1. Podcasts
  2. 30 Minutes to President's Club | No-Nonsense Sales
  3. #625: 18 Deal Cheat Codes to Cut Your Sales Cycle in Half
30 Minutes to President's Club | No-Nonsense Sales

12 Nov 2026 · 27m · 15 chapters

Episode artwork

#625: 18 Deal Cheat Codes to Cut Your Sales Cycle in Half

In short

Episode topic: 18 “deal cheat codes” to shorten the sales cycle, organized into early-, mid-, and late-stage tactics.

Guests

Sarah Uwe (Forbes 30 Under 30; founder/CEO of Selling Sarah) and Dana Hensler (15-year sales leader; leader at Apollo).

Key claims

speed comes from proactive preparation, direct questioning, multi-threading, and tight project management—especially during vendor review.

Notable examples

meet end users to build a “groundswell” and bring quantified hurdles to executives; share your point of view early and ask the exec to correct it; ask “if you don’t invest now, what happens in 6 months?”; start texting after the first call; book the next call live and suggest same-day next steps; address “no budget until next year” head-on; bring an executive sponsor; “champion sell-back” and “champion sandwich” around big team meetings; send one-to-one recaps post-demo; use give-get (no free discounting) with a “redline deadline” and pre-scheduled kickoff; finish with “pick up the phone” instead of last-minute email follow-ups.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

0:36

Building Momentum in Early Sales Stages

Discover how to build rapport and gather insights from end-users to facilitate better executive conversations.

“Early stage in your sales process, you should begin to build a groundswell.”
1:23

Effective Questioning Techniques

Understand the importance of asking impactful questions early in the sales conversation.

“There is no better way to cut through the noise than to say, hey, I met with six people on your team.”
3:40

Leveraging Communication Channels

Learn why establishing texting relationships can streamline communication in sales.

“One of the things that I love about Sarah's approach is she is extremely direct.”
5:03

Booking Next Steps Immediately

Explore the significance of scheduling follow-up meetings during calls to maintain engagement.

“Yeah, number five, never get off the call without booking the next call live.”
7:16

Mid-Stage Tactics for Sales Success

Identify effective techniques to address objections and maintain momentum during the sales cycle.

“Pro tip on this one, you're going to look kind of weird if you're just like, so are you free at three 30 or four today?”
8:08

Mid-Stage Tactics for Sales Success

Identify effective techniques to address objections and maintain momentum during the sales cycle.

“The best sellers connect the dots between what they learn in discovery and everything else they share with their prospect.”
10:16

Directly Addressing Budget Objections

Gain strategies for confronting budget objections early to establish credibility.

“So if anyone's going after Apollo right now, I would be suggesting to sales leaders, I think your marketing team has budget.”
11:41

Utilizing Executive Sponsors

Learn how to effectively involve executive sponsors to support the sales process.

“Dana, ready to be honest and friendly and kind?”
12:42

Navigating Group Sales Meetings

Understand how to manage large team meetings to mitigate risks and strengthen your sales pitch.

“And I love the way that you are coaching your team to do this.”
14:00

The Champion Sandwich: Navigating Team Meetings

Learn how to effectively prepare for and follow up on critical team meetings in sales.

“You're going to do some slices of bread around one of the most dangerous meetings in a sales cycle, which is the big team meeting.”
Show all 15 chapters
17:41

The Power of One-to-One Follow-Ups

Discover the importance of personalized follow-up emails after group meetings.

“The best sellers connect the dots between what they learn in discovery and everything else they share with their prospect.”
20:03

Gift Giving in Sales: Building Relationships

Understand how thoughtful gifting can enhance your sales relationships.

“and you get a direct answer, it's so much easier to update the internal team of like where that deal actually is in pipeline.”
23:23

Effective Negotiation and Project Management

Learn negotiation techniques and how to manage contract timelines effectively.

“I'm going to pull up an email and I'm going to start drafting an email to Sarah.”
26:03

Final Sales Strategies for Success

Explore last-minute strategies and the importance of direct communication in closing deals.

“Pick up the phone like it owes you money.”
28:05

Effective Discovery Questions

Learn how to steer customer conversations using multiple choice questions.

“Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve, because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them.”
A man walking through an airport, asking his phone a question

Ask about this episode

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.

