EP157: Hold Everything!
When you’re nearing the end of the quarter, especially the fourth quarter, do you tend to panic and offer a discount in order to close any deals hanging fire? Oren Klaff, New York Times bestselling author of Pitch Anything and Flip The Script, discusses the downside of this neediness on today’s Market Dominance Guys podcast. Our two hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, explore with Oren what happens to the status you have so carefully built with your prospective customer if you blatantly display just how needy and desperate you are to close the deal. Does showing your soft underbelly increase your chance of closing the deal? Or does your neediness kill the deal altogether? Oren’s advice is to stick to the sales process — and HOLD, no matter what. Join these three sales analysts as they caution the sales reps of the world about the pitfalls of a needy mindset when a sales deadline is looming on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Hold Everything!”
More Marketet Dominance Guys episodes with Oren Klaff here:
https://marketdominanceguys.com/category/guest-oren-klaff
About Our Guest
Oren Klaff is one of the world’s leading experts on sales, raising capital, and negotiation. He is the New York Times bestselling author of two sales-related books, Flip The Script and Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal. Employing his securities markets experience in capital-raising advisory leadership, Oren is Managing Director of Capital Markets at the investment bank Intersection Capital, where he manages its capital-raising platform. Since 2005, Oren has grown the firm to approximately $2 billion in aggregate trade volume across a diversified portfolio of companies and transactions.
Full episode transcript below:
Announcer (00:05):
Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys. A program exploring all the high stake speed bumps and off-ramps of driving to the top of your market with our host Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch49.
(00:21):
When you’re nearing the end of the quarter, especially the fourth quarter, you tend to panic and offer a discount in order to close any deals hanging fire or in clap. New York Times bestselling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script discusses the downside of this neediness on today’s Market Dominance Guys Podcast. Our two hosts, Chris Beal and Corey Frank, explore with Oren what happens to the status you have so carefully built with your prospective customer if you blatantly display just how needy and desperate you are to close the deal.
(00:51):
Does showing your soft underbelly increase your chance of closing the deal? Or does your neediness kill the deal altogether? Oren’s advice is to stick to the sales process and hold no matter what. Join these three sales analysts as they caution the sales reps of the world about the pitfalls of a needy mindset when the sales deadline is looming, on today’s Market Dominance Guys episode Hold Everything.
Corey Frank (01:20):
And here we are. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank and the sage of sales, the prophet of profits, the hawking of Hawking, does that make sense? And we have, Oren, I’m sorry I don’t have any nicknames I’ve rehearsed in my shower for the last few weeks for you, we have Oren Klaff, best-selling author of Pitch Anything, Flip the Script, and Sales Connoisseur. I don’t know, that’s all I got. So welcome, Chris, we got to a great special guest in the hotseat today and what brings the three of us together? What could possibly top the last podcast we did? Oh I don’t know, a short six, eight months ago or so. We probably have something to announce, do we not, Oren, Chris, that we could talk to a little later in the podcast?
Chris Beall (02:07):
I think we do. For one thing, let me just point out, I recommend some sales books but I don’t force any of them down anybody’s throat except for Flip the Script. And the reason I do is Flip the Script says, “Don’t force this book down somebody’s throat,” and I just love the delicious irony of utterly failing to apply every single principle in this book while pushing this book on people. I don’t know, the dynamic tension in that just works for me.
Corey Frank (02:36):
It’s like don’t push this button [inaudible 00:02:39].
Chris Beall (02:39):
Yeah, it’s like peeps, look, if you have only two books you can read in this coming year and for some of you that is a stretch, read Flip the Script and learn how to do simple things like get a little status alignment going and learn how to flash roll. I’m still trying to teach our people how to flash roll. They tend to want to drift into teaching at that point. Learn how to flash roll. And then when you’re done with all that and you realize that you’re not going to do all this, that you’re a manager and your people are going to do it, pick up Helen Fanucci’s Love Your Team and go and read that, and you put those two together, and I don’t know, I’m not going to be responsible for you failing, I’m just not going to be responsible.
