Sales Judo: Master the Art and Science of Closing with Mark Kosoglow

And it's gold, right? And we preach this internally as well. And even some of the people I've worked with, you know, over at Outreach in the past two, it's like we're going to 2x this, to 3x this. We wouldn't need sales.

That's what I like to do is we have that thing called a hypothesis statement. I think most people go into negotiations with Zero plan. Their job is to just keep as much as I can. And that's a crappy plan. You don't have to give the answer every time. They can give an answer to their own question, and they will if you give them a chance. That's what I like to do. We have a thing called a hypothesis statement that we use in our sales cycle. And the hypothesis statement is constructed as, despite A, we can't do X, which means we don't get Y as measured by Z, A is an investment that you have right now. Despite this investment that we've already made in this, we still can't do X. You know, we still can't convert our inbound leads, which means that we don't get why. That's the above the line, high executive thing, which means we don't hit our growth plans, which means we're going to miss our IPO next year or whatever. As measured by zine. You need a couple metrics that prove that they aren't doing that. And when you construct that statement, I can't tell you how many calls I'm on where it's like, did we send you that statement? No, that's what we've come up with. You guys know our business better than you do than we do. Like, nobody in our company would have come up with that succinct, a way to understand the challenge. I hate that. Like, let's move forward. Like, let's. I need to run away from that statement. Right. And so that's like the practical way that we do it.

And it's gold. Right. And we preach this internally as well. And even some of the people who I've worked with, you know, over at Outreach in the past too, it's like in order to sell someone something new, you have to unsell them on what they have.

Right.

If again, if it were just as easy as it's gonna be better with us, I wouldn't need salespeople. If that's all it took was to say, hey, it's gonna be better. We're gonna 2x this or 3x this, we wouldn't need salespeople. We could just run a webinar all day long and that's all it would take. And so unselling them on what they're doing. And I love that despite. Right, okay, yeah, you do have something or yeah, you did buy or you do work with a competitor. And despite that, you just told me you still can't blame. So why are we even talking about that anymore? Right. You still can't do what you wanted to do with that investment, which I think is a really strong point and it helps a company rally around, which I think is kind of the next point we'll talk about here, which is champion selling. Because what is it now? 11 Some people on average are involved in a B2B sales decision. It's insane. So like how do you then help that champion through the process? Both like helping the champion, but also how do you help your reps enable that champion? Because very rarely are you going to get the decision maker because there isn't one anymore. There isn't a. That's also what's changed a lot in sales. There's not a anymore. Like the CEO could be like, yeah, I want to do this. And you got seven people that are saying no.

Yeah.

And he's like, oh, all right, nevermind. So how do you then help your champion or I guess navigating that sales process to keep these things top of mind throughout all this?

So my argument on this topic is that reps actually already know what to do. They're doing it with the wrong person. They are treating a coach like a champion. They are enabling a coach who isn't in the meeting with the champions. They're enabling a coach that tells them everything but can't get the right people to the deal for the security meeting to get through infosec. You're talking to a person that like likes you and gives you great feedback. But what they can't do is they can't go talk to procurement and get the deal pushed through even because they think that you have another tool that does this. Like the my. I think that reps know what to do. I think that they're doing the right things. I think that they have misclassified a coach as a champion. And so all of that labor is for nothing. When you got a champion, that's somebody that can exercise power, can influence the decision and can advocate for you when you're not in the room. When you got those three things with somebody, you all listen, you show them the hypothesis statement, you make the. You do your normal sales thing, you build the rapport that champion can get stuff done for you. It doesn't mean you're always going to win the deal. Right? But it doesn't mean that they can go do stuff for you. I think that most reps spend too much time on coaches because coaches are easy. They're always positive. They're, they tickle the happy ears and they don't do the hard work of saying, you know what, this person is just a coach. They're not somebody that can actually get something done.

How do you help your reps identify the difference? Right? So like, okay, whoa, you have a coach, you don't have a champion. How do you identify and then how do you try to get a champion?

So the number one marker for us for a champion is the ability to get cross departmental people into meetings to get stuff done. And so if I go to you, Katie, and I'm like, listen, we need to do this and this, can you get an enablement and a rev ops person on the phone with us next week and you go do that, I know you're probably a champion. If you're like, well, why don't we have another meeting? And you know, I know you want to talk to Bob, but Judy's actually, and Judy's way below Bob, probably better. That's when I start to know that you're not a champion. The second reason I know is the advocation when you're not there part is are you willing to get with me to review my materials before big meetings? Love that. And if you're willing to do that and then are you willing to let me coach you on how to get this done? Because you want it done so much. And so like that's the, those are the kind of the two or three things that we use here to really look at a champion. Like title can be confusing. To your point earlier, you have the CEO doesn't mean they're going to make the decision. And so we just like to think about it as, like can they get the people, can they get people organized and moving? And then are they willing to help collaborate with us on the strategy to best do that? Because they know those people better than we do.

