How Sales Professionals Should Rate Their Sales Calls to Learn and Improve

Last week I was talking to a friend who is a CEO with a 15-person sales team at his growth startup. I shared how the successful sales professionals track their own effectiveness and I shared with him what I give to sales reps as a tool to self-rate their calls or demos.

Here are the types of questions successful sales reps should ask themselves after each call (of course, this is based on your context/situation and you can pick just the 10 most important to you or use the entire list below to briefly rate yourself on a scale of Bad-Average- Good to keep it simple).

  • Did I establish the rapport and had a friendly dialogue? Did we have a connection, did we connect in a meaningful way?
  • Did I deliver a unique value prop that focuses on the customer’s specific challenges?
  • Did I show my passion about the company and the product?
  • Did I share the “Story” or did I just jump into a product demo?
  • Did I do well on discovering the Challenges (pain points, problems and the ultimate needs) of the prospect?
  • Did I qualify for CHAMP effectively – Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization & Process?
  • Did I work off the customer’s precise responses (on Challenges/pain/problem/need)?
  • Did I differentiate from competition and establish enough distance between us?
  • Did I pause enough to ask “What do you think so far?”
  • Did I alleviate the prospect’s fears?
  • Did I prevent (i.e. not just handle) objections effectively?
  • Was I helping/helpful to the prospect?
  • Did I lay out the Mutual Agreement for the meeting and going forward and confirm if they would feel comfortable telling me a “no” (this is like Sandler system’s Upfront Contract)?
  • Did we have a DNS (Defined Next Steps) finalized – i.e. “got your calendar on you?”
  • Did I follow a “Listen-to- Speak Ratio” of 2 to 1? (i.e. we have 2 ears, just 1 mouth)
  • Did I immediately write the “IQ Email” (Implicated & Quantified) and send a summary and asked them to confirm my notes are correct ?

What else? What are some of your thoughts on the idea of each sales rep rating himself or herself after each call?