Where am I in relationship to this customer? What persona are they? What
problems or challenges do they have? What am I trying to accomplish in this
conversation. You're responsible to meeting the customer wherever they are. You're listening to
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Hello, I'm Rachel lett Miller. Thank you for listening to the Audible
Ready Sales Podcast. Joining me today as our own John Kaplin, Hi,
John, Hi, Rachel, How you doing good? I'm doing well.
I hope you are, and I know you love this topic we're tackling today,
John, Today we are going to talk about discovery. As we've said
a million times great, discovery is the gift that keeps on giving even beyond
the initial sale, and we talk a lot about the value it brings to
us as salespeople. But today we're going to talk about the value it brings
your customer. Yeah, I think it's such a great topic. We have
another podcast, as you know, with McMahon Revenue Builders, and we're constantly
coming back to this topic of discovery is the most important part of the sales
process. Discovering scoping, we believe are the most important and some of the
most difficult for both the customer and for sellers. So just kind of putting
some top line stuff in here, you discovery should always be two sided.
What I mean by that is not only should you be learning, but the
customer should be learning. Your questions should be so good that the customer should
be learning. And then we kind of talk about this concept of persuasion,
the art of persuasion, which really says the more you tell somebody that they
have a problem, they're more they're going to resist. So I think what
we're constantly trying to do is ask great discovery questions with the intent to get
a customer to stand in the moment of their own pain to where they convince
themselves that they have a problem, and therefore the urgency gets created and the
urgency to fix it. And you know, it really is that simple.
Rachel, I think that you know, when we practice this stuff from a
customer's perspective. Everybody loves to be led, you know, and a customer
loves to be led. They love to be led in a discovery process,
provided that you can take them to a place that they can't get to on
their own. And that's kind of a good caveat. You really got to
be thinking about that. And the last thing I wanted to say is there's
this saying and it says people rarely argue with their own conclusion, And when
you really think about it, it's kind of funny at first, but then
when you really think about it, you're like, well, no, of
course not. When I come to a conclusion on something, I'm not arguing
it myself. So the key is how do we do discovery so well that
a customer feels like they're coming to their own conclusion? Very powerful thought there,
Yeah, I mean I can't. I can even think about myself purchasing
something and it's you know, typically there's some like technical challenge that hurts my
head and I'm on the phone with a potential vendroom like can you just like
help it? Like what do we do help me that it out? Right?
Because as salespeople, right in discovery, we are gathering information that helps
us match our solutions to our customer needs. But that art of discovery is
really when you're having a conversation that the customer is getting value from. Yeah,
and I can really empathize with what you just said or connect with what
you just said, Like I am the easiest person on the planet to sell
something to if you're good in discovery. For me, if you're good in
discovery, I'm willing to slow dance. I'm actually willing to let you take
the lead. And there's not a lot of things in my life that I'm
willing to do that with other people. It's just I got one of those
personalities. I like to control things. But when I'm working with a good
seller, it is an absolute joy. But the flip side of that is
it is horror when I'm working with a seller that is not good at this,
and it's it's not just horror for me, it's horror for the seller
that's you know, that's trying to approach me. So again, it's kind
of like a slow dance, like I'm willing to be led in the dance
provided that you can take me to a place I can't get to on my
own and we talked about you want the customer to realize that they have a
problem, and you also want to do it in a way that creates urgency,
which is very difficult for people. Like we talk about find the pain
and uncover the pain and make them bleed and drag them through the and all
these kind of sayings that we come up with to kind of they're trying to
give us spirit around this because it's so hard and it's also hard mentally to
do. So. As you know, Rachel, we have something called negative
consequences, and we teach people at Force Management how to get the customer to
think about the negative consequences, stay in that moment of pain, and so
what happens when you know, when that happens with the customer, and what
did the customer wind up saying to you? What happened to the account,
what happened to the relationships, what happened to the pricing? And so we're
going deeper and deeper and deeper, and these are these negative consequences too.
It's kind of like a fine line, Rachel, where the customer is kind
of like, ouch, I give I get that, you get that we
have a problem. Why don't you tell me what we can do about it?
