Sales Pros – Stop Worrying About the Deal.

Most sales professionals are familiar with the journey of a cold call. It starts with fear. From fear, we move to trust, from trust to curiosity, from curiosity to commitment, from commitment to action. In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Corey and Chris remind us that there is only discovery meeting, and a true discovery call or meeting doesn’t have a destination in mind.Welcome to this episode of Market Dominance Guys: Sales Professionals, Stop Worrying About The Deal.

Chris Beall (01:04):

I did a debate the other day.

Corey Frank (01:06):

Yes, at the University of Texas, correct?

Chris Beall (01:09):

Yeah, and the subject was fascinating. We spoke about two different views of sales development. As you and I have been speaking, we’ve been speaking about the sales development function, that first conversation, the follow-up conversation, and ultimately the discovery meeting as being the essence of dominating markets. Because if you do that right, you can do the math, so to speak, and you can dominate a market.

Scott [Gillum 00:01:39] was taking the other side of the debate because, in his view, it’s simply too expensive to talk to people. So it’s better to use low-cost mechanisms, such as digital, media, search, advertising, that kind of stuff, and digital content, social media perhaps, in order to get people to come to you and then be the last company to have the first conversation. And my view is you want to be the first company to have the first conversation. So a very divergent view, but the difference in view is actually based on a different understanding of the cost of a conversation.

It’s fascinating to reflect, for me anyway, on this debate, two rational people taking 180-degree opposite views of what you should do. One is based on optimizing cost, the other is based on optimizing market dominance, but each one coming from a different perspective with regard to the cost of having a conversation.

So Scott’s view was, well, a conversation is… He opened with quoting Chad Burmeister, who by the way I had just been with the day before talking about the same subject, and saying it takes 30 or 40 dials to get a conversation. That’s too much to waste early because you’ll be trying and you won’t get ahold of the person, and then they won’t be ready to buy or they’re the wrong person, the wrong company, whatever. So wait until they show up and you know they’re ready to buy, then have your first conversation because it’s so expensive.

So it’s fascinating to me that the cost of having a conversation, both actual and perceived, can cause a 180-degree shift in the idea of how you should go to market or what’s practical with regard to go to market. Yet the difference at the end is if you wait to have the conversation, your only way to dominate a market is by having superior advertising, which is a hard position to maintain.

Corey Frank (03:35):

Sure. If I have superior digital means, superior digital firepower, superior digital messaging, efficiency, at least that’s the top of the funnel in order to dominate a market. That view is interesting. It’s very pragmatic, right? It makes sense.

Chris Beall (03:54):

Well, it sounds pragmatic. It has an issue in that the entire fight is out on the table. When you’re choosing to get into a fight for a market with competitors known and unknown, it’s very hard to do it in a way that’s anything but transparent. Your search terms are all transparent. And by the way, at any given moment, Google is busy selling your perfect competitor the exact search terms that will put you out of business. Their model is to go and find your perfect competitor and once a year, each one of you gets a shot at the good words, so to speak. That’s going on and your advertising is out in the open, and your website, and your LinkedIn work, and your Facebook. Whatever it is, is out in the open.

Whereas when you’re having a conversation one-on-one with somebody, not only can it engender trust in a way that digital can’t, but it’s private. Any information that you receive from that conversation is proprietary. And it’s hard to imagine sustainably winning a fight by having no information advantage whatsoever.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Let’s talk about that for a moment. I had a conversation with Andy Paul yesterday. Andy, if you’re listening, I’m about to break apart your messaging and about to butcher it. But from Andy’s conversation that I had with him, we were talking about the biz dev and then the sales role, and I believe one of his paramounts is that the biz dev if I get a person if I get a lead on the biz dev call and I’ve created some trust, that trust does not transfer to the salesperson. So if I set a discovery call as a biz dev for you as my sales rep, Chris, and I’ve established some trust, I’ve been able to create a couple hundred thousand bits of information to create to turn that fear into trust and to be able to expand that trust into a discovery call with you, you as the salesperson has to start all over again. You don’t start from step two. You really start less than that.

So we’re not talking about optimizing cost. We’re trying to optimize some trust when we have another cook in the kitchen as well, are we not?

