These are questions You've got to understand what business outcome are you driving to,
what's the sequence, how specifically are you planning to get there. 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. Let's get
started. Hello, and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel
Klapmillern. We often talk about competitors on this podcast. They're important, right
you want to understand your differentiation, your competitive differentiation. But a lot of
times, particularly when budgets are tight, we are competing against funds being directed
to other places. So we're competing against other initiatives, not necessarily like competitors
who have our same solution. It's always a risk. John Kaplan joins me
to talk about this today. Rachel, this is a great topic and it's
so relevant right now as people are trying to get above the noise. Yes,
rising above the noise, and so John, this is really sort of
competing against do nothing aligning to the pain, more specifically the pain of not
doing anything with this particular initiative that you're trying to sell. So, John,
let's start with what I'm asking to understand if this is something I'm dealing
with in the account that if I'm going to be dealing with competing initiatives,
let me just answer it flatly. Yes, you are always going to be
competing with different initiatives. The extent to which you are differentiating against those initiatives
will be your ability to align yourself to the problems that that customer is experiencing
and highly differentiate yourself in that process. So the answer is yes, yes,
yes, you're going to have this risk every time you do a deal,
every time, for every opportunity. But let me break it down a
little bit, and I want you to get a piece of paper out.
I'm going to give a couple seconds. Get a piece of paper out.
If you're out for a walk or whatever. Just go back to this podcast
and go back to this section because I want you to write these down.
These are questions you've got to understand, and you could ask them just this
way. What business outcome are you driving to what's the sequence, How specifically
are you planning to get there? Then you're associating the problem that they have
with how you might be able to solve it, and how you solve it
relates to that problem. It's all about the initial discovery. So there's some
initial great discovery questions. How are you prioritizing initiatives right now? What's making
its way to the top. What's the biggest business issue facing your customer right
now? What are they doing technically to solve this issue? You don't want
to assume that they're not doing anything, So what are you currently doing?
What do you like most about what you're doing right now? What's not working
so well? How are you measuring success? Folks? This topic is all
about discovery. As in most challenges in our sales process or in our daily
lives, it's all about discovery. Yeah. I also think too, John,
It's part of that decision process qualification that I'm doing with medic right.
If I'm weighing who is going to be making the decision? How do I
use my decision process stage of my qualification to make sure I'm accounting for competing
initiatives? I like it. Now you're starting to triangulate around the acronyms.
This is like you hear me talk about how to get it in your blood.
What you just said is especially critical in a few areas. So first,
if we just take a look at medic or medpick, you have a
decision process and decision criteria, and this feeds directly directly into what we're talking
about. Feeds directly into this. You also can hit it with metrics or
economic buyer. So decision process, decision criteria. Just look at medpicks.
This falls directly into this prioritization. It also feeds directly in for how they're
going to measure a solution and who the economic buyer is and how to get
to the economic buyer. So, in fact, if you understand like the
eye, let's look at that the eye identification of pain for both the technical
pain and the business pain, and you understand all the negative consequences that are
appearing because they have this technical pain in business pain. That's a home run
avenue to go down. So it's not complicated. You look at medic,
you look at MEDPIC, you look at Discovery. Don't even think about,
oh, how do I understand their priorities? Just by the process of asking
discovery questions to get these topics up on the table, you will understand prioritization,
right, and you always say, John, you want to find pain
that can't go another day without yes fix, And if you do that,
it doesn't matter what other initiatives are out there, largely right, because yours
is going to be the priority if it can't go anywhere longer without being fixed.
Rachel, that's exactly right. So once you understand the problems from both
a technical and a business prospect, from a technical and a business point of
view, and you understand how we can influence the technical decision criteria with our
differentiation. Let me repeat that, once you understand the problems from both the
technical and a business point of view, and then you understand how you can
influence the technical decision criteria with your differentiation, and we can understand how they
will measure success. We're now ready to pivot and speak about how we do
that. People often ask me how you do what that? And how we
do that is the decision criteria. How we do it better differently, that's
our differentiation and where we've done it before is our proof points, case studies
and testimonials. Always go outside in before you go inside out. Remember it's
not just what you sell, but how you sell that can be just as
important and differentiating you out in the marketplace. That's true. And remember,
I guess if there isn't a direct tie between your two initiatives, things like
that you might be competing against. You really got to find the urgency in
your deal, and that aligns with finding the measurableer pain. So how do
I remind my customer of the pain that they're going to alleviate with my solution
or the pain they're going to have if they don't move forward with my solution.
