A live Better Sell Better podcast episode with Kevin 'KD' Dorsey offering tactical, demo-focused discovery techniques for tech sellers and sales leaders. Key recommendations: use permission-based opening language to gain agreement to ask discovery questions, simplify upfront agreements to schedule logical next steps (follow-up, team involvement, pricing later), prime prospects with curiosity-focused questions, and use a "bucket" question (present common problems X/Y/Z and force an either/or) to surface pain quickly. The host supplies exact wording and scripts for each stage.
Chapters
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. Everything gets better from here. So here's how I like to set the stage. So I like to do like a little bit of what's called like permission based selling. Right. It's like I get permission to ask my discovery questions. Right? Right. Giving a very simple agenda and framework to help set the tone. Right. Because also by getting permission to ask the questions, they don't rush you through it as much. It's when you just start knocking things off a checklist that I get antsy. Like just show me everything versus if you got permission first, it sets up the entire scene. Right. Especially if you make it sound like they benefit from it. Right. And then eight miles. So you'll see how we can combine this. So hey kd, would it be cool if I asked you five or six quick questions here to make sure I'm not showing you things you don't need to see or don't apply to? You are just a waste of your time. And then don't worry, we're also going to cover things like pricing, integrations and all that. Could I dive in here real quick with you? That setup there is what sets the whole tone you hinted at. Hey, I'm going to talk about the things you want to. But notice how I'm asking that question makes it sound like the prospect benefits. Because I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to cover things you don't need to see. I want to make sure that you don't have to dive in to this. Right. Like that's the key to set up these questions. Not so I can better understand your goals. Do you hear the difference there when you say something like, so I can better understand your goals, you're the only person that benefits. They do not. When you flip it and say to make sure we're not wasting your time showing the things that you care about, making sure we don't I benefit by answering those questions? And so that's the key. So you get your permission to ask the questions. Right? Would that be okay? Would that be okay? Right. So again, listen real quick. Hey, Katie, so before we dive in here, can I ask you five or six real quick questions to make sure I'm not showing you things you already know or don't need to see or wasting any of your time there. And then of course we'll dive into things like pricing and integration, if those things make sense. But could I ask a few quick questions, make sure that we're aligned on this? That's your setup. 90% of people are gonna say yes. Now they have the law of consistency on your side. They said yes, you can ask your questions. So now you get to ask your questions. So then, upfront agreements. So upfront agreements and upfront contracts I think have gotten pretty butchered over the past three to four years. And reps are asking for way too much in the upfront contract. The upfront agreement needs to be about what normally comes next. Making a decision on this call is not generally what comes next, especially for all of you that are doing longer sales cycle. It takes sometimes more than one call to convince someone that they should do something. Right. So this is what you build into your upfront agreement, right? Is what comes next normally. Right. So hey, at the end of this, if you believe this will actually help solve xyz, then we can talk about a follow up meeting, then we can talk about getting Bill and Jim on, then we can talk about everything else. If not, no worries, right? So Gong actually released some information on upfront agreements a while back too. But don't go. What I'm trying to say is don't go too far down. Right? I hear a lot of upfront contracts of like, you know, and if we agree with this, is this something you're prepared to move forward with today? That's way too early to ask that type of question because you haven't shown me anything yet. Versus hey, so we're going to walk through this and if you think I'll solve XYZ problem, we can talk about setting up another call with the rest of your team. And this is important by the way. You're seeding the idea of setting up a call with the rest of the team, right? Then we can talk about how we can do pricing, then we can talk about xyz. Does that sound okay? So bring your upfront contract back, back a few steps. It cannot be like, hey, hey, you need to make A decision today because that puts too much pressure on the buyer right out the gate and now the bar is too high. So bring your upfront agreements back one step, scheduling the next call, agreeing to bring in someone else, showing it to the boss. A yes or no. Right? So you're not doing the chase, but simplify the upfront agreements. So this is one of my early questions that I love to ask. No one takes a meeting for nothing. What piqued your interest? Right? And sorry, what piqued your curiosity? And this was a shift in language over time, because interest, that's where you get some pushback. It's like, well, I'm not interested yet. Or you called me, like, what piqued your curiosity? Right? And this is why we get ahead of the will. You called me. I know we called you out of the blue. I know my SDR called you. I know I called you. But no one takes a meeting for nothing. Like what peaked your choice, curiosity day to hop on a car. What prompted your search? Right? Like if it was an inbound, what prompted your search? What had you googling, you know, world class pipeline management or whatever it is. And you can combine this with your bucket question that I'm going to show you in a little bit as well. But what piqued your curiosity today? Right? Was it for X or for Y? This is where you can lead a little bit. What is it for you? And the you is the word you want to focus on here. This is actually very important when it comes to language. When you say, what piqued your curiosity today? And the emphasis is on curiosity, it doesn't have the same impact of what piqued your curiosity today? It's called a separator, right? It makes it sound like, I don't care about anyone else in the world. I want to know you. Why are you focused on this? What prompted you to search? Right? People love to talk about themselves. You're emphasizing the word you. So this is one of my early questions of like, hey, let's get the conversation going. But also, curiosity is a priming word, right? So if you still haven't read Methods of Persuasion, go read it. I've been telling you all about it for years now. It talks about how you can prime people to feel a certain way by the language that you're using. Do we want them to be curious? We do. So by asking a curiosity based question, we're priming them to be more curious, which is exactly what we want them to be. Going through a demo. This is why I love to kick off with this. What piqued your curiosity? It's very non threatening as well. Then we get to the bucket question, right? And this is where you gotta get to the problem fast. This sets up the entire discovery process. Is this bucket question getting them to agree there's a problem right out of the gate. It also shows that you know the landscape. What? We're gonna talk about status alignment questions in a second. But it looks like this. Hey, I talk to Blank all day long and they all seem to be struggling with X, Y or Z. Does that sound like your world or do you got that already figured out? You've got that perfect, you're already swimming in pipeline, you're already booking all the appointments you possibly can. This is your framework for a bucket question. I talk with all day long. They all seem to be struggling with, stuck with, tired of X, Y or Z. Does that sound like your world or. And the blow up is key. Do you have that figured out already? Do you have all the pipeline you need? Do you have all the candidates? Whatever the complete polar opposite is, that's the blow up. And that's important because now it's an either or. They know they don't have it perfectly, so now they have to agree to the problem. Whereas if you just say does that sound like your world? It leaves it too open to say like, we're okay. When they have to pick between the two, it removes more of that ah, we're fine type answers because it's either perfection or struggle. This is within the first 30 seconds of getting in the questions we're already establishing there's some sort of pain point or struggle. I talk with Blank all day long. They all seem to be struggling with X, Y, Z. Does that sound like your world or do you already have that all figured out? Because it almost doesn't matter how they answer. Either they're going to agree to a problem or they say, well actually yeah, we've got that all figured out. What, tell me how or well then, hold on. So then what piqued your curiosity to talk today? Because if you have it perfect now you have a little bit of a takeaway, right? So this is the start, get the problem immediately.
