Fulfillment and Post-Sell

1Why this session is company-wide

This is your copy to keep. The gold Going deeper boxes go past what the session covers, for anyone who wants the fuller picture.

Two people here deliver presentations to prospects. Everyone here works inside the step that comes after one. At a managed services provider the decision rarely comes apart in the meeting. It comes apart in the first month of onboarding, when a staff member cannot sign in on the first try, when the number they used to call is now a ticket, and when the provider we are replacing is still on the phone with them being helpful about it. The people in the room during that month are technicians, intake, project engineering and the coordinator who sends the first invoice. This session is the part of the method that belongs to them.

This session assumes sessions 01 to 07: the seven steps of the system, how people decide whether to trust you, the agreement made at the start of a conversation about what it is for and what happens at the end, the questions that establish what a problem is costing a client, how money gets discussed before a proposal exists, and how to find out who really decides and by when. Fulfillment and post-sell are steps six and seven, the last two, and they are the shortest ones to learn because almost all of their work was done earlier.

The method here comes from the Sandler Foundations course. The examples and everything about how it applies here are ours. The chapter PDFs are in the reference folder of this program if you want the source.

2What a presentation is for

A prospect has told you what four outages last quarter cost them, that an insurance questionnaire is sitting unanswered on their desk, and that their office manager loses a day a week to IT. They have told you what they can invest. They have told you that they and their business partner decide together, that they want an hour, and that they will answer at the end of it. Now you present.

At that point there is almost nothing left to persuade anybody of. The fulfillment step is the delivery of an agreement that has already been reached. It is where we show that what we propose solves the problems they named, for the money they named, in the way they said the decision gets made.

That is the whole rule, and the two halves of it both matter. If the earlier steps were done, there is very little left to do here. If they were not, nothing you put on a slide will fix it inside the meeting.

One agreement is what makes this work, and it is made long before the meeting: both sides agree what the presentation will cover, how long it runs, who is in the room, and that a yes or a no comes at the end of it rather than a week later. Sandler's term for that particular agreement is the ultimate contract. Without it, asking for a week to think about it is a perfectly reasonable thing for the client to do, so they do it.

3The three tests a presentation has to pass

Run these before the presentation is booked, not while you are writing it.

The third one is the test people skip. A client who told you that they and their office manager decide together, and who then gets a presentation with only the owner in the room, has not been given anything they can say yes to. The meeting was spent before it started.

The obvious objection is that the client is asking for the proposal now, and going back to ask more questions looks like stalling. Producing a proposal that fails one of these three tests is how an opportunity turns into three weeks of silence, and that costs more than the awkward question does.

4The four elements of the fulfillment step

In order, every time.

The review takes about two minutes and it is the most useful part of the meeting, because anything that has changed since you last spoke surfaces at the start instead of at the end. A client whose partner has just been through a cyber insurance renewal, or who lost the office manager last week, will tell you when you ask.

The check is there to locate the gap. A 7 gives you usable information. It tells you which part of the proposal is still unresolved, and the answer to "what would make it a 10" is almost always one specific thing you can deal with in the next two minutes. Restarting the presentation from the beginning is the wrong response to a 7.

The confirmation is worded the way it is on purpose. Asking whether they are ready to get started makes the next move ours and hands them something to defer. Asking what they would like us to do now makes them say the next action in their own words, which is what a decision somebody will hold to sounds like. Then be quiet and let them answer.

5Presenting only to the problems they raised

Take the client from section 2. Their three problems are the outages, the unanswered insurance questionnaire, and a day a week of the office manager's time. A presentation to that client has three points in it.

What does not go in: the endpoint detection dashboard, however good it looks. The depth of the documentation we keep in Hudu. The patch compliance reporting. The fact that we have been doing this for twenty-two years with a local team. None of it is untrue and none of it was asked for.

Leaving that material out means leaving out the things we find impressive that the client never mentioned, and that is uncomfortable, because they are the things we are proudest of. It is still the rule, for three reasons. Every unrequested item is a new thing to price. Every unrequested item is a new thing to have a question or an objection about. And every minute spent on our capabilities is a minute not spent on their situation, which is the point at which a conversation starts to feel like being sold to.

The part of our capability that the client never asked about does not disappear. It gets taught after they are a client, in the recurring account meeting we call a BTR, a business technology review, where it turns into next year's work instead of this year's objection.

6Why a sale is lost at this point

There are three reasons, and each one traces back to a step that was rushed.

The mistakes that produce a lost presentation all happen before the presentation: not agreeing up front that a decision follows it, not restating that agreement before starting, rushing the questions about what the problem is costing, leaving a money question unresolved, and never pinning down who decides and by when. There is nothing on that list that can be fixed with a better deck, which is why a lost presentation is best read as a diagnosis of an earlier step.

7The post-sell step

The post-sell step is the conversation that happens immediately after the decision, while everyone is still in the room and still certain. It has three parts.

1. Keep the decision from coming apart. Two things take it apart. Second thoughts, once the reasons for deciding are no longer in front of the person, which is what buyer's remorse means. And a call from the provider they are replacing, who is about to lose the account and has every reason to make one.
2. Set the ground rules for what happens next. What happens first, by when, who does it, who they call, and a date in the calendar to review how it is going. This is the same kind of agreement made at the start of any conversation about what it is for and what happens at the end, applied to the next ninety days instead of the next hour.
3. Open the subject of future work and referrals. What is deliberately out of scope for now and when it gets looked at again, and the question about who else they know with the same problem. Ask it now, while they are certain about the decision they have just made, rather than six months later when the feeling has worn off.