Claude

On 30 Minutes to President's Club | No-Nonsense Sales, what are the key points of this episode?

Searching your listening

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Sara Uy: You will walk out of this session with 18 actionable, practical, usable things that you can do, say, or write this very day to move the deals in your pipeline faster. We have this session broken into early stage tactics, so when you have a deal in the early stages, mid-stage tactics, so when things start heating up, and late-stage tactics to move your deals when they are getting close to the finish line. I am joined today by Sarah Uwe, who is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, the founder and CEO of Selling Sarah, and Dana Hensler, who's been a sales leader for 15 years and is currently a leader over at Apollo.

0:35Sara Uy: In the name of velocity, why don't we get into the tactics right away?

0:39Dana Hensler: Dana, you're up first. Early stage in your sales process, you should begin to build a groundswell. You can meet with end users to get a sense of what's working, what's not working today, and put together a pretty powerful point of view. and that can be used as leverage later to get a call with the executive team. And then when you reach out to the executive, it could be, you know, hi, Adam, I spent some time meeting with your team, including Nick and Sarah, and I gathered that X, Y, and Z are their main hurdles that they're trying to get over today, and it's leading to X impact. And I'd love to spend some time with you to validate this perspective and see how we can better support your team.

1:16Dana Hensler: That executive will then have validated, quantified pain to work with versus just assumptions.

1:23Sara Uy: There is no better way to cut through the noise than to say, hey, I met with six people on your team. Do you want to hear what I learned from them? That is a great little carrot, a nugget to incentivize an executive to meet with you. And that actually takes us to number two, which is once you get that meeting, proactively share your point of view early, and then ask the executive to correct your point of view. One of the things that I will often do early in a sales call is say something like, look, Sarah, before we get into talking about us and all the things that we do, do you mind if I share what I learned about you and your business when I was prepping for this one?

2:03Sara Uy: Nobody is going to say no to that. This gives you a chance to share all of the stuff that you found when you were doing your groundswell, when you were doing your research. And then when you finish sharing this, you're going to say, so that's what I found. But I guess, tell me where I'm off, and tell me what I'm missing. And what this allows you to do is skip all the 101 level BS that they think they might need to educate you on, because most sellers do not show up prepared. And you can get right into the 301 and the 401 level stuff. And so it is much easier to react to a painted on canvas than to hand them a blank canvas and say, so, tell me about your top priorities.

2:43Sara Uy: Tell me what keeps you up at night. With that said, let's move to number three and stop saving the good stuff, because you got some good stuff for me, Sarah.

2:49Nick Cegelski: Number three, stop saving the good questions for later. There is no better feeling than when you ask a really good question on a discovery call and they repeat back to you, wow, that's a really good question. And they sit back and they start thinking, and then you're thinking, hell yeah, like I got them right where I want them, right? So like why save them for the second and third discovery call? I think one of the best questions you could be asking right now, it's asking the question of, Hey, if you don't invest in something like this right now, how is that going to impact your business in the next six months?

3:21Nick Cegelski: They will sit back and I'm telling you, they will be like, damn, I think I need you. Right? Like, and if you really have them in that corner and you know, you have prospects consistently saying to you, wow, that's a really good question. it also proves to you like, hey, you have the confidence to be a really good seller and you probably are. So like pat yourself on the back.

3:42Sara Uy: One of the things that I love about Sarah's approach is she is extremely direct. Yeah, you guys are going to find that out real quick. She's not afraid to ask hard questions. And a lot of times we shy away from hard questions because we don't want to introduce friction in the deal. But oftentimes introducing that friction can save you an immense amount of time from somebody that is just window shopping so that you can reallocate that effort into real deals and move those ones faster. Before we move to this next one, I don't mean to call anybody out, but we were doing a lot of prep calls for these, and Dana kept looking at her phone, and I was like, why do you keep looking at your phone?

4:15Sara Uy: And she was like, Nick, this is actually tactic number four.

4:19Dana Hensler: Tactic number four, get on a texting basis early. So it pays to start slacking, texting. It's so easy to do at the end of your first conversation with them of just saying, hey, do you mind if I text you my number just so that you have access to me in case a quick question comes up and you just need an answer between our meetings or between our emails. We know that emailing is snail mail. And yes, of course, we'll always send polished follow-up emails, but things are going to come up. And the last thing you want to do is late stage when you're deep in negotiations and they're ghosting you, they're not responding, you send a text out of the blue.

