Now you're going to check in. So they're way more likely to actually put it into place on that call, knowing that you're going to be on the phone to them or scheduling time straight after that call to see how it went. Love it. So let's talk about, you had mentioned your four-step deal health check. Talk to us a little bit about what that's all about as far as, you know, again, kind of what you look for in the health of an opportunity versus a one that's probably just going to sit in the pipeline forever. Yeah. So the key to, to, to, to really simplify it and for, for managers that struggle a bit with, you know, running effective deal reviews is there's a kind of a really simple plan.

It's not rocket science. I didn't kind of come up with this. It's just my version of it. But first of all, there's got to be pre-work. And so the pre-work is on the manager and it's also on the rep. And that would be filling out what I call a deal health check or deal deal score sheet where you're going to have, as I said, anywhere from eight to 12 key aspects of a deal. Is there pain and impact? Um, is there urgency? Um, is it multi-threaded? Who's is their executive alignment and so on and so forth. So they're going to fill that out in advance. And what it's going to prompt is for them to really self-reflect and realize, Oh shit, I, you know, I am unclear on like what their exact buying process is, or I haven't, you know, I don't have exchange of effort.

Um, and what it's going to do for the manager is you're going to be able to review this and come to that call knowing, you know, the strengths and weaknesses of the deal and not getting on and asking those kind of, you know, redundant questions. Like where did this deal come from again? Um, so that's step one, is that pre-work and analysis to identify gaps, blind spots, um, focus areas. And then the second part of it is actually having that strategic conversation. So having a discussion, let's talk about these areas where you feel there's a gap or where there's unknowns. What's your plan to address these? Um, so you're going to go back and forth and that's where the coaching is going to happen.

And then what's really important is that for every deal that you do a deal review, there's a go forward plan and you're going to have big rock items that, you know, probably two or three that they need to work on. And I keep using multi-threading just because it's an easy example, but okay, one, we need to get more multi-threaded. And number two, we need to ensure that there's, you know, commitment to the evaluation. So, but within those, you don't want to just say, oh, go and get multi-threaded. It's like, how are we going to do that? So every big rock goal has, you know, two or three micro steps or kind of micro actions underneath it. So the AE leaves the meeting with this go forward plan.

That's got two or three big rock goals and for each of those two or three actions. So they know exactly what to do and you didn't tell them what to do together. You came up with that. Um, so that's the third step. And then, and I've got templates for all this stuff, which I'm happy to put in the show notes and sharing all of that. The fourth one is the follow-up is, you know, having a deal review. And let's say you do a weekly deal review, um, with a team member or with group. And it, for me, it doesn't matter if they're individual or group, but always check in on the deal that you reviewed the week before. And how are you going in terms of this action plan? And you might still have more stuff to discuss on that deal, but never just don't follow up on the deal.

Um, so yeah, it's pretty simple. There's the pre-work, there's the strategy and problem solving, there's documenting a plan that gets shared and the AE owns that. And then there's the follow-up. Which deals should you do this with? And I say that because, you know, it'd be great if we had two, three hours, you know, and all the time in the world to do some shit like this. But realistically, you know, at best, I probably have an hour with my manager for this, probably a half an hour. If my manager's overburdened, like most of them are with 10, 20, you know, 15 reps or something like that. So it's, it's like, which deals should the reps focus? Uh, and well, let me ask it this way. Should the manager be the one dictating which deals they should use this with, or should the rep be?

And, and, and which ones do you, and how do we make that determination? Yeah, that, that last question is kind of a little bit fluid. I always like to empower the reps, but if you're getting, if you're finding that, you know, reps keep bringing deals to you that are not a good fit for a deal review, then, then you need to be a bit more prescriptive. Um, but the first question, like what deals, that's a, that's a really good question as well, because what I see a lot is deal reviews. And like you said, you can only do one or two per rep per week to do them thoroughly. Um, but you'll get dear, uh, reps who bring a deal to the deal review. That's like, it's late stage deal. I haven't heard from the prospect in a couple of weeks, they're panicking and they're like, let's discuss this deal.

And there's not much to discuss. There's no rabbits you can pull out of the hat. There's no magic bullets at the end of the deal. If all the earliest stuff there's, you know, there's gaps and risks there. So you don't want to get them bringing it like late stage deals. Um, especially the just a stalled deal. Um, how do I get it unstuck? Um, and you also don't want the super early stage deals where they maybe had one discovery call. And there might be cases where you do because it's really interesting and really kind of, you know, complex and all those things. It's kind of that kind of early to mid stage where you might've had a couple of calls, the deals gathering steam. Now's the right time to strategize and figure out what really needs to be done to put this in the best possible place.

So that would be one thing in terms of where the deal's at. Um, obviously it depends if you're selling SMB mid-market or enterprise, but the more multifaceted a deal is obviously the more interesting the deal review is going to be. Is it, you know, you're selling into multiple departments, multiple stakeholders. Is that, you know, a longer sales cycle, but so yeah, I'd look for those two things. But if you're in SMB sales, deal reviews are still really critical and that the immediacy of it is also really good. It might just be that instead of looking at eight or 12 aspects of a deal, there's like four or five things that really, you know, determine if a deal is going to move forward and that you can coach a rep on.