Now, I just want to give people spirit or what you can do
about it if you reach that point in a conversation. Everybody's afraid to reach
that point. But in reality, less than one percent of the time does
a customer actually go to feel like they've gone too far in discovery that they're
like pushing you back and saying, you know, I get that we have
a problem. So that's like, don't think about that there. And when
we say negative consequences, you're not being negative. You're getting the customer to
think about their problems or challenges, and it so often comes to them in
a negative way like negative consequences, that it creates urgency. And your job
as a seller is to make sure at the end of these conversations they believe
that they spoke about something with you that has to be fixed. That's what
the most elite sellers do. And then the last thing I would say,
Rach is, you know, building credibility in the conversation. So many times,
you know, I told you just a pet peeve of mine. So
many times people try to go personal and they try to go like, hey,
is that your family, and that picture there, whatever, what keeps
you up at night? Blah blah blah blah blah. Those books, if
you got them on your shelf, throw them out. It's human behavior.
Doesn't work that way, at least it doesn't anymore. And what I think
is also one thing we got to be careful of. When people think about
doing discovery, they're like, oh, man, I'm getting them to rat
out the competition, my competition. And that's not what you want to try
to get a customer to do. You want them to focus on the problem.
Let them come to their own reality that you know what, I have
a vendor right now that's supposed to be helping me with this problem that isn't
and I still have this problem. So I always like to say, Rachel,
let's be loyal to those not present. Focus on the problem and the
competitor or the vendor. It's going to raise their head around them. The
reason why they still have that problem is because they're with that competitor. Does
that make sense right? They can draw their own conclusions there. You don't
have to point it out. You're pointing out the challenge they have. And
you know, you make some great points there about approaching these converx stations with
empathy not coming out a minute negative way, even though it's negative consequences.
You're trying to illuminate right to the customer ways themselves. But your ability to
have the conversation it opens the door for your being able to share how you
can fix it. The customer probably knows they got a problem. Yeah,
I mean, I'm thinking about the challenges that I'm dealing with right now.
I know they're there. Yes, I could have a conversation about it,
more like a therapy session. Can you help me? That's what it is.
And you know another concept, John, you mentioned slowed answer, which
I love. That concept is what we talk about when we're talking about discovery,
uncovering customer problems, getting them to persuade themselves. Another one we often
use is on ramps. We say that there are several on ramps to a
customer conversation, and I think that applies here. Can you talk a little
bit about what we mean by that and why it's relevant to value a customer
gets from discovery. I like it, And if you don't mind, let's
keep that dance analogy going is that typically two people can't lead in a dance
because it just doesn't work. And I'm not an expert dancer, but you
know, I know, like in ballroom dancing or whatever, they teach people
like, Okay, sometimes you're leading and sometimes you're following, and you've got
to be good at both. So we have this saying that says wherever you
are, there you go. Because people are like, Okay, what step
next? What do I do first? What I do second? What do
I do third? And reality is in these conversations there are a lot of
different on ramps. There's on ramps with different people, There's on ramps with
different problems, there's on ramps with different departments or different outcomes. So in
order to be truly present in a discovery conversation, you have to ask yourself
where am I? I mean, it's really you might hear Kaplin say it
in a meeting sometime to himself, or he might say it out loud Where
am I? And people might think I'm crazy? But what I'm trying to
do is get grounded with where am I in relationship to this customer? What
persona are they? First? And foremost, what problems or challenges do they
have? What am I trying to accomplish in this conversation, and so you're
responsible to meeting the customer wherever they are. You know that we talk about
that, Rachel, that you get delegated to those that you sound like.
