How to Minimize Sales Call Prep Time
As a business owner, it’s important to find a balance between preparing for sales calls and keeping your time precious. In this post, we will explore how to use a sales call questionnaire to work smarter and minimize the amount of time spent prepping for calls by having the answers to the right questions at your fingertips. By leaning on a sales call questionnaire, you’ll be able to confidently guide the conversation and make the most of every opportunity.
How to Minimize Sales Call Prep Time
As a business owner, it’s important to find a balance between preparing for sales calls and keeping your time precious. In this post, we will explore how to work smarter and lean on your sales/discovery call questions to minimize the amount of time you spend prepping for calls.
Understanding Your Time Needs
It’s important to understand how much time you should dedicate to prepping for sales calls. The amount of time will vary for everyone, but it should be enough time to make you feel confident, but not so much time that it becomes a drag. Currently, I spend about ten minutes (if even that) prepping for a sales call because I know my stuff and my ideal client well, and I trust that the questions I’ve asked in my scheduler will give me enough information to feel in control and guide the conversation.
I get to ask questions like, “So…about your answer…tell me more about how it’s a little of both. What does that look like for you?”
Asking the Right Questions
In order to minimize your prep time, it’s important to ask the right questions in your questionnaire. Instead of giving specific questions, we’ll provide prompts and suggestions to help you make the best decision for yourself. The key is to ask questions that will help you take control of the conversation, understand if the client will be a good fit, and if you can even help them. Be sure to ask specific questions, as open-ended questions can be too broad and vague.
Here are some prompts to help you craft good questionnaire questions:
- What information would help you feel like you can take control and guide the conversation?
- What information would help you know they won’t be a nightmare client?
- What information would help you know if you can even help them?
Don’t be afraid to ask specific questions either. Your prospective clients are coming to you because they see you as the expert. So, guide them. Open-ended questions are totally acceptable, but they shouldn’t dominate the questionnaire. Questions like, “How can we help?” is too broad and vague and would allow them to answer in a million ways. So? Why does this all matter? Our client, Lydia, summed it up so perfectly:
"Within 30-minutes, Veronica helped shorten my services inquiry process prep time from one week to one hour. I was spending unnecessary time doing behind-the-scenes and research tasks, which meant discovery calls couldn’t be booked earlier than 7 days out. Since tightening the inquiry process, the reduction in time has been amazing! My ghost rate has gone down significantly, and I’m able to be just as effective in 1 hour of preparation than what I was spending 1 week of my time on in the past."
Lydia kitts
Turnquist House
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