Charles Muhlbauer explains how to make discovery conversations feel natural by asking follow-up questions instead of running through a checklist. He recommends the line "I'd rather be more accurate than optimistic" to lower pressure and get prospects to open up about their real situation.
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You just said it. You can have the best discovery questions on planet Earth. But if your discovery questions are not based off of what the prospect literally just told you, it will be an interrogation based on what they just told you. Of course you're gonna run out of things to ask on a certain topic. But they said something. Oh, that's interesting. I'm gonna ask something else about that. Now, if they said something that's not relevant to me, okay, I'll move on. But if they say something that's a trigger, my question is gonna be based on what you just told me. And that's the best kind of discovery.
I like that. I like that. And so something you'd mentioned to me when we were like, kind of talking in prep is you had this line, you said, I'd rather be Accurate than optimistic. I'd rather be accurate than optimistic. Talk to me a little bit about, like, what that means and what you're trying to get the reps or the prospect to understand when you say something like that.
Yeah. Now, I admittedly I haven't read a crazy amount of sales books. I'm very picky about the sales books that I read. Have to be heavily, you know, convinced to read a sales book. My favorite sales book to this day, and it's probably the second sales book I ever read, is Question Based Selling.
Yes.
I just love that book for so many reasons. The discovery part of that book is out of this world. And that's where I learned. It's where I learned discovery. No question about it. He talks about how he specifically, if you could probably use it in other stages as well. But he specifically talks about it in a stage where you sent out an agreement and it was supposed to come back. For some reason it hasn't come back or whatever. I'm sure it can be applied in other situations. And at that point you just want the prospect to help you. So what you do is you say no. Hey, Kevin. And by the way, I did post this on LinkedIn a while back and I can't tell you, there were a number of AES that have reached out to me and said, charles, this has literally helped me or gotten me to close this deal when I haven't heard from the prospect in a while. And it's such a great feeling. And the email or even on the phone is, hey, Kevin, wondering maybe if you can help me out here for a second. I'm having meeting with my CFO tomorrow, next week, whatever. Or my VP of sales. He or she was expecting the agreement to come in last week. I'd rather be more accurate than optimistic here. What do you recommend? I can tell my CFO or VP of sales in terms of what to do next. So the I'd rather be more accurate than optimistic is indirectly communicating to you like, I'm cool with the truth and I'm not pushing anything here. I'd rather be more accurate than optimistic. It's totally okay. And that takes pressure off of the prospect. It's almost like a mini version of it's okay to tell me no. And this is something I learned, or I should say was re emphasized from Sandler. We took a Sandler training a while ago. One of the coolest things that we learned so simple is the main reason why a prospect will ghost you is because they are afraid to tell you no. So I love always telling the prospect. I'd rather be more accurate, not accurate than optimistic here. It's okay to tell me no, don't worry about it. I'll say that all day. So it's a mini version of it's okay to tell me no. And then they. Most of the time. I've never experienced anybody that hasn't responded to that in my sales career. They will respond and tell you how they want to help you. So that's what that's about.
I love it. One of my former top reps, David Karch. Salty old dog, you. I hope you hear this. I love dk. His thing was always, I love yeses. I'm okay with no's, but I hate maybes. Can we at least agree to not get into the chase, to not have to play the back and forth here? You can tell me no or you can tell me yeah, yes. But it's that chase in the maybe that I don't like. Could we at least agree to that? And I always loved that. I loved that line because I love that the way he delivered it was so natural. And he said it on every single demo. It was always the funniest things, like, the floor could hear it, right? And people like, oh, there's dk. He's dropping his line. Like, here we go. And so, you know, kind of getting that. And it's the agreement part of it, right? Of, like, trying to get that up front.