And when you don't approach a conversation like being cognizant of on ramps, what
happens is you wind up missing that. You're like talking to an economic buyer
about the tactical things that have to get done on a maybe decision requirements or
what have you, or the other way around, you're talking to a technical
champion and you're pounding them on the business implications of what's going on and your
right to talk about these things. You've got to understand the technical issues,
you've got to understand the business implications. But it's your job to stay focused
in the slow dance and Rachel at Forest Management, you know what we've spent
twenty years doing. I talk about the buckets, Like when you go into
a conversation, you got to fill up three buckets. No matter who you
are, You've got to fill up positive business outcomes, required capabilities, and
metrics before you can even pivot and talk about yourself. So that being said,
I go, okay, I know I got to get the positive business
outcomes. I know, I got to get the require capabilities, and not
just to require capabilities. I got to get them in a way that they
are favorable for me and for the customer, which means they have to be
influenced by my differentiation. Okay, and I know we have to understand how
they're going to measure success because today's measurements become tomorrow's proof points. Okay,
let's simplify this. Let's just go into conversations knowing I got to understand the
business implications. I got to understand the technical require capabilities in a way that
they're favorable for me, influenced by my differentiation. And I got to understand
how the customer's going to measure success. Okay, smart guy, who are
you talking to today? Okay? What part of this outcome that I'm going
to need? By the way, Rachel, before I start talking about how
we do it, how we do it different or better, and where we've
done it before, I got to get those three buckets filled up. So
I ask myself, what role is this person that I'm talking to? What
do they play? Is this an economic buyer? Am I going to talk
to them? About technical requirements, probably not A. Is this an economic
buyer? Am I going to talk to them about business implications? Probably yes?
Am I going to understand how we're going to measure success? Probably yes.
So the whole point there is we want you to go into conversations and
first understand from an outside end point of view, where are this customers coming
from, what are the positive business outcomes, what are the technical requirements,
and what are the metrics? Okay, who am I talking to? I
have to adjust my language based upon who I'm talking to, because if you
don't, you get delegated to those that you sound like. And at the
end of the day and only then, Rachel, you know, that's the
first part of the backswing we talk about like a golf swing. That's the
backswing of the golfing in order to really pivot and smash that ball down the
middle of the fairway, we have to align that to Okay, now that
I've earned the right to tell you, let me tell you how we do
that, How you do what well? How we do those require capabilities?
Let me tell you how we do it differently or better than anybody else and
where we've done it before. That's what I mean, Rachel when I talk
about that slow dance, and the slow dance is customers willing to be led
if you can take them to a place they can't get to on their own.
If you're asking them questions that you could have got from somebody else,
that's not going to work. If you're doing things like asking them about technical
capabilities when they're really focused on the business implications, that's not going to work.
So that's what we mean, Rachel, by just making sure that we
really align ourselves. And it's our responsibility too. If you want to slow
dance and you want to lead, you got to know how to lead.
Wow. That was a mouthful, wasn't it. Both those on ramps help
with that alignment. John. And when you say you get delegated to who
you sound like it's not great for you as a salesperson, right, you're
going to get stuck in the lower runs of the organization. But the other
flip side of that is that what you're bringing to that particular person is not
valuable. They are going to move you to somebody where you can provide value.
The customer is not getting the value. So all of this that you're
talking about with the slow dans and the on ramps. If you execute it
correctly, it's you are getting the right information you need to craft an awesome
opportunity and get a great deal. But also your customer is gaining value from
every interaction that they have with you, which pays dividends multiples of dividends.
It's like, Rachel, you get instant feedback, like I want reps.
If you're listening to this, like just open your eyes. If you're on
zoom, open your eyes and look what's the customer doing? Are they lead?
Are they looking at you? Are they looking down at their watch?
Are they doing answering messages or typing on their computer? You get instant feedback,
man on this one, Like if you're leading them and they're happy with
the dance, they're with you, they're asking you questions, Hey, what
did you mean about that? I didn't quite understand that question. If you
think you get through like a ten minute conversation and you're the only one talking
at the end, they just kind of go like you find yourself going yeah,
and you know, like, who's the dude that ran across when he
says and that's all I have to say about that? Who was that,
dude, what movie was that Forrest Gump? When he's done spewing and then
the customer doesn't even look back. Customer's not even looking at him, he
says. And that's all I have to say about that. If you feel
like you're in that position, then it's not working. You're not leading.
