Episode 71: Unnecessary Discounting Be Gone, A Proven Method to Removing it From Your Team, with Richard Harris

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Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered sales teams. Hot off the press from California, a fellow waterman, water baby, water boy, surfer, whatever you want to call it, we have Richard Harris joining us today. So Richard is without doubt a world renowned sales trainer. I've had enough time with him today to see that he knows what he's talking about. He's got a rich history of really elevating sales teams across spectrum. Doesn't matter where that spectrum is or where you start on that spectrum. But he also really prides himself on sharing invaluable insights and tactics as his or as his cemented authority for a go to in sales training. But Richard has plenty of principles that he likes to roll out. But you will see right there printed on his shirt is the neat selling system and shortly release of a book called the Seller's Journey. So I'm really looking forward to having Richard on board today. But when I started to do a bit of research, what I was really impressed about was his list of clients. So Google, Visa, Zoom, Salesforce, sales Loft, Terminos, PandaDoc, Pandora, DoorDash, we could keep going, there's plenty more. But that's an impressive list of customers who are worthy of mentioning. And to be honest, that's worthy of hearing what Richard has to say. But to make it even easier, Richard is an experienced podcaster. So welcome Richard to today.

Thank you very much. And let me also say thank you for mentioning all those clients. I also have a ton of small startups, so just I want people to understand, like I certainly have this approach and understanding of big scale and those types of enterprise sales and stuff. I also do a lot of work with small startups. So as you hear advice today, I want people to kind of know Like, I think I know a lot. I don't know that all. Certainly not the smartest guy in the room. But I'm happy to share what I can.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm a big believer that there simply is no substitute for experience. You can have all the capacity and capability in the world, but until you have seen enough sunrises, sunsets, and everything that happens in between, then for me, it's very difficult to say you have that level of experience to really drive hard into the sales world. So I'm super excited when we get really genuinely experienced sales leaders and sales trainers on the show. So we might jump straight into it today. And hot off the press, last week, one of my key podcasts, it was a solo session that I ran last week, was all around bringing how we add value and great outcomes to customers forward into our sales process and our sales journey. So if you like, that focused more on a customer's journey rather than a seller's journey. And it's interesting, as we start today, we're going to talk about the exact opposite, I think, for the next few minutes, or certainly on paper, and that being the seller's journey. And for me, a statement that I've seen around your name that says, it's not about the customer journey, it's about the seller journey. So let's dive straight into that. I'm really keen to hear your thoughts on why you think the seller's journey is the place we should be focusing.

Yeah. So, you know, and again, this is also, you know, it's meant to be provocative. Right. Because what I do. Right. I do not believe that there's anything such as a buyer's journey. I believe there's only a buyer's experience through a journey. And that journey is often created by sales and marketing. So that's the essence of where this concept comes from, is that it's always about the experience for the buyer. Right. It's not about the journey. Nobody asks us, how was your journey to, you know, the steakhouse? They asked you, how was the experience? What was it like? Was the food good? Was the service good? All that kind of stuff, when, you know, we've heard this all along, too, is that, you know, nobody ever talks about all the positive experiences they've had with salespeople, but they love to talk about the negative ones. Right. And it's not about that experience is based on a bad seller's journey, not a bad buyer's journey. They were just on a journey. It was ours. So that's the essence of the thought behind it and how I came up with it.

Right. So I think I'm hearing is that the buyer's experience, in your opinion, is going to be based heavily around the seller's journey. So for us as sellers, it's important to make sure that we have our journey or our process or our map or our, however you want to phrase it, that we have that nailed down with a focus then on the experience, it's going to lead to the customer.

Correct. And again, that in my head it's, you know, in what I believe in practice that still aligns back to knowing your ideal customer profile, the pains that they have, what your value propositions are around, your solution. You know, it's a very competitive experience right now. Just about everything you sell is in a competitive space, right? And buyers, humans by nature are comparison shoppers. And they will often commoditize you without you realizing it. They'll look at two things and try to say, oh, you're just like so and so now, short of it being a Mercedes versus, you know, a Hyundai, right. Those two things can't be commoditized, so to speak. But that's because Mercedes provides a different experience. Right? And so that's what I want people to understand. I think we've all, and you tell me, Ben, we've all been in the situation where maybe we were priced a little bit higher than our competitor, but because of the way the experience went, the relationship went, how we conducted ourselves, providing that experience through our seller's journey, we've still won the business. And so for me, that's really the essence of it, allows us to still be customer centric, customer focus, making it about them. We can just better manage ourselves and then help set and create better expectations and experiences for them.