Chris Beall (06:01):

Yeah, I think Andy’s exactly right. If you do a hand-off from one person to another and do it with the simple assumption that the amount of trust that was needed in order to get to curiosity, remember the journey. And we’ll just go back over the journey for the cold call and ultimately for the follow-up call, too, the unscheduled follow-up call. The original journey in the cold call is from fear to trust, trust to curiosity, curiosity to commitment, and commitment to action.

The action is actually showing up at the discovery meeting, and the person you show up to the discovery meeting with could either be the person who you set the meeting with; that is, the salesperson is doing their own biz dev function and they are setting their own meetings. And in that case, you already have built that little bit of trust. You probably would be wise not to rely on it being there. Why squander it? But to go through a process of re-meeting the person a little bit, and that’s why, as I think we discussed in one of these episodes, I love to start with the question, “Where are you on the surface of our blue whirling planet?” just to have that sense of us being together.

There is a need in every conversation to re-initiate the relationship a little bit and re-establish the trust. But you have an advantage in a 15-minute meeting that you don’t have in a cold call, and the advantage is the person has decided to come to you, and confirmation bias tends to kick in. If I decide to come and meet with you, I’m doing it of my own volition. So my interpretation of the meeting, especially the early part of the meeting, is going to be conditioned on my decision to come and meet with you. That is, I will be looking for confirmation that this is a good thing for me to do with my time because I’m doing it with my time. I value my time. I believe that I am a good custodian of my time. I have voluntarily chosen to come and meet with you, and therefore, I’m going to be more likely than not to interpret that investment as a good investment and therefore you as a person worth meeting with, which is very, very different from a cold call.

So yes, you can blow it by acting like a salesperson. You can get into interrogation mode. I was told to ask questions. Let’s just start right in with the questions. Time’s a-wasting.

And I know that Andy Paul, it’s funny that he’s a master of time and Zero-Time Selling was his first book and one of the most brilliant sales books ever done, and Andy and I have talked at great length about it. He’s not advocating hurrying up in the conversation though. He’s advocating getting to where you need to go or deciding not to go there in the minimum amount of calendar time and in the minimum amount of elapsed time or rep time actually. So the unit that he cares about most is the sales rep hour. And the question is, what are you getting done per hour of your time? I think that’s quite brilliant.

What happens in a discovery conversation needs to be as efficient as can be while taking into account that you’re establishing or re-establishing a relationship with somebody, and that needs to happen because otherwise you may run the risk… and you will run some risk, but you may run the actual risk that this person’s going to say, “Hey, I came to this meeting in good faith and you’re abusing my trust.”

So the salesperson who abuses that trust can lose it, but they still start with some. And they start with some for a funny reason. It’s not a transfer of the trust from, say, the business development person who called them to the sales rep who’s holding the discovery meeting. It’s a transfer of trust back to the prospect who trusts themselves enough to invest their time wisely and come to the meeting and, therefore, the meeting is going to be interpreted at first flush, in the beginning, in a positive light.

Chris Beall (11:00):

You can blow it for sure. Salespeople blow it every day. I have neighbors who listen to me listening to some of our sales reps’ calls. I use [Chorus 00:11:09] in order to listen to those calls, and I do it often while trotting on the trails here in Reno because I can get two things done. I know it’s supposed to be impossible to multitask, but you actually can walk and listen at the same time or trot and listen at the same time. And I am living proof of it. I do it pretty much every day.

Corey Frank (11:28):

Just as long as you have no gum in your mouth.

Chris Beall (11:31):

Yes, as long as you have no gum. And breathing turns out to be relatively automatic, especially when you’re going up these big hills here. My neighbors believe I own a dog, and the dog’s name is… Well, the polite version of the dog’s name is shut the heck up. That’s actually not the dog they think I have. That would be [crosstalk 00:11:51] brother or sister.

Corey Frank (11:51):

Sure.

Chris Beall (11:51):

What I’m saying is if you keep talking at this point… I’m just shouting at the air because I have no more sense than to do that, and then I’ll try to take a note by sending myself a text message by talking to my phone. But the point is, you can abuse somebody’s trust by going on and on about something that you care about instead of letting them talk and listening. It’s still very different from interrogating them. If you’re curious about what their situation is and you’re willing to learn what their situation is before you map their situation onto the amazing coincidence that your product is the perfect fit for them if you can just listen, get them talking about something that they care about and listen, then you are doing the right thing with their trust.