Oren Klaff (03:18):
In the military, those super sauced up guys, so calm guys, they have these banana clips they put in the clip, and then they shoot the 28 bullets or where the 30 bullets are that clip, and then they flip it right around, and then they shove the next clip in because it’s already attached. I feel like Flip the Script and then Love Your Team, you shove that in, you shoot all those 30 bullets, you’re out, then flip it over, and then Love Your Team flips in.
Corey Frank (03:42):
I love it. That’s right. Well, hey, I thought getting you two fine gentlemen together, here we are coming up on the end of another quarter and the end of another year coming up in Q4, and Oren, we always talk about no neediness, right? I think what you’ve hit me over the head for the years we’ve known each other. Chris, certainly that’s what you talk about on this podcast many, many times.
(04:04):
But here we are coming up at the end of the year and so I wanted to grab you two gentlemen and talk, certainly maybe about a pending event that we have coming up, but also what do you do so we don’t just drop the price and create all these insulting kind of promotions to finish the year strong but still have a little pipeline left going into Q1. So, from a neediness perspective or what are you going to think to that?
Oren Klaff (04:28):
I like to think in visuals. There was this movie, The Perfect Storm, towards the end they’re like going up this wave and however, they shot this wave is like a thousand times bigger than the boat, and they’re going straight up it. The captain’s telling the kid at the wheel to hold because he wants to turn it, and he’s going, “Hold!” And they’re climbing up this wave and it’s just terrifying. He wants to turn, “Hold, hold, hold.” That’s what I think is like [inaudible 00:04:52], is you want to turn the boat, you want to turn around, you want to run to safety, and you need Corey, or me, or Chris get saying, “Hold, don’t turn the wheel, just hold.” Right? And you get yourself in this impossible situation in which there’s no possible way to get out. But you have somebody who’s been in that situation saying, “Hold, don’t be needy, don’t turn the wheel.” And then it becomes, “Now! Turn the wheel.”
(05:23):
But you have to be able to hold through that period where most other people would cave, collapse, run away scared, start discounting. So, if you could remember, hold your position. If you built the position but then you’re afraid of the position you built and back away from it, you haven’t done any good. You cannot be needy. I don’t care if this is the last account on earth for you, because the other side of being needy is it definitely will not close. You have to hold strong, hold. Get a tattoo on your forearm. I mean, I’m not advocating that you get a tattoo, but go ahead and get a tattoo that says hold, based on this podcast and Corey will sign it for you. I don’t want my name on it because I don’t know who you’re married to, but you know.
Corey Frank (06:15):
All right. Chris, from your perspective, you have obviously ConnectAndSell. You have a weapon that brings more prospects to your doorstep, more than they can even handle. So, what do you tell your clients, your fellow CEOs, your fellow CROs, CEOs, VPs of sales, when they come to this time of the year that, “Hey, I can bring you the prospects, I can bring the conversations to you, but be careful you don’t do x.”
Chris Beall (06:42):
Well, one of the things is there’s a mathematical thing, right? It’s like driving on a one-lane road. You have a problem. And that is if anybody’s slow in front of you, then you got to decide to either be as slow as they are or go off-road. And sometimes you got to go off-road, and sometimes you got to go up the wave, and sometimes you got to hold and hold and hold. A really good idea, and it’s getting a little late, but a good idea is to just, if you widen a little, you widen a lot. That is, if your portfolio is a little bit bigger, it’s a lot bigger. And that’s just the way it is. With risk management, we all think, “Oh, if I add one more opportunity to my one opportunity, I’ve reduced the risk by something.” You don’t know what it is.
(07:29):
You’ve cut it in half, my friend. But you add a third one and you actually cut it two less than a third. Now, you’ve cut it to one over three to the third. Ooh, you’ve cut it to by 26, 27th. Life gets a lot better because you only need one lane to go down. Now, do you need it or not need it? Well, you might need it but you better not act like you need it because it’s like Oren drives the best cars. And when Oren shooting a gap between two cars or he’s making a decision to pass in someplace that’s a little tiny bit marginal or whatever, once he makes that decision, he’s got to actually hold that line. He can’t kind of half unmake the decision part way into whatever it is that that maneuver is, right?