It's very much about how you leave people feeling rather than what you say. Big proponent of that. Whilst it's important what's coming out of our mouths or how we're delivering it, how the other side feels once we finish, that is even more important. So if we're looking at a seller's journey and particularly how we're making sure the buyer's experience is very much a positive one, what are you working on at the moment to be driving that real positive outcome for the buyer?

So in terms of what I do to teach reps, I teach people how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when to do it. And behind that is making sure we don't jump into feature benefit situations, right, where we just start lecturing at our prospects or customers. I want to teach the team to talk with their prospects and customers, not talk at them. If you've ever been on a bad demo, that's talking at your customer, that's not talking with them. And so that's how I try to encourage this to happen. And wrapped around all that is definitely some psychology of teaching people how humans even make decisions. We're all comparison shoppers, so how do I make sure this sales team feels more comfortable when they get an objection or they run into what I call the grumpy Gus prospect who's like, no, just tell me your pitch. Just get into the demo. Right? Like, how do we teach the psychology behind that? And then on top of that, well, how do I respond? How do I say it? That's business appropriate and authentic to me, meaning authentic to how Richard says things versus Ben. Ben needs to say the same thing Richard does, but he needs to sound like Ben, not Richard. He doesn't need to sound like a bot or a robot. Right. And I want to teach people that skill set, that they can still be massively authentic to who they are as a core human being and bring that level of humanity into the experience. And I think that's where the trust gets built. That's where real conversations happen. And from a sales perspective, and even from the customer perspective, it doesn't feel like a sales conversation. So that's, you know, is teaching reps how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when with all that concept behind it for authenticity.

We were talking about AI at the very start of our. Before we got live, and I think where you mentioned features and benefits and that talking to customers around features and benefits, I think that's where AI is really going to take over. And those salespeople that simply are there to read a script or. Or rope, roll, play out a very standard pitch are going to find that it gets a little bit more difficult for them to keep their jobs and to keep their own position as being valuable to customers and to their organizations because they're just rolling out features and benefits. But where we're trying to create that value and that sense of a strong outcome for our customers, that's that right to ask questions. I think that you talk about there. And that very natural conversation that salespeople have. The. There's two other things that come up all the time. I think when we're talking about a journey, let's call it the seller's journey or an experience being at the buyer's end. And the first one there is around, and you mentioned it around being higher priced than your competitors and that's over discounting. What are your thoughts around over discounting?

So this is something we've all been taught the wrong way, myself included, and I've taught other people the wrong way. Right. And so for me, what I always try to do is, is encourage people to. When someone says, oh, the price is too expensive, I need it to be lower. Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to. I think at that point you've earned the right to say so, okay, Ben, well, what were you expecting? And if Ben turns around and says, well, I don't know, but I just need something better, I will then teach the team and I will say to Ben, I appreciate you asking, in fairness, I've given you a price and you want something different. And I understand you're asking for a discount, I get it, but I'm not going to negotiate against myself, Ben. So you tell me what you're expecting. And it's not like that customer is going to hang up on you right now. If it's a one call, close, you know, transactional sale, then maybe they will. Right, I get it. And we could go off on another tangent about that. But I think in the world you and I swim in the most, with most salespeople that's not the case. So that's the first thing. The other thing I will say if I don't want to say that. If I say, you know, if Ben says, well, you know, I just need something lower, my first response might be, hey, Ben, I appreciate your asking. You know, our pricing is based on what the market dictates. What were you expecting? Because there's no response someone can give that's logical around the market rate because at that point they should have done their research and figured out where we are right now. If I'm still priced higher, Ben could turn around and say, hey, you know, well, you know, your competitor's doing this. And I could say, okay, great, you know, why are you still talking to me though? There's some reason you decided to choose me other than price. What was it? Now what's really happening is Ben's having to resell himself on my value proposition and hear him say out loud all the reasons I'm better than the competitor. So that's another tactic. The final one is if you have to give a discount after you've done at least the, hey, you know, this is what the market dictates. So what would you like to Do. If you do that one, the next thing you can still do is say, well, Ben, I think there's three or four ways we could both leverage commercial terms to our benefit. Here's something we could do. You know, if you agree to give me a customer quote, I can get you 2% off. If you agree to do a case study, I can give you another 2% off. If you agree to a longer term contract, 2 years versus 1 year, I can get you another 3 or 4%. If you agree to prepay the whole contract up front, I'll give you another 5%. Which ones would you like, Ben? So now all of a sudden I've let Ben know there needs to be something mutual in exchange for this value. And I've limited myself from going to the well, I can get your 20 or 25% or 30% and just sort of, you know, railroading myself and negotiating it's myself way too much. So anyway, so that's a lot to share, a lot for people to sort of think about. And yes, absolutely, go back and rewind it or transcribe this thing somewhere and figure that stuff out. But those are the ways I encourage people to say these things.