4:53Dana Hensler: It's going to reek of desperation. and so it's really important that you begin that texting relationship early in the process so it doesn't look desperate later.

5:03Sara Uy: Amazing. Sarah, take us to the next one.

5:05Nick Cegelski: Yeah, number five, never get off the call without booking the next call live. I'm sure you guys have never heard that one before. You got to have the next meeting in the calendar because if you're losing deals and you're losing the deals that are in your pipeline and you're not doing this, it's probably why. There are so many times where I'm like, okay, great. We need to meet next week, follow up on this. I'll send you everything over via email, of course, but let's follow up on everything together. That way, if you have any questions next Monday at 2 or 4 p.m. Eastern time, we go over them together.

5:34Nick Cegelski: So which one works best for you? Depending on who your ICP is too, like they will really respect it. Like I've had a ton of sales leaders say, hey, listen, like who taught you that? Or like, how are you getting it in the calendar? Because I need my sales team to be making sure that they are closing out every single meeting like that. People really respect it. Also, So they aren't going to guide the next steps for you. You are there because you asked them to be there. So make sure you guide them to next steps.

6:01Sara Uy: Beautiful. So this is the last one of the early stage tactics. And this one builds off of what Sarah has just suggested. This one is going to sound crazy to some of y 'all. Number six is suggest same day next steps. I know this one sounds insane. But if you are on a meeting with a prospect and they are interested in booking the next step, What most salespeople do is they default to offering times for next week. And that makes sense because you're busy and they are busy. However, if instead you might consider saying, well, look, this might sound crazy, but I actually have some time at 3.30 or 4 today if you just want to do the demo then, most prospects won't be able to take that time.

6:43Sara Uy: However, this communicates two things. Thing number one is it shows that you want to make them a priority and you are willing to pull them in as soon as possible to give them what they want, which in this case might be a demo. The more powerful piece of this is this actually anchors them to meeting sooner rather than later. What you will most often hear is, well, I can't do today, but I guess I could probably do Thursday or maybe Friday. And now what you've done is you've moved your meeting up to same week as opposed to kicking it out next week. You move the deal faster and you also start to create some momentum.

7:17Sara Uy: them. Pro tip on this one, you're going to look kind of weird if you're just like, so are you free at three 30 or four today? So I recommend before doing that, giving a humbling disclaimer that shows that you like, you know, it's kind of weird by saying, look, this might sound kind of crazy, but I'm free at three or four later today. Arms up, tone, laugh. This will make it not so weird. Today's show is brought to you by consensus, which helps your demo keep selling. Even when you're not in the room, before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in.

7:49Sara Uy: Number one, the biggest problems I learned in discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Mutiny, the AI agent that helps you personalize your buyer's experience and beat the competition. The best sellers connect the dots between what they learn in discovery and everything else they share with their prospect. Every demo you show and every piece of content you share, you need to explicitly tie back to, I'm presenting this to you because you said X.

8:23Sara Uy: Now, this applies to business cases, proposals, and more. And we partnered with Mutiny on the three magic sales templates to help you move your deals without needing your marketing team's help. Grab it in the show notes. The worst discovery advice is just be curious and ask lots of questions. Look, our prospects are not showing up to sales calls to answer our questions. they're showing up to get their questions answered and to figure out how we can solve their problem. And this is what Pipedrive does. If you want to get clear, complete sales visibility, you can use Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows.

8:56Sara Uy: We actually put together an entire resource hub with Pipedrive to help you get to President's Club, and you can get them for free in the 30 MPC Pipedrive Closers Hub. The link is in the show notes. Okay, so those are your early stage tactics. You've created some momentum. You've cut through the BS. You've saved the good questions. You've actually given them the good questions early. Now we're going to talk about, once you've got some momentum in the deal, mid-stage tactics to cut through all of the noise and confusion and ambiguity. And why don't we start, Sarah, with just how you hard hit them with a tough objection.

