Brian LaManna suggests cold-calling a lower-level team member before meeting with a VP of Sales. Ask them directly: does your team use Salesforce, and how many sellers do you have? This intel makes the executive conversation sharper and shows you've done your homework.
Chapters
We've all gotten the meeting schedules with zero discovery coming into that conversation. They agree to a meeting and then they had to run quickly. So here's what I would do in that situation. Try cold calling someone lower level, maybe an AE, an SDR, a marketing specialist, and be disarmingly honest with them. So here's an example of what that might sound like. Hey, it's Brian. I know we haven't spoken before, but do you have a second to hear why I called? I promise to be brief. So I set up a meeting for next Tuesday with your VP of Sales, Karen, and we're really excited to show her the platform. She had to run right after we locked it down, but my counterpart is requiring that I learn a few details prior to our meeting to make sure we can maximize her time. Could you do me a huge favor and confirm if the team is on Salesforce CRM today? Thanks so much. Also, do you know how many total sellers there are on the team, or your best guess? Awesome. I really appreciate your time. Now, I've done this plenty of times before in the past, and a real bonus here is you can do this Even when you just wanna gain more intel when it might not actually be required.