There's two things that stand out there for me. The first one is we're compartmentalizing or we're taking the stigma away from what's often a difficult conversation. And that's around price. And what we're doing is rather than offering the discount up front, we're asking our customer to be clear on what their expectations are.

Yep.

Once we're clear on understanding what their expectations are, then we have a baseline to work off. So I think that is a very important part around pricing is to understand what the expectation is on the other side rather than to have, have it open and unknown because then we can get to work. The second take you're talking about there is asking for something in return for your discount. So it's not a case of hey, I can offer you this great, it's if I will you, if I offer you 2%, will you pay early? Will you plan a longer contract? Right. So most of those things I think are critically important in that final stage of closing our deals. So really good, really valuable in there, particularly the piece around, I think around getting the expectations out as quickly as you can when that price discussed discussion comes up.

So by default. So there are two things. One is when you negotiate price, remember you're negotiating a contract with terms that's going to go through legal as well as the price and if you don't combine them together, you're going to get unbundled, meaning you're going to come up with some price. But then all of a sudden, the legal team is going to pull out a whole bunch of stuff that they don't like. And so again, and part of this is a. It's very easy for Richard to do it because I run my own company. It's also easy because I do it all the time. Part of it is to say, hey, I can agree to this, whatever price you agree to, but I got to base it on what we get back from your legal team on the red lines. Because if all of a sudden they start requiring me to do indemnification or add something that's going to cost me more time and resources, you know, it's fair for me to understand that. So that's one thing. Just be mindful of that. The other thing I do, and it's in every contract, and you'd be surprised. I've had the biggest companies in the world just gloss over this in my contract and never say anything. And it literally says in there that they will give me a customer quote. They will agree to a case study. They will let me use their logo without giving any discount. So it's by default in every one of my contracts because I want them to redline it out. Because if they redline it out and then we start talking about pricing, it's, wait a minute, you just tried to redline that out and you want a discount? I need that back in because of the discount. So making that default in your contract is really important in my opinion. Look, you know, sure, there are many times where I pulled stuff out or look, if Salesforce came back to me and told me it was 24% that I needed to give them, of course I'm going to figure something out. I'm not stupid. Like, I'm not an idiot. But I need to at least put myself and I want everybody else to put their best foot forward. I want them to be able to go to bed at night saying, hey, I did this. I gave it a shot. And I want my leadership. I want my. The people I train. I want you to be able to go to your leader and say, hey, remember that tactic we talked about about how to prevent over discounting? I just want you to know I did it and this is the feedback I got. And by the way, it's Zoom or it's Visa. And so I tried it. It didn't work. We got to go to the discount Like, I at least want people to be able to know that they've done all they can to be better. The last thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up one more time, I promise, is the reason this is hard is because we don't get this far into the conversation on a regular basis, right? How many times do you give a demo where you know your demo, you know your pitch, you know how you're going to do it, it comes off, you know, very naturally and authentically, versus how many times do you negotiate pricing? So part of this is giving you these very specific words I'm suggesting as a script for you to practice and memorize before you get into that conversation. Because it's uncomfortable. Believe me, it's not comfortable. Look, we are all taught not to talk about sex, religion, politics, and money, right? Everybody's taught that. So here we are having to talk about it, but nobody's trained us on how to say it in a better way. Maintain our authenticity, make it sound like we're having just a conversation and not trying to be a jerk or try to make it a combative conversation with our prospect. It's just a conversation about money.

