The Demo Is a Dance Between the AE and SE - Jorge Soto, Ed Jaffe, Joe Caprio, and Tyson Goeltz - Revenue Today - Episode # 062

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We should anchor that respecting everyone's calendar is important, right? Not just the SE. It flows like a circle, and I think that's, you know, important as we do business in all aspects today. But look, yeah, the SE is not just the Swiss Army knife that you bring in and you expect that they can just handle everything. The best relationships I've seen is the AE and the SE invest the time on the front end to understand how they can best work together, understand where their strengths and opportunities lie. You know, they're, they're going to choreograph a dance together, and you can't just step on the dance floor and say, okay, I'm going to lead, you're going to step on my toe, and then we'll, then we'll fall. I'm a horrible dancer, so I step on toes. But for my wedding, I practiced. That was a pretty important dance. And I think, you know, the best, again, SE-AE relationships, they've practiced. They know how each other works. They can anticipate each other's moves. And the AE also knows the SE well enough to know when is this request the customer has given me actually not the best fit for the SE. It's that confidence to say, I think, you know, when you guys were talking about it is, what are you actually asking for? I know you're asking for a technical demo, but what are you actually trying to glean that technical demo and then let me decide, is it the SE that's best suited to give that to you or is it me or is it someone else? I think the SEs appreciate the fact that the AE is, I'll use the word qualifying, but just ensuring that the ask is commensurate with the person and the setup for that call.

Awesome. Ed, what's your, from your perspective, given that you've been in that, on the other side, well, both sides, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I love the point about dancing because that Tyson brought up, because I think that is like the best AEs and SEs kind of know as they build a relationship, like the best AEs I ever worked with, we kind of knew we can kind of look at each other and know like, I need you to step in here. I need you to help. They also are able to take the ego out because I've worked with some, some people in the past. It's like, you want the AE to take a note on something? They're like, I'm not, I'm not doing that. Don't, don't ask me to do anything. So that really is, I think the mutual respect thing I think is so important and I think That comes both from the relationship between the AE and the SE, but also how an organization views SEs. And so Joe's point about how critical it is, I think is so important. And some organizations, I think, do that. I think the challenge is for many organizations, particularly I think in that kind of 100-person to 250, kind of later than Joe's talking about, but still relatively early. That's about when I see people usually add that pre-sales role, not as early as Joe's saying. And what they'll do Is they'll take a couple people out of post sales or professional services, and they'll say, "Okay, you're pre sales now." And those people have no idea how to demo. They know how to do that. So that's why they're in the technical thing because they know how to be technical and they know how to make it work. And so it's the hardest thing for people in that role. They they have the curse of knowledge. They know it so well. When they get a question, it's really hard to decouple the idea of okay, what's the best answer to this versus, well, I guess we could do it one of 3 ways. We could solve it this way. And they're almost trying to solution it live in front of the customer, which is not what the customer wants to see. So you need to invest in that organization. I know it's somewhat self-serving to say that, but you need to kind of provide those resources for the SEs so they're able to know, you know, where do you need to give them skills? Do you need to train them on the technical side? Do you need to train them on the— of sales side and those soft skills, like what is it that you need to do to build them? And then you need to, from leadership, needs to really push the idea of AE and SE kind of having parity on this deal because if leadership kind of looks at SE as second class and really any sales support role, whether it's SDR, SE, it doesn't matter what it is, but if they kind of establish a culture where the AE kind of, you know, is above everybody, you're gonna have that. So you need to have kind of mutual respect around, but that's both from individual relationships as well as really from leadership pushing that message.

And tactically, do you have any tips on how the AE can better prep the SE around discovery and those items that you mentioned?

So it's funny. I used to sort of play a game, if you will, with my AEs when I was in an SE role. And we would look at deals and I would say, okay, you convince me why we should do this deal. I'm going to convince you because I'm always the devil's advocate. It's just my nature. If I were an optimist, I'd be an AE. I'm not. That's why I do this instead. And so, I would say, okay, it's my job to convince you why we're not going to do the deal. And we kind of go back and forth. Even if we don't necessarily agree with the points we're making, we still do that to kind of have very clear prosecution defense, if you will, because that really helped us work through what are the potential risks on this deal. And that also was a really good relationship builder because we really had to kind of work through this deal together and think, well, what do we have to do? So if I brought up something, then it's the— we could say, can we overcome that or is that a deal killer? And vice versa. So it really like letting us having that deal strategy together before you agree to the next meeting with the customer, having a deal strategy. And I think the other thing too is having very clear next steps and kind of knowing what you can offer and what you can't. I was once, I ran a presales organization and one of the challenges when I took it over was there were, it was a relatively complex proof of concept to build. There were 50 proofs of concept in the pipe, not a single one had closed. It was a pretty big problem. And the reason it was happening was the AE did not know what to do as a next step. So they just said, oh, go build a proof of concept. They build a proof of concept and because they had not established use cases, they had not established value, then the, it just didn't go anywhere. And so one of the things that we did immediately is I was like, okay, we're not doing that anymore. You gotta clear 'em before we offer one. You gotta talk to me about it. And before we would agree, we would put in writing, here's what we're gonna do. Here's the value you are going to get and here's how you're gonna measure it. And if we do those things, you're gonna buy it. And it's not legally binding. However, that would do a little bit of qualification because sometimes we would do that and the person would say, well, I can't really agree to this. Okay, then how can you agree to a deal if you can't agree to that? But then it would also help us be very clear on here's the value that you're going to get. So we know at the end how they're gonna measure it, because if we don't know that, how are they gonna know? Like, how can we build something to meet their specs? And so it actually, the first time I did it, it killed the deal because we were so mismatched with the client on what the expectations were. It died. I wanted to know it then and not in 3 weeks after we built it to find that out.

