#176 - Playbook: Top 10 moments that change the way we sell

Foreign, Everybody. And welcome to this playbook episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. My name is Armat Farokh, and I'm here with my co host, Nick Sigelski. And today it's a cold calling playbook. No, it's a cold email playbook. No, it's a discovery playbook. No, it's all of the playbook. In other words, every Friday, five playbooks, we break down the top 10 moments that changed the way that we sell from the last 50 episodes. So this is 101 to 150, Nick. Why should people listen?

Well, gosh, Armand, in the last year. Cause that's 50 episodes, a lot has changed in the way that I thought about selling. And the cool thing about running 30 minutes to President's Club is you. And I don't actually get to listen to the interviews. We get to live the interviews. And there's moments when we get off a recording and we are like, wow, the. That is going to change the way that I operate on a daily basis. And we have documented the top 10 for you, distilled all of our learnings into this episode from the very last year. So let's roll the tape. How are we structuring this?

All right, so folks, as always, we're going to start with some prospecting tactics, and then we're going to go into some discovery tactics, and then we're going to go into some sales process tactics and a 10. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Oh, wait. Stay tuned because there is also going to be an 11th number one tactic at the end. Let's do it. Today's show is brought to you by Text Us, which helps you move your deals forward faster. When timing matters, the fastest way to move a feel forward is to avoid getting stuck in the inbox. And so my favorite way to get on a text basis is literally when your prospect requests a demo, just send them a confirmation text saying that you're looking forward to the meeting. And that text opens the text channel for you to call back on it later, folks. We put an entire guide on how to revive ghosted deals. Nudge next steps and use texting to keep deals moving forward with text us. Check it out. It's free in the show notes.

All right, well, we are starting with a little bit of prospecting, Armand. And the first moment that changed the way that I sell came from Ryan reiser on episode 118. And what Ryan talked about is he said, use the right prospecting channel for the job. What Ryan talked about was this philosophy of there are some people that categorically are not going to answer cold calls. There are some people that have your domain blocked and so you could write the best email of your life and they're not going to open it, they're not going to see it, because you're blocked and you don't even know. And so what Ryan advocates for is once you determine that a channel is not working, your emails aren't being opened, you've called them five or six times and they've never answered. It's probably safe to say that you should abandon, abandon that channel for that individual human being and reallocate your effort onto the channels where they are active. So if someone's not opening emails, not answering calls, but they're a LinkedIn maniac, you might want to hit them up on LinkedIn. Use the right channel for the job.

That's right. The other day I actually made a post about a couple places you should drive 80, 20 lines, or a couple places that you should draw 80, 20 lines. And it got a lot of flack because one of the tips was never leave more than two to three voicemails. Another was never dial the same person more than four times in any given month. And I'm sorry, I stand by every single one of those things because some of these people are the 10 dial warriors where they take buzz tone after buzz tone after buzz tone instead of just changing the voice or changing the channel. So find the point of diminishing returns when or the 8020 line, the line where your 20% of your work has produced 80% of the results. Stop there and move onward. And that brings us to our next tip.

So the next one came from Charlotte Johnson on episode 114, and there is a reason that she is now a member of the illustrious club. What Charlotte talked about was do not be afraid of out of cadence effort. And what that means is there are so many salespeople that are married to the rigid structure of their sequence or cadence or campaign or whatever the heck you call it, and they spend a lot of time building out the perfect structure for which day they'll call and which day an auto email will go out, and they refuse to deviate from those things. And that is a grave error. If you see the CMO at your account that you've been prospecting, make a timely LinkedIn post bemoaning a problem that you solve. Please, for heaven's sakes, do not wait until the next step in your cadence. Pick up the phone and call them when there are Timely events that will impact your prospecting trigger events and you see them and your mind's focused on them. Please take action immediately. Your sequence will not revolt and get angry at you.

There was a moment where the majority of outreach was actually not done via sequences and cadences. And so prospects would be like, oh, this person's being so responsive. Oh, they sent me a follow up email that said, thoughts? Oh, wow. How did they remember to follow up three or four times? And now what's happening is every prospect is used to getting the exact same 10 step drip three days apart per email with the same sort of feel between touches. And what this allows you to do is it allows you to break the pacing and show that even if it is still a sales email, you are responding to a current event that has changed in their world and you are in fact a human. You are not just a click go on. 10 touches robot.

