When you wake up in the morning, you have to tell yourself that I have to attach myself to the biggest business issue facing my customers. You're listening to the audible Ready podcast, The show that helps you and your teams sell more Faster. Will 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. Let's get
started. Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Klepmullard. John Kaplan joins me today. Hi John, Hey Rachel, how you doing good? Good? I'm excited for this topic today because we're going to be talking about asking great questions. And I'm just realizing that I am recording a podcast about questions when I'm going to ask questions. So there's a lot
of pressure here to ask great questions in this compresiction. But when we think about the sales process, questions are critical and the key to asking great questions having great discovery is to make sure that your questions are natural aligned to where you are in the sales process. In the current situation you're in with your customer, and of course that you're listening to the answers. Discovery such a critical point in the sales process in an area where you can really differentiate yourself
as a salesperson. Yeah, Rach, that's so well said. I think, you know, especially now, how you sell can be just as important as what you sell. And I think, like you said, you know, discovery is the most important part of the sales process, and if you screw that up, you're going to have a real, real difficult time getting a good deal. Yeah. And so we talk a lot about preparation because that's the key to every conversation, no matter where you are in the customer
engagement process. But let's talk a little bit, John about how you go about preparing for your discovery by getting into the questions that you're going to ask. Yeah, you know, right. So, I'm a big believer. You've heard me say this a number of times that I don't believe in cold calls at all. I believe that every call can be warm. And let me just give you an example. I call it the bullseye, And in the bullseye, on the outer ring, I write the word industry and then
the inner one inner ring, from that one more ring. Inside of that, I write the word company, and then I write the ring getting close to the bullseye, I write the ring department, and then I write in the ring personal. So what I mean by that is we should prepare and find out what do we know about what's going on in the industry. Based upon what's going on in the industry, how is that impacting the company?
Based on how that's impacting the company, how is that impacting the department that I'm calling on, and how that ultimately impacted the individuals, the men and women who I interact with, and Rachel, they get it all screwed up. Most people try to go for the middle of the bullseye. First, I'm personal, and they haven't earned the right. So you know, the next thing is, I think you have to be prepared with an agenda.
So if you're okay with it, Rachel, can I just rattle off, you know, some questions and stuff and then you can kind of get me give it to go okay. So when I think about an agenda, I always think about asking the question in an agenda, in an email, in a in a voicemail, whatever, just to giving the person the heads up and it says, first question is what does a great outcome look like for
you? And I think that's just a great question to begin with for an agenda, because you're really giving that person the understanding that you're trying to make it all about them first. And then I say, I'm going to ask you some questions. I'll probably ask you what you like most about your current situation, and then I'm probably gonna ask you some questions about what you like least about your current situation, and then we'll go into more detail. Is
there anything that you would like to cover? And I always lead that open. I don't send an agenda that says this is how we're going to do it. I send these are my suggestions, what would you like to accomplish? So I think that's a real, real good way of doing it.
And then I prepare my questions Rachel, and the questions are things like, can you give me an example of how when they give me a feedback on and I start off again, say, hey, we talked to I said I was going to talk to about your current situation, what you like most about it and what you like least about it. When I get to the part where you're like least about it. Can you give me an example of how that manifests itself in your company? When was the last time that that
happened. What was the impact on the company, What was the impact on the department, What was the impact on you and your team? What feedback did you get from the line of business or from the customer, etc. What are you doing right now to make sure that that doesn't happen, Gab And if they look at you or they say to you, Rachel, nothing like you've opened the door. They've sat in their moment of pain by answering
these questions and then they're not doing anything about it. It actually creates kind of it creates kind of some urgency without even you creating it. You're just asking the questions. And to your point, John, going back to your agenda. When you send the agenda, you're sort of setting the tone for the conversations. You may drip a few out, like I really want to make sure we align on outcomes. What do you want to get out of
this conversation? And then over on the side, while you're waiting for the call, you're working these questions that help get you to some critical components of an opportunity that you're going to need if you're going to move the opper tunity forward. And I know we talk a lot about setting the tone for the call in advance, and that always involves sending an agenda. Talk a little bit about why that's so important and what it does for you when you get
on that conversation. Yeah, I think it's an important topic and I think people are really missing the boat on this. Let you know, for me, I don't want to ever blindside a customer. And I'm going to share a little story with you, Rachel. It's one of the most painful stories of my young sales career back in the day. But when I was it's actually when I was a manager. So I was a manager at Xerox and I was trying to get into the chief marketing officer one of the largest furniture
manufacturing companies in the world in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And if you know that area, you can figure it out. It's probably one of two companies. So my number one competitor was entrenched in there and they were they had two large print shops on site, and both managers were very, very loyal to the competition, so I'd go, you know, try to make calls on those people, and they gave me the stiff arm all the time, and I said, you know what, I'm going to go high. I
don't have anything to lose. I'm going to go high. And I did a great job. I thought I did a great job and got a meeting with the CMO. But since I was not purposeful with my contact and I didn't send an agenda, he had no idea what the meeting was about on the day of the meeting. So what did he do? What do you think he did? He invited those two birds. I'm going to call those two birds. I'm gonna call them enemy number one and Enemy number two.