(08:19):
There’s just a rule in all, I’ll call them ballistic acts. A ballistic act is where the performance outcome, the thing you want, depends on what came before, therefore what came before, therefore what came before. It starts somewhere and once you commit to it you’re really screwed unless you go through with it. I used to be, Corey, and Oren keeps trying to forget, I used to be a very serious rock climber mountaineer, and there’s a word used in climbing and there’s a word that’s used as an adjective and it’s used as a noun. As an adjective, the word committed. That’s a really committed route means once you start you better finish it or you’re toast. You start that move, you got to finish the move. That’s like the same thing. It’s like look, once you’re here and you’re in a committed situation, you have to ignore all outcomes and you simply have to go; that’s just a truth of the world.
Oren Klaff (09:16):
And so I think what happens is ultimately we tell people run the process. And so if they go, “I forgot the process,” or, “What process?” Then there’s a problem. But if you have a process and you just go, yeah, outcome independent, don’t be needy, run the process, trust the process, and then if you don’t like still the nervousness that brings with it, then have Chris bring you lots of other pipelines. So, we run that process in a very high stakes, high tension situation where there’s a couple of leads, we got to close two out of four. And it’s very challenging.
(09:54):
That’s where we learned this never be needy, but if we know Chris is going to bring us another 18, then we’re flipping. We come to meetings in T-shirts, we say things we wouldn’t, we take risks we otherwise wouldn’t take. We come late, we come early, we do what we want because we’re like, “Yeah, that didn’t work out. Let’s not do that again. But still, Hey Chris, bring that wheel barrel over here. Jumps some more leads off.” We just figured out a couple of things that are not going to work, so the great thing is if you have a process you can run it, that allows you to hold and stay the course. But if you can run a process and you’ve got pipeline, there’s a name for that.
(10:29):
I’m not sure how it’s pronounced in German, or Swiss, or whatever you speak, Chris, but in English we call it a business. Where you have prospects, you have a process, you’ve got a technique in which you can close them, and then you also have new leads coming in case something goes wrong, you don’t close the lead that you wanted to. That’s called a business.
Corey Frank (10:51):
Oren, talk a little bit about with neediness, we’ve had a number of conversations about this, you need some status with that neediness. And I think that if you built up a good status in your previous conversations with this prospect, with this company, with this executive team, you’re expecting that status is going to hold, right? But as you’ve always talked and you’ve written about, it’s temporary, and so you need to establish it throughout. And it seems like a lot of sales reps will abandon all that status they’ve worked to hold and maintain at the last month of the year, the last few weeks of the year to try to get a deal.
Oren Klaff (11:29):
Yeah, I think there’s one way to address this. Okay, yes, we’re having an event… Sorry, what was your question?
(11:42):
Let me try to run this down. So, Chris, Corey, and I said let’s have an event and it was in June and it became July and then it became August. Back then in August, August we could’ve had any event, like Chris and Corey debate politics and crypto, and that would’ve been a good event. Then it became September, end of the year, busy. We didn’t do the event. So finally we got serious. We said it’s now.
(12:06):
All right, December and we’re still having an event. And then Corey pointed out, it better be really good if we’re going to have an event in December. So yes, we’re having a really good event in December. Actually, it’s too good because when you hear about it. The event’s too good when I don’t want to speak at it, I just want to go to it and benefit from the event. Because like hey, my business can use the event, but I’m actually in the event and part of it, but I’m too busy to do what I’m doing at the event for our own business. So, this thing is amazing and I really want to be there. So status.