Speaking of robots, let's talk about how you set your agendas and move to discovery. Armand.

Oh, will you look at that? That's actually the fewest number of prospecting tactics we've ever had. So we've got four discovery tactics and we've got four process tactics. And so in order to become a little bit less of a Robot, I have three letters for you to set your agenda. And those three letters are from the one and only Doug Landis in episode 110. It is purpose, plan, outcome. I have heard some ridiculously long convoluted agendas that are literally a small Shakespearean monologue of typically. This over here, over there. Here's my biggest concern here. Yada, yada, yada, yada yada. Do you like, like popsicles or lollipops or red or blue? And it's a little bit too much for me. Purpose, plan, outcome is an extremely flexible agenda that you can use at any point in your sales cycle. On a discovery call, the purpose is typically to figure out if there's a problem you can solve. The plan is to get to know their business first via questions before going and showing them a demo. And the outcome is to decide if the call is worth a demo. The second PPO after that on the demo call is the purpose is to say, hey, we had these problems. I'm gonna show you if I can solve them. The plan to do that is to actually run you through a demo. And the outcome is, if you like it, you're gonna introduce me to your boss. And that can carry through multi threading, that can carry through proposal. It can carry through every element of the sales cycle. And it's a simple, structured way to kick off a call.

Yeah, Arman, I actually have been using this for my customer success calls that I lead. I lead customer success for 30 minutes to President's Club. We've been doing it with our internal calls also. It is a tool that you can use, yes, in your sales calls, but frankly, in any interaction where you have a goal, and I'll give you one even little bonus tip, PPO is how you might consider planning for your calls. What's the purpose? What's my plan to get there? What is the outcome that I am hoping for? It is an extremely versatile tool. Speaking of extremely versatile tools, Armando, let's talk about when you and I go out to dinner and the tool that you use to figure out what the heck you're going to eat because you'll never just order what I ordered.

That's correct. It is the one and only the menu. But it's not the menu of features. It's not the menu of a poo poo platter. It is the menu of pain. And that menu is being served up by episode 137. Guest. It's Kristin Connor. And so whenever you go and you are done setting your agenda, oftentimes what you need to do is you need to understand are you a bucket, a bucket B or bucket C type of problem? And what you're doing is you're creating some structure at the front end of the call with the menu of pain. To say these are the three or four most common problems that we solve for a CRO or for a VP of sales. What that might sound like is if I were selling to myself and I was doing some sort of service for people who are running a sales podcast, I might say typically when I'm talking to sales podcast hosts, they fall in one of three buckets. Either they're sick and tired of hearing their co host high pitch voice, they feel like they're the better looking host, or they feel like they do all of the work and get none of the credit. Which one of those three are you into? And I would be like, oh, I'm just writhing in this menu of pain. And that would kick us off into a wonderful pain funnel from there. Nick, is there anything that you'd like to add to that one?

Well, I'm trying to intentionally deepen my voice here, but what this is really good at is putting the call in the right direction. Because a lot of times salespeople get on the call and it can be hard to get Your prospect, talking about the problems that you are equipped to solve. If you just show up at the meeting and say, hey, Mrs. CFO, you know, talk to me about the things you're focused on this year, talk about your priorities this year. They might spend eight and a half minutes rambling about things that you have zero ability to help with. And okay, fine, that might mean that they're not focused on the things that you help with. But when you use the Menu of Pain, what you're doing is you're priming the other person to say, hey, this is the domain in which we can help. Are any of these things that you're trying to solve? The answer still might be no. I mean, honestly, we know who the better looking host of this show is. But that helps you get the conversation in the right direction. So that's our discovery tip from Kristen Connor, Episode 137The Menu of Pain. And I'm going to move on to the next one which comes from episode 123, Chris Orlob. And what Chris taught us was when somebody talks about an initiative to maybe lower their voice or a change in state in their business, you must uncover what is driving that thing. So what happens for me in my sales cycles is I'm Talking to these CMOs and VPs of marketing and they'll tell me things like, yeah, you know, we're actually going through a rebrand right now. Or, you know, we've always sold to SMBs, now we're moving to mid market and enterprise sales. And it's easy for me to say, oh, you're going through a rebrand. 30 MPC would be great because you can advertise your new messaging, yada, yada yada. But what Chris taught me is I need to say, well, gosh, it's not every day that you wake up and say, we're going to rebrand the whole company. Could you give me a sense of what is driving you to make that big change? And what I'm doing here is I'm doing what Chris talks about. I'm peeling the onion and I'm figuring out, okay, they're doing this thing, but what's actually behind that, what's prompting that thing? Because until I understand what's prompting it, I should not be addressing how we help with the surface level situation.

