Hall of Fame: Kevin "KD" Dorsey Ep. 134

Foreign.

Everybody. And welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes to Presidents Club. My name is Armand Farouk and I'm here with my co host Nick Sigelski. And today we have a legendary two part episode. This is going to be the first episode ever two part episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. And it's with the one and only Mr. KD. Nick. Why should people listen?

Many a salesperson has floundered on a Discovery call and this is an elite level Discovery conversation. We talked about connecting dots, we talked about getting agreement on the problem, we talked about the depth or the intensity of your pitch and how it starts kind of muted and how it should build and when it should build. And so if you're looking for a more advanced Discovery episode, this is one that you'll want to listen to.

And folks, the way that we're going to split this up is the first episode is going to be more focused on the upfront part of the sales cycle, largely about Discovery. The second part is going to be more focused on the demo, the multi threading, the building, the business case, et cetera. And wait, there's one other thing that you're going to get out of this. In fact, there are two other things that you're going to get out of this. The first is is Katie has also offered to give the entire audience his Did I manifesto. In other words, it's a checklist or a worksheet that you can use as a rep every single day, every single week to make sure you did the right activities. And he's doing this as part of the launch of his new sales leadership course. And so you can get the Did I Manifesto in the show notes for free. And definitely check out the course that Katie is launching as well. A three, A two, a one. It's part one. Today's show is brought to you by Outreach, which helps you increase seller productivity, coach calls more precisely and forecast more accurately using a platform powered by AI agents. If you're running a tape review, you're going to stop at three different points. Number one, when the prospect monologues ask your reps, what did we pull out that was important? From there, ask your reps, what should we say or ask next? And then click play and recap. What did the rep do versus what we thought they should do? Our friends AT Outreach built a 30 NPC resource hub where you can grab this play and an unreasonable amount More links in the show notes.

Today's show is brought to you by Nooks. Nooks is the AI powered pipeline engine that researches your accounts, builds your target list, writes your emails and gets you more live conversations on the phone. Thousands of reps at companies like HubSpot, Seismic and Deal use NUX to automate the busy work in prospecting so they can focus on closing deals with reps that use Nooks daily have twice as much pipeline as their peers. And we put together a guide with our friends at Nooks on how to automate the busy work in prospecting and dialing so you can focus on winning. Go get it for free at the link in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by 11x your all in one digital GTM team handling, creating, qualifying and converting pipeline across every channel. If you are still using stale triggers like congrats on the funding you're getting blended in with everybody else. The best use unique signals, exact LinkedIn posts, negative product reviews, podcast appearances and use those as their trigger. And we built a growth playbook with our friends at 11x breaking this stuff down. You can get it for free at 11X, AI30 MPC or grab it in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Insightly, the CRM that helps you spot deal risk early. So pipe reviews actually drive. Your number one question I ask in nearly every deal review is what do we need to get in our next interaction with a customer? If my rep can't answer that question, the the deal has risk and I have something I can coach to. Now we built a guide with our friends at Insightly CRM on how to run pipe reviews that surface real risk and get deals moving again. And you can get it for free at the link in the show notes. All right, kd, welcome back to the show. You remember, we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways. So let's get your three.

All right, first one PPI Problem, pain and impact. So most sellers and sales leaders completely miss on these three different topics and understanding them for their Personas, right? So there's a big difference between a problem and a pain, right? Where pain implies something hurts and a lot of salespeople think that they can tell someone something hurts, right? So if I looked at our mind, say, that jacket's ugly. I bet that hurt. Didn't.

Did.

Oh, see, now I know it hurt because he told me it hurt. But a lot of salespeople, they approach like they tell people things hurt. They try to tell people it's a pain. So you need to know the problem. So a problem could be something like, all right, not enough pipeline. A problem could be not enough podcast downloads. A problem could be not getting enough sponsors. That's the problem. Right? But we all live with problems all the time. We live with problems all the time. To get change, you gotta get into pain. So we need to know, okay, well, what are those problems causing? Like, what's the underlying issues? Well, maybe, you know, our close rates are low. Maybe no one's picking up the phone. Maybe no one's showing up. Like, we gotta get into the pain point. Our activity is too low. Those start to become the pains. But, like, to Armand's point, they have to say, we're not making enough dials. That's when it becomes a pain. Whereas if I tell you you're not making enough dials, it's not. But then most sellers truthfully don't even get there. But then they don't go to the next level. Like, what is that pain causing? Okay, we're not making enough dials. So what, what is that causing? What's the result of that? What's the impact of that? What is that preventing? What is that getting in the way of? So you need to know the problem, pain and impact. And then as I wrap this though, you need to know the problem, pain and impact of your product to the different Personas. Because the problem, pain and impact of a user is different than the problem pain and impact of a benefitter, which is different than the problem, pain and impact of a buyer. You need to make sure you map that completely out for the entire sales process.

