No matter what we do, we should always be outside of the first meeting. We should always make it about the buyer before we earn the right to make it all about our products and services.
You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by the team at Force Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness.
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Hello, Welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel klett Miller, joined today by John Kaplan. Hi, John, Rachel, how are you good? Good? A good podcast today, John.
Yes, looking forward to it.
We do nothing less right always, But today we are going to talk about executing a single selling motion. You know, a lot of times, as sales reps, we're giving a lot of tools, tactics, technology, processes to follow, and the challenge can come from how do you, as a rep pull all of these tools together fluidly and in a way where you don't feel like you're just piling on process after tool after tool. And John, I know you get this question a lot from reps who have gone
through several of our programs at a force management. So let's just start with your high level advice about how to maneuver that.
First of all, I think the I do get the question a lot, and I think I'm getting a lot more lately because of all the implications with a lot of these AI tools for sales assistance and all kinds of stuff that are coming down the pike, and I think there is a general kind of concern that it may complicate the selling motion. And it sure seems like the world is just trying to make this topic pretty complicated.
I'm not saying I'm against AI apps slowly for AI, but I think you really have to make sure that at the end of the day, you are simplifying what you're asking a seller to do and simplifying the motion for the seller and the buyer. Let's talk about that a little bit today. How can we simplify it right.
From really that rep PERSONA, because you can really get bogged down in using a lot of these tools, and you want to use it in a way that benefits you and benefits your buyer and benefits the sales process. So we're going to kind of frame this conversation today as it relates to the tools that we use at force management and what we do. So if you haven't gone through any of the force management methodologies, first.
Check us out.
But if you haven't, just you can kind of supplement our ideas for the tools that you use. So let's just kind of level said John. Let's say you learn command of the message and you have your value framework
to help with that value based conversation. Then let's say you go through commanded the sale and now you as a rep have the tools to align that framework with your organization's customer engagement process and perhaps the qualification process like medic And then you may have a negotiation training, so you've got an negotiation framework. So you've got a lot of tools here to help you execute. How am I pulling these together in one single motion?
It's a really good question. I'll try to do this in a way that it doesn't matter if you have an experience forced management methodology. So let's begin with the concept of an outside in versus an inside out approach. So no matter what we do, we should always be outside in the first, meaning we should always make it about the buyer before we earn the right to make
it all about our products and services. So if we talk about this concept of emotion, I like to think about it like a golf swing, where there's a takeaway first and then there's a forward delivery motion. If you're not a golfer, if you just think about throwing a ball, you first kind of position yourself, you take your arm back,
and then you move it forward. If you think about bowling, if you think about cricket, if I don't care what you think about, there's this takeaway motion which builds momentum, and then there's a follow through and a delivery motion. So let's stay on this topic of emotion. Let's think about the mechanics of this takeaway and of the delivery,
because let's start with the takeaway. So I want you to think of the takeaway as discovery with the buyer, where we are gathering information and before we can effectively deliver something talk about us, we need to finish the takeaway. So it's just like you look at like Google Charles Barkley golf swing. When you don't have a full takeaway, then you have a very suspect delivery and things full,
things will go wrong. So we want you to just think about having a full takeaway where in the selling motion. I like to think of that takeaway as like filling up three buckets of information. Every time I sit down with a customer, I am building three buckets of discovery information, positive business outcomes. What are the business outcomes that this customer is trying to achieve? Required capabilities is the same as like the technical decision criteria, but without positive business
outcomes you miss a real opportunity to create urgency. So the technical required capabilities are where we connect positive business outcomes and technical decision criteria. And then the third is metrics. How is the customer going to measure success? Okay, so the first part of the motion the takeaway. I'm asking questions about positive business outcomes, I'm asking questions about technical required capabilities, and I'm asking questions about how the customer
will measure success from a metrics point of view. That's the takeaway.
Yeah, So, as you said, John, that first part of the motion is the discovery where we're gathering the information from our buyer. You mentioned it, positive business outcomes, required capabilities or solution requirements, and metrics. Those are the gifts of gold. Right allow you to align what you do with what they need. So you're making it all about them before we make it all about us. So now talk about that delivery part of the motion, that back half.
Yeah, So just like any any golf swing or any motion that relies on what you do, and the takeaway totally impacts what you do on the delivery. So if we think about the downswing or the follow through up a golf swing, now we have taken away positive business outcomes, require capabilities and metrics, and now we're going to face the target and deliver to the target because we've earned the right to talk about these three things, which are
how we do those required capabilities. So why would you talk about your products and services in any other way than what the customer said was required. So we call that required capabilities in the takeaway. In the delivery, we talk about delivering. How we do that and how we do that? That is the required capabilities. It will really help you stay aligned. Then I have to talk about, well, how do we do those require capabilities different or better
than everybody else. This is our differentiation. It's here where we influence those decision criteria or those technical require capabilities with our differentiators, and then we finished the swing with a great follow through where we talk about our proof points, where have we done it before, case studies, testimonials. These aren't brand names. This isn't a logo slide. This is we had this customer that had this problem, that was
trying to accomplish this. They had these technical requirements. They measured those requirements this way. Here's how they measured that six, here's how we did that, Here's how we did it differently or better, and here were the results. Now, that is an unbelievably great golf SLNK and at Forced Management we call that the mantra. So there's three things you
take away. Possitive business outcomes require capabilities and metrics, and there's three things you deliver back in every sales conversation, which is how we do it, how we do it differently or better, and where we've done it before exactly.
