Transcription
[music] Good morning everybody and welcome to this episode of 30 minutes to President's Club. My name is Arman Faroke and I'm here with my co-host Nick Sagielski.
If you've ever listened to 30 MPC before, you may have been fortunate enough to hear one of the Hall of Fame episodes from one of the greatest guests we've had, Charles Mulbower. If you don't know his stuff, if you've ever struggled with asking discovery questions or asking for power in a way that doesn't feel cringey, he is the master of asking questions in a way that doesn't piss off your prospects. And this was a clinic.
Nick, why should people listen? Charles gave a clinic on how to ask questions in a non-selferving, non-cringy way to get the information your sales manager is going to ask you for without your client or your prospect being like, "Okay, here's another sales guy asking me questions." He also talks about how you can tell if you should preemptively discount a deal and ways to quantify impact or pain without directly asking typical impact questions. If you want better answers, ask better questions. And in the next 30 minutes, you will learn to ask better questions. 3, 2, 1, let's roll.
All right, Charles, welcome back to the show. You remember that we start every episode with your top three actionable takeaways. So, let's get your three.
Actionable takeaway number one, ask your prospects that have previously decided not to work with you, aka a closed lost op, why they dumped you. That is the first question you want to ask them because it starts a very meaty conversation where the discovery can become more natural and significantly enhance the probability of a conversion.
Great. What's number two? Number two, AEES don't use chat GPT enough. Use chat GPT to create better questions. For example, if you want to go on chat GPT and say something like, "I find that asking prospects who is the decision maker is a very self-serving ask. How can I ask this question in a less self-serving manner that's in the prospect's best interest? Using a variety of sales methodologies, give me five versions," and you'll see the type of language that spits out will help you create much better questions.
Round us out, Charles. What's number three? Ask your prospects if you can make a recommendation, especially if they're not sure what the next steps should be. Let your prospect know, Nick, "Based on my experience, would it be okay if I suggest potential next steps that we've seen work for other prospects?" And you'll see that's a very inviting way of asking prospects to suggest next steps. They're open to listening. They lean in and the probability of conversion is a lot higher.
Charles, you are the master of asking questions that sellers need to know the answers to that prospects do not want to answer. Who's going to approve this thing? Do you have budget? How is that actually going to impact your business? What's procurement going to try to take out of the piece of the pie? We have six, seven, or eight different situations that we're going to run by you that are typically uncomfortable, cringey questions that sellers will ask, and you're going to teach us how to ask them in a non-selferving or non-inflammatory way.
I want to start earlier in the sales cycle and then we'll move to the later parts. But the beginning, early in the sales cycle, we want to do discovery. People will say, "Can you just show me your product or can you just tell me how much this thing costs?" When that's happening early on in a discovery call, how do I get a prospect to work with the process?
I think one of the most underrated parts of selling that AEES need to realize is that the entire call or cycle is about managing expectations. Prospects don't want to waste their time. Sales professionals don't want to waste their time. Our time is equally valuable. Whenever I'm about to go into discovery, I want the prospect to be prepared that I'm going to ask a number of questions aside from the upfront contract. You guys talk about this all the time. It never hurts to ask for permission while providing a reason that benefits the prospect. That might sound like, "Hey, Armand, would it be okay if I maybe asked you two or three very direct questions? This way, I can pinpoint our demonstration to what's most important to you and the team versus things that are generic and are not a good use of your time." That's an example of asking for permission while providing a reason to the prospect that they would care about that they won't push back on. I find that prospects don't push back on things that make logical sense because they don't want to waste their time. Usually the reasons are based on wasting time and people cannot push back. There are always outliers on wasting time. And so that is something that also solves for a nugget which is prospects crave reasons for things. They love them. When you give them a logical reason, they like it. They value it. And they're more likely to say yes.
There's something about this doesn't just happen in sales. When I'm managing people, I find that just by asking permission to give a rep feedback, they'll brace for it and be ready to receive it as opposed to getting surprise feedback. That naturally makes them less defensive.
Other than asking for permission to ask discovery questions, where are some other common places, Charles, that you find it's important to ask for permission before asking really direct questions?