Beautiful. What's number two?

Number two is ctd. And if you all can tell, I really like acronyms because it makes it easy for me to remember, but also easy for my teams to remember. The CTD stands for Connect the Dots. So once you've found these things out, you have to connect the dots back to your product. Each and everything that you are talking about with your product, you have to connect back to one of those pain points. Connect back to one of those impacts, right? So, you know, you see it all the time. Everyone preaches disco, disco, disco, which is actually interesting. Like very few people are talking about. Well, then how do you actually run a demo? All right, I did all this disco, all right, I did all this research. No one's really talking about, well, what do you do with it? You have to connect the dots back to it, right? So I use this example with a company I was working with where, you know, they sold things around like automation for invoicing and packaging. And one of Their prospects found out that they had been on vacation. I said, okay, how can we connect the dots to them being on vacation to your product? And it was like, well, you don't want to be on vacation worrying about whether or not your inventory is up to par. That right? So it's connecting the dots when you're running the demo, connecting them every feature that you're showing. And if you are showing a feature that you can not connect back to, one of the things you learned, don't show it. It's literally not worth it. Don't even show it when you're saying the follow up proposals. Connect the dots back when you're doing pricing, connect the dots back. So that's the key of connecting the dots is what you've learned. You're lit like in your brain. You need to be picturing, how am I weaving this all back together?

Beautiful. Round us out, Kevin. What's number three?

So to round this out, right, we'll talk about just how to approach an account, which is you go low for info, middle for insight, high for influence. More and more still to this day, people talk about, you know, getting to power. Well, the easiest way to get to power is to get in. And I feel like everyone forgets that, right? Like you get to power by getting into the account, by getting into the castle, right? Like you can't storm the castle from the top, you storm the castle from the bottom, right? So you have to go low for info. So one of the easiest places to find out if an account has a problem is by going low. Go to the users, go to the non decision makers. And these are, these are simple and we'll probably get into messaging. But there's more people at the bottom.

That you can target to find out.

Like, do they even deal with this? Like do you even have an automation tool? Does anyone over there even listen to podcasts? Like, these are short, punchy, like info. Because once I have that info, now I can go to the middle. Because I have that info, I can now start to provide insights. Hey, you know you have a team of 20 SDRs and it sounds like there's no automation that could be causing. Now I'm providing insights to the middle. That's where I get to start having deeper conversations. And then once I have the insight, I to the top for influence, right? By the time you're targeting the top, you need to be talking to me about my business. The amount of times I get targets like, hey KD, well 2x your blank doesn't even matter. We'll 2x your blank. If you don't know what my X is, you can't tell me anything. Versus Hey, I know you've got 45 SDRs. They're getting about 15 emails out per day. I think if we got that to 50 per day, you could probably look at this in terms of your pipeline. Have you considered this? Now you got influence, right? So low for info, middle for insights, high for influence.

So, Katie, I want to start with this problem pain impact framework that you're using largely in discovery, it sounds like. And then I want to talk about how you use that to connect the dots and then how you bring that to power to drive influence in your deal. So if we start with the problem, pain impact, the first thing that you talked about is identify a problem, but then figure out what the pain is associated with that problem. But don't just tell them that, that they have a pain.

Right?

And so can you give us a couple examples or ways that you can ask questions that bring a customer from problem to pain?

So the first is getting problem agreement, right? And most sales orgs, I asked this question, I might have even done it live, Nick, on a webinar we were on recently where I asked all the time, I said, what are the three main problems your product solves? And most sales reps completely get that question wrong, right? They'll say things oh, like, you know, save time, you know, more pipeline, more revenue. Right? This is soft examples. None of those are problems. Those are all benefits, right? What problems does your product solve? Most reps don't actually even understand that language. Not enough pipeline, wasting time, low revenue, Right? So the first is that problem agreement. So the way I teach that is the bucket question. And the bucket question I might have covered in the last one, I don't remember, but it's worth repeating if we did not. Right. So the bucket question sounds like this. So Nick, you know, I'm talking with VPs all day. All of them seem to be struggling right now with, you know, people are taking longer to ramp. They can't find or source good talent. You know, 50% of the team is missing quota. I mean, does that sound like your world at all or is it all fine and dandy there? I'm leading with the problems that I know 80% of my prospects have because if they didn't, my business probably wouldn't be in business. Right? So you actually lead with the problem. And so when they say, well, yeah, I mean, that sounds like my world. Which one's biggest for you right now? Ramping. So I've got my problem now. I can start to diagnose. Okay, so talk to me about, like, you know, what's causing that? Like, what's prevented you from getting more candidates? Where are things falling off right now? We get to dig into it.