9:28Nick Cegelski: Number seven, get the major objection out of the way. What's the number one objection we're all facing right now? Oh, we don't have budget until next year. It's a lie. they have budget right so one of the things that I always like to do is like beat them to the punch like before they even bring up like we don't have budget next year literally say like I'm not asking you to whip out your card right now and like swipe tap you know pay right now but you know let's let's chat now that way when you do have budget you know you know exactly how we could come and support you still get those meetings in before end of the year right and I think also like that you could really take it a step further but a lot of teams don't think you know we really need to invest in this now.

10:04Nick Cegelski: It's really a priority, but we don't have budget. All right, well, who does? Because there's a lot of teams that don't have budget that roll over. So for example, I'm thinking, take a look around. Apollo Marketing, they clearly have a budget, okay? So if anyone's going after Apollo right now, I would be suggesting to sales leaders, I think your marketing team has budget. I think we could shift that over to sales, and maybe we could get you some sales training, right? So get creative with it and just have some fun with it. It doesn't need to be like, oh my God, budget is such a serious question.

10:39Nick Cegelski: Budget this, budget that. We're so scared of budget questions. Just get them out of the way early. Face them. Again, it builds credibility and it shows that you have confidence in what you're selling.

10:48Sara Uy: One of the first things that I learned that really helped me when I was a new salesperson was that my job was to just get the truth as opposed to try to get the optimistic answer. And you do this again and again and again, where any time that you sense risk in your deal, they might not have budget. There might be a senior stakeholder who used a competitor's product in the past. You had a closed loss, and your current champion doesn't know about it, and it was very recent. You just run towards those things, and you address them head on. And one of two things happens when you do that. Thing number one, the champion or the person you're talking to is like, yeah, that's actually not a big deal.

11:20Sara Uy: Oh, no, we'll be able to find budget. Yeah, I have more budget than what you cost. And all of your fears get addressed, and now you can sleep well at night. Thing number two is you find out that there is something that's going to blow up your deal. And now you can actually start to take action to proactively address that risk or figure out you can't overcome it and realize this ain't a real deal. Either way, you have nothing to lose by being direct so long as you are honest and friendly and kind in the way that you ask that question. Dana, ready to be honest and friendly and kind? Number eight.

11:51Dana Hensler: Yes, number eight. Bring in an executive sponsor early. You don't have to do this alone. There are so many leaders within your organization that you can lean on to ride shotgun throughout your evaluation. And you can match them with a peer, someone with a similar role, a similar seniority. So if you're meeting with a VP of marketing, connect them with your VP of marketing. If you're meeting with a head of sales, connect them with your operations counterpart. They understand each other. They have the same responsibilities, the same priorities. and they can be that trusted resource throughout the process so that if negotiations get a little dicey later, they can be there to help kind of get through those hurdles and help you if escalations ever happen.

12:32Dana Hensler: And they're going to be that point person. Again, everything's going to sound so much better coming from them than you anyway. And so lean on them and approach this like as a village, you're not alone.

12:41Sara Uy: I love this one. And I love the way that you are coaching your team to do this. Sarah, I love this one too. Number nine, halfway there.

12:48Nick Cegelski: I really love this one too. Make your champion sell your solution back to you without them knowing. You can do this twice in the call. However, I always recommend it at the end. But the reason why I say it twice is this is actually a really good thing to do in the middle of your meetings. You know, if you ever feel like that, don't be afraid like mid meeting to be like, hey, like let's just pause here for a second. I'm clearly saying a lot. What have I said thus far that's valuable to you? That way, if they haven't been paying attention, they're probably thinking, oh shit, I got to start paying attention because I wasn't or they really were and now they actually give you a really good answer and now you know where to tailor the second part of the conversation or and ask it at the end right hey I gave you a lot of information the last 30 minutes what have I said across these next 30 minutes is the most valuable to you because when you do lock that meeting in on that call for the next one if you are not running that meeting you could prepare your account executive hey like this is what really impressed them tailor the meeting towards this and let's sell them that way especially i know a lot of you guys are at companies that have a ton of products a ton of services and they're not all going to be of interest right so narrow down what really gets their blood flowing that way you know exactly how to sell them let's move to

14:06Sara Uy: the next one which is also kind of a weird one number 10 the champion sandwich your typical sandwich, unless it's open-faced, you got a slice of bread. You got some sandwich accoutrements. You got another slice of bread. You're going to do some slices of bread around one of the most dangerous meetings in a sales cycle, which is the big team meeting. The big team meeting is when you've had one, two, maybe three meetings with your champion, and they're ready to bring you to introduce you to the family. They're going to take you, and they're going to show you to four, five, six of their colleagues in one big group meeting.