Great. Thanks.

What is it? The cat? Schrödinger's cat? Is that what it is? The AEs are like, you ruined my deal by asking a smart question. You know, like you opened the box and killed the cat. It's like, no, I exposed to you that you had a dead deal on your hands the entire time. You just now realized it was dead.

But it was still in the box, so maybe it wasn't. Right,

right, right. Let's wait till the final stage. You know what I mean? Let's wait till 2 days before the year ends and then let's find out that that deal's dead.

Well, I know we're coming up on time here, so why don't we move on to meeting management? Tyson, what does it look like to have a well-balanced meeting between these 2 stakeholders, right? Your AE and your SE. Who owns who or who owns what I should say. You know, there was this, Nuance now, right? Like, I think Ed said that he was able to look over at his AE, you know, and kind of in real time and sort of like be able to kind of flow, right? Like that art of it, which nowadays, you know, given the current state where we're all online, that's a little more difficult. So like, how do you actually, first of all, again, just to kind of restate it, it's like, what does that good meeting look like, you know, and the balance between, and how do you sort of deal with this nuance that we're now on Zoom screens?

Yeah, I think there's some— again, a lot of this is common sense stuff that we just, for whatever reason, become— we make it harder than it needs to be. The meeting starts before the meeting, right? What does the customer need to achieve in this meeting? And 2, what are our roles inside of this meeting? Again, so there's no, okay, are you taking this now? No, I know I'm set up You're here, I take it here. Like, we need to establish those roles upfront. Look, I think something that we— a real challenge today is we manage the beginning well, we know what the meat of the meeting is, and we are woeful when it comes to, you know, creating adequate space for action planning, next steps, and what are we going to do from here? Like, You know, show your hand if you've been in the meeting, said, I know we have 2 minutes left, let's talk about next steps.

But first I wanna finish this demo. But first I wanna show you one more thing.

Yeah, we've been on for an hour, but can you take 15 more minutes so I can show you a little bit more and then also talk about action planning? So work backwards is my advice. How much time do you need to adequately set next steps, recap, and establish who's doing what from here? Then build how much time does that leave you for intro and setup versus the other way around?

That dance, choreographing that dance.

What's your big finale? Your big finale is what's gonna come next. So don't, you know, don't bury that once the TV viewers on Dancing with the Stars have already turned off to the next channel.

I think it's just— That's my demo.

Yeah, I think this is just another— is it Schrödinger's cat? Am I even quoting it right? Is that what it is? Like, you know—

It is now.

Hockham's razor. What is it? Where, where you're afraid if you open the box, then the cat's dead. You guys have heard of this, right? I'm not making this up. Yeah. So this is the same problem. The AE either hasn't been trained, but I don't believe that. I don't believe you could have had a sales job ever anywhere and not had your boss say, hey, before this meeting ends, let's try to get the next one on the books. Like, I don't, I don't think there's a salesperson in the world who hasn't been taught At the end of this meeting, book the next meeting. Like, that's it. So why don't we do it? I think we're afraid of the answer. I think we're afraid of the answer and we're really comfortable that I send you the follow-up email and you might reply and say, I do want that next step, which is probably a trial, right? Maybe. No, I'm joking. In this case, if the AE's hoping to sell over email after the meeting, what they're really hoping for is you'll take a trial because they want the trial to sell the product. I don't understand this. When I, when I do sales meetings and I do them with respect and I respect the audience, I ask for your time. I'm very upfront about why I want your time. And then I get you on a sales meeting and I tell you relevant stories until one resonates. And then I ask you if you want to go try and do that with me too. That's what I do on my calls. And at the end of the meeting, either you're going to say, yeah, let's party, you know, or you're going to say no go. And there's a legitimate reason why. Or I'm literally gonna take what I learned from this call and I'm gonna share it with other executives at your business. That's what I'm gonna do. And I'm gonna tell you that in the beginning of the meeting too. I usually work with sales engineers. Sometimes I work with product marketers. I usually work with the director of, of this team, and sometimes it bubbles up to the CISO. At the end of that meeting, if that's the reality of the world, the reality is that champion's gonna march you into stage 2. That champion's telling you this is going nowhere, or you have to go sell to other people in the building. That is the reality. So why don't we just have that conversation with 5 minutes to go? You know, hey, like, what do you think? Is it vibing for you? Is this something you're interested in? And if they say no, say, okay, well, you know, maybe I gotta take this over to Lisa and Harry and see what they think. Or don't even tell 'em that. Do it anyways. But that's my opinion. That's how I believe sales works. You find lookalikes to your customers and you send them a, a reprise demo over email, a video, a, a PDF case study and say, you look like this, I bet you have this problem. And when they get on a call, you explain that problem and how you solved it and you get 'em excited for it. Then you offer to solve that problem for them. And if they're not, yes, I'm your champion. I'm marching forward with you. And it's not a disqualified account, it's dead. It's that third bucket, which is 70% of your first meetings where, you know, there's something there. The person told you things about the company. You could write an ROI case study right now, even having not done the work. Do that and send that exact same use case to the other stakeholders in the business through email, reprise, video, Loom. I don't give a shit what you do, right? But that's what happens at the end of the meeting. You are my champion. This account is dead, or I'm going to the other people in the building because that's my job and it's implied anyways. So just talk about it and agree to it and then do it.

Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today.live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, Join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side. Yeah.