Okay.

Then we get to impact questions actually the easiest, because that's just. So what is that causing? But the key to all of this, the key is you should have all of this mapped out ahead of time. You should know the top three problems for your Personas, the top three pain points that cause those problems, and the top three impacts. Because then you sound like an expert, right? Where if I'm talking to a fellow podcaster, I can say things like, hey, so like, I'm talking a lot of podcasters right now. Like, sponsors aren't renewing as much next year. Everyone's really going over budgets with a fine toothed comb. Are you seeing that also? It shows, right? Like, okay, like, you know it. But then the impact, even then I can go deeper. What's the impact of not having sponsors? What's the impact of not having sponsors? For most people, you think, well, they're.

They'Re gonna go out of business. They can't pay for their fancy podcast mics anymore.

So can't you lead that with the questions like, yeah, sponsors have been getting tighter a little bit. Okay, is that maybe changing your revenue forecast for next year? Is that going to prevent you from hiring more people or getting that fancy mic? Like, what's that causing for you? And the key there, right, is the emphasis on you. What is that causing for you? It's called a separator tone. Where it's not like, so what is that causing? So what's that causing for you, Nick? There we go. So, like, in three, four questions, I've got problem agreement number one. Problem. What's causing that problem? And then the impact of it right in the flow. But to your earlier question, Armad, this is not just in disco. This is my framework for prospecting emails for the phone call that we're making in Cole. Because again, if I know these things, it changes how I do my message.

Kd, one area that I've seen this go awry is when the prospect jumps immediately from that bucket question to a solution. So in the example that you gave, they respond, yeah, you know, the team is struggling to ramp, and that's why we just need to get someone in here coaching the team regularly. And we know that you could probably do that. So what I want to understand from you is when they jump immediately to the solution. How do you keep the conversation from you? Just saying. All right, let me tell you all about the great ways that I can coach the team and all the stuff that I've done before. Because you don't have the full context of the problem. Pain, et cetera.

So anytime someone tells you what they want, you have to rephrase it as a pain point. And it's not that hard to do. Yeah. That's why we're looking into more coaching. Oh, so they're not getting a lot of coaching right now?

No.

Interesting. Why not? Anytime salespeople hear me, Anytime someone tells you what they want, you have to restate it as what's lacking. This is the key. Yeah. We're looking for more automation, you know, in our process. Okay, so things are pretty manual right now. Yes. Now I'm getting agreement to a pain point. It's a restatement. Right. This is so, so, so, so important. When someone tells you what they want, quite literally, that means it's lacking. But if you never get them to say it's lacking, you didn't have paying agreement. Even something as simple as, yeah, we're trying to drive. Yeah. We want to generate more revenue next year. Got it. So you're not on pace to do that right now. It's a flip. Right? That's how you stay in control. And again, it's not about going down a deep rabbit hole. I just need to get you to say that what you have right now isn't working. Yeah, we want more coaching. Got it. They're not getting enough right now. No, not really. What's preventing time? Know how resources, like, what's getting in the way? I know what the answers to those things are. You can lead with it.

So how deep are you going here? Cause one of the things you were talking about in the prep call was everyone's beating their chest on discovery, discovery, discovery. And there's not enough talk around, like, what's the best practice for how you show a demo or you pitch what you can actually do to help them with their problem. And I would assume that most reps listening to this hear what you just talked about, where, okay, they say anytime somebody states what they want, I'm rephrasing that as a, hey, it sounds like that might be lacking. How deep am I really going before I then go into, all right, you need someone to come in and coach. Let me talk to you about how I might be able to help, because my guess is you could push and push and push. And dig and dig and dig and potentially frustrate your buyer or miss out on. You only have a limited amount of time with the customer. And so you have to have a balance of, I think, discovery and also giving some detail on how you can help. So can you tell me what your take is on that?

