Run the cross-department call review

1. Why run it

As the sales and customer success departments grow, new faces come in and details get lost. Sometimes new managers train poorly, and results suffer on both sides. The answer is a weekly review: every week, customer success and sales watch either a sales call or an onboarding call together. That makes each team's work visible to the other, and lets both build and keep a seamless customer experience as the business scales. Once you start, the claim is, you will never go back.

The meeting is called one of the most beneficial calls a company can put in place. In one practice here, it turned around the marketing, sales and customer success departments of several companies, and the results are called remarkable if this is done right.

Most departments work in silos, and the customer does not. If the teams that deal with the customer do not agree on what the customer's journey looks like, you will inevitably leave money on the table, or even burn it. Oftentimes a business does not get what it wants, not because one department works badly, but because the departments do not work well together. The silos give the customer a disjointed experience that makes people want to leave.

In one practice here, the head of the business still attends these calls. When an issue shows up in marketing, sales or customer success, the move is to sit in on them until the problem is pinpointed.

What each group gets from the meeting:

• Marketing hears what customers want and need, and what they object to, even more than it would hear it from sales. It can use that when writing ads and content, and overcome objections before they reach a sales call.
• Sales sees what it can do better when presenting on the call, and can shore up expectations that were not properly set, if you are seeing bad churn.
• Product and delivery learn which features and benefits can be built into the product. The meeting helps define which features or services a base-level product needs, and which are possible upsells, add-ons and chances for expansion revenue.

2. What the meeting is

People from marketing, sales and customer success watch a sales or delivery call together. Each person watches for something different and takes notes as directed in section 3. The meeting is called probably one of the highest-return meetings you can put in place.

Who attends and which call is reviewed are given three ways: customer success and sales, watching a sales call or an onboarding call; marketing, sales and customer success, watching a sales or delivery call; and, in the steps below, a sales, onboarding or service call.

3. The five steps

1. Arrange.
   • Put a recurring weekly meeting on the calendar, lasting 60 to 90 minutes.
   • Host: the head of sales.
   • Attendees, as listed: Head of Marketing, Sales, Customer Success.
     • If your team is larger, you can include more people, such as managers or leads.
     • If one team is struggling, the practice described adds more people from that team to the call, so they can be trained quickly.
     • There are no rules: add whoever you think it will help.
2. Assemble.
   • One day before each week's meeting, the head of sales asks for one of these:
   • a sales call;
   • an onboarding call;
   • a service call.
     • That is the call reviewed at the meeting the next day.
     • If nothing is going wrong in any of these departments, the suggestion is to rotate the calls in that order. But if you have an issue in any single department, the practice described is to spend 4 weeks in a row reviewing only calls from the department with the constraint.
3. Assess.
   • The appropriate people join ready to take notes, and watch the call together at 1.5x speed.
   • The head of sales shares a screen and plays the call at 1.5x speed.
   • Each leader watches for something different:
     • Sales leader: What went right? What should we improve?
     • Marketing leader: Which objections could marketing overcome before the call? Which ones cannot be overcome in marketing, so sales should train on them?
     • Customer success leader: What was said that I can make sure is handed off to the delivery team? What was said that we cannot deliver, so sales should update its script?
4. Analyze.
   • When the call ends, everyone shares feedback and settles on ONE thing the team commits to act on.
   • This matters because you will see a lot wrong. The strong suggestion is to pick the one thing that is the "big domino". Pick too many things at once, even if they are objectively better, and you might break things, because the team lacks the bandwidth to see every change through with great execution.
5. Act.
   • Write down the action item and the key points.
   • Watch progress, and adjust in later reviews.

4. The note-taking template

One template goes with the meeting:

• A table with columns headed Highlights, Sales (assess), Marketing (assess) and CS (assess), and numbered lines 1 to 3.
• Below it, a list headed "Big Dominoes", numbered 1 to 3.

The template leaves lines 1 to 3 for big dominoes; the analyze step commits to one thing.

5. What this page does not decide for you

• Why the call is played at 1.5x speed. Not established on this page.
• Which call, within a department, is picked. The head of sales asks for one. How it is chosen is not established on this page.
• Whether "Head of" covers every attendee listed. The list reads "Head of Marketing, Sales, Customer Success". Not established on this page.
• How product and delivery take part. They are among the groups the meeting helps, but not on the attendee list. Not established on this page.
• What follows the 4 weeks on a department with a constraint. Not established on this page.
• What the other big-domino lines on the template are for. Not established on this page.
• How often, who attends, and who commits to what. SOP 152, section 5, runs the same review at ten to nineteen people with the head of product attending, from twice a day while a problem is live down to every other week, and has each department name its own one thing to act on within seven days. Here it is weekly, product is not on the attendee list, a department with the constraint gets 4 weeks in a row, and the team commits to ONE thing. This page's way keeps one change in hand at a time; SOP 152's way meets a live problem with frequent reviews and a fix from every department. This page does not settle which reading is right.

6. The checklist

Question	The answer
How often	Weekly, on a recurring calendar slot
How long	60 to 90 minutes
Host	The head of sales
Attendees	Head of Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, as listed; more if the team is larger or one team is struggling; no rules
Which call	A sales, onboarding or service call, asked for one day before; rotated if nothing is wrong; 4 weeks on one department if it has the constraint
How it is watched	Together, at 1.5x speed, on the head of sales' shared screen, taking notes
Sales leader asks	What went right; what to improve
Marketing leader asks	Which objections marketing could overcome; which ones sales should train on
Customer success leader asks	What to hand off to delivery; what cannot be delivered, so the sales script changes
The outcome	ONE thing, the big domino; not too many at once
Afterward	Write down the action item and key points; watch progress; adjust in later reviews

7. What this page does not cover

How a team communicates day to day is SOP 136 — Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part. Drilling a sales team on closing, one obstacle at a time, is SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing.

Customer service standards for support reps are SOP 144 — Hold support to five service standards and grade each rep.