Does it make sense Rachel? Yeah? Absolutely, And everything you've said here
really goes to having a great customer conversation. But maybe John, you can
kind of break down what good looks like when you have a customer folks discovery
session. What does that feel like as you're filling up those buckets? What
happens? Yeah? I know. Okay, so what you're asking me is
like from the customer's point of view, kind of like, how does it
feel? I like that? So, as I said earlier, you know,
the customer has convinced themselves that they have a problem, and that's the
ideal situation. They're like, they're owning the problem and say okay, and
their mindset is switching to well, let's talk about how what we can do
about that, and they should be telling you what they need and if you've
done it right, it's aligned to what you provide they'll be like, Okay,
I think I need this or I think I need that, and you've
done such a good job. They don't even realize that it's your differentiation they're
talking about. They don't even realize that it's your solution they're talking about,
because you've done discovery so well, you've made it their idea and the customer
wants a next step. Okay, when you're getting off these calls and they're
like, okay, and that's all I have to say about that, and
the customer's like, hey, it's really nice to meet you or whatever,
or you're not good shape. You're not in good shape, stop the presses.
You know, a lot of times, what I'll do Rachel in those
situations when I feel it's just not working, I ask a customer like,
hey, what do you like about what we talked about today? And then
what caused you pause? And it always helps me when I feel like I'm
not hitting the mark, you know, And it's not always when I'm just
feeling and I hit the mark. I actually do it, like on every
sales call, like mister missus customer, what did you like most about what
we talked about? And it should be like well, I think you understand
my problem, and I think I have a real good understanding of you know,
what your solution can do. I mean, that's heaven right. Well,
give me a couple of things that cause you pause. Well, John,
I don't know how much your solution costs. You know, I know
I'm doing a good job at the end of a call when somebody says that
to me, I really like what we talked about, but I'm a little
hesitant because I don't know what it costs. That means I wasn't talking about
features and functions and talk trying to talk about pricing. You know, I'll
get a lot of people debate me on that. Oh they should know you're
hiding something, na I don't think so. I think when that comes up,
I say, mister MSUs customer, I promise you were going to talk
about the cost, but I want to do it in ways that so I
make sure that what I'm saying totally reflects your problem and the challenges. And
then if we do that right, the cost will be just kind of like
a return on investment. And I've had really really good success with that.
And then other things is that they have an urgency and that they're they're kind
of genuinely interested in how you do it, and they're the ones asking about
have you ever gotten off a call? And the customer's like, hey,
you know, let's talk about next steps, and you're like, holy smokes,
I got a little lazy there for a second, like I was just
going to get off this phone and the customer's asking for the next steps.
It happens. You know, we're making a lot of these calls every day,
and you know, sometimes you're just going to feel those things and thank
god, that's a good sign where the customer says, hey, Rachel,
when are we going to have the next call? So you can tell me
like what you're going to sell me and how you're going to sell it to
me, and just celebrate that, know that you know you just missed something
there. But it's you know, I chuckle when somebody says that, Yeah,
I mean, thanks for keeping the conversation going, mister missus customer.
Let me get grounded here here, I think are the next steps? And
that's awesome. But how many times, Rachel, we get off the phone
and we feel like we're just like Forrest Gump, And that's all I have
to say about that, and the customers like, nice to meet you,
see you later click holy smokes, right right, because you build this great
momsum, you need to continue that. And we have some great content on
what we call owning the next step. Make sure you're owning the next step.
I'm going to link that in the show notes. Probably a good time
to bring up this concept of the what we heard email great way a customer
continues to benefit from that discovery session. Talk a little bit about what we
do. Yeah, I like that because we've been swimming around a little bit.
Rachel like, we know that customers. You know, this is about
customers reaction, right, and we know by data that says, you know
that seller deficit disorder. The customers do not believe that we understand their business,
and most of them don't believe that we listen very well. And it's
not an indictment. I'm talking about myself too. I love the sales profession,
but that's just a reality. Those survey results don't lie, and they've
been out there for about fifty years. So what you got to say to
yourself is I need to demonstrate that I heard the customer, that I'm listening.
What better way to do that than to start about you know, we
call about it. What we heard email, Well, what we heard is,
mister missus customer. What I heard was, here's an ideal one rage.
What I heard was, these are the positive business outcomes you're trying to
achieve. In order to achieve those positive business outcomes, these are the minimum
required technical capabilities that you talked about. I say minimum. What I mean
by that is I'm not trying to minimize it, but I'm trying to say
these are must haves. Okay. And then we talked about how you're going
to measure success, Well, you want I don't know what, Rachel.