So my. And it's funny because everyone is like, everyone just, you know, thumping their chest on disco, but I feel like everyone's forgetting what disco is actually about. Discovery is about discovering a problem worth solving. That's it. That's it. Right. The deeper questions, Nick, that you're talking about, I save for the demo. I save for the demo, Right. I only need a little bit of juice early on to know whether or not there is a problem worth solving. Problem, pain, impact. Got some juice there. But now once I get into the demo, I can go into those deeper ones. So the first thing Nick, I want to show you is our automated coaching, you know, platform. So earlier you'd mentioned that they're not getting a lot of coaching right now. Let's go a little bit deeper there real quick. What's preventing them from getting coaching? Is it like no one knows how managers are overstretched? Like, what's happening there now I'm asking those further questions in the demo is what makes it more engaging. And now I'm again connecting the dots I opened up. So earlier you said they're not getting enough coaching. Let's go a little bit deeper on this as I'm about to show you how we solve this. What's causing it for you? Truthfully, my managers don't know how. Got it. Okay, let me show you how this part will enable your managers to feel more confident in their coaching. Connecting the dots, right? So I'm saving a lot of what I think people would call disco questions for the demo right before I'm about to show you.

Right.

So the demo framework I teach is educate, demonstrate, buy in. Right? Educate, demonstrate, buy in, education. Why am I about to show you what it is I'm about to show you? Why does it even matter? Demonstrate, show you, buy in. Do you agree it will solve the thing I said it was going to solve? So I save a lot of disco for in the demo because that's what makes it more engaging.

So, Katie, can you talk about that transition from you've done a great job going through problem, pain, impact. You know what it means for them, you know what it means for the business, and now you're transitioning into a demo. What are you doing to connect the dots between the discovery and. And the demo before you pull up your screen share.

So we hit them with the Might make sense, right? So I've been doing some disco, and quite literally, as soon as I think it makes sense, I'm about to say, you know what, Nick? I think this might make sense. Let me just restate what I'm hearing here real quick. You're not ramping people as fast as you want to. You believe it's because they're not getting enough coaching right now, because the managers just don't have the time to do it, which has you on pace to potentially missed the number this year, which I can only imagine is beyond stressful and hard to work with. This is what we do. Like, we might be able to put something together for you. Would it be okay for me to show you how I think our product might be able to solve those things for you? Would that be all right? I'm getting permission to pitch. Like, I'm the opposite of a pushy salesperson. I'm pulling you in. I'm getting permission to pitch. And if you listen to how I set that up, it might make sense. You're struggling with this, which is causing this, which is preventing this. We might be able to solve that for you. I mean, could I show you how? Well, yeah, sure. Let's dive in. All right. And then now I've got my pillars that I know I'm going to focus on in that demo. So did that answer the question, Armand?

It did.

And so what you're doing, what's really important to call out here is Katie. In our last interview, you talked about it. It's about the mites, the maybes. It's never about the pressure sale.

Right.

It's about the nuance in the tone of what you're doing. And so I love that. Let's talk about what that demo looks like now that you've done. Problem, pain, impact. And so you have a set of problems, pains, impacts that you solve for this customer. How much flex is there in your demo flow, based on what you've heard in discovery?

Ooh.

So this one will be an interesting answer. I'd say a lot and a little, meaning the flex that was required. Generally, yes. You don't need that much flex.

Right.

I'm a huge believer and have seen it play out in the real world of, like, the 8020 rule. 80% of your demos are the same, y'.

All.

80% of your prospects have the same pain points, the same problems, the same impacts. 80% of them. So there's actually not a huge need for a ton of flex because you know how 80% of these are going to go right now. On the flip side of that, of course, there's always that 20%. There's always that 20%. And with my teams and my managers, until you've mastered the 80%, I won't even spend time with you on the 20% until you can run a demo that covers the three to four main problems with the three to four main pain points, with the three to four main impacts, the 20% where they're like, well, how does this work for my left handed employees, dude, I don't know. So that's why it's like, it's a lot and a little like I want it to be very fluid in the demo, meaning I only want you showing things and talking about things that you can connect back to their problem, pain and impact. So that's where there's a lot of flex, where it's not just linear. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, it's okay, well, this person needs a little bit of B, little bit of Z, a little bit of Q. That's where the flex comes in. But how we talk about those things is not very flexible because we know for the most part what's going to matter to these prospects and how we approach it. So that's why it's a little bit of a paradoxical answer, like there's flex and there's not. Because if we really know, if we really know our prospect in our industry, we know how 80% of these are going to go.

Katie, I want to ask you about. That might make sense sort of related to the demo because when you're first approaching this demo, your approach, your tone is sort of, it's almost tentative, it's sort of unsure. It's like, hey, this may be able to solve your problem. And then I think the whole other end of the spectrum where you've got the salesperson who's like, this is gonna change your world. This is exactly what you need to solve your issue. And there's like almost this bravado or maybe even hubris around, like this is going to shatter your problems and be life changing. I don't imagine you ever wade into that territory, but do you ever move deeper or closer to that from the sort of tentative, unsure.

