Sales Managers Mastermind: Micro-Learning

The Two Phases of Pre-Call Strategy

In this video, we're going to talk about the importance and the structure of pre-call strategy — the two phases of planning and practice. Here's the challenge: when I talk to sales managers about how they're currently handling a major sales meeting coming up with one of their salespeople, they'll typically do some kind of pre-call strategy, and it's typically just planning. They'll say, "Hey, what are we gonna do on that call next week? What are we presenting? Who's gonna be there?" That's a pretty good conversation, but it's usually not very structured. What doesn't happen is the second part — "Now let's practice what we're gonna say. Let's role play and go through what we're actually gonna do on the call."

It's almost like being a football coach getting ready for the Super Bowl. The planning phase is in the room with a whiteboard, X-ing and O-ing, talking through the plays — that's what a coach does. But in football, they wouldn't stop there. They'd say, "Okay, we've planned it. Now it's time to practice. Let's go run those plays on the field." They take what they planned, they get their muscle memory down, and they're ultimately better at the end of practice than they were before they started.

Many sales managers are not practicing, and they go into some pretty big opportunities where the first time the words come out of a salesperson's mouth — for the upfront contract, the bonding and rapport, the pain questions — is in the actual meeting. They strategized well in pre-call planning, but the first time those words are spoken is in front of the prospect. That would be malpractice. You'd be fired as a football coach if you did it that way. Yet many sales managers are doing exactly that, often because they never really learned how to do it differently, and there's a certain comfort in just doing more planning.

Structuring the Planning Phase

As you can see on the screen, this is an example of a pre-call planning tool — a starting point for you to work from. It covers everything from who's going to be in the room, what their DISC profile is, what questions they're going to ask of us, how we're going to respond, and what we need to prepare for. It gives structure to the planning, versus the classic unstructured sales manager question: "Hey, so what's the plan for the call?" — which leads to a rambling discussion where we're not even sure what we're doing by the end. Whether it's the tool I'm sharing here or something you build yourself, some kind of documentation keeps the conversation structured and produces a better end result.

Another way to plan today is using large language models — LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini, or whatever you use — and prompting them with questions like: "Here's the scenario, here's who we're calling on. What questions should we ask? What questions could they ask of us? Anything we should prepare? How should we practice it?" LLMs are changing by the day, and if you're watching this in six months or a year, who knows what the prompts will look like. But if you can take old-school forms and apply technology on top of that to help deepen the thinking in the planning phase, it will add to your preparation and lead to better outcomes.

Making Time for Pre-Call Strategy

One of the things I hear from managers — and it's valid — is that they're really busy. Many sales managers say, "This is a great concept, I buy into it, but when am I supposed to find the time?" Here's what I'd suggest: it's really not a time issue, because I don't believe there's any such thing as time management. There's only priority management. What's more important for the head coach of a football team than planning, practicing, and then coaching in the game? I know it's not easy — I acknowledge that — but the question is how you move things around to make this the priority. If you make it the priority, you'll find the time.

Applying technology on top of this can also help accelerate things — meeting with your salesperson remotely, recording the practice sessions — so you don't all have to be in the same room on the same day. And you're not going to be able to be involved in every single meeting's pre-call strategy. You'll have to prioritize. The ones that come to mind first are probably a major presentation with the biggest prospect your company has ever had. But it might also be a quarterly business review with a major customer where there's a quality issue on the table. It's not always easy to decide where to draw the line, but as you get more comfortable with this, you develop a clearer sense of what rises to the level of needing dedicated time.

Running the Practice Phase

The second part after the planning phase is practice — real-time role play. It might look like this: you're the manager, the salesperson is there, and you say, "Let's practice the upfront contract. Let's practice the first five minutes. I'll start as the salesperson, you play the prospect, and let's play it out." Then you practice the top four objections they're likely to get — pushback on pricing, questions about how you're better than the competition — and you go back and forth, back and forth. We can't cover every single question or objection, but we can prepare for the ones we can pretty much count on.

When the question comes up in the meeting and you've already done it four or five times in practice, your response might not be perfect, but you have enough muscle memory to respond effectively. The key is getting the words out — not just planning them. There's a big difference between having a strategy on paper and having it in your body.

The best way to take action on this right out of the gate is to not overthink it. Find one meeting. Look at your calendar right now — across your whole team, there's probably a meeting coming up in the next couple of weeks where you're already thinking, "That's the one." The problem many managers have is that when they hear this concept, they want to build the whole process first, find the perfect pre-call planner, get everything right. Don't do that. Just start. Run the process once, note what worked and what didn't, and keep going. The key is to get something scheduled on your calendar for pre-call strategy immediately.