I think that's key. And we do as reps and as managers and as leaders helping your reps listen for these things because they do they get coaches the happy ears. Oh yeah, sure. Like, all right, yes, I got them. No you don't. It probably isn't that way.

Right.

And we're just trying to listen with happy ears. And so let's bring this home then. Right. So we've done proper discovery, we have done a great job of calling the unselling process through the demo, getting people excited. We're enabling our champion. We've identified who it is. Now we're getting towards the end around, call it negotiation, the close. Right. So what are some things you help to finish it? Because so many deals they get to that 80% mark and it's that last 20% that it just fizzles out and the time kills the deals or something goes wrong there. How do you help finish the sales process as a closer and your team?

Well, I'm not going to spend long on the generic answer, which everybody knows is you. First of all you got to ask for the business.

Right.

And you know, so many calls where the rep never asks the hard question is, are you willing to buy? Right, right. And so that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. If you don't get that and you need that explained, you need a little bit more coaching. Right. So that's the first thing. Here's the other thing that I think is really important when it comes to negotiations specifically is I think most people go into negotiations with zero plan. Their job is to just keep as much as I can and that's a crappy plan. So what we teach at outreach is you have where do you want to land? Like ideally, like go to finance and get it figured out where you think this is a great deal. Your manager, what's the top end of that and what's the low end of that? Like what's the least that you'll do that you'll be able to succeed and go in with those three numbers and then look at what you're doing and be like, okay, if price is high then maybe time or you know, the number of years on a contract can be low.

Right.

But price is low and number of years is low. Maybe then referrals and case study and stuff is high. But what you're not going to do is you're not going to give them everything that is important to you on low and everything that's important to them on high, it needs to be a trade off. Right. And I think that what most reps do is they don't, they don't do give gets like, Katie, listen, willing to do an extra 10% but I can't go to finance and get that approved without you giving me something back. This is what I would think would be valuable, an extra year on the contract. Can we do that? No. Well, Then I don't know how I'm going to give you 10%. How would you solve that? Right. Oh, something there. Right. But that's, that's what gets lost in the negotiation stuff is people don't have a plan. They don't know what is the floor, they don't know what is the ceiling. They don't know what that would be a good outcome when you go in with those things and then you start to look at, all right, what's the highest price I could get the lowest price, the price I want. What's the number of years most I could get? Whatever. What's the amount of proserve? The most I would want to get for pro serve fees. And the lowest. And once you map that kind of stuff out, then you can kind of see, all right, they're asking here, oh, I'm low here, I can ask for something else. And then that starts to even it out and makes it a real negotiation. Not just you giving.

I love it. I want to call out something. You did. There was two things you actually brought up. One, the magic word that I hope you all caught was trade. Trade, right. It's not. If all you're doing is giving, that actually is not a negotiation. You're just giving things away versus that give get. What are you trading? They want lower price. Okay. That's what they want. What's something you want? That's a trade. Right now you're sitting on the same side of the table a little bit of like, okay, you have this that I want, I have this that you want, and let's find that. But then talk to me about that. That how Question you just kind of threw out there subtly, which was beautiful. Right? I can't go to them, you know, to finance. Answer this 10% discount. If we can't have X, how would we solve this? That was fucking glorious.

I call that sales judo. Right? So judo is the martial arts practice that uses someone's own energy against them. Right. So the idea is you can do the same thing with an objection is you take the energy of that objection and you transfer it to back to the person for the answer. So if somebody says, hey, Mark, you know, I don't think that we can do because of price, Katie. Like, I'm sure there's a lot of negotiations that you're in where you can't go down in price the way somebody. How do you handle that? And you just throw their question back to them. And I'm telling you, like nine times out of ten people answer their own question, and you don't even overcome the objection. They overcome it themselves. Or at the end, you're just like, they offer a good solution and you just say, well, why don't we do that? And then it's their idea, and they're much more willing to do it. But like sales, judo is like a very subtle and awesome thing that people forget. Like, you don't have to give the answer every time. They can give an answer to their own question, and they will if you give them a chance.