There's so many things in there unpacked. But I think a couple of key things I want to take out of that is legal teams are often like the second layer of procurement. So beware when we're negotiating contracts. I love the piece around making sure that some of your key requirements that you have from a customer side, I. E. Case studies, I use the logos, I. E. Getting quotes from them. We put them in the contracts up front. I really like that. In fact, I'm going to go and add that to my contract.

Everybody, that's. That's the one thing everybody does. Everybody's like, oh my God, we at least need to add that. That's easy. You know, by the way, the other, the other piece of that too is that a, you're not necessarily going to make them all go do it if they don't want to. But it's a whole lot easier if it's in the contract to say, hey, by the way, we've already gotten your approval from your legal team or your marketing team to do this. So can you give me a quote versus if you don't have it in the contract? And then they, I got to go check with somebody and see how, you know, it's like, it eliminates that whole other later conversation too. So it applies to a couple of things.

So excellent. Okay, I really like that. And I think the last piece we were talking about there is that to give ourselves a bit of slack when we're talking about pricing, because it's not something that we do all day, every day. So to lean into that challenge, bulls running through a storm and understand that because we don't do it every day, that sometimes we might need a little bit of extra training on it. So I love it. Okay, so second place around that we've spoken about when it comes around having a great experience at the buyer's end, we've spoken about the. About over discounting. The other area I want to unpack is the ROI journey, and I think so the proposals come back to return on investment. Tell me your thoughts on this one, Richard.

So this is how I say it. And yes, I say it to CFOs and they say it to procurement. I will, you know, if Ben comes to me and says, richard, what's your roi? I will look Ben square in the eye, even in the zoom. I will look at the camera hardcore and I'll go, hey, Ben, let me ask you a question. I'm going to answer that, but let me ask you a question. When was the last time a salesperson gave you an ROI number and you ever believed it? And Ben's going to do exactly what he's doing, which is grinning. He doesn't know how to answer that question because he knows it's not true and that nobody ever believes it. So that's the first thing, because all ROI is a scare tactic to tell you you need to negotiate better, that they're going to ask for a discount. That's your biggest indication they're going to ask for a discount is when they ask the ROI question. Now what do you do when they bring that up is to say, hey, totally understand. You know, what's really important for me, Ben, is that when we spoke before, you know, you explained that the economic impact of you not solving this problem as it is right now is costing you X, Y or Z both in not just the hard costs of time saving or efficiency or effectiveness, but what do you get to do with that time you get back? If I save Ben, you know, three hours a week, which is 12 hours a month, give or take. Ben, what are you going to do to grow the business with those extra 12 hours? Great. What's the value of each new customer you get? What's the lifetime value of those customers? So now all of a sudden, I have this economic impact, Something that's real and tangible, they can touch and feel and see not coming into their bank account because there's revenue's not there, versus this ROI thing, which is just some number that's in the future, which is really just called the religion of insecurity because they're insecure about spending the money. So to do this, you also have to have done good discovery. So you have to kind of have gone all the way back and done ask some of those questions that need to happen early in the sales conversation, through demos, through, you know, compliance issues, whatever it is that you're going through. So it's all about economic impact, because what they're current, they're talking to you because there's a certain economic impact of if they don't solve this problem, it's costing them more money. Well, if we can dollarize that and put numbers on that, well, then the ROI number is a whole lot easier. It's a whole lot easier to say, Ben, you know, I appreciate the ROI conversation. Let me ask you a question. You told me that this is what it's costing you. This is your economic impact right now, that if you don't solve this problem. So isn't that really your ROI calculation? Because those are your numbers. So. Because I will ask, you know, and I teach the reps, like, we want them to give us their own numbers, not make up, you know, our widget numbers. So. So that's how I teach people to have that conversation. Yes, I can be a little snarkier about it and I can say things like, you know, return on insecurity and, you know, do you ever believe your salesperson? But that's really where it comes from. That's how you have to shift that conversation.