Oren Klaff (13:32):
I think what happens is salespeople very carefully and intuitively curate their status going in. And so they appoint themselves well, they give a good presentation, but now you’re sort of a move out of your domain into their domain and people come out of nowhere that know more than you. It’s like a video game. You’re going up higher levels and bigger bosses come out. My favorite analogy, as you know, is you think you’re fighting the boss to win the level and this giant foot comes out of nowhere and crushes the boss you’re fighting, right? The big boss cares so little about… He just crushes his own team, and what’s going on here? And that’s where salespeople lose their status is where somebody who has much stronger frame, much more expertise, much more knowledge, and actually controls the contract comes out of nowhere. And that’s where status goes to die.
(14:29):
And I think it’s not a status event, but we’re definitely covering how to hold your status not at the beginning, because there’s like no teaching about status that you need at the beginning, right? Yeah, I dress good. I talk politely. I have a presentation. Everybody can hold it together at the beginning until the stress comes on. And then the things we’re talking about, never be needy, hold your status together, make sure you’ve got pipeline, widen your lane, stuff that Chris and Corey know how to do really come together once you’re later in the deal and there’s real stressors.
(15:05):
And if you think about it, last thing then I’ll turn back over to you, you’re at the beginning of a deal all the time, right? There’s a lot more first downs than there are fourth downs, I think. I’m not sure. We’ll have to check that. But anyway, you’re at the beginning of deals all the time and so you’re good at the beginning. Chris and I had a call with Andreson, one of the big venture firms today, which is great, but how often are you on a call with Andreson Horowitz versus on a call with somebody about something? So, you’re good at beginnings, but how good are you at controlling those later stages when status falls apart, you fall apart?
Chris Beall (15:41):
[inaudible 00:15:41]. That remind me of a story by the way.
Corey Frank (15:42):
Go ahead, Chris.
Chris Beall (15:43):
There’s a story [foreign language 00:15:44].
Oren Klaff (15:44):
A story about our event?
Chris Beall (15:46):
Yeah, this is a story [inaudible 00:15:49]. This is the kind of thing you learn at this event is to do what’s in the story. So, first of all, this event is so important, I might actually show up. I might not because I have a very dear family member who’s having surgery the day before and might need my care, and I’ll be approximately 1400 miles away, but I could be there. The story is sometimes you have to be somewhere else in New York. You find yourself at the end, you don’t even know it’s going to be the end. So this particular story, I was called by the general counsel of the General Electric Company who told me, “I need to talk to you and I need to talk to you tomorrow.”
(16:23):
And so it was a Sunday. I went and did my usual thing. I was living in Denver, went down to the airport, asked them at the red carpet club where I was going. They told me. I got on an airplane, I got off, I went into a building up there in Connecticut. And the general counsel of General Electric put me in a room, a big boardroom, the one right under the CEO’s office, right under Jack Law’s office. And he sat down and he dressed like Mr. Rogers, which I think was one of his best tricks. And he literally pounded the table, which I thought was hilarious.
(16:54):
I almost laughed out loud, but I held it. “You are destroying the General Electric Company.” Now, that’s a case where you’re kind of at the end because this had to do with a huge renewal opportunity for 11 out of the 12 general electric companies. Now, what are you going to do there? You must have something wired into you that allows you to hold your status. And I have a fondness for humor. I just said, “Well, there must be some amount of money you’d like to pay me to get me to stop destroying the General Electric Company.” It’s an example.
Oren Klaff (17:29):
That’s where he pressed the button underneath this desk, and security came in, escorted you out the building.
Chris Beall (17:34):
No, no. He started laughing. And you know what? We ended up doing the deal I wanted to do.
Oren Klaff (17:39):
Oh, I have a great story about the other call that I have to be on right now [inaudible 00:17:48]. The good news, well, so the bad news is it’s not a good story. The good news, it’s a very short one. Corey, can you run down the dates of the event and a little bit of information for people and then I will call both of you in a while.
Corey Frank (18:00):
Yes. We are going to do this on December 7th and December 8th coming up here in a very short period of time. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to put you and your existing sales process through the ringer. We’re going to take and rip up your sales script, turn it into a screenplay, and start from scratch building up a brand new December Q4 sales machine for you with a screenplay that’s tailored to your business. And Chris’s team, Oren’s team, our team, the Branch 49 team, we’re going to walk you through step by step through this Pitch Anything formula, through the best practices and how we create a screenplay, and apply it to the industry and business. So the best part, Chris, right, Oren, as you know, is we’re going to perfect your pitch and you’re going to practice it.
