Sales Discussions that Work
Selling is challenging work, and often, “we” (sales and marketing teams) make it even more challenging than it has to be. How many times have you seen a selling script, elevator pitch, or initial presentation that is long, boring, and undifferentiated? People have a short attention span, and nobody wants to interact with someone who does not listen to them or is pushy.
Your initial discussion is crucial to your success. Instead of going over a list of features, reading a slide deck, and telling why you and your product are so great, let’s try something else.
1. Understand why people buy. Any change has the potential to be difficult, risky, and painful. So, the pain they are facing has to be even greater, or they won’t bother changing. Your main job early on is to listen and try to learn what their pains are. You may have a perfect solution, but if it doesn’t solve their pain, it isn’t worth much.
2. At the start of the meeting, ask, “What would make this time well spent for you? What would you like to walk away from this meeting with?” Get them thinking about their problems and the value you may be able to provide, even if they don’t fully articulate it.
3. Ask questions and follow-up questions. People don’t lead with their significant issues, and someone unwilling to divulge anything likely isn’t a buyer. The more the prospect talks, the more you learn. So many people do not understand this simple concept.
4. Once you think that you have identified a pain, qualify and quantify that. For example, “You mentioned that your product release cycles are too long and complex. What is the business impact of that, and what would the impact be if you could reduce that time and effort by 50%?” Write that down because it could be vital later.
5. If you are giving a presentation, pull up the most relevant slide (customer problem/benefit slides work well here) and ask if this sounds similar to the problem they are facing.
6. Don’t worry if you are not able to cover everything you intended, as long as the meeting is productive. I’ve also seen salespeople cut someone off and move on to a new slide rather than discussing something of substance.
7. Next steps. Keep in mind that your time is valuable, and qualifying out a prospect that is not a good fit is essential – it helps you avoid false hopes and lets you focus on people who might want your help. There are many ways the next meeting could go but ask the prospect. Would they like to expand the audience? Is there a specific problem they would like to focus on? Would they like a product demo or a technical discussion? Is something like an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) keeping them from opening up?
Here is a mini success story. In 2010, my team and I began selling the first commercial vector high-performance analytics database. There were several products already out that claimed to be 70x-100x faster than other products. Our pitch was supposed to be that we were 70 times faster than other products. That was self-limiting before we even started and likely kept people from contacting us.
After two months of minimal success (I closed a deal to a small hedge fund, which was the only sale in all regions), we started a weekly webinar called “Why Fast Matters.” The focus was on positive business outcomes rather than specific technology and features (“speeds and feeds”). We opened with some “What if?” statements, such as: What if you get answers from complex queries faster than your competitors? What if you could do that without the cost, complexity, delays, and limitations of a Star Schema or pre-aggregated data? What if you could do this on commodity x86 hardware? We would then briefly cover the breakthrough technology (which was a precursor to Snowflake) and offer a free half-day meeting with a consultant.
Within the first two weeks, we met with a company that was later acquired by PayPal a few months before eBay acquired PayPal. This company was about to spend $500K on a proprietary hardware expansion that would have only provided additional capacity for the following year. Their customers bought advertising based on queries against the last six months of their data. I asked the question, “What if they could query against five years of data and get answers faster than they do today? Do you think that would help them buy more advertising? Do your customers ever ask for this?” The response was that their customers frequently ask for 12 months of data and would be willing to pay more for these capabilities. Still, they did not have a way to do this cost-effectively.
I closed a $250K ARR subscription deal in less than two weeks, and they purchased $140K of commodity Dell hardware for our software to run on. They saved 20% over their planned purchase, and more importantly, they rolled out advanced querying capabilities (against six years of data) in less than a month. There was incredible value to them and their customers, which we would not have uncovered if we focused primarily on features and technology.
As an aside, I was initially chastised for going off message, but after the Australian team adopted our approach and began closing deals, it became the new corporate standard. If something isn’t working, focus on finding ways to improve it.
In the words of Tony Robbins, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
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