The incumbent call is worth preparing for out loud. Incumbent here means the provider the client currently uses, the one who is about to be told they are being replaced. They will often make one more approach, and it will usually take the form of an offer to fix the specific thing the client complained about, at a better price. Saying in advance that the call is likely, and agreeing what the client will do when it comes, takes almost all of the force out of it.

8The first month of an onboarding

Here is the version that matters at an MSP, a managed services provider. An agreement is signed on a Friday. Onboarding starts. We deploy an endpoint agent to every machine, we turn on multi-factor sign-in, which is the second step a person has to complete after their password, we take local administrator rights off laptops that have had them for years, and we replace the mobile number they used to call with a ticket in Syncro. Their staff feel every one of those in the first two weeks. Their old provider is still in contact and still has relationships there. And the person who signed the agreement starts to hear complaints, and starts to wonder whether they made a mistake.

At that moment nothing has gone wrong technically. The work is on plan. What is missing is that nobody told them it would feel like this.

That is what the post-sell conversation is for, and it happens before onboarding starts. It covers:

• What will be difficult, named out loud. Which changes their staff will notice, roughly which week each one lands, and when it settles down. Name the specific ones: the sign-in prompts, the lost local administrator rights, the ticket replacing the phone call.
• Who will complain, and about what. Usually the longest-serving staff, because the old way worked for them, and usually about something small and daily.
• What normal looks like, and when. Say what the second week feels like and what the second month feels like, so they can tell the difference between friction and a problem.
• What to do when their staff complain to them. They send it to us, and we answer it as a ticket rather than as a grievance. They should not be the support desk for our onboarding.
• What to do if the previous provider calls. Agreed in advance, in one sentence.
• A review date. In the calendar before onboarding starts, not promised vaguely.

A difficulty that was named in advance is evidence that we knew what we were doing. The identical difficulty arriving unannounced is evidence that we did not. The work is the same either way, and that is the entire reason this conversation is worth fifteen minutes.

9Practice on a live client or opportunity

1. Pick one. A live opportunity heading for a presentation, or a client who is onboarding now or about to start.
2. Write the facts: the problems that client named in their own words, what they said about money, and how the decision gets made or was made. Write "do not know" where that is the truth, and treat each one as a question to ask this week.
3. Run the review out loud, to yourself or to a colleague, in under a minute. If it comes out in our vocabulary rather than theirs, rewrite it.
4. Find one thing in the proposal or the plan that the client never raised, and take it out.
5. Write the six-line post-sell script and keep it: three things that will be difficult in the first month and roughly when each one lands, who is most likely to complain and about what, what we say if their previous provider contacts them, and a review date.
6. If that client is onboarding now, use the script this week. If they are not, bring it to the next session.

10Check for understanding

1. A client sits through the whole presentation, says it looks good, and asks for a week to think it over. Which step was not finished, and what specifically was missing from it?

2. Name the three reasons a sale is lost at this point, and for each one name the earlier step that was rushed.

3. Why does presenting three capabilities the client never asked about make the sale less likely rather than more likely?

4. An agreement is signed on Friday. Three weeks into onboarding the client calls and asks to pause, because their staff are frustrated and their old provider has told them this is not normal. What is the fix, and what is the obvious answer that is wrong?

5. The confirmation question is what they would like us to do now, rather than whether they are ready to get started. What does asking it that way get you that asking for the order does not?

6. A technician is on site in week two of an onboarding and a staff member complains loudly that the new sign-in is slowing them down. What does the post-sell step say to do, and who needs to hear about it?

11Before the next session

• Do the practice steps in section 9 and bring the six-line post-sell script you wrote, and the item you cut.
• Know the four elements of the fulfillment step in order, and the three reasons a sale is lost at this point.
• Optional. Chapter 8 of the Sandler Foundations workbook in the reference folder.

Next session. 09 - Behavior, Attitude and Technique. The three things that produce a result, which of them you control directly on a given Tuesday, and how the weekly activity numbers are worked out backwards from what the year has to produce.

12Glossary

Fulfillment step

Step six of the seven. The delivery of an agreement already reached: showing that what we propose solves the problems the client named, for the money they named, in the way they said the decision gets made.

Post-sell step

Step seven. The conversation immediately after a decision that keeps it from coming apart, sets the ground rules for what happens next, and opens future work and referrals.

Ultimate contract

The agreement, made before the presentation is booked, that it will cover an agreed subject at an agreed length with agreed people present, and that a yes or a no follows it.

Up-front contract

An agreement made before a conversation about what it is for, how long it runs, and what happens at the end. The ultimate contract is the version that applies to a presentation.

Buyer's remorse

The doubt that arrives after a decision is made, once the reasons for making it are no longer in front of the person.

Incumbent

The provider a client currently uses, who is about to be replaced and who will usually make one more approach.

Readiness check

Asking where a client is on a scale of 1 to 10 on going ahead, where 10 means they want to proceed today, and presenting only to whatever is keeping it below 10.

BTR

Business technology review. The recurring account meeting with a client, and where capability the client never asked about gets discussed after they are a client.

MSP

Managed services provider. What Hermetic is.

13Sources

• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations, chapter 8, Closing the Sale (Fulfillment and Post-Sell): chapter PDF.
• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations: full workbook PDF.

The seven steps, the fulfillment and post-sell steps, the four elements, the three reasons a sale is lost, and the terms up-front contract, ultimate contract and buyer's remorse are Sandler's. The worked examples, the onboarding material and everything about how this applies at Hermetic are ours.