(18:45):
If this is your first time at Fight Club, you will fight. If it’s your first time dialing with ConnectAndSell, you will dial and we’re going to jump right on the phones right alongside you. And by the end of the event, you’re going to have a brand new pitch process. You’re going to have a brand new screenplay that drives qualified leads back to you that are ready to buy. And we are going to guarantee that you’re going to close enough meetings to at least equal the cost of the event, or Chris’s team, orange team, our team, we’re going to work with you until you do. That’s a pretty good guarantee, would you say, Chris?
Chris Beall (19:20):
That’s crazy. Corey, has anybody ever in the history of, I don’t know, life on Earth, have they ever actually done this particular kind of event? This exact thing.
Corey Frank (19:32):
I recall when you visited our sales team at my previous company, you swooped in with the jump boots and one or two of your cohorts, and you walked us through a mini version of this. I think this was one of the origins, I know you’ve had others, of the flight school because as soon as we started utilizing the weapon of ConnectAndSell, and I think it was the first monosyllabic construction we put together, you said, “Stop. What are you saying? Stop. Don’t ever say that again.”
(20:00):
And you completely deconstructed and then built up our screenplay to an effective breakthrough screenplay that changed the trajectory of our business. And hence, since many thousands of folks in flight school later, many thousands of folks at our Pitch Anything events later, many thousands of events or phone calls that we’ve made here at Branch 49, I think we’re pretty dialed in on how to do cold outreach.
Chris Beall (20:27):
And it’s fascinating to me because some people don’t like that word, cold outreach. They think it implies, well, I don’t know, it’s December and it’s cold or something like that. Or maybe you don’t like people, you’re so cold when you’re reaching out. Of course, it’s technical. It’s a term of art. It means outreach to people you haven’t spoken with before. And if you have half a brain in your head, these are people that you would like to speak with. You have a hypothesis and that is a conversation with anybody on that list of people, anybody in that target set has a reasonable shot of moving forward to something better than where you are than talking to a random person. That’s not a big hypothesis. That’s an important one. What’s so interesting to me, and this is what this event is going to be about, is it doesn’t have anything specifically to do with what you’re selling.
(21:15):
It has to do with one universal truth, which is you’re speaking to a human being and that is bedrock. That’s the thing I always come back to and somebody goes, “Well, does it work in this industry? That industry?” We don’t want to come to this thing like that because what we do is we sell something so high value, customized, so bespoke, so thought through, that nothing that you guys could teach us or that we could practice in an event like this could possibly fit us.
(21:46):
But you know what? It’s kind of like a pair of gloves. As long as I know you have fingers, even if you’re missing one or say, you have an extra one because well, maybe you do. Maybe somebody killed your father and they should prepare to die, but you still have got something that pretty much looks like a hand, it’s going to fit pretty much in a glove and you’re about to go pretty much out into 20 below and you’re better off with gloves than with no gloves. You’re going into a world where it’s better to have something on your hands. And that’s really where we’re taking it, that’s what’s cold, is that world you’re going into. I think it’s going to be quite a fascinating experience for folks. I dearly do hope I can physically show up. It’s extremely inconvenient.
Corey Frank (22:32):
Well, it’s your weapon. It is your weapon and probably a member or two of your team. So, ConnectAndSell will be represented fully in spirit and in practice. And you’re mentioning cold outreach, Chris, I think maybe we could finish with this concept because we’ve talked about it a lot. I know the esteemed Jerry Hale posted something on LinkedIn several months ago about this concept of survivorship bias and particularly how germane that is probably to Q4. Listen, we’ve always done a discount at the end of Q4. We’ve always extended our contracts for another month to allow our folks to make it easier to jump on board. So, maybe just talk a little bit about not just cold outreach in the approach, but how survivorship bias really kind of diminishes your opportunity to grow as a sales organization because of that’s how we’ve always done it this way.
