August 8, 2026 | Read online
For years, I’ve been using and training the “Summary Email” as one of my favorite tactics (nuggets) in Sales and I had the proof points to back it up.
I even wrote a post called “My Favorite Nugget” because it was so effective for me.
For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a simple summary email that you send at the end of the meeting that captures the key highlights from the conversation and aligns expectations, including next steps.
The key was to let the client know at the end of the call that you were going to send it and ask if they would review it and respond to make sure it was accurate.
When used correctly, it helps you 1) hold the client accountable for what they’re telling you, 2) avoid getting ghosted, and 3) confirm “power” (i.e. Decision Makers)
I ran the numbers on this once and found that I only got a ~30% response rate on that email, even when I would tell them it was coming and they agreed to respond. But, the ones I did get a response from were usually from “power” and closed over ~80% of the time. For the other ~70% of clients who didn’t respond to that summary email, I had a ~24% close rate.
Getting a response from the Summary Email was an absolute indicator for me that an opportunity was going to close…..until AI came along and ruined it.
My mentor, Jeff Hoffman, always hated the Summary Email because he said it put your “social status” beneath the buyer and made you look like an admin. I respectfully disagreed with him and thought it was a differentiator because it showed you were actively listening to the client and was a respectful way of staying aligned. It wasn’t just my opinion; as I said earlier, I had the receipts to prove it.
Then AI came along and gave EVERYONE the ability to immediately send a “perfectly written” summary email automatically at the end of every call.
I even started using AI to summarize my calls, so I stopped taking notes and just reviewed what AI put together for me.
The combination of the “technique” being commoditized by AI and me over-relying on it myself made it a meaningless part of the process that no longer differentiated me and started to do more harm than good.
I now agree with Jeff that sending a summary email makes you no better than an AI bot or admin. It absolutely lowers your social status.
This creates two questions for me: 1) Is there another “get” that replaces it and has such a high indicator of success, and 2) how else do you hold the client accountable and make sure you’re on the same page through the buying process?
For the first question, I don’t think there is going to be another “get” that shows such a high likelihood of closing like the Summary Email did (~80%). But there is one that I think comes in close, and it’s a ‘Defined Next Step.’
If the client agrees to lock in a next meeting on the calendar before they get off the call with you, it’s a strong indicator that you’re moving in the right direction with them. If you ask them to schedule a next call and they avoid it or say something like “follow up with me next week,” then you know you’re in trouble.
As for the other question about how to hold the client accountable, I’m not sure I have a great replacement for the Summary Email on that one. The obvious one is the Mutual Close Plan, but I don’t think those are appropriate on every deal.
The good news is there are plenty of other GIVES and GETS we can use to determine the health of any deal.
That’s why I’m giving away my favorite part of my training next Wednesday at 11:00am ET. It’s going to focus on Objective Negotiations and developing a custom GIVE/GET Deal Scorecard you can use to measure the health of any opportunity in your pipeline.
I’m also going to walk you through how I used it to “Score” a $400k deal I was working on and find out I was losing it before I ever would have without using it.
You’re not going to want to miss this one. Sign up today, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
#MakeItHappen
| How did I do with this edition? |
|
|
|
|