Answering Common Sales Rep Questions

there and I think, wow, that's a great question. So here, I've compiled a couple of them to cover in this podcast. I'll throw them out, John, you can answer. The first one comes from Lee, who I believe is a quota carrying rep. He has questions about the next step, and I'll just read you what he wrote. I've been working with a prospect and have conducted both a discovery call and a demo. We had some excellent discovery during our

initial call, even more during the demo. The customer then requested pricing for budgetary purposes, which I provided parentheses, though I'm unsure if that was the right move. I received this dreaded response, thank you so much for the details. We will regroup internally to discuss our approach and I will let you know how we would like to move forward. So Lee says, do you have any suggestions on how I should reply? How can I avoid this situation in

the future? John, take it away. What advice do you have for Lee?

great question. When I read it, the first questions that come to mind for me are like, what does your customer engagement model look like? Does it first outline how customer buys by stage? And I know you're not here with me on the pod here, so you can't answer these, but I just want you to contemplate it. Does it have your sales process align to how the customer buys by stage critical activities for the seller and the customer. We call those customer verifiable outcomes, and we look to

see that they have those by stage. And then who's doing what when inside the company all the resources, including again the customer, So we're looking for is there exit

criteria to move from one stage to the next. So I can't tell if you have that because it looks like some of these stages may have morphed together when you said, like in next fall you did discovery demo and pricing, And I know that that happens for a lot of us, and I'm not saying that you don't do that all on one call, but it wasn't clear to me if there were definitive stages and exit criteria that warranted the next stage. And only Lee will know that.

So this kind is open for everybody. So the next thing you said was that you had excellent discovery during the initial call and demo, and I would just kind of ask us, how do you measure that excellence? Because for me, here's what excellence looks like. You know, in Discovery, I think about three buckets on every call that I'm doing that I fill up. I'm looking to find positive

business outcomes and the impact the business impact. I'm looking to make sure that I have technical required capabilities and that those technical required capabilities have the ability to be influenced in favor for the customer and in favor for us with our differentiation. And then I'm also looking to

understand how they measure success. So coming out of that, I should have a good set of decision criteria or require capabilities which are good for the customer and highly differentiated for us, and that is what we should be demoing. So before we do anything or commit to a demo or commit to pricing, we have to make sure the decision criteria, the required capabilities that they are set in place and that everybody's going to have to use those and your job, Lee is to make them heavily influenced

by your differentiation. Okay. And then on the pricing piece, Look, I understand that you get asked for pricing all the time, but if you're going to give it early, use it as a discovery tool. So definitely, for me, I give the highest possible price that I can give, you know, based upon priceless and that kind of stuff. I don't create some arbitrary high price, but whatever the highest price I can give when that's all somebody has asked me for.

And then I look to get feedback and I ask things Lee, like give me your feedback on the pricing that I just shared with you, or at the end of the call, ask hey, what are two things you liked about what we discussed and two things that are causing you to pause? And lead. Most of the time, people are going to bring up pricing if it's an issue, So always ask what are they going to do with the pricing once you give it to them. So if someone says, hey, you're kind of expensive, don't get discouraged.

You know, for me, that's where discovery begins. And I just ask, so, what do you mean by expensive? What were you expecting? How did you come up with that number? Often it's a budget number. Walk me through how you get something approved that may not be in the budget. That helps me understand lead the decision process. And then when they say other competitors or if there's two other competitors,

what have you, there's no problem. Will you be judging us all on the same specific decision criteria that we just set up, And that's no problem for me. If that decision criteria is favorable for us, Lee set, it's favorable for us, it's good for the customer, and it's favorable because you did a good job setting traps for the competition and influencing it with your differentiation. I think you're all set, and then I wanted to give you something that you can go back with immediately because I

know you're like hey, what can I do now? So I'd call the prospect back and ask for feedback. Even if they've gone dark, I'd still call them back and ask for feedback, and I'd say something like, please share with me two things you like about what we've talked about thus far, and two things that may be causing you pause. If your pricing comes back, go back and use exactly what I said earlier. So if they said, hey, you were a little expensive, can you describe what you

mean by a little expensive? What were you expecting? Just use some of those tips in summer. I know that was a lot. But what I would do Lee is I would go back and make sure that you have a very specific sales process that delineates lines to how your customer buys and then one of those critical activities, including exit criteria. So if you jump right to a demo but you don't have decision criteria that's established and you don't have your discovery done, it doesn't mean that

you can't do it. But while you're doing that demo, go back this and delineate the decision criteria that comes out of that, the required capabilities that come out of that. Because at the end of your conversation. You got to make sure you got business impact, you have highly differentiated decision criteria, and you understand how the customer is going

to measure success. You can jump around a little bit because customers jump around, but you've got to have all three of those things before you give pricing, or while you give pricing, or you never know where you stand.

just go from there. It's not like I'm trying to shame myself or shame somebody else, but it's a good starting point for discovery. Awesome.