14:42Sara Uy: This is a really dangerous meeting, because you can have a deal detractor start to pull on, poke on holes on you. You can have a very technical person ask a bunch of in the weeds questions that makes the executive on the call check out. These meetings often make or break your deal. And so you want to sandwich those meetings with your champion sandwich. Before the meeting, you're going to get 15 minutes on the books with your champion to get a sense of where everyone coming into that room's head is at. They will give you a sense of major objections you could anticipate. This gives you a chance to run your call plan past this person.

15:14Sara Uy: The front half of the sandwich makes sure that the meeting goes well. The back half of that sandwich is what you do immediately after the meeting. So you're going to pre-schedule a debrief call with your champion to get a sense of what did people like, what didn't they like, what were they slacking each other when the meeting was going on, and you will ask them to coach you on how you should follow up with each of the individuals on the meeting. When you sandwich your meeting, it makes it that much more delicious. So that brings us, now speaking of sandwiches, I get to go twice in a row. Look at this.

15:44Sara Uy: Number 11 is send one-to-one recaps post-demo. So what most folks do after that big team meeting is they will send one follow-up email, one recap email to the six people that were on that meeting. That is a great way to invoke the bystander effect and have zero people respond to your follow-up email. What I recommend you do instead, still send that big group email so everyone knows that you're on top of your game. But then send one to one to one emails to each of the people that were on the call. This gives you a chance to, if Dana was asking a bunch of technical questions, I can say, hey, why don't we hook you up with my integrations team?

16:22Sara Uy: They can talk about that. If Sarah was asking a lot of questions about our analytics dashboards and we didn't get into a deep demo of that, I can offer to say, hey, do you want us to show you a deeper dive on that without everyone in the room so we can get all of your stuff addressed? This gives you a chance to start to multi-thread and build relationships one to one to one, which will never happen if you just rely on one big mass email.

16:43Dana Hensler: Oh, shocker, we got more. So number 12, no ask gifting. Many say chivalry is dead, but reciprocity is still alive and thriving. Sending thoughtful, personalized gifts will go such a long way. You will stand out. They will remember you and they will be more inclined to help move this process along. And it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be formal. perhaps your executive buyer there prepping for a board meeting or they're stressed out about an upcoming QBR they're planning for. Send them a cup of coffee. Let them know that they're thinking about you. Or if they mention they're celebrating their kid's birthday this weekend, send them some cupcakes or some cookies and just let them know that, hey, I understand what you're, you know, you got celebrating this weekend.

17:26Dana Hensler: Let's get a head start on that. You have to do it early in the sales process too. Don't do it later when you clearly want something in return. Like build the relationship early and they'll notice the little things like that.

17:37Sara Uy: Today's show is brought to you by Mutiny, the AI agent that helps you personalize your buyer's experience and beat the competition. The best sellers connect the dots between what they learn in discovery and everything else they share with their prospect. Every demo you show and every piece of content you share, you need to explicitly tie back to, I'm presenting this to you because you said X. Now this applies to business cases, proposals, and more. And we partnered with Mutiny on the three magic sales templates to help you move your deals without needing your marketing team's help. Grab it in the show notes.

18:12Sara Uy: Today's show is brought to you by Align, the AI deal workspace that helps sales teams close complex deals. So here's a tip about multithreading. There are stakeholders in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's speaking around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line. And Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes.

18:41Sara Uy: Today's show is brought to you by Unify. Top SDRs don't work every account the same. They tier by intent and then they work the hottest signals first. So Unify actually builds that list for you. If you just describe who you're targeting in plain English or connect to your CRM, it will literally search over 40 different sources to surface the tier one accounts automatically and then draft the outreach in your voice. So it's basically like Claude for outbound sellers. Grab our guide on how top SDRs hit quota every year in the show notes or sign up for free at unifiedgtm.com. Speaking of the little things, I keep noticing how direct you are, Sarah.

19:15Sara Uy: Number 13.

