Hello and welcome back to Startup Curious, where we discuss things you should know if you’re thinking about working for or starting a startup.
Today, I want to talk a bit about sales calls and how to get the most out of them. When you first start talking to a bunch of people and trying to take notes, it can be overwhelming. A lot of founders find themselves with notes that just aren’t that useful, which can make the ever-important followup a lot trickier!
So first, before you start thinking about taking notes - find a good place to keep them. There are tons of tools out there for this, but you can even just use Google docs. The most important thing is that there is a search so you can easily pull up notes, and that you have all of your notes in one place. You can also, of course, use an automated meeting notetaker if you prefer.
Once you’ve figured out your tool, there are a few things you want to make sure to write down every call. It can be helpful to make a template if you tool of choice supports that (or you can just copy and paste the same prompts every time).
Here are all the things I like to make sure I have after every first sales call:
The names and titles of all of the people attending the call - sure, you can refer back to the calendar invite, but if only some of the people attended it can be tricky to figure out who you should address follow-ups to!
The name of the company or companies they work for - this will make the document easier to find when you’re trying to search for it
One or two lines about the problem they’re facing as it relates to your product. It can be tempting to try to write down every word, but it’s better to keep it simple - “Current product too expensive” “Planning to hire a lot this year so needs new tool” etc
Which features or aspects of your product they’re most interested in
Any features they want that you don’t have
What’s stopping them from using your product immediately (if anything)
Any follow-ups that have been promised on either side - and who to send them to
Obviously, don’t be too rigid with this - if there’s other information, make sure to write it down if you can! However, I’ve found that if you make sure to capture the information above, it’s much simpler to do follow-ups down the line… and follow-ups are key to closing deals!
Alright, we’ll wrap up there for today, though you can definitely expect some more content around sales in the near future. I know many of you have questions about it! If you have any specific requests, don’t forget to let us know - contact information is at the bottom of the transcript.
Thank you for joining us today! If you found this episode useful, please remember to subscribe and share. Our goal is to make startups more approachable for everyone and the only way we can do that is to get the word out!
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What notes should I take during a sales call?