One of the most dangerous places you can be in a deal cycle is taking someone's word that they want something. Someone might show up to your door and they might say, I want a call recording tool or I want to sponsor 30 minutes to President's Club or I want to do XYZ and a lot of reps will get happiers and they'll be like, great, I have XYZ or I have a sales platform that you can sponsor. I have a call recording platform. And then what happens in the later stages of the deal is you realize that there wasn't a big enough foundation of a motivation in the organization to actually turn that want into a need. And so if someone says, I want to move my hand away from the stove, what you need to do is you need to ask, why do you want to do that? So you can figure out it's because their hand is hovering over a hot fire. And that brings us to, I think, what is our best guest of all time? Nick, what's the next tip?

Armand, I spend a lot of time poking fun at you, but I have to give you some credit because you were on episode 113 and you've also helped me a lot with this one. It is the concept of the five minute drill. For those of you who don't know, I recently took over all of sales for 30 minutes to President's Club and I went full time with 30 minutes to President's Club and I sell all of our advertising sponsorship packages. And there was a period of time where I was struggling and Armand really helped me with this concept of the five minute drill, which is a way to uncover with the prospect, do you want to buy this thing? Talk to me about timing and talking about the direction that they're going to buy the thing. And the concept here is when you get to the last five minutes of a call, the first thing you need to do before you talk about timing, before you talk about the process and the next steps and the multi threading, you need to determine is the other party bought in on whether or not this is worth continuing to explore. Because trying to sell that person on introducing you to their team, if they're not bought in, you are going to meet resistance. So in the last five minutes of the call, the first thing that you've got to do is a simple gut check. How are you feeling? Is this something that you want to continue exploring? If the answer to that is no, you've got some work to do. You need to deal with the human being in front of you first before you cover timeline or other people or process, et cetera. Gut check, how you feeling? Do we keep exploring? If the answer to that is yes, then you move to the next piece of the five minute drill, which is hey, give me a sense of timing, right? I wanna match your urgency. Mr. Or Mrs. Customer. Is this a. This week, this month, this year, this decade? Talk to me about how you're feeling on timing. And what this allows me to do is I don't need to get to a specific date, but it does allow me to understand how quick do we need to move and what process we be following. So I understand do they want this? Approximately when do they want this? And then what I can do is I can advise them on, okay, if you need this in place in 45 days because you have a big product launch for your rebrand, typically here are the steps that need to happen and what I now can do is advise the other person on the process that we need to follow. So, Armand, I give you a lot of grief, I make fun of you a lot. I think I'm the better looking host, but thank you because you've helped me quite a bit.

Well, you're right on many things, you're wrong on a couple, but you're right about the five minute drill. And what I'll say folks is to recap the three questions that Nick just hit on are do you want to buy? When do you want to buy? How do you buy? The most commonly skipped over question is the first one which is do you want to buy? It sounds ridiculous, but. But there is an over rotation in sales to setting next steps. Setting next steps is an important thing to do, but it is also a colossal waste of your time to set next steps with a deal that's going nowhere. And the way that you need to make your prospects earn the right to see a demo or earn the right to see a proposal is by validating, hey, are we still on the path to buy this thing? Or is it even worth seeing a demo? Or is this a nice to have and you don't even want to see a demo. You need to get them to punch through that do you want to buy wall first? And then and only then are you allowed to set a next step. And that is typically when you exit your first discovery call. And now we are going into the world of sales process. And so we have four final process driven tactics for you to drive your deals all the way through close. And the first is actually from a two time guest. One of the best reps that I've ever coached of all time, her name is Morgan Melo. Which is once you start to build a champion, oftentimes the first thing you want to do is you want to try to get in front of power yourself. But we all know that that doesn't always happen. So when it doesn't happen, what you need to do is you need to make sure that the content of your message, the business impact, the problems you can solve, they are kept intact. So that if it goes from a director to a VP to a CRO, those problems hit the board meeting level problems. And so Morgan's way of doing this is by asking their champion one quick question. I'm curious, as you go into this meeting with your CMO or as you go into this meeting with your VP of sales, I guess, how are you going to justify this thing internally? And what you can do is that opens up the can of worms for you to start coaching them on how to best manage that meeting. And it gives you one more at bat to say, hey, there might be a couple of those things that I can help you with. And if nothing else, you at least be able to point out some things that you know are below the line priorities that they're going to hit on that they should replace with above the line priorities.