Right. So let's first we call it discovery. Shouldn't we sound like we're discovering? Discovery quite literally implies the finding of something that was not known before. So we should sound a little Bit like, let's feel this out a little bit. Then we get to the might make sense. Yeah, let's dive into this a little bit. Then we get into the demo, right? I'm doing educate, demonstrate, buy in. I'm teaching, I'm showing, I'm getting buy in, right? I'm asking the make them hold it questions. I'm asking the status quo questions. I'm like, so how would you use this? How does this compare to every time they give me an answer? How does this compare to what you're doing right now? It's definitely faster. Writing down faster. That's one more brick. Now, how would you implement this with your managers? Well, I'd probably add it to their one on ones because we added. I'm building the case as I go. So at the end is when that bravado comes in of like, Nick, my man, I. I think we're onto something here, right? Based off what we covered and what you said here, you said this would be faster than what you're doing right now. You said you think your managers would buy into this real quick. You said this is light years away from the training they're getting right now. I mean, my man, like, let's do this. How can we get. The bravado comes when you know, I want that confidence at the end. But to lead with that confidence, I think is misplaced for a lot of reasons. One, you don't actually know until the prospect has told you it will solve their problems. You don't know if it will solve their problems. But the second, and this is how our brains are wired, right? If I had opened up this podcast saying, this is going to be the best podcast you've ever heard, what do we look for in the podcast? This is actually very interesting about how our brains work with communication. If I tell you this is gonna be the best, what am I gonna look for this whole time?

The whole time you're looking for something that makes this not the best episode ever. It's like when I go to a restaurant that's got the world's best cheeseburger on a sign. The whole time I'm like, well, you know, the patty was good, but the lettuce a little bit limp. And yeah, I don't know why, because I wanna prove them wrong.

Almost right versus this might make sense. We might be on to something here. Like, there's potential we could do this for you. We're not the best fit for everyone. Now I'm looking for reasons why you are the best fit. It's a complete dichotomy of what people tell people to do. And we know this. If I had opened up this podcast and this is going to be the best episode you've ever heard, 50% of your listeners would have tuned out immediately because they're just not even interested. The next 50% would be like, all right, I'm going to listen to this, but I can guarantee, guarantee you this isn't going to be the best. Let me but then we go to sales and that is how we do our messaging. It's how we do our emails, is how we do our demos, how we do our follow ups. It's, it's comical.

Kd this has been a phenomenal episode, but we are running out of time. No, we are not running out of time. Believe it or not, this is going to be a two part episode. So we're going to move to Armand's summary of this episode, the 60 second recap and make sure to check out the next episode for part two.

Today's tactic is brought to you by Attention, which uses AI to capture all of your sales interactions. Automate sales busy work like CRM updates and flag Hidden deal Risk so if you want to avoid ghosted deals, end every discovery call with these three questions. Number one, do you want to buy AKA validate if the deal is real? Number two, when do you want to buy Validate if it will close this year. And then number three, how do you buy validate that they will get you in front of Power. We put together a guide on how to unblock the three biggest deal blockers in your pipeline. There's a link to get it down in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Text Us, which helps you move your deals forward faster. When timing matters. The fastest way to move a field forward is to avoid getting stuck in the inbox. And so my favorite way to get on a text basis is literally when your prospect requests a demo, just send them a confirmation text saying that you're looking forward to the meeting and that opens the text channel for you to call back on it later. Folks, we put an entire guide on how to revive ghosted deals. Nudge next steps and use texting to keep deals moving forward with Text Us. Check it out. It's free in the show notes. Hey folks, if you keep getting grilled in your pipeline reviews, try this show up with your deal risks already flagged. So gaps in pain, timeline or power and your next move ready to that's kind of where Clari helps is they will show you live signals and risks on your deals in one clean view so you can run your business, not have your manager do it for you and poke a bunch of holes. So we put together a free guide on three plays to get your sales manager off your back. The link is in the show notes. Go check it out. Your top four takeaways from this episode with Katie include Number one PPI Problem Pain impact Get agreement on a problem, understand the pain that problem causes and then identify what it means for that person and and for the business the impact. Number two Use bucket questions to get problem agreement. Weave the top three problems you see in any situation into your open questions. Number three Anytime someone tells you what they want, restate it as a pain point. Do not just take solutions, turn those solutions into problems. And then lastly, number four the transition between discovery and demo is the Might make sense. Nick, how can people help us out here?

Well, next week there's going to be a Part two and dare I say Part two is even better than Part one. You want to make sure you don't miss it. And the way you can make sure you don't miss it is if you choose to follow our show on your podcast player of choice. When the episode drops, it will end up right in your podcast player and you can be greeted first thing in the morning with the all Armand's wonderful voice. Thanks for listening and we hope to.

See you next week.