Chris Beall (23:25):
Survivorship bias is funny because everybody I think, I hope they know the story. It was invented as a concept looking at the damage done to bombers that were flying over Germany in World War II. And the ones that came back that where they had the holes in them, what they were doing is basically saying, “Well, this is where they got hit. We should put armor there.” And that’s incorrect. This is where they got hit and they made it back. So, those places don’t need armor. Put more armor in the places where they got hit and didn’t make it back.
(24:00):
Now, it’s a little actually more challenging to figure out what that really means, but anything’s better than putting armor in a place that you didn’t need it, because we know it always adds weight. So, when we come to the end of a quarter or a year and we’re looking at last year and we’re going, “Well this worked last year.” What worked is like a plane coming back, it “worked.”
(24:26):
Do we really know which part of the plane went down? Or the ones that didn’t work and are maybe it was one of those that would’ve made it? Did we even select correctly which deals to focus on and where to put our armor, so to speak? Survivorship bias is the most insidious, I think, of the intellectual failings that we embrace in groups. So, groupthink is bad, but groupthink is amplified by survivorship bias because we can all see the same thing and seeing as believing. We reason in very simple ways about these situations and the simplest way is let’s do what we did last year.
Corey Frank (25:06):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we’ve talked about false positive versus false negatives and how most organizations… I think we talked about this with Jeb when we were on the phone, is that how most organizations look at false positives and they should be, similar to survivorship bias, looking at the false negatives, correct?
Chris Beall (25:22):
Yeah, false negatives kill businesses. False positive, they cost you a little something, you have to do some work that you throw away. Dying is not as attractive, frankly, as doing some work you throw away. Now, the fact of the matter is management of ignorance is what it’s all about. And it’s really interesting. If you want to hold, you want to do it what Oren said, which is hold, one of the things you oddly have to do to be so committed is you have to embrace your ignorance. You have to admit you don’t actually know based on the information you’re getting right now, what your reaction should be.
(25:58):
And since you don’t know, your best course action is probably to be proactive, to run your process. P-R-O, as the beginning of both of those words because your lack of knowledge is actually your savior, in this case. It’s like, “I don’t know, so I may as well do what we decided to do, whatever that happens to be.” And it is that change of course. It’s like, “well, what if we offer them a discount right now?” I have a couple of them right now. I’ve got a couple of deals that are… One of them, one of my very best customers will expire at the end of the day. I’m sitting here talking to you.
Corey Frank (26:38):
That’s right. That’s right. Well, I’m sure the rep on the deal is…
Chris Beall (26:42):
I am the rep.
Corey Frank (26:43):
Oh, you’re the rep, too. Even better.
Chris Beall (26:44):
Well, we have another principle here, and I think a lot of people practice it, but we’re pretty hard over here at ConnectAndSell. We all sell from the front lines and we don’t sell the special deals. We just sell deals. And in fact, I sell the most experimental deals. The ones that are the weirdest. People turn their nose up at and go, “Why’d you do that?” Because I can endure the most reputational damage without being damaged. Being the CEO, as long as you hold and people make fun of you like, “Oh, that’s a stupid deal. That was idiotic.” It’s like, yeah, well, it’s part of my job is to explore the possible on behalf of all of us. Som I get to go to the top of some mountain that turns out there was nothing over on the other side that was worthwhile, but I’m kind of a sunk cost, right? As the CEO, you kind of a sunk cost.
(27:30):
So, we sell from the front lines, but one of the reasons we do it is that there’s a hidden set of signals that go on in a company that cause reps to waiver. And it’s this thing that says, “Hey, do the right thing in the deal. Go do the right thing.” We all know what that is. Oh, and by the way, make the number no matter what. It’s like those are a little bit at odds with you there and that’s fine. I mean, dynamic tension is the essence of good stories, but at some point you have to decide what are we going to do as a company? What’s our real goal? Was it to make this number?