And that trust can lead, again, to curiosity, but in this case, it’s your curiosity. You’re being curious about their situation as a salesperson. And from there, you can have mutual curiosity. They could become curious about how you might be able to help them, and from there you could have exploration, and exploration tends to be the next step that you’re looking for… exploration or stopping the exploration, deciding there isn’t any reason to. We call that disqualification, which is I think an unfortunate term. It’s nothing more than just deciding not to go on another date.

Corey Frank (13:14):

The shut the heck up reaction is from the sales rep abusing that trust that was first created by that biz dev in that conversation, the overwhelming confirmation bias that that sales rep has that you are a fit. You seem a mere QED, you must be a fit for my product, and I am going to continue to try to talk about the things that I’m interested in without curiosity at all, with potentially the exception of my only curiosity will be how you’re going to answer the questions that I need to have you answer… time, need, budget, fit, bant, what have you… in order to fit into my funnel.

Is it a lack of empathy? Is it a lack of genuine curiosity? Is it a lack of awareness that the sales rep shouldn’t be selling the product in that discovery meeting? And as you’ve always said, there’s a product, irrespective of the product that you’re selling, that is innately built into that discovery meeting, and that is what should be sold. That’s the value that should be distributed to the prospect on that phone.

Chris Beall (14:25):

Exactly. I mean, it’s a whole bunch of things that work together to get this standard behavior. For one thing, we make our reps believe that making quota is everything, and then we reason backward and say therefore selling to this particular prospect is a perfect outcome. And in a market dominance sense, that tends not to be true. But even in a sales sense, it tends not to be true.

We wouldn’t call it discovery if it only had one outcome. We wouldn’t go on a voyage of discovery and say, “And oh, by the way, here’s what we’re going to find, just to let you all know.” Right? We’re going into these little wooden boats and we’re going to sail across this big ocean and, oh, by the way, what we’re going to find is a mall with a Starbucks and so forth and so on. And it’s going to be shaped like this and it’s going to look like this. We’re going to be able to buy this. That’s not a voyage of discovery.

Discovery has to do with the unknown. And yet we tell reps, “No, no. You’ve got to know because if you don’t know what the answer is, you won’t get to the answer. And if you don’t get to the answer, you won’t get the sale. You don’t get the sale, you don’t get the quota. You don’t get the quota, you don’t get the commission. So let’s just focus on that.”

And I think that arises from two sources. One is it’s the tradition of what I call sales at the crossroads, one and done. Once we sell to you, we’re strangers and we will go our separate ways. It’s transactional, I believe is what that kind of selling is rightly called. But the other is when we only have a few opportunities, when our flow rate of conversations and our flow rate of meetings is low, then we’re desperate to make the most out of each one.

So if we have enough conversations, it’s very easy to take the attitude, at least it’s practical to take the attitude, that says let’s just have a good conversation. Let’s explore this one question, which is does it make sense to move forward together? In order to explore that, as a salesperson, I need to tell you what it is that I think might make a difference, and you need to tell me what resonates with you if anything. And it’s back to something that’s economic, something that’s emotional, something that’s strategic. If nothing resonates, well, there’s no reason to explore it. If something resonates, let’s take that element and explore it further in the conversation.

So if the desire is to have a good conversation that has the right result… the right result being either moving forward or not depending on the degree of fit, timing, and maybe other factors that are out there… then it’s a simple job to hold a discovery meeting. But it’s hard. It’s a hard thing to execute on an intermediate step.

It’s like if you’re a football player… it’s NFL season now here in the US, the American football guys are out… and I’m trying to become a better wide receiver, and I’ve got to learn to run a particular pattern, whatever this pattern is. I’m learning to run this [inaudible 00:17:25], and there’s a cut in it. I actually need to focus on making the cut before I focus on catching the ball.

If I just think about catching the ball the whole time, well, for one thing, my back is to the quarterback for part of the time, and catching the ball isn’t going to work during that period. And I’ve got to make the cut correctly at the right time in order to get to the right place to catch the ball. So focus on making the cut. Focus on having a good run with the right speed, planting the correct foot, and doing the right stuff with my upper body in order to support the cut and also to see if the cornerback is covering me or whoever’s on me. And if I focus on that, my chances of being open to catch the ball go way up. If I’m just focusing on catching the ball, I’m probably not going to make a very good cut.