That's not their names, and that's not how I referred to them, but that just will kind of set the stage. And so he invited them to the meeting. And you should have seen the expression on my face when I walked into the boardroom. And you can imagine what a boardroom is. That like a furniture manufacturer, like an office furniture manufacturer. Jacked out, like it is like the matter. It's like the mecca of where you'd want to be having a sales call. So anyways, he invited these two birds in
the room. And I walk into the boardroom and I see these birds sitting there and they had their grinning like cheshire cats. Rachel, they just have a huge smile on my face because they knew I didn't think they would be there. And so what I did was I tried to gather myself. And since I didn't send an agenda, you know, he went to the two managers and probably said, hey, what's this meeting about. Why don't you guys join? Is of course what's going to happen. And I know if
you're listening to me, I know that this has happened to you. And so you know, enemy number one and enemy number two show up in the meeting. And I got to tell you when I walked in, Rachel, they almost started laughing, and I was like, oh, it's under pressure.
I started to sweat so like a prize fighter. I was a little bit staggered by it, but I wasn't out yet, and I went to my prepared list of questions and I went for the gusto and I said something like, mister CMO, would you please tell me which documents in your organization are so mission critical for you that if they weren't done with the proper information, and they weren't done on time, it would actually bring your organization to its knees. And I got to tell you, like, that's what we
did. We did on demand printing better than anybody else on the planet. You can make changes late, just do it on demand. And then these print shops they couldn't do that. They had to set up the printing press. It just wasn't easy. So the digital works on us. I felt so good about that question, Rachel. It felt like as it left my hand, I like grooved a fastball right down the middle, except there was
one low problem. This was not a fastball that the CMO was expecting, and his eyes kind of looked confused, and like he looked confused until the pitch like actually, you know, hit him like in the middle of the back, like I beamed him with the pitch, like to keep the baseball analogy. And when I looked, I immediately regretted asking that question because I
could tell he was not prepared. And you know, it was funny because even Enemy number one and number two I could tell they thought that was a pretty good question, and they turned to the CMO, which made it worse because then the cmos like, oh my god, I probably should know this, but I don't know it. And he was a little embarrassed, but not too long the embarrassment turned to anger, and the CMO gathered himself and
this is so typical. He looked me straight in the eye, Rachel, and he said, mister Caplin, I thought we were going to speak about copiers. What does that question have to do with me? And I immediately remembered the mantra, Rachel, of you get delegated to those that you sound like, and I sound like Enemy number one and enemy number two. So the CMO said, so enemy number one and Enemy number two, you guys could probably answer the rest of mister Caplin's questions. I have another meeting,
and he actually got up and left the room. Rachel. He got up and left the room, and he didn't even shake my hand. So, oh, it was brutal. I'm like sick to my stomach. And I watch him as he leaves the room and the door kind of like closes behind him. I could feel Enemy number one and Enemy number two were staring at me, and when I look back over at their gaze. I like followed their gaze like and they had even bigger cheshire cat smiles on their Rachel,
is a true story. I literally just closed my notebook. I got up and I left the boardroom, and I didn't say anything to them. So I had my tail between my legs and you should have seen me. I like couldn't get to that elevator fast enough. You know how you hit the elevator button like multiple times. Dying in the lobby, I wanted to get out of there. It's funny because, like, Rachel, do you remember the movie with Tom Cruise, the one it was called let me think about
what. Oh, it's called Risky Business. Do you remember that right? Sure? Remember when he was interviewing for the Princeton to go to Princeton and he totally bombed the interview. Yeah, Afterwards he kind of lift up his sunglasses. He said, well, it looks like the University of Illinois. That's exactly how I felt. And forever more, Rachel, sorry for the long story, but forever more, I have always sent an agenda. I don't want to catch people blindsided. That's such a good story. To illustrate
the importance of it, I can feel the awkwardness as you want. And I'm sure many of people listening have been in similar situations. So it's a good anecdote to remind us to send an agenda and kind of set the tone for the conversation. And you give us some great questions for those opening conversations that allow you to really start to set the tone for digging deep on business
pain. But they also are i don't want to say soft, or they're disarming enough that they're not going to get you in trouble or not expose somebody in the room that's not ready to be exposed. And during the call, you know you always say it's a slow dance right with your customer of like
getting them to open up, give you information. And once you have the basic information, once you have aligned on the answers to some of those questions that you spoke about, like impact, what happens if this doesn't work, you want to make sure that you are also asking questions that give you the information that allow you to line your differentiation to the buyer, because that's what really is going to obviously set you apart from other competitors or other options.