What this question also uncovers is you get to sense check does the other person actually understand what you are going to help with? Because I can't tell you the number of times you ask that question and they explain something and it's like, well, yeah, we do help with that. But wait, what about this other big problem? Like is that important we talked about, we're going to solve that too. And so what you're helping your champion do is refine their pitch. You're helping coach them, you're helping them bring it higher level. If they're bringing it up and you're helping dispel misconceptions, I ask the question a little bit differently. Instead of justify, I ask, you know, talk to me about how you're positioning this to your team as you go back to them. But justify positioning, talk to me about how you're communicating this with others. You'll also start to uncover the other parties who are involved in this multi threaded buying committee. So you might get to talk to them in the future. Speaking of the future, let's move to the future and talk about the next tip.

Okay, so this one comes from Adam Wainwright and he described the supersonic sales cycle a couple of weeks ago. Specifically, what I want to talk about is the concept of, yes, momentum. What you need to do is if you've ever played those arcade games where you're driving around, you're getting through the booster pads, you're getting through these Little rings. And every couple of minutes it says, checkpoint, Checkpoint. Everyone has probably played that arcade game or can at least understand the concept of what I'm saying. And what you're gonna do is you're just going to create your own sales process in form of mini yeses. There are a couple of very common mini yeses in a sales cycle. Yes, I agree that this is a problem. Yes. Feature number one solves problem number one. Yes. Feature number two solves problem number two. Right. Yes, I agree that this is something that is worth the price. Yes, Power has signed off. Yes, we got through legal, and all you need to do at that point is tie your sales cycles to those mini yes points and then just continue walking your buyers through the next three or four checkpoints that they need to achieve. And so every time you meet with your buyers, whether that's problem agreement, whether that's agreeing that a demo is solving the problem that they had, whether that's getting to the end of technical validation, what you're going to do is you're going to check off the last step and you're going to show them the next three checkpoints that they need to get through. And that will create. Yes. Momentum in your deal cycle.

What you're not doing is waiting all the way to the end with a big grand hurrah. So is this the right thing for you? What you're doing is consistently throughout every conversation. Does this feel right? Does this feel right? Does this feel right? And the second that resistance is there because you're more frequently pulse checking, it gives you a chance to address that resistance. And if there isn't the resistance there, the person feels like you're on a roll. So much of sales is a momentum game, and by consistently pulse checking and getting their validation, you actually preserve their autonomy. They don't feel like they're being controlled, and you keep the momentum rolling. Speaking of keeping the momentum rolling, let's move to the next one.

So from Miles Cain, this tactic is one that you can use when a negotiation is starting to go downhill. Someone's asking for a 30, 40, 50, 60% discount, and you need to stop them in their tracks and reverse the momentum of the negotiation. And what you might say when someone's asking you or pushing you for a discount. So you might say, hey, I completely understand. We believe that the solution we bring to the table is worth the value or worth the cost. However, naturally there are some things we consider. But before I do that, I'm curious, what would you be willing to bring to the Table and offer in return. And you'll get a fun little smirk from a really sophisticated buyer on the other side who knows that you know what your stuff is. But what it does is it starts to set the expectation that this is going to be a give, get. You're not just going to be able to get, get, get, get, get. There is going to be a cost to every element of the negotiation.

Arman this is the most powerful negotiation tool that I think I've learned on 30 minutes to President's Club because I historically have over rotated on the maxim seek first to understand before trying to be understood. And what will happen is you will get on a negotiation call right? You're at the end of the sales cycle and the buyer will start laying into you with the 15 different things that they want. They want a discount, a shorter term, a software customization, they want you to change your hair color. And what happens is I would sit there and I would do discovery on each of these things and we'd spend 32 minutes talking about all of their asks. And the issue with that is, is you are communicating subliminally communicating, hey, we can do this stuff. And what you have to do here, this question that Miles advocates asking, it changes the frame of the negotiation. It is, hey, you want things, fine, but what are you willing to bring to the table and offer in return? And it totally changes it from a they're laying into you to, all right, we can have a conversation, but I want to figure out what you're going to bring.

