Live podcast episode (Better Sell Better) where Kevin 'KD' Dorsey interviews Charles Muhlbauer about sales discovery tactics. Muhlbauer outlines the concept of 'staying' on a prospect's problem using four triggers (as taught at CB Insights), recommends keeping a conversational 'thread' or theme in questioning, leveraging status-alignment questions to build trust (per Oren Kloff), and maintaining curiosity to let prospects sell themselves.
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I think this is gonna be good though, so. And also too, Oren Kloff talks about this in his book Flip the Script. He says it's a status alignment question and that's what helps build trust very quickly.
When.
When you ask me a question that only someone who understands my world could ask the, you know, so everyone listening. Like when you're asking the what keeps you up at night? What are your goals? Where you focus going into 2021, those are so broad and so they're too open ended that it makes me think you don't know my world at all. Versus Yo KD talking to a lot of VPs right now. A lot of them are talking about how the connect rates have been cut in half since everyone's moved from home and there's no longer an office to call to, which is making it twice as hard to book more meetings and pipeline is shrinking. Like, is that something you're seeing with your team or do you guys find a way around this? Now I know you know my world now. Okay. Now we have that trust and we can talk about problems. So where do we go from there? Right? So someone says, yeah, Charles, like, yeah, we're struggling with our connect rates right now.
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A lot of reps take that as a sign to time to pitch, baby. All right, all right. I got a problem. Where do you go from there? Right? So they agree to one of those problems. So they say like, yeah, like we are struggling with that. How do we keep discovery going?
It's an awesome question. Well, there are a lot of different ways to go from there, but the main teaching point here is to keep the thread. Mm. If they. There are. There are four triggers I teach here at CB Insights, triggers that if the prospect does this, it's a trigger for you to stay. Okay. So if they bought into a problem, they say, well, actually, yeah, this resonates That's a trigger. Trigger for me to stay there. Oh, that's so interesting. There are a lot of different ways to. To stay there. One way is, would it be okay, Kevin, if I asked you a couple questions about that? Sure. Oh, that problem is something that resonates interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Or was there a time that that problem happened in the past six to 12 months? Or would you say that's like, that's never happened to you before? How do you guys think about it? I like also asking, how do you think about it? How do you think about X? How do you think about Y? How do you think about Z? I just want them to think and to sell themselves. So a lot of different ways to stay there. I just mentioned a couple of different ways. That's some of the ways that you want to just stay there. And basically it's a mindset. And the mindset is I want to completely, as an ae, I want to completely forget about myself totally. And I just want to stay in curiosity land. And people have trouble being curious. I tell them, try to act as if the person that is telling you something is telling you something that's one of the most interesting things you've ever heard in your life, and stay there. And it only helps.
So it's funny you mentioned the threading, I think is how you call it. I'm trying to remember what term I use. I'm totally blanking on it right now. But it's. It's like keeping your questions consistent. Right. On a theme. Because when you ask people questions that are inconsistent, it makes them uncomfortable, even though they don't know.
Interesting.
So, and this is also, you know, even learning lessons, I look back to, like, my younger days. Like, even, like, how guys, how we'll try to talk to a girl at the bar. Where are you from? Where you go to school? What are your hobbies? Who do you know? The questions are inconsistent. There is no theme to them, and it makes people uncomfortable because we as human beings love to anticipate. And if the questions jump around, we cannot anticipate what's going to come next. So it makes us uncomfortable. Whereas, you know, where did you go to school? Oh, what's the weather like there?
Oh, right.
What did you do in the winter? Like, you keep it on a path. It makes people easier to talk to you. So I hope people caught that from you of, like, you can't just go, okay, I'm hearing this problem. Tell me about. They go, yeah, we are starting with that problem, and then you switch to. And how many employees do you have and who is involved? You have to. So I love that you brought up threading, because it's very important to keep that conversation going and it makes it feel like a conversation and not. And interrogations.
