Are Your Call Plans DAPA

Another first call/meet structure. Courtesy of SA’s Protea Chemicals and their perhaps eccentric English sales trainer many moons ago.

Define – Agree – Prove – Accept

DAPA.

Fairly straightforward.

I recall four years back noting that a recruitment giant still used an old style first meeting structure like this. Theirs has six steps.

Not that ‘old’ is ‘bad’. Far from it. Any rubric that ensures your critical initial full conversation covers all the essentials is a good thing. Over-regimentation can always cause issues, yet to give yourself the best platform on which to build is key.

Also, from the mid-Noughties, I picked up a standard such system known rather unflatteringly as IFSC.

Anyway, with the first ‘D’ there’s all manner of techniques aimed at eking out pain from a reluctant prospect. From when ‘creating the need’ to arriving at a fully formed spec (note for the latter evoking the architect’s dream scheme).

I was further interested that Agreement on what was Defined got elevated to its own entry.

Definition of what was at hand you’d have thought included the mutual recognition of such. But this shows that extra attention is specifically required to make sure this does indeed transpire.

Also, there is no second middle ‘P’ for Propose. A staple of such call stipulations. Often bunched in with Close. It’s again useful that time ought be spent Proving yourself, but what exactly is it you’re hoping to gain Acceptance on?

Whatever the merits of this for your world, the point is worth making, that pretty much any agenda-setting introductory-digging first call will likely benefit from having such an acknowledged format.