19:17Nick Cegelski: I know, everyone's gonna be like, oh man, this girl's cranky, but I promise I'm not. I'm just direct. But what needs to happen to get this over the line? This is probably a question you probably should have asked this morning for any contracts that you're still waiting to get over the line by five o 'clock today. And I don't think it's five o 'clock yet. So you definitely still have some time, but this is a question you should always be asking. Like literally, again, don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. Like we're all hiding under a rock when it comes to asking the hard questions. And we're all thinking about it.

19:48Nick Cegelski: Like what needs to happen for me to get this deal over the line? There's also nothing worse than, you know, when your manager is counting on you for that deal that you said was going to close six months ago, and now all of a sudden you tell him it's going to close the last day of the quarter, like it's definitely not. If you had just asked the question, like what needs to get, you know, happen to get this over the line, and you get a direct answer, it's so much easier to update the internal team of like where that deal actually is in pipeline. And all you had to do was ask the question. So don't be afraid to ask the question.

20:15Sara Uy: One thing I like to append to this question at times is I would rather, I would tell my contact, I would rather be accurate than optimistic. And this can be a way to, sometimes our customers are afraid of letting us down. If the deal's gonna slip, this can be a way to gracefully give them an out. But I love the question. I love the question. And I love this one too, Dana, because this is kind of like gifts, right?

20:39Dana Hensler: Number 14, negotiate with a give-get framework. So I said you could give free gifts, but never give free discounting. Always get something in return, and don't be so quick to shave off pricing either because then they'll question your credibility and like why didn't you lead with that pricing originally? Like why are you so quick to slash it? So make sure that it's mutual and that they're willing to invest more in you if you're going to, again, reduce the pricing for them. So it could be committing to multi-year payment terms with us. It could be annual payment terms. It could be quick signatures.

21:15Dana Hensler: It could be additional product. Or if it's a small company, maybe they can't do any of those things. So one thing reps often forget is get a referral. Like that's something that we can easily get from someone. There's probably someone within their network that could also benefit from our platform. And then that could become the gift that keeps giving. It could help build your pipeline. So always make sure it's a mutual decision and that you're getting something in return for the discounting.

21:40Sara Uy: Number 15, the red line deadline. As sellers, we set a date by which a contract must be signed when we do this give-get stuff, or we send over a contract. And this is probably the biggest place that I see sellers fail to project manage their deals, which is the vendor review stage. Once you send over a contract to a customer, you have to be maniacal around project managing them to get through the legal process. One of the most effective tools that I have found to do this is called the redline deadline, which is literally just a set of deadlines for when their legal team is going to get you their first round of redlines, when you are going to return your response, and then when they are expected to get you their second line of response.

22:26Sara Uy: Unless you are doing a true commercial give-get, hey we're gonna give you a 10 % discount in exchange for signing by this date, or we're gonna give you split billing terms in exchange for signing by this date, you don't really have a lot of teeth with your redline deadline, that doesn't mean you should skip it. Just by setting it out there, it will incentivize the customer to hit those dates, and it gives your champion, your contact, a way to enforce moving through the review queue for their legal team. So the way that I like to do this is when my champion asks me to send them a contract. What I do is I say, great, I'd be happy to do that.

22:59Sara Uy: Let's talk about what happens next from here. So I'm going to get you a contract today. Question for you, Sarah, when will you be able to submit that contract over to your legal and procurement team? Sarah will say, well, if you send it to me today, probably tomorrow morning. Great. Once that's in the queue, when can we expect your legal team to get us their first cut of red lines? Sarah's going to say, I don't know, about a week. And I'm going to say, great. And I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to pull up an email and I'm going to start drafting an email to Sarah. And I'm going to say, Nick, to send Sarah a contract today.

23:31Sara Uy: October 1st, Sarah to submit contract to Coupa or whatever procurement portal they're using. October 7th, Sarah's company to send me their first cut of red lines. The next day, Nick's team to return the next round of red lines. And I will literally put out date by date by date. This is a mutual action plan applied specifically to the vendor review process. And it sounds crazy, but I can't tell you how many deals I've seen drag out because legal hasn't even looked at your contract for two weeks. So the red line deadline, one of the best ways to manage timeline when you are in vendor review. Dana, welcome us home.