(28:07):
It’s very rare, by the way, that making a specific number on a specific date makes all the difference. I’ll never forget my eldest, and I think I told this story once in a previous episode, we were in a meeting and everybody’s talking about it, making this number on this date and all these numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. And we came out and my eldest kid, Serenity, at the time said, “So, dad, I have a question.” I said, “what’s the question?” She said, “Well, do they think by talking about the numbers, they’re going to change them?”
(28:43):
And I said, “Yes, they do.” And she thought for a while said, “That’s really sad,” and walked off and led me over to Starbucks for hot chocolate. Talking about the stuff is actually a bad habit. Talking about what’s going to close, talking about when it’s going to close, talk, talk, talk, talks a bad habit. Go run the process and take your spare time and fill up with other opportunities because they’ll make you stronger.
Corey Frank (29:09):
One of my good friends, our good friends, Robert Vera always talks about you can’t out exercise your fork. So, as much as you want to do a lot of activity, you got to make sure that the biggest constraint in your system is tackled and it takes… You’re a mathematician and a physician. It takes 3,500 calories to burn every pound of fat. These are the laws of thermodynamics. The same for celestial mathematics and the laws of physics. And those exist in client acquisition and revenue. And you have to eliminate that biggest constraint in your system, as we’ve said time and again. And for most folks, it’s establishing that trust-based conversation game at scale and no conversations, no product-market fit, no conversations, no core Q4 achievement, no ticket, no laundry, right? And so if you’re not doing five to six pitches in your tam, as you said many times, guess what? Somebody else is.
Chris Beall (30:05):
And those are the good ones.
Corey Frank (30:05):
[inaudible 00:30:07].
Chris Beall (30:07):
Most are the good ones. It’s prima facie evidence that they’re good. They’re actually happening. [inaudible 00:30:16]. And it’s so fascinating when folks talk about the quality versus quantity thing, and there’s all these sort of notions that people have like, “Oh, if I just think harder about the quality, then there’ll be better meetings.” Embrace your ignorance. Your ignorance is your friend. Freedom is your friend. Just go in knowing nothing and have a conversation.
(30:38):
I mean, you know one thing. You have a range of capabilities, you have a range of things that you could bring to bear. You’re representing your company, that’s why you’re called a rep. You’re representing what your company’s capable of doing. Now, you know what that range of capabilities are, but you really don’t know where the problems for the other person or the challenges, the gaps where they are. Okay, your ignorance is your friend. That’s what enables you to be curious and ask those curiosity-based questions. And when you’re needy, you want to see where neediness shows up first. Neediness kills more deals in discovery, then it kills at the end of a year by a lot. Not a little.
Corey Frank (31:23):
There you go. Absolutely. Well, I think we also need to mention the event one more time since Oren’s not on here, right?
Chris Beall (31:31):
Yeah, when is it?
Corey Frank (31:33):
December 7th and December 8th at the Top Gun Studios in Carlsbad, California.
Chris Beall (31:37):
Wow.
Corey Frank (31:38):
Yes. Sunny, sunny California, right on the beach. You’ve had many events over the years there, Chris, you’ve been there many times. We’ll try to maybe take a few of the cars out for a spin, maybe a couple of Ducati’s since Oren’s not on here, we can guarantee that. We’ll have a blast. We’re limiting it. If you would like some more information, please reach out to me at corey@branch49.com. Go to orenklaff.com, go to chris.beal@connectandsell.com. christ.beall, correct?
Chris Beall (32:06):
Yeah, chris.beall.
Corey Frank (32:09):
[inaudible 00:32:09]. Okay, great. And with that, Chris, I think we’re going to put together another episode in the can here, since we do have our own Q4. Of course, you’re not sitting around, you’re waiting for the prospects to come to you. So, if he buys, he buys. It’s only your number one client. We’ll wait to hear how that story ends in the next episode. So for Chris Beall, this is Corey Frank with the Market Dominance Guys. Until next time.
Chris Beall (32:34):
All right, thanks, Corey.