So, aside from asking for permission to ask direct discovery questions, I'll also ask for for permission around next steps, which is what I referenced earlier. That might sound like, "So, Nick, would it be okay if I make a recommendation on what I've seen the best next steps usually are for other prospective clients?" It's another way to ask for permission. You can just ask simply, "Hey, Nick, can I make a recommendation? Would it be okay if I made a recommendation around next steps?" These are things also that prospects are not used to. It's very refreshing when I'm training account executives and we're we are roleplaying and they all of a sudden say, "Hey, Charles, can I make a recommendation around typical next steps?" It feels amazing on the other end. Like accounting executives typically don't know how it feels to be the prospect. And so a lot of times I'll suggest just people roleplaying that the prospect first in that role play gives feedback on how they felt. That's what I'll first ask for feedback. "Hey Bob, you were the prospect in that role play. How did Andy's quest feel to you?" Because that matters most because don't know how it feels for other prospects. And so once they have a better sense for how that feels, you can use it anywhere in cycles. That's another example of where I might ask for permission to do something.
So, there's a couple other places that actually came to mind for me, Armand, when you asked that question. One, when you're cold calling, I use a permission-based opener. When you give control to the other party, you're actually more likely to get their agreement. Other times would be when you're giving some sort of presentation or you're about to share like an extended amount of information like going through an ROI calculator or technical elements of what you're doing where you might need to talk for an extended period of time. Asking permission to, "Hey, I'm about to get into something that's fairly technically dense. Getting permission can be helpful." Another time would be if you're disagreeing with your prospect. If you directly disagree with what they said, it can be a bit confrontational versus if you say, "Hey, I appreciate you sharing that. Would you be open to me sharing another perspective on things that opens the door for you to disagree with them?"
I want to go back to something you said earlier, Charles, which is that feeling. And I know one of the areas that causes a lot of people to feel very uncomfortable is when a prospect asks them about pricing very early in the deal cycle. And I think most salespeople have heard some variant of the advice that you should never share price until you've first established value. But it can feel weird 20 minutes after talking to someone, they ask you for a general ballpark of price to withhold absolutely everything. What's your recommendation for how people respond when a prospect is pushing them for pricing information before the salesperson feels like they've properly established value?
I think you should change your mindset approach. Instead of "don't share the price until you've established value," it's more like "price is dependent on value." Therefore, Mr. or Mrs. Prospect, price depends on a variety of different criteria, which I'm sure you can appreciate. It's not that we hold price until we establish value. It's we explain price is dependent on a variety of criteria. So they're not two different things. If I was talking to a prospect and the prospect said, "Just tell me the price." I'd say, "Sure. As you can imagine, the price is based on a variety of criteria. We have clients that pay us $10,000. We have clients that pay us $100,000. We have clients that pay us a million dollar. I don't expect you to be in that very large range at this point in this conversation, but it is dependent on a variety of criteria. I had a number of questions for you just so that we can at least get the right footing around what range you could be in before we decide to move forward. Would you be okay with that?" So, it's honest that that's what it is. It's just being honest about what the price is based on criteria and that you can't answer that question without explaining what the criteria is.
The more aggressive way, Charles, would that I see a lot of sellers do the traditional enterprise thing where it's like, "Well, I don't even know if there's a fit yet and so it doesn't make sense for us to discuss price if there's not even a need." Right. That's like antagonistic. Exactly. That's the wrong approach versus that's a reasonable question approach and I'm going to answer it because it deserves an answer.
What should you do if a prospect asks you a question that you think is irrelevant?
I would first acknowledge the question. Say, "I appreciate the question." Uh, and then I ask for permission to reframe the conversation. So that might sound something like, "Yeah, Nick, that's a I appreciate the question. Can I give you some context around how our current clients think about our offering because it's a little different than how you're approaching it. Would that be okay?" So now it gives me now I get to reframe the conversation cuz typically if prospects are asking me a question that's irrelevant, it usually means they're misunderstanding what's happening or they're misunderstanding the offering. There's a disconnect. And when I see there's a disconnect and they're asking a question because of a disconnect, it's my responsibility to reframe and reposition the conversation. And I'm going to do that with asking for permission as well as sharing in a nice way that our clients don't think about this offering this way.
So, Charles, let's go back into the call and where you dropped us off is asking for permission to set next steps or recommend next steps. Mhm. Let's pretend that the next step in your sales cycle is a meeting with power. Often times, this is where reps will ask for power in a way that is self-serving to the seller. It basically sounds like, "Who's your daddy?" or "Who's going to buy this thing?" What's the right way to ask for power in a non-inflammatory way?
