Great sales calls begin before the meeting.

Steven Werley walks through a fast pre-call workflow that uses AI to assemble a one-page brief so you enter discovery prepared, objection-ready, and set up to secure a clear next step.

Key takeaways

• Gather the essentials fast: invite, email thread, CRM facts, quick AI research.
• Build a one-page brief with persona, pains, outcomes, objections, five discovery questions, binary next step, and proof points.
• Use Steven’s plain-English prompt to generate a printable brief in minutes.
• Label assumptions and avoid invented facts so the brief stays reliable on the call.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro and show format

01:20 Why strong calls start before the call

01:39 Five-step play overview

01:46 Gather inputs, invite and thread and CRM facts and quick AI research

02:13 One-page brief sections, persona and pains and outcomes and likely objections

02:32 Follow the brief on the call and mark assumptions to verify

02:57 AI sidecar overview

03:27 Build the printable one pager in ChatGPT

03:31 The exact prompt to generate the brief

04:30 Guardrails, one page and plain English and assumption labels

05:07 Confirm time zones for the two realistic slots

05:20 Action in five minutes and close

The Single Source Sprint: Elevate Your Sales Game

In this episode of 'This is the Play,' Steven Werley introduces 'The Single Source Sprint,' a strategy designed to place sales managers in the top 5% of their field. The key to this method is establishing a reliable CRM as the single source of truth, scrubbing away cluttered and inaccurate data. Werley outlines a daily 10-minute and weekly 20-minute routine to ensure CRM cleanliness, emphasizing the importance of seven core fields: owner, stage, amount, close date, last touch, next action, and confidence level. Additionally, leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT can assist in maintaining pipeline hygiene, ultimately boosting decision-making and forecasting accuracy.

00:00 Introduction to the Single Source Sprint

00:55 The Importance of a Single Source of Truth

01:34 Implementing the Daily Hygiene Loop

03:21 Choosing and Enforcing Your CRM

05:19 Daily and Weekly Review Processes

08:15 Leveraging AI for CRM Hygiene

13:05 14-Day Plan for CRM Optimization

13:39 Final Action Steps and Outro

The Play: Single-Source Sprint

1. Choose your SSOT: the CRM. Freeze side sheets read-only.

2. Enforce 7 canonical fields: Owner, Stage, Amount, Close date, Last touch, Next action, Confidence.

3. Make “Next action + date” required — otherwise not a valid opp.

4. Build 3 core views: Missing Next Action • Stale by SLA (Hot 24h, Warm 72h, Cold 7d) • Closing This Week.

5. Run a daily 10–15 min Status-Sweep: fix missing next steps, touch stale opps, close junk.

6. Hold a weekly 20-min exceptions review: discuss outliers; every decision = next action.

7. Keep a dashboard with only 3 metrics: Time-to-first-touch • Stage-to-stage days • Win rate by source.

Export a simple opps table and let GPT run a hygiene audit, returning a fix list and close/recycle candidates.

• Don’t add new fields mid-sprint; stick to the 7 canonical.

• Keep dashboards at 3 metrics.

• Archive side sheets read-only — no split sources.

• Back up before bulk edits.

Start (≤5 min): Export today’s open opp view, paste into GPT with the audit prompt, and copy the FIX LIST into your task queue.
Finish: Run a 15-minute Status-Sweep today and schedule it daily.

AI Sidecar

Export a simple opps table and let GPT run a hygiene audit, returning a fix list and close/recycle candidates.

Guardrails

• Don’t add new fields mid-sprint; stick to the 7 canonical.
• Keep dashboards at 3 metrics.
• Archive side sheets read-only — no split sources.
• Back up before bulk edits.
• 
  

Action in 5

Start (≤5 min): Export today’s open opp view, paste into GPT with the audit prompt, and copy the FIX LIST into your task queue.
Finish: Run a 15-minute Status-Sweep today and schedule it daily.

Speeding Up Sales Handoffs with the Two-Tap Update

This episode discusses the 'Two-Tap Update' strategy for sales teams, focusing on creating brief and consistent call notes to improve handoffs between sales development representatives (SDRs) and closers. The method involves using two templates: 'Outcome' and 'Next Action,' which can be completed in under two minutes. The episode explains how this approach leads to more efficient sales processes, fewer questions during handoffs, and nearly eliminates no-touch opportunities. Additionally, the script introduces an AI tool using ChatGPT to extract these snippets from call transcripts.

00:00 Introduction to the Two-Tap Update

00:36 The Problem with Current Note-Taking

01:43 Implementing the Two-Tap Update

02:34 Detailed Breakdown of Snippet Templates

03:23 Ensuring Consistency and Efficiency

05:13 Leveraging AI for Note-Taking

06:20 Action Steps and Conclusion

The Play: Two-Tap Update

1. Save two snippet templates:
   • Outcome: “Call outcome: [result]. Objection: [x]. Next step proposed: [y].”
   • Next action: “Next action: [task] on [date/time]; owner [name].”
2. After every call, paste both; tweak a few words; set the next-action date before closing the record.
3. Friday 10-min audit: 100% of opps show a valid next action.

AI Sidecar (copy-ready prompt)

From this call transcript [paste], extract:1) Outcome snippet in one sentence (result, key objection, proposed next step).2) Next action snippet: a concrete task, realistic date/time, and clear owner.3) If the next step is missing in the transcript, propose one based on the conversation. Return only those two snippets, plain text, ready to paste into CRM. Keep each ≤25 words.

Guardrails

• Cap updates at ≤2 minutes per call.
• Do not close an opportunity without a next action + date.
• Keep snippets short; no paragraph “novels.”

Action in 5

Start (≤5 min): Paste your most recent transcript into GPT; copy the two snippets into today’s opportunities.
Finish: Use Two-Tap on 100% of calls this week and run a Friday audit.

Links

• 1-page checklist: Coming Soon
• Closable.ai