And that's a really great way to simplify what you need in those sales conversation, the three things you need and then the three things you need to deliver. So that's the motion for the sales conversation. Talk about how that fits into a sales process and the tools we have for our sales process.
That's a great question because I think the sales process should be totally dependent upon the sales conversation that you're trying to build, and I call that the ultimate summation. And so if we are trying to build this mantra, the same thing that we're doing in a sales conversation, we are actually building throughout. You know, it's a great flow for a sales process. So it's a couple of hygiene points on sales process. First, sales process need to
be aligned to how a buyer buys. First thing, we should look at us how does the buyer buy? And most buyers go through some kind of discovery or requirements phase, then they move into some type of evaluating options phase. They then move into some type of justification phase or a decision phase, and then an implementation phase, et cetera. So whatever those are, a sales process should align to those buyer stages, and we should think of it as
we are helping the customer build out this mantra. So customers in their buying process, they'd better be thinking about what impact is this going to have on our business? What are the technical PBOs by the way, What are the technical required capabilities that we're going to be How are we going to measure success? Who's out there that can do this, how do they do it? How did they do it differently or better than everybody else? And
where's the proof? So if you look at it, Rachel, that mantra of that swing is actually represents not only the sales conversation, but it also represents the things that you go through to build that out into you know what I'm going to call later here is the ultimate summation that should show up. Okay, how do we get the customer to attach to the biggest business issue that
they're facing that's in your sales process. How do we establish the decision criteria or the required capabilities and attach our differentiation to it to make it more favorable for us? How's the customer going to measure success? How are we going to validate that? It's all in the sales process.
So they're really not separate processes. They're the same. There's just ones at an uber level and a conversation, and the other one is how it manifests itself and what you do in activities every day, which is your sales process.
Right, exactly. So that's a great way to kind of break it down. So all of these tools that you have at your disposal, discovery guides, value frameworks, value pyramids, negotiation planners, close plans, implementation plans, whatever you got, think of those as tools to build the mantra, as John talked about, as it relates to your sales conversations and then the activities that you're doing throughout the day. Did I get that right, John.
Yeah, exactly. I think for the golf swing or the mantra, I call this I called it earlier, I called it the ultimate summation. I want to really give it a name. So it's the ultimate summation of creating and delivering value. All those tools that you just mentioned, they are all a manifestation of those critical components of the mantra. Positive
business outcomes. Technical required capabilities that are highly differentiated for us, how the customer's going to measure success and it should be very favorable for us, obviously very favorable to the customer. How we do that specifically, the technical required capabilities? How do we do it differently or better than anybody else where? Have we done it before? This becomes the focus of everything that we do. Skip one of those things and
go google Charles Barkley's golf swing. You skip any one of those three takeaways or three deliveries, and you're going to have a choppy swing.
Yeah, and you know, Johen, A lot of this really comes into finding your own style to use these tools, but you want to make sure you understand how each plays a role in executing with the customer, right. That is important. Focus on the customer and everything else sort of falls into place.
Yeah, you know, sticking with this theme of golf, I go to the range to practice a lot, and I'll see people with different tools. I'll see people with things around their wrists, things around their legs, different technology that they're using. It's all pointed at trying to be better at getting that ball closer to the whole, closer to the fair way. It's all aimed at doing the outcome. Not everybody uses all of those. Now, I'm not saying that you don't have to use the tools that the
company gives you. But if I'm better at some part of the execution, I focus on the other areas of the execution. I focus on what I do well. I focus on minimizing what I don't do well. So what I'm trying to tell you is there's all these tools
that they can bring and continue to bring. It's all to get you closer to a customer, to attach yourself to the biggest business issues facing that customer, to allow you to influence decision criteria, to make it more favorable for you, and to allow you to be a voracious qualifier. So when you think about it, we got the takeaway. You got three things you're taking away. Positive business outcomes
require capabilities and metrics. And once I have that, I can pivot and I can start my down swim or my delivery to my customer, and I can tell them how we do it, how we do it differently or better, and where we've done it before. Again at Force Management, we call this motion the mantra, and we're not only building a great sales conversation, but we're also doing that through utilizing a great process of engagement or sales process, which is basically how the matra comes alive and the
activities of what we do. So hopefully that we didn't confuse you with golf swings and analogies and that kind of thing, but our goal was to help you simplify it. Take away three things from a customer, deliver three things back to a customer, and you should be on really golden ground right.
And that's a great reset for the week. Thank you, John, my pleasure go get them right, and thank you to all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. At Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your t the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience. The proof is in our results.
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