It's really powerful and these moments can be a little bit uncomfortable, especially if you had great rapport with somebody. And so this last tactic, I think we got to talk about break in rapport, Nick.

We do need to talk about break and rapport, Armand. Which comes natural to you, but maybe not to me. And that's why it was really, really impactful. We had Henry Schuck, the CEO of ZoomInfo, on the show and what Henry told me, and he had deep conviction behind this. He said, do not let your need for rapport, the good feelings between you and this prospect that you've developed over the sale, block your advancement of the sale. What he means by that is it can be hard when you have developed a relationship with your prospect to push and say, look, I gotta talk to your boss. I've seen this 15 times. If we don't talk to the CMO, this doesn't get done. It can be hard to ask that Miles Kane question, what are you willing to offer in return that's gonna break rapport in some ways. And I have had to embrace this one, Arman, because the way that you and I are paying our grocery bills is via 30 minutes to President's Club sponsorships and we can't pay them with my rapport with our wonderful prospects. And so do not mistake this. Your job is to advance the sale. Your job is to sell the right thing to the right customer and help them solve their problems but also make some money for your business. You are not in this to make a bunch of friends. That is actually going to be a side effect of holding your ground. I cannot tell you how many prospects have respected the directness and holding my ground on negotiations, on pushing for doing the right thing. Rapport is a double edged sword and.

It is our job to progress and advance this episode. And so I command that we move this and break all rapport and go to our number one tactic. Our number one tactic which was not from one but episode. It was from a two part episode. It is turning a want into a problem. From the one and only Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. This goes back to the concept that Orlob talked about which is anytime someone is planning an initiative or they have a change in state, you need to ask what is driving it. Or in this case what you need to do is if someone says I want X, you need to rephrase that in terms of I can't accomplish X. So if someone is really, really, really saying, yeah, I want better training for my sales reps, you might rephrase that and say something like, okay, so it sounds like right now the training that your reps is getting isn't doing the job. Is that correct? And that simple reframing will get more crisp clarity on the problem and open up the door for more and more discovery questions from that point on.

The way that I recommend putting this one into action is think back to that menu of pain that Kristen talked about and you probably know the top four to five problems that your product or service solves. And what I recommend doing is thinking about, okay, when someone is proposing a goal related to those problems, what is the talk track I can use to turn it into a problem? So I hear all the time from the VPs of marketing that I'm selling to, yeah, we really want more sales teams to know about XYZ feature that we have. And I know, boom. I have it written on a post it note that is taped to my monitor. Huh? Is that because you feel like a lot of folks don't know about that and now we're talking about a problem. So figure out those big goals or problems that you help with and figure out how you connect goal to problem. That way you don't have to think, think about that hard in real time.

Alrighty folks, so we got our crown coming out for the king of our first ever two part episode, it's KD but we had 10 other amazing tactics. So let's do a quick recap in the prospecting section. Number one, Ryan Reissert. Use the right channel for the job. Number two, Charlotte Johnson. Don't be afraid to use out of cadence effort. Then we went to Discovery. We had Doug Landis, PPO purpose, plan, outcome, Kristin Connor, the menu of pain. Chris Orlob. When someone talks about a change in state or initiative, ask what's driving. And then lastly you had me with the five minute drill. And then you had the process section where we talked about Morgan Melo's question of how are you going to justify this internally we had Adam Wainwright's supersonic sales cycle with yes momentum. We had Miles Kane's negotiation reversal question of what are you willing to offer in return. And then we lastly had Henry Schuck which is the concept of breaking rapport to continue advancing your sale. Alrighty, Nick, those are the last 50 episodes, the top 10 moments that changed the way we sell plus one good one and what is one good one way that people can help us out?

One good one way that people could help us out is believe it or not, we put together what we call the 30 minutes to presidents club demo Scovery deck. And what this is designed to do is actually incorporate a lot of the things that we talked about in this episode. Setting a clear agenda with PPO turning goals into problems, carving out time for the five minute drill. And we built a deck that you can use to facilitate discovery when you're in a big team meeting. I have been using it for almost all of my discovery calls. I think you've watched me, Armand and so it's a really, really great tool. There's a link in the show notes. Go steal it. It's free. We want to help you all sell more effectively. Thanks for sticking around for the last 50 episodes and we'll see. See you for the next 50.