The Upfront Contract Gives the Prospect an Out to Say No with Charles Muhlbauer

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. What are your thoughts on an upfront contract and like, how you teach your people to go through it?

Do you mind if I tell you to tell me what you think people get wrong?

I don't know. Now you're trying to make sure. Yes, I'm more than happy to.

I don't mind. No, I really am curious. Yeah.

Yes. So when it comes to upfront contracts, I feel like people ask for too much before they've given a reason to do so. Right. And so a very standard upfront contract that people tend to ask is. So at the end of this, if we agree that this, like, helps, is this something that you would move forward with today? Is this something that you would be willing to. They ask for agreement to purchase wild before you've provided any value whatsoever. I hate those types of upfront contracts. Like, if we can come to agreement on pricing and value today, is this something you could move forward with? Is this something you'd feel comfortable bringing to your cfo? And people ask for basically a commitment to buy before they've done anything. So interesting the prospect. So that's one area that's have a massive problem is they ask for too much before giving. So that's where I think most people go wrong with upfront contracts.

Interesting. Pardon me. We split up the upfront contract into three questions, actually. The first one's very easy. Let's say you have some light conversation, how you doing, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Maybe some mini rapport building or what have you. Cool. Kevin. So glad we could connect. Had us down for a half hour. Just wants to make sure that you had a hard stop at this time. Is that right? Yep. Done. Out of the way. Cool. So the second part can be done in a number of different ways. Second part is cool, Kevin. So the purpose of this call is to determine whether or not we are fit to potentially work together in the future and even if we can help you, not everybody is a fit for what we do and vice versa. Naturally, you'll have a lot of questions about what we do, which I'm happy to answer. And of course, I'm probably going to have a number of questions for you, some of which may be direct as well, to ensure whether or not we're a fit. Would that be okay? Sure. Yeah, that's fine. Cool. That's step two, step three, and then, Kevin, at the risk of stating the obvious here, there are really kind of one of two outcomes from this conversation. Either one, you say, charles, this conversation was garbage, totally useless, not interested in. Thanks, but no thanks. Or it's compelling enough to talk further and see whether or not there could be something here. So those are really one of the two outcomes in this conversation. Does that work for you also? Yeah. Cool. That's my upfront contract. I liked what you said, what DK did there also. So you could probably add that again or make it part of the one or two outcomes. But that is the upfront contract that we have here. I'm just going to add one more thing. What we like to do is take the last part of that upfront contract, the two outcomes, and bring it back at the end. And there's like five minutes left. Cool. So, Kevin, I know I mentioned at the beginning of the call I wanted two outcomes here. One, this is useless. Or two, this is compelling enough or could make sense to speak further, I guess. Where do you feel like you're at? So that's how we bring it back.

Now, I'm a fan of that format because, like, I'm a big believer in, like, permission based selling. Right. It's like, hey, I want to be able to ask you a few questions to make sure that we're not wasting your time. Would that be okay with you? Yes. Now you're getting that permission to ask those questions. Then that next part of like. Because at the end of the day, I need to find out if there's even a problem worth solving here. If y' all got it all figured out, you got nothing to talk about. And I'll be the first person to tell you. Right. But if we do, we can keep this conversation going. If we do, we can. Then we can get into pricing. And that's one of the things I like to really do, is tell people that getting into pricing is dependent upon how discovery goes. Getting into the demo is dependent upon how discovery goes. Because if you don't address the fact of what they're probably thinking right and anyone who has a significant other. You know what I'm about to. What I mean when I say this. Like, if you're arguing with someone, are you really listening to them? What are you thinking about? You're thinking about what you're gonna say next. If someone comes into Discovery, more often than not, the core questions they have in their head are, what does the product do? And how much does it cost? If you don't let them know that you're going to cover those things, it just stays up in their head the whole time. But then, two, when you make it contingent upon how Discovery goes, they tend to be more forthcoming. Right. We're gonna ask these questions. Cool. Why? To see if it's even worth showing you the product. If it is, there's a problem there.

Cool.

If there's not, we don't even have to show it to you. We don't have to get into these things to go through. So I like the way you're setting it up there. And then dk, his upfront contract to me was always at the end, like, hey, we think this makes sense to then take these next steps, right? Yes. That's when he'd get into his yes, no's and maybes and chase of like.

All right, let's get this on.

Let's get this on the books, Cool. But now, hey, yes, no, maybe let's avoid the chase and go through it. So now, I like the way that you set it up with permission, give them the ideal outcomes up front and then start to work through it. But it's very different than how most people are doing upfront contracts right now. And when a sales rep does it to me on, like, a demo, like.

I'm like, no, really, it's funny. It really sets the stage big time. Like, big time. It makes. I think AES don't realize how powerful an awesome upfront contract is. It really sets the stage for the call where the prospect hears you do it and the prospect says, wow, yeah, that's cool. I heard a prospect say on a call to one of my AES, on a recorded call that we were. That I was coaching them on. The prospect said, after the two outcomes, he said, yeah, no, that's cool. By the way, you should know, I really appreciate you saying that because most people that I speak to don't even ask me if it's okay to say no. He literally said that. And it was really, really powerful. Yeah, I loved.