So talk a little bit about that slow dance and how you set up questions so you're able to break get your differentiation on the table. That's such a great setup. So we talked a little bit about opening the call. So I kind of think about it as like kind of three part. It's kind of like opening the call, and then there's during the call. So now we're talking about during the call. When you wake up in the morning.
If you're listening to this and you're a seller, when you wake up in the morning, you have to tell yourself that I have to attach myself to the biggest business issue facing my customers. I also have to get my differentiation influenced into the decision criteria so the decision criteria is more favorable for me. So I want you to write those two things down. I have to attach to the biggest business issue and I have to influence the decision criteria with my
differentiation. Those are two things you have to do during every sales call. So let's talk a little bit about that. I call those trap setting questions, and it's not trapping the customer, it's trapping the competition. And you're trapping the competition around your differentiation. So let's break it down even further. First, I want you to think about a differentiator, and you know, let's just think about like force management for a second. Let's just kind of
give like a common denominator. So Force Management, one of the things that we have is like every single person that shows up in front of a facilitator, that shows up in front of our customers is a former VP of sales. So they are so relevant, they are so understanding of what's going on in the position. Most of them have come from technology backgrounds for most of our technology customers. So it's okay, so let's think about that. Well,
how do I get that influence in the decision criteria? You know? The first thing I do, Rachel is I look at the differentiator and I ask myself a big fat so what So what if Force Management's facilitators are extremely relevant with technology backgrounds and former vps of sales? I asked myself that, and I say, well, what bad things could happen if that wasn't the case. You could have somebody standing up in front of their people that was
completely irrelevant and was telling stories that were irrelevant. I can feel it right now. I know what happens every single day. So what I'm going to try is I'm going to try to think about a question. Can you give me an example of where you worked with someone in our industry and they presented people to you that just were not relevant for your company or the stories they were telling. They just really didn't look like that they were kind of in
sync with your company. People's eyes light up, and everybody's got a story like that. Every single one of you listening to me has seen people address your company before. It doesn't matter if it's training, if they're selling or whatever, but they're just not relevant. And for me, so I say, so what and then says who and says who is nothing more? I'm
a proof point for the differentiator. So I got all kinds of proof points in our industry of people that will say, when force management puts somebody in front of us, they like know our business as much as we do. And it's really really powerful. All right, Rachel, the crux move.
Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's go. All right. So then you just ask questions about the bad things that happen when they didn't have the kind of the impact of that differentiation, and you're always looking for negative consequences and you're always going deeper and deeper and deeper. So in my early days
at Force management, people kind of remember me by using these terms. Like they've heard me say, you drag the customer through the glass, you rip their face off, you know, you make them put on the code of pain. And you know, I've meled a little bit. I'm sixty now and I've met a little bit. And my kinder jetler side tells me to you know, what we're really trying to do. I mean, I just
do that kind of get people emotional about it and have some fun. But really what you're doing is you want to help the customer stand in the moment of their pain with real examples, with real consequences. So the more you tell them they have a problem, they're going to resist you. But the more you ask them a question that makes them stand in their moment of pain, they will actually create their own urgency and they'll convince themselves that they need
to fix it. It's that simple, Rachel. There's an old saying that says people rarely argue with their own conclusions, and if you can get the customer to come to their own conclusion, you're all set. This is what I'm doing during the call. This is the majority of what I'm doing during the call, the actual call. I love it all right. So we went through some questions you can ask when you're opening up the conversation getting the
conversation going. Great tips here for aligning the conversation so you can get that differentiation up on the table. I want to bring up another area that you want to be validating with your question process, and that's the decision process. I just wrote a couple of pieces for a sender on paying attention to this because I think reps might kind of toss it to the side a little bit because it's not as big as like the economic buyer or the champion. You're
like, oh, I know the decision process. So and so is going to finance and then they're going to sign the deal. But a lot of times it's much more nuanced than that, and getting the right information can really set yourself up for success prevent the stalled deals. Knowing those key components about the decision process can also point you to those important stakeholders in the conversation, some of whom you may not have considered. So I got to tell you.
