Days 61–90: produce

The final month is where the learning becomes commitments — yours to customers, and yours to your manager.

5.1 Your first proposal

A proposal is a written argument, not a price list. Whatever template you inherit, make sure yours contains the problem in their words, verbatim from discovery — a stakeholder who wasn't in your meetings should recognise their own organisation on page one; the measurable outcome, using the customer's number rather than one you invented; scope, including what they must provide, because ambiguity here becomes a churn problem in month nine and a clawback on your commission; commercials; the plan, with dates and named owners on both sides; and the decision you are asking for, by when, and who has to agree.

Before sending, have someone senior read it. And never send a proposal into silence — one without a scheduled conversation to walk through it will be forwarded, misread and used to negotiate against you.

5.2 Your first negotiation

Module 05 covers the craft; three rules matter specifically for a new rep. Never discount alone — not because you lack authority but because discounting teaches a customer that your first number was fiction; every concession is traded for payment terms, contract length, a reference, a faster decision, expanded scope. Know the floor before the call, in advance and in writing: discovering your limit mid-conversation makes you hesitate, and buyers read hesitation accurately. And treat silence and time as legitimate tools — "let me take that away and come back to you tomorrow" is a complete sentence, and almost always better than an improvised yes.

5.3 Your first close — or your first honest forecast

If your cycle allows it you may close something in month three. Take it seriously: run the paperwork carefully, learn the signature and procurement route, thank everyone who helped.

If your cycle doesn't allow it — the usual case in health tech, life sciences and enterprise generally — your day-90 deliverable is a forecast your manager can trust, which is harder and worth more. Learn the local meaning of the forecast categories and apply them ruthlessly:

• Commit — you would bet your own money. Champion confirmed, budget confirmed, decision process known, paper process understood, close date agreed with the customer.
• Best case — plausible, but at least one of those five is missing.
• Pipeline — real opportunity, too early to date.
• Omitted — in the CRM, not in the number.

Two habits build forecast credibility faster than anything else. First, name your own risks before your manager finds them: "I've got this at best case, not commit, because I haven't met the finance director and the close date is mine, not theirs." Second, never move a close date twice without changing the category. A deal whose date has slipped twice is telling you something you are refusing to hear.

5.4 Running your first pipeline review

Your first proper pipeline review is a credibility event. Most new reps treat it as an interrogation to survive; treat it as a briefing you deliver.

Maths on one page first, before any deal talk: ramped quota for the period and current closed; total qualified pipeline and coverage ratio against the number (ask what coverage they expect — 3x and 4x are common answers); opportunities created and meetings booked; the gap, and your plan for it.

Then deal by deal, in value order, in the same short format each time:

Account, value, stage, what's true (champion, problem, budget, process), what's missing, next step and date, my category and why.

Two moves separate a rep whose numbers are believed from one whose numbers are checked. Volunteer the bad news first — open with the deal that has slipped and what you're doing about it, because managers stop auditing reps who audit themselves. And bring asks, not complaints: "I need you on the call with the finance director on the 14th" is useful; "procurement is impossible" is noise.

End with the same question every time: "What would you challenge in this?" You will get better coaching from that sentence than from any amount of asking how you're doing.

6. Managing your manager

Your manager is the single largest variable in your ramp — larger than the product, the territory or the comp plan. You cannot choose them now, but you can very much manage the relationship.

6.1 One-to-ones that are worth having

The default 1:1 — weekly, 30 minutes, manager asks how it's going, rep says fine, both stare at the pipeline — wastes roughly forty hours of your first year. Fix it in week one by proposing an agenda and owning it. Numbers (5 min): activity, meetings, opportunities created, pipeline, forecast — you present, they correct; never make your manager pull this out of the CRM in front of you. Deals (10 min): two only, chosen by you — the one you most need help with and the one you're most confident about, so they see your judgement calibrated rather than only your problems. Asks (5 min): specific requests with deadlines. Development (10 min): one skill — what you're working on, what you tried, what you want reviewed.

Send the agenda the day before and a three-line summary of actions afterwards. It is unusual enough to be remarked upon, and it is the same discipline you're expected to show with customers — which is the point.

6.2 How to ask for coaching

"Any feedback for me?" gets you nothing, because it asks your manager to do the diagnostic work. Ask narrowly and hand them the artefact: name one skill ("I want to surface budget without killing rapport"); point at something specific ("would you listen to the first twelve minutes of Tuesday's call?"); ask for one change, not an assessment; and close the loop next week — "I tried it on two calls, here's what happened." Nothing makes a manager invest more coaching than visible evidence the last piece was used.

If your manager genuinely doesn't coach — some don't — build a substitute: a senior rep who'll review one call a fortnight, a peer swap on recordings, or the enablement function if there is one. Do not wait a year for coaching that isn't coming.

6.3 Escalating a blocked deal

Escalate when you've hit something you structurally cannot move: a stakeholder who won't meet you, a term outside your authority, a competitor incumbency, a stalled information-governance review. Escalate with, not to — the situation, what you've tried, the specific role you want your manager to play, and what you'll do if they can't. And escalate early: an escalation in week two of a stall has options, while the same escalation in week eight has a lost deal attached.

6.4 Giving bad news early

The one genuinely unforgivable thing in a sales team is the surprise. A deal that slips is normal; a deal that slips after your manager has committed it upward on your word is a different category of event, because it damages their credibility as well as yours.

The rule: the moment you know something has changed, your manager knows within 24 hours — not at the next 1:1, not once you've fixed it. Three lines: what changed, what it means for the number, what you're doing about it.

"The trust's digital lead left on Friday. The deal I had at commit for March has no sponsor, so I'm moving £45k out of the quarter to best case. I've got a call with her deputy on Wednesday to find out whether the project survives, and I'll know by the 20th either way."

Reps who do this get trusted with bigger deals within a year. Reps who hope a slipping deal will recover before anyone notices get their pipeline audited weekly for the rest of their tenure.

6.5 What "coachable" actually looks like

Coachability is the most cited trait in sales hiring and the least defined. In practice it is five observable behaviours:

1. Feedback visibly appears in your next call. Once. Without a reminder.
2. You don't defend. Clarifying question, then what you'll do differently. Explaining why you did it is the reflex to kill — it reads as arguing even when it isn't.
3. You ask for feedback on specifics rather than in general.
4. You self-assess first, and accurately — naming your own two real mistakes in any debrief before they do.
5. You run the house method before proposing improvements to it. Around month six, having done so, your suggestions become interesting rather than presumptuous.

Field note

First-line sales managers are usually former top reps, promoted for selling rather than coaching, carrying a team number and often a patch of their own. Their attention is a scarce resource allocated by urgency, and the reps who get most of it are not the loudest but the easiest to help — the ones who arrive with the situation summarised, the attempts listed and a specific ask on the table. A new rep who is cheap to help gets helped disproportionately; one who needs half an hour of excavation before the coaching can start gets a shorter conversation every time, regardless of talent.