Yeah. I think that's the, the challenge I see is most reps or managers, quite frankly, you know, they get enamored with a logo or a dollar figure, you know what I mean? When realistically the rep might've put that in there, you know, and the dollar figures, like, I guess, you know, that they're like, Oh, I think this is a huge one. It's like, well, it really, is this the deal that we should be spending all our effort on right now when you have five other deals that are relatively healthy and probably closer to realistically closing. So it's always a balance again, kind of going back to the subjectivity versus objectivity component to it. You know, we, we, I actually use a deal scorecard similar to you where it's like all the gives and all the gets and we point score them out in a, in a prioritized way.

So we use the health score of the deal to figure out which ones are effectively worth talking about. Right. So it's like the equal ones, the ones that are equal, where there's been, and you said the, you know, the exchange of effort, if you will, that give, get process all the way through is relatively equal. Well, then those are more likely to close because they're, they're working with you. Whereas the gap is we've given a ton and we haven't gotten very much or the other flip side, which is actually the happy years version, which is we've gotten a ton, but we haven't given very much. And then that's usually because the client is just not engaged and they're just, you know, I call it column fodder, right?

They've already made up their mind to go with somebody else and they're just keeping us in the game. So. Yep. Yep. That gives to get. And I've seen your scorecard. I think that's, it's a similar kind of concept to exchange of effort. And that's, that's, like I said, one of the key things that I look for in a deal. Love it. Awesome, man. Well, this has been great. What's anything else that, that we didn't hit on as far as what, what managers or reps should really make sure that they're paying attention to, especially now that we're coming close to the end of the year here. You know, I, there's a lot of reps who are probably panicking right now to say, like, what do I need to do to get this deal to close?

And unfortunately I, I can just hear the discounts going out the window right now and profitability getting smashed. It's just like the most cringeworthy thing that happens at the end of this year here. So anything else that we missed? I would say we could do a whole nother session just on kind of the closing process and paper process. But I think just back to like what we've discussed, like to, to leave kind of managers with one thing, it really comes down to preparation and frontline managers are pulled in so many different directions. Often, like you said, they're not taught on how to do these things, but if you can carve out, like the, the deal review and coaching is the most important thing you can do with your team every week.

So you need to do whatever you can say no to other stuff to find time. And for every deal or every rep, it, it only takes, you know, 20 or 30 minutes to look at a couple of their key deals, review deal notes, look at the CRM. You can, you know, review email exchanges, listen to calls on high speed to get you up to speed on that deal. And that means when you talk to that rep, you're going to be able to cut to the chase and talk strategy instead of just storytelling or having them storytell. And they're going to like, be so appreciative of you because you're going to give them real help on those deals. So like, you know, it's not the sexiest thing to say, but like preparation and just finding that time to get familiar with your team's deals makes a huge difference.

Actually bring one more question I had that, that, uh, that sparked, which is what are your thoughts on kind of like group deal reviews, right? So I'm the rep, I got a big deal that I'm working on. My manager is going to help me coach on it. But what do you think about opening it up to the team? And instead of doing a bunch of individual management, you know, 30 minute hour things, maybe taking Friday afternoon, fuck it. Right. And saying, Hey, I got five reps on my team. Everybody bring their best deal. We're going to spend 10 minutes on each deal, 15 minutes on each deal. You do the prep, but we're going to bring it up on the board. And yes, I'm the manager. I'm going to lead the questions, but reps, you need to ask questions too.

Like what are your thoughts on kind of more of a collaborative team effort when it comes to reviewing deals, even if everybody's not involved in the same deal? I love it. And I know that's, I hinted at this briefly, but I probably, depending on the situation, small groups, you don't want it any more than like five or six, you get passengers. But if you've got a team of eight, break it into four and do two different group deal review sessions and pair up different AEs based on strengths and weaknesses, the key again, is that every AE that's going to come has to have like read the deal health sheet for their teammates deals so that they're ready. And everyone's got to have questions and suggestions.

And if it's done right, that's like, that's the most powerful because your one AE might be working on a deal with a similar problem to the deal that's being reviewed and they can give input. So group, group deal reviews, I love, just keep them small and make sure that there's actual proper preparation and interaction. I love that. And I think that's like, you know, going back to just learning, right? Because yes, I learned from my manager, but I also learned from the other reps who are doing certain things that I might interview. And as a manager, usually I'm probably two, three, four years older than the reps I'm managing. So some of them might be studs that I could learn from that, you know, from a like, Oh crap, that was a great idea.

As a matter of fact, those types of things. So I love it. The best ideas I've got that I'd bake into my coaching deal reviews came from stuff I've seen AEs do that was just stuff I wasn't even thinking about because I'm older than them and slightly more out of the game than they are. Yeah. Awesome, Adam. Well, tell people, appreciate you coming on, man. Tell people where they can find out more information about what you're doing, about LinkedIn, how you want them to connect with you and everything else. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me, Adam Carroll, and it's at Carroll Sales Consulting. So LinkedIn is probably the best place. I think there's an opportunity in show notes to put some of the stuff that we talked about today.

I launched a Frontline Sales Leader Academy with Ian Konyak. So there's a Frontline Sales. Oh, cool. I didn't realize that. Is that where we got connected? Yes. Yeah. Shit. Sorry. I forgot how we got connected. But yeah, Ian's stuff on his is awesome. So you're on his platform. That's fantastic. I'd say those two things, LinkedIn and then, and yeah, we could put those links in the show notes. That would be great. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on. And yeah, this is a fun conversation. I think it's a timely one too. So we're going to get this one out before the end of the year. So hopefully save a few deals that, that are leaking a little bit on some reps. Awesome. All right. Well, look, everybody, hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

And as always, like I always say, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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