So I think that relates very heavily back to the seller's journey versus the buyer's experience. And what we're trying to do is place a return on investment discussion. We're trying to shift that from being a seller's focus to one that's in the customer's language. So specifically about their economic problem, their economic opportunity, whatever it is, and getting them to word it out. And we're essentially guides in the ROI discussion, if you like. I really like that as a pro. So it's fantastic. So, Richard, we've covered off pretty heavily today, I think, around how we make sure a buyer has a great experience. And in particular, we've spoken about over discounting or discounting in general, and roi. I think they're two really chunky pieces of information that this podcast prides itself on providing. And for those listening, I have no doubt that one or both of those topics over discounting and the ROI conversation, you have written some notes down and you've got some things to tweak with your teams. But before we go today, Richard, I will often, in a solo podcast, in fact, every solo podcast, I will talk about health and fitness and mindset because I think it's so important as a sales leader to be showing up in a way that you want your teams to follow. So we spoke a little bit about that before we got started today. Can we very quickly touch on your beliefs around mindset and the importance that it plays?

Yeah. I'm going to promote a free resource to everybody. For the last three years, with a partner of mine at the Sales Health alliance, we put together the state of mental health in sales report for the last three years. So you can Google state of mental health in sales. It's a very important topic to me, particularly with my own journey of anxiety and depression and things where I consider myself lucky in the sense that I never wanted to hurt myself. I never wanted to hurt anybody else. I just kind of felt sad for a long time. So it's personal to me. And then when you put on top of that the pressure and stress of sales and performance and hitting numbers and that your very livelihood and your job security relies on it, that's a lot of pressure. So what I'll share with people is that, you know, the top things we asked and we asked people, you know, hey, you know, we did a survey and we said, hey, when you were at peak performance, what was your sales leadership team doing? Not what do you wish your teams, your leaders did? And the things that they told us, which then tells us that this is what people want is they were saying things like, my leaders were led with vulnerability, or I had very clear understanding of my goals. I had a level of autonomy within my role. Right. So these are all the things I think we know. So. But at least we have a little bit of data behind it. And I want to come to the vulnerability thing. You know, the vulnerability thing doesn't mean, you know, Richard coming in and talking about his mental health or Ben sharing the stories, which I'm. I'm sure Ben has shared his own experiences around Vulnerability just means sitting there and going, oh, wow, you know, that's a really tough situation to be in. What can I do to help? Not, hey, that's a really tough situation. Here's how I handled it. Right. Because that's not helping. Right. You know, being vulnerable is opening yourself up. Or you can open yourself up as a leader and say, hey everybody, I just want to tell you guys about this experience and what I learned about negotiation or hey, here's an experience I had about how I got stronger at cold calling, right? And say, hey team. Like this was my experience. Here's how I convinced myself to get better at it. By the way, I don't expect you to follow my footsteps. I just want you to know I've had my experience with it and if it's helpful to you, I hope so. And if not, I'd love to hear your feedback too. Like that's vulnerability. Being able as a leader to say and I teach this to managers is, you know, in your one on ones with your direct reports is to be able to say, hey Ben, what's one thing I could do better for you as your leader? Just the fact that I'm being vulnerable to ask Ben what's some feedback I could do better And I'm just asking for one thing. It means that I care and it shows that there's intention from me as an individual. So those are some things. Again, I sort of went on a rant and I apologize. But vulnerability matters. Having purpose, having direction, career pathing, all those things matter to you as a salesperson and or to your sales team if you're a sales leader. And if you're a sales leader, I'm willing to bet they matter to you as an individual too.

So yeah, you've hit a key pillar for me there. Hit the nail on the head there, Amit. A pillar of being a sales leader is showing your career. So thank you very much for today, Richard. Where can people find Richard Harris?

So there are two things so I'm going to do, you know, because I don't mind a shameless plug for my book. The seller's journey is on Amazon and all the other places audiobook is coming out. But if you really want to get a hold of me and yes, I'm on WhatsApp +141559691494155969149. That is my real cell phone number that I'm holding up here. And I know it's real because it's the number four my kids ignore when I call them. They're teenagers. So if anybody has advice for me, please help me see me being vulnerable. But you can also find me on LinkedIn. Richard Harris. I'm the one with a goofy little trademark emoji. But yeah, like I literally will take phone calls and text messages. Text me, let me know that you know, you heard me with Ben on the Stronger Sales Team podcast. But text me ahead of time if you want to call or just ask me a question. I'll. I'll support you.

Yeah, awesome. Well, and everyone remember Richard being California based, six hours ahead, but a day behind in terms of time. So when it's six o' clock here, it's midnight Richard's time. So we are. Thank you, Richard. Really good to have you on today. Really enjoyed it. For everyone listening, please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.

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