hear them. And now that's kind of my definition of authenticity. There's a reason why people are hesitant to share information with us. This is what I find. It can be that they don't trust us, they don't understand why we need the information or what we're going to do with the information, and maybe they do not have the information

that we're asking for. But all of those situations are a problem for us, and they're very very important for you as a leader, Brian, to kind of help them discover what the truth is, the authentic truth is behind that. So again, I like authenticity at all times, and I like to say things like, mister missus customer, a sense that you're not comfortable sharing all the information that I'm

asking you about, can you get me some feedback? And again, if you ask that in a very authentic way, people are going to share with you things like well, I don't understand what you're going to do with that information. I don't know why that information is relevant for this conversation. I've gotten some great feedback from people when I noticed they're shutting down a little bit. So for what I like to do is I like to say things like, let me share with you why this information is important.

For example, let's talk about business impact. It's my experience that most successful customers tie technical capability to business outcomes, and so other things like metrics. People struggle with metrics sometimes or a lot of times as the feedback I get. So when I'm asking about measurements or metrics, I'm not trying to set up a situation where I'm going to give the customers some impression like we, as the vendor,

are going to measure you in some way. We just need to show that when our solutions are measured with your success criteria, I'm kind of role playing here. We have to know that when our solutions are measured with your success criteria, they become proof points in the future of what we both committed to, and this becomes like credibility for both of us. I used to talk about

putting deposits in the bank account with my champions. Say, the reason why I'm talking about metrics now in measurement is because they are going to be proof points in the future for us, and it's going to build credibility. So the next time you want to do something, you want to expand this solution, you want to do something else with the solution, you want to go ask for more budget money, you and I both have proof that what we set out to do did so. It's extremely

extremely important. So again, Brian hats off. Teach them to be authentic, call it out when customers are being close to the vest, just be authentic and ask them a lot.

might upset the person their initial contacting. Another common scenario is when I ask that point of contact who else I should be talking to, they insist that everything should be funneled through them. In other words, my opportunities are frequently single threaded as a result. Can anyone offer advice on how to navigate this hurdle with my customers? How can I make bold requests without offending the customer? This is the common scenario, right John, Yeah, I.

of us are selling solutions that impact multiple organizations. So, Rachel, there's very few single threaded sales campaigns that are successful today, very few. But here's some tips. Ask gatekeepers questions that

they may not have the answer to. For example, a lot of times, if you're talking with somebody and they are responsible for the technical impact of a solution and the technical criteria, which is awesome and we need that every time when we're selling technical solutions, you might want to consider asking them for business impact and sometimes they'll have it and sometimes they won't. But I like to ask people questions that they may not have the answer to.

So if you do find a situation where a gatekeeper can't give you the answer, Also, don't be so quick to run out of the office with your hall pass to get away from them. I know I used to do that. As a young seller, so phoow, I want to get around this person. So now I asked them a question I didn't have an answer to and I run out of the office. But you might have an opportunity to build champions future champions, or at the very

least make the next call warmer with their participation. So a lot of times I'll say, hey, even though we didn't have the answer together on this, we both need this answer. Do you want to come with me? Or would you please come with me? And a lot of times when they're setting up the next call with somebody with an introduction, you're not having to do that cold. It makes the call a lot warmer. When people are adamant about you sticking with them, don't be afraid or

not going around them. Don't be afraid to ask them to walk you through the last purchase they made, and do kind of like a reverse timeline with them, and not in a gotcha way, like aha, here's a person that we don't know, here's another situation, here's another decision. But I'm telling you, ninety nine point ninety nine percent of the time you'll hear other people's names and other decision points, and it just becomes obvious. So just ask the simple question, can you walk me through the last

purchase you made. Many times you'll find that they didn't even make the purchase. They made a recommendation to somebody else that needed to make the purchase. So just let that kind of come organically. Again, I'm talking about authenticity. I'm talking about transparency. If you think somebody's boxing you in, just ask for some feedback on why that might be. At the end of the day, you're going to have to make a call if this gate peeper is a

competitors champion, don't get stuck. What do you have to lose? If you believe that what you do matters, you must know how your product is differentiated in a way that adds value to your prospect, you must continue the fight. And then the last point Rachel, I'd like to make here is in the question, the person said, I worry that I might upset this person. And I know that's real and it's authentic, and I kind of appreciate it and I've been there, but I want you to get

over that right now. We're not rude, we're not obnoxious, we're not disrespectful, but we do believe what we do matters, so we know that we're not any of those bad things, and so there's no reason for us to worry because what we do matters. And don't worry about things until they come up, meaning don't go in with a world that you're going to be boxed in or you're going to just be aware and if it comes up, you

just deal with it. At the end of the day, you go into conversations knowing that what I do matters, meaning my solutions are highly differentiated, they create business impact, and they matter. So regardless of who's in front of me telling me what I can and can't do, I always have that in my heart, and it gives us a lot of courage, especially to deal with gatekeepers.