Ask a Status Alignment Question, Its Impact, and Why with Kevin "KD" Dorsey

Foreign. Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. Right? So I talk about the core four. There are four main reasons why someone would buy your product, right? So remember this from the problem based language in bull script. Go watch the bull script training if you haven't already. But these are your buckets. And then you can dive deeper, but you want them to say like, think about it. What do you want them to say they have a problem with and work backwards, right? So I can always use the example at patient pop right now, the two main buckets are not seeing enough patients and not seen the right patients. There is a complete difference between getting a doctor to say they're not seeing enough and getting them to say we want to see more. Totally different Snag nation, right? It's like, hey, you know, people are bored, snacks are getting stale, morale is getting low. Like, what are you hearing? It's getting them to agree there's a problem right out the gate. I just, I cannot stress this enough. It's where I work with my teams the most is this. What are the four main reasons, four main problems that people buy your product for? Those are your leads. I talk to VPs all day long. They all seem to be struggling with either getting enough pipeline, touching enough leads, or getting enough activity. Like, does that sound like your world or do you got it all figured out? Everyone's making all the calls, booking all the meetings. I said, well, no, that definitely sounds like my world. Ah, okay. So then now we get into a status alignment question, right? Because the bucket question, it does a pretty good job of this, but this is where we can get a little bit more granular. Because you wouldn't ask this question if you didn't have a solution. And it shows that you know what the hell you're talking about, right? It establishes you as an expert versus so what are your goals for 2021? Like, no, no, no, no. So let's use the VP of Sales. You're selling me some sort of pipeline tool, right? You can say, hey, like they're struggling. I talk with VPs all day. They're all seem to struggling. Like you know, they're not generating enough. Again, listen, not generating enough versus they want more. They're not generating enough pipeline. You know, they don't have the right contact information for people or their rushes aren't making enough dials. Like does that sound like your world? Or you know, I say, yeah, like yeah, they're just not making enough dials. The status alignment questions, when you go ah. And you ask something that only someone that understands the space would know. And so that could be something like what? Why do you think that is? Is a call reluctance thing. Are they not empowered by rev ops? Is it taking too long to find the leads? Like it's where you show that you know what causes the problems. Often that's where we can talk and go okay, this person knows what they're talking about, right? Or it's like, oh, okay, yeah. I mean a lot of VPs I'm talking to have really noticed a drop in connect rates ever since everyone went home. Like do you think that's driving a little bit of this right now? The status alignment question, which shows me you know what you're talking about. I cannot tell you how often I get on a discovery call and they're like, so what are your goals for this upcoming year? No, like you have to show me you know, what I'm actually working with. And again, there's a difference between goals and problems. We could pause right here. Stop asking me my goals. You know why? Because everyone sets goals for the year and most people never hit them. Ask me about my problems and you can get me to want to solve them. All right? That's a very big difference of problem based discovery versus the general discovery a lot of people are doing. So now you've gotten that first bucket problem like, yeah, like I'm not generating enough pipeline. This is when we start getting into the impact and why, right? So you need to have your next two to three impact questions ready. Right? Ah, okay. So if you're not generating enough pipeline, is that causing blank, blank or blank for you? Again, you're showing you know your space, but you're making it easy on me. This is the power of a the leads and the illusion of choice is like, yeah, that makes sense. And you're getting me to agree to these things. Is that preventing you from X? Tell me more. Why is that a problem for you right now you need to start getting the impact, right? So why tell me more. What is that causing? Simplest formula for you right there by far. Why? Tell me more. What is that causing? So if I say, yeah, like we're just not generating enough pipeline and you go, ah, okay, why do you think that is right now? Well, like, you know, my reps just aren't making enough calls. Interesting. Like, is it a call reluctance thing? Like, tell me a little bit more. Well, it could be call reluctance. Like, I just don't think they're operating their time very well. Like. Got it. So what is that causing for your company? Why is that a problem for you right now? Remember the U emphasis we talked about? So why is that a problem for you right now? Well, if I don't generate enough pipeline, like, we can't get to our revenue goals. Ah, okay. So it sounds like there might be a change needed here, right? Remember, we're getting that change agreement as well. But why tell me more. What's that causing? Is that preventing you from. Is it causing xyz, Right? You can lead into this, but now you're getting the impact of that problem. You can't just be listening with happy ears. And I say, yeah, I'm not eating enough pipeline. You go, okay, well we can fix that. You need to start pulling it out, right? Like the impact, the impact of what that problem is causing, right? This is another great one to dive into. So what's prevented change? Right? How have they been trying to solve this problem? How long have they been dealing with it? What's made it hard to fix in the past, right? The point here is that one that as you dig, it's not just on them, but this is really important in discovery too. This is a big difference between like pain selling and problem selling. Pain selling is trying to make that person hurt. How do people respond when something hurts? They back away. But by alleviating the pain, right? Because other people are dealing with it too. Now you're talking about a problem. It's like, Yo, I'm talking VPs everywhere. They are all dealing with this right now. It takes some of that pain away and we can actually talk about the problem. Because I'm not feeling defensive anymore because I know other people are dealing with it too, right? So that not your fault type of language. But what we're setting up here is that the current way isn't working. And second, that a change is needed, right? So remember we talked about seeding words and priming. So what's prevented change in the past? How long have you been dealing with this? Right. We're trying to unsell them on the now because also too remember to go watch the unsell the status quo training. We're trying to unsell them in discovery a little bit. Planting those seeds of doubt of like the way we're doing it right now is not ideal. Right. So how have you tried to solve this? How long have you been dealing with it? What's made it hard to fix it in the past, right? What things just haven't worked before? Why isn't what you're doing right now working? This is so key. Like, I hope you wrote that question down. Why is what you're doing right now not working? You're getting them to tell you why it's not working. Now again, you're moving them further and further away from the status quo that they have right.