I love that set up, Rachel, and I want people to listen
to this very very careful. If you're walking, you're riding a bike,
stop for a second, because it's not that you will have to remind them
of their pain. You don't remind them of their pain. You need to
remind them that you understood their pain. It's significance to both the technical pain
and the business pain, and that it has real negative consequences. So here's
the skill, Rachel. It's not to tell people that they have a problem
hoping to convince them of the urgency. The skill is to ask great discovery
questions that can get them to stand in their own moment of pain, where
they wind up convincing themselves that they have a problem, and then it becomes
urgent because it was urgent for them. People rarely argue with their own conclusions.
And Rachel, when we get done producing this thing, I want you
to cut that snippet for me because I'm going to post that everywhere. That's
right, good done, Consider it done. And really, what you're talking
about, John, are some of the same tactics that we use when we
talk about competing. Again, do nothing because there really are potentially doing nothing
as it relates to your initiative. Yeah, you know, when you think
about it, the only time you really run into do nothing is when the
customer does not think the problem is urgent enough and therefore they've not prioritized it.
Do you understand So, Rachel, when somebody says to me, oh,
you know, they're dragging their feet there, that's our problem. If
they're not prioritizing us, we haven't prioritized it for them. We haven't helped
them. This is why you have to have deep. While you got to
go deep on discovery, many people have taken training from me before, Rachel,
and they remember me shouting in the room go deeper, go deeper,
go deeper. What I'm really talking about is connecting it to the negative consequences,
almost to the point where the customer says, uncle, I give and
Rachel. I actually had a customer tell me one time, this is exactly
what they said. They said, Okay, smart guy, it's obvious that
we have a huge problem. Why don't you spend a minute or two telling
me what you think you can do about it. It's one of my proudest
moments in selling. And look, I'm not trying to pester my customers,
but I am trying to get them to participate in their own rescue. I
need you to cut that as a snippet too. Were full of them today.
Yeah, we're on a roll. Yes, there are going to be
situations that we run into, John where you really have to put your initiative
on hold because of other priorities and they really need to do those initiatives before
yours. But if you find that out, that's still great knowledge. And
this conversation provides you a way to stay in touch. Yeah, and I'm
just going to kind of reiterate. You're absolutely right. But if I'm doing
my discovery right and my product has value and meaning, I should be able
to overcome that. I should be able to get someone to create their own
urgency. But look, you asked a specific question. There are times that
that's not possible. And if for some reason I've not done that, then
absolutely I continue to keep in touch with the customer. Again, not to
pester them, but to drip them, you know, drip to them good
pieces of information, articles, announcements, industry news, et cetera. One
of my favorite sellers on the planet is somebody works for us named Paul de
Moore. He sends these podcasts, Rachel. These podcasts we do because that's
a walking audition for what we're going to teach people and why they would buy
us. He sends these podcasts to customers and he's not asking for an order,
but he is front and center every week with them. Yep, exactly,
And what a great way to be uncommon right to be an elite seller,
John, You've given us some great tactics to use when we're faced with
this situation. I know many of you are faced with differentiating and competing against
alternative uses for that budget in your prospect companies, wrap it up for us
as we close. Yep, it's all about discovery. Prepare great discovery questions
that can get your customers to stand in their own moment of pain. Let
the urgency get created by them. The more you tell them they have a
problem, the more they're going to resist. You. Make it all about
them before you earn the right to make it all about you. Go crush
it always, always. Thank you John, my pleasure. Thank you to
all of you for continuing to listen to the audi Already 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
teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our
strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started.
Visit us at forcemanagement dot com. You've been listening to the audible Ready
podcast. To not miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite
podcast player. Until next time,