Most people on this listening to this right now, they can't say that at
the end of a conversation. They can't send what we heard email. Okay.
What we heard was basically me talking to you for an hour about my
features and functions. That's what we heard on the last call, and that's
why people don't come back to you. That's why they don't answer those emails.
Okay, So what do you do about it? You didn't have a
great call, You're trying to send something that's kind of like what we heard.
Just turn it into something positive, mister missus customer. What I like
to be able to do is be able to follow up with you and talk
to you about the business implications from our conversation. I don't feel like I
did a very good job with you talking to you about what the business implications
are. So I have some ideas on what I read, but I'd like
to talk to you more specifically about that. Just be honest. What we
heard should include how's theive business outcomes require, capabilities and metrics, how they're
going to measure success if it doesn't for some reason. Wherever you are there,
you go, that's where you're going to go. You're going to call
them back. You're going to ask to talk to them again, and you're
going to say, I'd like to spend a little bit more time talking about
the business implications or I'd like to spend a little bit more time talking about
how we measure success. And I got to tell you, man, like
when you do it right, and you did hear that and they said that.
Customers more probably going to say to you, hey, that was awesome,
Rachel. You know, if you showed it to him, I call
it like a ten finger presentation. A lot of times I'll have like one
or two or three slides, which is what we heard. Here's what we
heard. Here are the positive business outcomes, here's the technical required capabilities,
and here are the metrics. And the ultimate ultimate compliment is when the customer
says, can you send those to me? Because that means you were right
and you did a good job. That's great. So be sure to check
out kailing it today. I don't know about you. I'm killing it.
You got to you're warmed up. I hope you're doing later. Is that
Easter holiday? Man, I'm all warmed up. Well. As we've said,
John, I think there's a ton of value in what you've shared today,
a lot of steps that we can take as salespeople to just improve give
us. You know, we say sales is a game of inches. It
gives you a couple more inches some of these things that you're talking about.
Yeah, and as we said, discovery helps you as a seller, but
it also the way that you helped deliver value to your customer early in the
sales process. So wrap us up with the bottom line as we leave here
today. Yeah, I'm gonna be kind of cautious on this bottom line because
I know you're going to put great content in these show notes, and what
I want people to do is go read the show notes, man, go
read the content that Rachel's going to put in here, because it's outstanding content.
All these concepts we're talking about, deep dive into them and get really,
really comfortable with them. So that's kind of like my first bottom line.
And then the next thing I just say is, just know that discovery
is really, really important. It's probably the most important part of the sales
cycle, and not just for you. Does everybody understand that, not just
for you. From a customer's point of view, when you do good discovery,
they feel like you understand their problem. They feel like you heard them,
or you listen to them, because that's what discovery is. It's two
sided. Also, it's important to go outside in. You have to earn
the right to be able to talk about what you do and how you do
it. And you don't earn the right by just starting off talking about your
features and functions. Don't make assumptions about my problem. The more you tell
me I have a problem, the more I'm going to resist you. Okay,
So what I also want you to know is that you always have an
opportunity to recap. Wherever you are, there, you go, Okay,
here the business outcomes. Oops, I don't have business outcomes. No problem
redirect. At this point, I'd like to be able to say, these
are the business outcomes that we've heard, These are the technical required capabilities,
and these are the metrics. I feel like we did a really really good
job on the technical requirements and on the metrics. But I'm not sure done
I've made the connection. Don't blame it on the customer, blame it on
yourself. I'm not sure I've made the connection of the business implications. Like
you know your CEO talking about the number one problem we have is renewals or
what have you. Just wherever you are, there you go, and don't
forget. You get delegated to those that you sound like. You get delegated
to those that you sound like. Jump in the water's great. Learn how
to just say to yourself, wherever I am, there I go. There's
no scripts, there's no there's outcomes, but there's no scripts on step one,
step two, step three, step four. And the minute I learned
that, Rachel, I felt so much comfort more comfortable in sales. I
know I got to have these three buckets filled up, and that's when I
know I pivot to talk about myself. That really simplified it for me.
That's a great way to simplify. A great takeaway for everybody listening to this
episode, John Kaplan, thank you, my pleasure go get them all right.
Thank you, 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
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