What I’m doing in the discovery call is more like getting to the point where we can be open to consider a transaction. So how do I do that? Well, I need to focus on the conversation itself, and that’s what’s hard to do because it’s not the end goal. I’ve often heard managers say, “I don’t care how you do it, just get the deal.” And “I don’t care how you do it” is like saying our approach here is to hire people and fire people until we find one that can do it.

Corey Frank (18:42):

Well, that’s right. Andy and I had a conversation about that yesterday, Chris, it’s funny, about quotas, and his premise, which I really like, is that quotas are not good. When the measure becomes the target, Andy says, the measure is no longer valid. You miss out on the humanistic element of the problems you’re trying to solve for your prospects it seems.

And I really like this idea, I think we should tackle it next call, about discovery. Discovery is not a destination. Discovery is a state of mind with the unknown. It’s not an iterative process where I already know the destination with my heavy confirmation bias as a salesperson. Certainly, I’ve been guilty of that, is that, listen, because you fit my persona of X… You’re persona number three, Chris. You’re a CEO of a SaaS tech company over X million dollars with Y amount of margin. Therefore, you must fit the product that I am trying to sell, and not having any budget, you have to be a fit. So my discovery is already tarnished or biased in its performance. It’s kabuki at that point because I already know where I’m going to try to take you, and as the prospect, you probably already are feeling a little bit like this is a hostage situation as we’re going down our questioning funnel.

But it’s not genuine from the sales perspective, correct? Because it’s not a true discovery of let’s find out if it makes any sense to explore this together because I already have my finger on the scale.

Chris Beall (20:23):

I think that’s exactly right. The hardest part about sales… And I’m speaking with these students at the University of Texas, Dallas… Dr. Dover’s brilliant program down there. Dr. Howard Dover runs this amazing advanced sales program down at UTD. I had a group of students that were around me and one of them asked me, “Well, what should I do or what can we do that would make a difference in our sales careers?”

And I said stop caring about the deal. Just stop caring about the deal. Just be willing to execute the process of exploring with another human being what might be possible, knowing that you only have one set of things you can provide. You’re not a consultant there to have a conversation with them about everything, which is why you allocate a specific amount of time for the discovery meeting. You allocate that time in order to clip the investment. And within that investment period, that 15 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it is that you set on the calendar, you want to have it go as well as it can with regard to discovering the truth about the potential fit between that person’s situation and their challenges and what it is that you offer especially your most plain vanilla, this is down the middle offer, the thing that’s really in the bag, so to speak.

If there’s a great fit, or even might be a great fit, to the degree that it’s worth exploring further, then you have the next step. That’s what sales really is, is navigating a series of next steps that are very concrete and doing it with an investment known in advance, time investment. This is where Andy Paul’s entire approach is so spot on. You’re going to have one discovery meeting, and in that discovery meeting, you’re going to determine does it make sense to move forward to the next step? And the next step is not another discovery meeting. It’s something different.

In our world at ConnectAndSell, the next step is what we call an intensive test drive. It’s an actual experience of our product in production with a sales team. And that is the only next step that is prescribed in our sales process coming out of a discovery meeting. There is not a next step that says let’s meet again. The error that many salespeople make is believing that-

Corey Frank (22:42):

That’s right.

Chris Beall (22:42):

… continued time investment is progress.

Corey Frank (22:45):

That’s right.

Chris Beall (22:45):

It’s generally a waste.

Corey Frank (22:46):

Well, that’s great. Well, we’re going to end it there for today’s session, Chris. I think we have four more topics just from the last five minutes of your little riff there, one of which is I need to lasso Andy Paul and be the bystander, the fly on the wall, and let you two guys duke it out on the definition of trust, I think.

So I think the discovery call as a destination is a misleading term from the prospect’s perspective it sounds like. So if we’re going to call it a discovery call, then we have to be authentic and genuine and really mean what we say about a discovery call versus having the destination in our mind and we’re going to do everything we can to get them there when it’s inauthentic to say let’s just see how it’s going when I already know where I’m taking them. So that’s incredibly valuable.

With that, Chris, until next time?

Chris Beall (23:42):

All right, Corey. This was a good session for the first one in my 66th year. Hopefully, I can stand up to the pressure going forward.