You already have four of these.

Each one records something

The recorder records what was said. The CRM records what you typed. The spreadsheet records what you knew. The notetaker that scores MEDDPICC records what it inferred.

• The recorder

  An exact record of the hour, searchable, and it costs you nothing to keep once the call is over.

  A transcript is complete by definition, which is the problem. What nobody said has no timestamp, so it is not in there to find — and on most deals that is the half that decides them.

  Not a record of an absence.

• The CRM

  The one record your whole company has agreed to read, and the place the number is kept.

  The fields are an audit of your deal, filled in by you and read on Monday by somebody who is not you. An empty field and a question nobody has asked yet look exactly alike in it.

  Not a record of an absence.

• The spreadsheet

  The one you actually use: yours, fast, and honest — which is why you went on keeping it after the rollout.

  Every row in it is something you already knew and typed a second time. It never read the call, so it can only ever be as complete as the evening you last updated it.

  Not a record of an absence.

• The notetaker that scores MEDDPICC

  It listens to the call and hands back a scorecard with eight rows filled in, which is more than the recorder ever gave you.

  Look at what it does with a dimension nobody discussed. It fills it in anyway, from the nearest thing said, and the row that was a blank becomes a sentence you now half-believe. Ours leaves it empty and tells you which question empties it.

  Not a record of an absence.

And instead of all of it

Every dimension the calls have left open, still open — with the question that would close each one written against it, and nothing filled in from the nearest thing anybody said. You paste a call you already had. What comes back is mostly what is missing, which is the only part you could not have written yourself.