You want to use really good discovery questions to get them to stand in their
moment of pain with the internal solution. If you do it right, they
will tell you that the internal solution is a problem and it's not going to
work for them. You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast, the show that
helps you and your teams sell more faster. It's brought to you by the
team at Force Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness. The
show features sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine
that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Let's get started. Hello and welcome
to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel clad Miller, joined today by
John Kaplan. Hi, John, Rachel, how are you good? Good?
Okay? We know many of you listening out there are in challenging environments.
You are selling in a challenging environment. Number one, keep pushing,
keep going, it's going to get better. Concentrate in the fundamentals. But
here on the Autobolready Sales Podcast, we're trying to tell our topics to help
you find some success in those situations you may find yourself in. They may
be new to you, so today we are going to tackle competing against an
internal option. We call it do it internally. Yeah, I think this
is a great topic, Rachel. It's it's probably one of the most underestimated
competitors on the planet is for a company to do it internally. And you
know, with these tougher economic times, you can pretty much guarantee that you
know this is going to come up more and more for all of us in
twenty twenty three for sure. So even I'm becoming more of a di I
wire with some of the stuff you know at home and if anybody who knew
me, who knows me, and that's pretty drastic step for me, But
every company is going to first ask with any investment, can we do this
ourselves? So it's a really good topic for us to talk about today.
Yeah, you don't want to underestimate that competitor that is always in that sales
process. So let's talk about how we prepare for that internal We can do
it internally, objection, I guess, so to speak. And then how
we make sure we are accounting for it throughout the sales process. First,
if I know that's going to be an issue, John, how am I
preparing my discovery to make sure I have the right information to differentiate against it
later on. Yeah, I think you're going to treat it like any other
competitive situation, and so you know, just ask yourself, how do I
treat other competitors and make sure you're able to differentiate against them. So you
want to make sure you understand why you're a better solution. But you can
either get to outcomes faster, you mitigate risk, you avoid negative consequence,
is etc. Those are some of the common ones. But you want to
prepare the questions that get to the waste that you're better. And we call
these trap setting questions, and there's the same trap setting questions are the same
whether it's an internal competitor or whether it's an external competitor. However, you
need to be very conscious of not bad mouthing the current solution, as there's
a very real possibility that you will potentially offend the very person who created the
internal So there's an old saying that you can't call another person's dog ugly,
but they can call their own dog ugly. So you want to use really
good discovery questions to get them to stand in their moment of pain with the
internal solution. If you do it right, they will tell you that the
internal solution is a problem and it's not going to work for them. And
this is selling one on one, so it's the exact same thing you'll do
with an internal competitor. Yeah, you may, just you spend more time
in your prep thinking about those questions as it relates to the internal competitor because
they're a stronger competitor in this type environment. So John, asking questions one
step, right, but you need to stay focused on this internal option throughout
the sales process. Talk about building your differentiation into the solution requirements, the
required capabilities as it relates to that internal competitor. Yeah. I mean the
most elite sellers on the planet all know that they have to influence the decision
criteria with their differentiation, and this is an elite skill. But you don't
want to overcomplicate it. So I want you to think about your differentiation and
ask yourself, so what if the customer does not get the value from my
differentiation? And what bad things will happen for them? This is what I
call the so what factor? So you want to follow the pain of this
value or the problem that they experience by not having your differentiation and link it
to negative consequences and go deeper and deeper, helping them to stand in their
moment of pain and come to their own conclusion that they need your differentiation.
So we always have to remember people rarely argue with their own conclusions. And
that's what elite sellers do, right, That's how you successfully compete against do
it and Totally or really any other competitor. But for the sake of this
topic, here is get your differentiation into the required capabilities to solution requirement.
And it's important to know that this internal option is going to keep coming up
throughout your sales process, particularly as you talk to different decision makers. Likely
in your conversations with finance and legal you may think, God, didn't we
already handle this issue? Well it's back again. You're building your case in
every conversation. So how do I make sure John, as a salesperson,
I'm ready to continuously defend that differentiation. Well, you got to stick to
a pretty simple framework. And we've talked about the thousands of times on this
podcast and the positive business outcomes that you're trying to achieve. What are the
required capability slash decision criteria and are they favorable for you? And how will
the customer measure success? And is that measurement favorable for you? And that's
what we call the mantra. And you need to do it for every single
one of your opportunities, right, don't get slack, don't get slack.
Yeah, it should also be said, I think when we're talking about competing
against do it internally. In order to do this well, you need to
have a great understanding of the political landscape of the company. Know what's going
on in there where people might have outcomes they need to drive where the allegiances,
all our goals, etc. So what questions am I asking? What
am I doing to make sure I gain the understanding that eventually helps me better
differentiate? Well, I mean, you got to keep in mind that your
buyer is likely navigating the political landscape within their own company, and they may
fear the implications of going with an outsider like you. There are several other
factors they may be weighing as well, such as you know, saving you
know, their or their own job or somebody else's job, and you know,
doing right by you know, their own company. So you always want
to stand in your buyer's shoes. All of these political nuances will reveal themselves
if you let your customer talk. That means you need to be prepared with
great discovery questions to get them to talk and to stand in their own moment
of pain. It's not it's not any more difficult than that. Yeah.
Yeah, And as we're talking, and you kind of mentioned it earlier at
the top, John, having this type of conversation could also make it easy
for you to fall in the trap of hey, we're better than you type
perception. You can't do it as good as we can because you're essentially differentiating
against the people you're having conversations with as opposed to when you're differentiating get someone
outside the company or another competitor. So that's something you should watch out for
in your tone, how you're delivering your message. So to see at such
a great point, I mean, you want the buyer to understand that your
primary concern is to help their company and you want to be buy your focus,
meaning that you want to make it all about them before you earn the
right to make it all about you. So in this case, don't be
so quick to make it personal. Focus on the business outcomes and negative consequences
of the problems make it obvious that no matter who the competitor is, it's
not going to work for them. And that's that's the best advice that I
can give you on that. Yeah, all right, great tips here,
John. I know it's fundamental, it's sales fundamentals, but sometimes revisiting this
stuff is particularly when you're in a new type of environment or are having different
types of conversations. Giving the economic landscape, it can be great to refresh
on these fundamentals. So John, wrap us up here, give us a
bottom line. Well, I think for the bottom line for me, I
think that I think that you're going to have to expect that you will always
have do it ourselves or do it internally as a competitor, just kind of
ongoing for the rest of your career. Just always assume that that's going to
be the case. Some executives always gonna ask why can't we do this ourselves?
So stick to your guns, influence the decision criteria with your differentiation,
Be sensitive that the very person or people that you are talking to might be
responsible for that internal solution, and don't over complicate it. Just do it.
Just handle it as another competitor and you'll be a great You'll have a
great, great selling experience. Yeah, just remember the basics. Handle as
another competitor, and as we always say, don't forget to prepare, get
your game face together. Thank you, John, Amen, have a great
one. Thank you, and thank you to all of you for continuing to
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