The way I would do that, and I'm just going to spit out how I would do it, and then we'll talk about what I'm actually doing. Whenever I'm asking a question, I'm incorporating a number of different ingredients in a structured way, and then we'll break it down. So, I might say, "Hey, Arman, with regard to to next steps, assuming you've told me how you make decisions." Okay, let's assume you've told me in detail how decisions are made, and you've told me in detail who's in charge of ultimately signing an agreement because that's that's a reasonable question for me to know who would ultimately be in charge of signing an agreement, right? That's a reasonable question. I'm not asking who's the decision maker. That's more of an administrative question like who let's let's assume Arman we would agree to move forward. Uh, who who ultimately is is would be signing off on that just that we're managing expectations of both sides. Right? So that's a reasonable question. But assuming you've given me uh a good process on how the decision process works, but I don't have access to the DM, I'm going to say again using the same structure I use for the procurement piece. I'm going to use a similar structure for the DM. And I might say, "So, Nick, just to give you some context, if we might work together, it sounds like the price range would be anywhere between $150,000. In my experience, I found that those who were ultimately in charge of making this decision, it sounds like it's Sarah on your end, if I heard that correctly. I found that when I've given them an opportunity to just roast me and ask me any direct question that they want to ask me without me doing any pitching or anything like that, I find that they feel it's really valuable. This way they can do their eyes, cross their tees, and avoid any misunderstandings or misconceptions about what this is versus what what it's not. Do you think Sarah would like the opportunity to do that as well, or do you think that's a terrible idea?" So, that's an example of how I would do it. First of all, it's very disarming. I didn't ask who's the decision maker. It's not about me. That entire talk track was about them. Do you think that would be helpful for the following reason that is in your best interest? I've also added context on what I found to be helpful because I've been doing this for some time and I know what works. And then I asked the question toward the end. Basically asking, "Do you think that would be a terrible idea?" You don't even have to ask if it's a very thoughtful question. You just say, "Do you think that's a good idea?" And if somebody says no, that's okay, right? Depending on how the cycle continues to go, you can see if you can make another attempt later on to bring in Sarah. But those are the ingredients that I'm using in order to ask the question as opposed to just, "Hey, I learned from 30 MPC. I should ask for the decision maker." So now I'm going to ask, "Hey Bob, who's the decision maker? Can I talk to them?" If we want to be able to do this with thoughtfulness and finesse in a way that benefits the prospect that also benefits us.
Um, I want to go to one of the other challenging situations in a deal which is driving timeline with a prospect. I'm working with a sales team right now. They sell health benefits. And one of the things they'll run into is someone will be talking with them in August. It's mid-August. And they're like, "Hey, we think we want to do this, but we would want to roll this out at the end of the year." And they want to get the deal in now. They want them to sign now. What would you recommend an AE at that company say when they hear from a prospect, "Hey, I want to do this, but further out than what the AE would like?"
A couple things I want to know is how long things will take them, assuming we decide to move forward. So I want to bring the future to the present and say, "Yeah, sure. So Nick, assuming that we do decide to move forward, can you walk me through how long it would take procurement to decide that they want to move? Like, does that take a week or does that take two months?" "Takes a month." "Okay. And I know we're somewhere in the beginning of our early stages in the conversation here. Assuming that you evaluate our offering and it's now three weeks later and procurement now wants to take a look at it and that takes a month. So now that's like six weeks later. We're talking about the end of September, right Bob?" "Yeah." "What else happens on your end that would also take extra time that I might be missing? Maybe this person has to look at that person." "Okay. How long would that take?" "Another week or two probably." "So what are we talking about? Like mid-September." "Yeah, mid-September." "Okay. Assuming by mid-September you guys decide to say, 'Hey, we actually want this, knowing you can't officially roll it out by the end of the year.' When you say 'roll it out,' did you mean start or did you mean pay? Like, what did you mean 'roll it out'?" "Say, when you say 'roll it out,' do you mean pay for it or what? Can you help me understand what 'roll it out' means?" "Right. So there may be a whole kitten kaboodleoodle about 'roll it out.' We don't have the interns. We don't know who we're looking to hire." "Okay, so that helps me be better prepared to then ask all the timing questions. Assuming all that works, how long would it take procurement to look at it? So now we're looking at this date roughly. Depending on what 'roll it out' means, I might say, 'Can I make a recommendation?'" "Sure. I was in a similar situation a couple of weeks ago where someone needed extra time to roll it out. They said if we can work on something flexible, whether it's timing or flexibility on price, they'd be willing to sign an agreement and push out the start date. This way, it aligns with their budget. It aligns with the people that they have decided to hire at that time, and we also allow them to start using our service even a little bit earlier, and that's something that really worked for them. Do you think that's something worth discussing?"
What's brilliant about what you did there was you basically floated to that prospect, "Hey, if I had some flexibility on things like start date, timing, terms, would you be able to move faster?" You're basically saying, "Hey, if I give you a discount, would you move faster?" But you're not doing it in a way where you're dropping your pants and you sort of look like the the used car salesperson who's like, "If I got you a discount, would you move faster?" You're telling the it's almost like the third party story where you say, "Hey, I was working with someone else and what they found was this was helpful. I'm not even sure if it's worth us discussing that." And that opens the door without you seeming uber salesy.