Let me rephrase what I said during the call you wake up in the morning, because you just added an incredible point here, and I'm sorry I missed it. When you wake up in the morning, you're doing three things, Rachel. You are first saying, how do I attach myself to the biggest business issue facing the customer? How do I influence the decision criteria with my differentiation? And now, as so eloquently pointed out by you, I
am also qualifying. I'm voraciously qualifying, and one of the things I'm qualifying for sure is the decision process. So let's talk about some of those questions. They're real simple. Hey, walk me through the last time you made a purchase like this, who was involved, who had the final sign off? How much does that person know about what you're doing right now here, How do you plan on bringing them up to speed? What help do you need from your partner? Parenthesies me to do that? How do you put
together your justification? What does it take to get approval? Walk me through the specific steps. What would you do differently this time around in getting something approved? So I want you to think about the last thing that you got approved or the last thing you went through the process on. What did you like about that process us and what are some things you'd definitely like to do
differently. These questions are so benign, Rachel, They are so non threatening, but the answers to these questions are just just a pot of gold. That's great. I think this has been a really meaty podcast. And John, I know that when we started, I said I want to do a podcast about questions. And there's like a hundred different ways that we can take this. But I love what we did here today and I think I hope those of you listening were able to write some of these down, or you
can go back and take notes as you listen to John's question. But I don't want to talk about discovery, Rachel. Can we have started interrupted? Can we just can we just take those questions and put them in the show notes? Yeah, I'll make a link somehow. It might be if I put them all in the show notes, it might be a little bit long, but the expert man, let's just give them a let's point them somewhere
where they can see the question. Yes, awesome. So I don't want to go through all this, John and not talk about wrapping up a conversation, even if you've had great questions. You want to make sure that you've captured the right information, that what you heard is what the customer felt like they said, and you want to make sure you have a great next step. Yeah, you know so critical. So we talked about preparing an agenda, we talked about opening a call, we talked about during the call.
Now let's talk about it as we're closing the call. I call it the seller deficit disorder. Customers do not believe that sellers understand their business, and they don't believe that we listen very well. So I want to give you a little tip what you're doing when you're gathering your answers. You're really kind of building up three categories. In my opinion. The first thing I'm trying to understand is the positive business outcomes they're trying to achieve. I call those
PBOs. The next thing we're trying to do is we're trying to understand and influence the required capabilities or the decision criteria, and we're trying to influence those with our differentiation. So I like to summarize, and if I can't summarize, I'm not ready to sell them anything. So the summary goes something like
this, Rachel. It says, Hey, during our conversation today, we talked about these positive business outcomes that you're trying to achieve, and in your mind you're like, oh, oh no, we didn't, or yeah we did, and if we didn't, then just ask a question. I typically at this point understand the business outcomes that you're trying to achieve, and I don't think we talked very much about those. Would you mind if I asked you a few more questions about those? All right, bo, let's go
back. Okay, so we have the positive business outcomes and then you said, what was technically required is the following And it's real simple once you list that and you look at that list, and if it's not favorable for you, you got more work to do. Would you mind if I kind of elaborated on some of this criteria and I start to influence my decision criteria right
there? This is assuming you didn't get it done during the call. And then very important, I want to understand how you're going to measure success. So many people miss this, Rachel, because if they don't understand how they measure success, they're never going to have a proof point. Today's metrics is tomorrow's proof point, and we have to have proof points. And you can't leave the door open for the customer later on to say, yeah, I
mean, you guys are good, but you're not like that good. You can't do that when you have metrics and you say, hey, we signed up to do these things. We said we're going to measure it this way. So Rachel, my point is, I want you to think of these things. It's like buckets of information, and through our discovery, we're filling up those buckets of information. At the end of the call, we're saying to the customer, let me recap what we talked about. Number one,
it proves that you listened. Number two, you're starting off with positive business outcomes, so you definitely understand their business. So in that summary alone, you wiped out the seller deficit disorder. Then what I always like to do, Rachel, is I like to ask, hey, before we go, and this is really important. I really love it. Just I've gotten great feedback on it. Before we go, what did you like most about we talked about today? The next thing I ask is what caused you pause in
our meeting? Oh, that's good. People always bring an objection without fail they'll say, well, here's a the common one. Well, John, we didn't really talk about how much this stuff costs, so whatever, whatever the objection is on their mind, it just comes out so naturally from the way you positioned it. And then the last thing I say, is is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you would have expected me to
talk about? And those three final questions are so powerful. It proves that you're a professional, and it proves that you are really interested in what their feedback is, so really really powerful way to edd it. That's great, some great things for us to think about in our sales conversations this week. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information or a list for you to take with you. You give us a good bottom line to help wrap this up, John, I love these, so here's my bottom line.
Discovery is the most important part of the sales process bar none. You have to be prepared, send an agenda, set traps for the competition which will help you influence the decision crightter are, be a voracious qualifier, make sure you understand decision process and close well, close well with intention and follow up action items. Go get them go, get them go get them close. Well, thank you, John, welcome, all right, thank you
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