24:08Dana Hensler: All right, number 16, the executive welcome note. So hopefully if you've already done pro tip number eight, you've engaged an executive sponsor, so it won't be unnatural for them to then reach out to this buyer and proactively welcome them to the platform. So they said that they wanted to move forward, so why not just go ahead and assume the sale and have that exec sponsor reach out. So excited to partner with you. I can't wait to continue the collaboration and have you on our platform. But they're there as that resource for you. And again, they're going to be so much more engaged with them, probably than us, if they have just a few last-minute concerns.

24:43Sara Uy: Number 17, we're almost there, pre-schedule the kickoff call. So I finished the conversation with Sarah about our redline deadline and the conversation about when the contract is going to be reviewed. And then I'm going to say, well, okay, I guess once things are executed, the first step is we're going to schedule a kickoff call with our implementation team. They're going to talk about data migration. They're going to talk about integrations, et cetera. I guess I know our team's calendar is starting to fill up, and I imagine yours is also. Do you think it'd be crazy just to schedule the kickoff call now?

25:12Sara Uy: Pretty much everyone's going to say, sure, let's go do that. Now I can put this on the books. Then what I'm going to say is, obviously, we need to have a signed contract in order to hold this, but I don't think that's going to be a problem based on what we just discussed. And I will tell you, this, again, gives your champion a reason to hold their legal team and their procurement team accountable to bring things through on the timeline that you and your champion now have agreed to. And at this point, they want what you are selling. And this is not about some weird slimy sales tech. This is around incentivizing going through the last phase of the vendor review process so that you both can get what you want.

25:48Sara Uy: So the pre-scheduled kickoff call, it's kind of like having a due date on your essay in high school or college. You're going to get it done the night before. I literally have had a customer sign a contract on the kickoff call because they didn't want to have to reschedule it. All right, Sarah, finish us off.

26:03Nick Cegelski: Number 18. Yeah, we got to rename this one. Pick up the phone like it owes you money. Do not follow up for last minute things via email. Do not go to your manager saying, I don't know, I followed up via email. I didn't hear from them. They're going to say, did you call them, right? Do not be afraid to pick up the phone. Pick up the phone like a really great chunk of change at the end of it because it probably is.

26:25Sara Uy: I think one theme across all of this is everything here is actually designed to help your customers solve their problem faster, and these are actually designed to be very, very customer-centric, connecting them with multiple people on your team, getting an executive involved in the deal, getting to the point and just asking a direct question, helping them think about how they will manage the vendor review process, setting up your sandwich so the demo goes well and the team doesn't show up to a snooze test. Think, what would your average salesperson do here? And then do the opposite of that. Don't be average.

26:57Sara Uy: Thank you, folks. This was a lot of fun.

27:08Sara Uy: Today's show is brought to you by Ambition, the coaching and performance platform helping sales leaders turn metrics into action. Did you know that sales orgs where the majority of reps are coached weekly are twice as likely to see high quota attainment than those who don't? And that is from Ambition's new state of sales coaching report that also found teams using a system like Ambition coach almost 60 % more frequently than those who don't have one. Now, we built a toolkit with our friends in Ambition on how to actually use data to coach your team. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by ConsenSys, which helps your demo keep selling even when you're not in the room.

27:37Sara Uy: Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, a what does success look like today slide. You can steal that exact 30 MPC demo deck template powered by ConsenSys. Go check it out in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy to use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C.

28:12Sara Uy: Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve, because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes.

From the publisher

Nick Cegelski sits down with Sara Uy and Dana Hensler to share 18 actionable tactics for speeding up sales cycles. From building early momentum to navigating objections, negotiations, and legal reviews, they break down how to keep deals moving at every stage.

🚀 Build momentum early: Get executive buy-in, ask tough questions upfront, and book next steps before ending the call.

🤝 Strengthen your champions: Surface deal risks, multi-thread with stakeholders, and use pre- and post-meeting check-ins to build alignment.

🎯 Accelerate the close: Trade discounts for commitments, set redline deadlines, and pre-schedule kickoff calls to keep deals on track.

You’re one step closer to President’s Club!:

🏋 30MPC Training: https://www.30mpc.com/course/team-training

🛠 Weekly Newsletter: https://hubs.li/Q02NJQ8p0 

📚 Things you can steal and use today: https://linktr.ee/30mpc_youtube

More from 30 Minutes to President's Club | No-Nonsense Sales

All episodes