What I want to add is to make that question even better. I want to end that question with, "Do you think Nick that's something worth discussing or will that make zero difference in your decision-making timeline or is that a terrible idea?" If you ever read Question-Based Selling, he calls it a neutral disposition. It's not, "Hey, Arman, you want to hang out tomorrow?" Let's say Arman's like, "I don't really want to hang out with Charles. He's like a loser." You know, but I might say, "Hey, Arman, you want to hang out tomorrow?" Or, "Is tomorrow a bad time for you?" Right? So, doing a neutral disposition allows a more accurate response from a prospect.
I'm sorry I didn't mention this early in the call. Maybe I should have, but we use something called the timeline tester. That's one of the best things in the world. You have to use your professional judgment on when to use it. You're speaking with a prospect early. They're somewhat interested. It's still early on. Maybe they're in an evaluation. They're giving you good feedback. You may then you go with, "Hey, Nick. Um, if I may, just for some context, I recognize this might be premature, but it's my responsibility to let you know that um, at the end of the month, our board is looking to hit some revenue stretch goals. And so, we're having a meeting about it tomorrow. My guess is that they're going to approve flexibility for people that are coming on by the end of the month. If there is flexibility that they approve, is that something that you're going to want me to let you know about, or is moving forward by the end of the month like too quick and not going to make any difference in your decision-m?" If a prospect says, "No, I don't care. It will make no difference." Perfect. Now I know who to spend less time with and who to spend more time with, which is something that we all want to be ruthless about. Number two, if they bite and they say, "No, that's actually that would be that would actually be helpful if you can let us know." Now, you have a carrot in your back pocket that prompts or compels the prospect to say, "I need to talk to Charles again." And so now, great. Great. I'll have that meeting tomorrow. How about we talk on Friday and I'll give you an update and we'll take it from there.
There's one last bucket that I want to hit on and then we'll go to the final question. So, we've talked about asking for power. We've talked about pushing back on the price ask immediately. We've talked about other forms of driving timeline. The other tricky one is you might get a problem that sounds like a process problem or a surface-level problem like "we're spending a lot of time in spreadsheets" or "it takes us a lot of time" or "I'm spending a lot of my time doing manual entry of these types of things." And the problem is that you and I both know that one person spending a lot of time on a task does not justify a six-figure purchase. And so you need to turn that small problem into business impact. But the problem is what most sellers will ask is they'll be they'll ask for things sorry they'll ask cringy questions like "What would you do with all that time back in your calendar?" or "How do you think you would quantify the impact of this time on the business?" And all of those things are super super cringey leading sales questions. And so how do you get them to quantify the impact of process problems without sounding very salesy?
Yeah. So the problem with uh I haven't said this before out loud. [laughter] The problem with impact questions is people like jump for joy over impact questions. Impact questions should be the grand slam home run question. And you don't have grand slam home run questions without really getting an amazingly solid sense of what the problem is, why it's a problem, when they realize it's it's a problem. Like Arman, you like to talk about a lot as well as like why do they care really that much? Like unless all of that stuff is not there, I shame on me for asking an impact question. I avoid asking impact questions as much as I possibly can unless I've delved into the problem. So if you said, "Oh, we're we're spending too much time uh updating our our spreadsheets." Okay. Can you can you walk me through what what the problem is actually? Like when you say you're spending too much time, can you help me understand? Can you maybe give me a specific example that comes to mind? Where that where that showed up, right? Can walk me through an example of where that showed up in particular? Oh, okay. And why is that a problem? I know it's a I can use a disclaimer. I know this might sound like a weird weird question, but why is that a problem for you? Because I've talked to a lot of prospective clients where that's a problem, but they don't really care to solve for it. I'm just curious how you're thinking about it. Right? When you ask these baby step questions, they'll accidentally give you the impact without me having to ask it. I'd rather get answers to questions where I don't have to ask the question. And so baby incremental step questions, incremental step type questions help get you there. Simply asking, "Hey, I I don't know how to ask this, but why is that a problem?" and they say it's a problem because they'll and they'll go into especially if the rapport is there, they'll tell you the impact and then when they tell you the impact be like, "Oh, I see. So, you're saying that this is impacting that?" "Yes." "Oh, okay. Um, out of curiosity, I appreciate you sharing this with me. You know, I was speaking to I speak to a number of my clients on a daily basis. They they've told me that sometimes when they waste time on X, Y, and Z, it's impacted these other areas as well. Is that something that you've experienced or am I or am I way off there?" Right? Just you want to test that, gauge it. And then to your point, Arman, maybe it's just them. So, I'm going to ask them, "How widely known is this problem internally?" or "Arman, to what extent in or I'd say or Arman I guess in your opinion, I appreciate you sharing with you sharing all these issues with me, to what extent have you and the team discussed this internally as a problem that needs to be solved for or would you say it's only been you thus far?" Right? There are many different ways to ask that question. I'm always going to ask a widely known type question because if they haven't discussed it, then that's going to tell me where I should be spending my time or if I should be spending a lot of my time with this person. Or I might quite frankly say, "Hey, Arman, at the risk of I always prefer to be more accurate than optimistic, the last thing I'd want to do is talk about solving a problem that only you care about." And then you go back to your team and they say, "You know what, Bob? We actually do not care at all." And that's something that I that I've seen before. "Do you think it might make sense to talk about it internally and determine whether or not you want to talk more?" It's another asking for permission, providing context, right? They're all mixed into one question while expressing your concern using "I'd rather be more accurate than optimistic," all that stuff. And that helps more artistic or more artful question.
Charles, I feel a little awkward saying this, but we are running out of time and we got to move to our final question. And the final question for you is this. We've talked about a lot of the great things sales people should be doing. Now, I got to ask you about a shouldn't. And so, my last question is, what is one bad habit that you see a lot of sales people exhibiting that you think they need to break because it hurts them more than it helps?
Stop asking other people for help with something before you've told them what you've tried to do on your own to solve for it yourself. Be more resourceful. Be more resourceful. People are a lot more willing to help you and will actually give you ideas in advance before you ask them for help once they see the work that you do on your own before you ask for help.
Wow, Charles, amazing episode. You continue to bring the fire. Thank you for joining us. Everybody, stick around for a 60-second recap coming up soon.
All right, and Nick, it's time for a 2 by 2 recap from this episode with Charles Mulbower. What do you have for your two?
So, one is instead of asking direct impact questions that try to quantify pain, instead more deeply explore the problem that the prospect has shared with you. Ask them questions about stuff. How long have they known this as a problem? Well, how else have they tried to solve it? Can you tell me a story about the first time this exper can you tell me about the time? Can you tell me about the first time that this actually came up for you? And when you ask some of these questions that more deeply explore the problem, you will inadvertently get them to share impact and quantifiable impact and it is far less cringy and salesy.
Number two is you want to determine if the person you're talking to is the only person that has experienced or cares about this problem. Because if it's just them and nobody else, you probably don't have a deal. And one of the ways that you can ask that is you can say, "Hey, you know, I'm curious how widely known is this problem internally? Or is this something that just you have experienced?" Or you might say something like, "Hey, to what extent have you discussed this problem internally or is this just something that you've been focused on right now?" And this helps you determine, hey, is this just one person dealing with it or is this a broader organizational problem that actually warrants a deal?
Number three, on the note of amplifying the problem, a lot of times sellers will ask cringy impact questions, but instead you can lead into those by asking baby step questions. So if someone says "spending a lot of time managing things in spreadsheets," you might say, "I'm curious ju just I know this might like an awkward question, but I guess why why is that a problem?" or "I've worked with other folks, they've oftentimes said like, 'Yeah, that problem exists, but they didn't really want to solve it,' and I'm curious different about that for you." And that's when they'll actually lean in and they'll share the impact proactively.
And then lastly, number four is when you're asking for power, we all know that you want to get in front of power, but you need to frame it in terms of their best interests. The way you might say it is often times when I've worked with other companies like you all such as A, B, and C, whenever there's been someone like a chief people officer, a chief revenue officer, they've usually wanted to get their hands in this and really cross their tees and dot their eyes to make sure they know exactly what they're getting. Do do you think that's something that your chief revenue officer may might want to consider when you frame it in terms of why that person at power might want to see your thing as oo not one jeez. So when you frame it in terms of Yeah. So when you frame it in terms of why that person at power might want to see your product as opposed to why you want to get in front of power, they're much more to accept.
All righty, Nick. How can people help us out here?
So if you want to learn how to ask questions just like Charles Mulbau does, you don't need to listen to this episode 12 times again, but you are welcome to do that. Instead, however, we put together a newsletter edition recently literally called "How to Ask Discovery Questions Like Charles Mulbower." And there's a link in the show notes to go get it. It's entirely free. You will learn the frameworks and the processes and how he structures his questions so that you can become just like Charles if that's what you want to do. Anyways, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on the show. [music]