Transcription
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes to Presidents Club. My name is Armand Farouk, and I'm here with my co-host, Nick Siegelski. And this is Month one, episode one of Discovery Month, where we are bringing on the absolute best guests we have ever had in the domain of Discovery on 30 Minutes to President's Club in celebration of our upcoming course release. It's on discovery from 30 MPC that is coming in the first week of April. And it is a guest you've probably never heard of. He's only been on the show at least nine times. He is a four-time CRO of 100 million plus ARR revenue organizations. He is Kevin Katie Dorsey. And holy smokes, we've had him on in the last year for a lot of leadership stuff. But if you want to learn how to run a disco call step by step, this is the one.
Nick, why should people listen? So we got into a number of beliefs that a lot of sellers have around how they should be running discovery calls. KD challenges and shares what you should actually do. We talked about stuff around, like, why you can't just sell on pain. We talked about selling next steps rather than setting next steps. We actually talked a decent amount around how a lot of salespeople think that they need to get to impact. They have to quantify problems on that first discovery call. And he actually talks about why that might actually not be in your best interest. So if you're looking for a simple, effective way to run your disco calls. Not simple and like surface level, but simple as an easy to understand, but extremely impactful. This is one for you.
All right, Katie, welcome back to the show. You might remember, we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways. So let's get your three. The first tip, bar none, is problem identification. That's actually the whole point of discovery is to discover. And my favorite way to do that through what I call a bucket question, where you are taking what this is and you are leading with what the most common problems your personas face. So it sounds like this. Hey, Armand, I speak with VPs of sales all day. They all seem to be struggling with getting reps to follow through, updating pipeline notes, like selling next steps. I mean, does that sound like your world at all right now? Or am I off base? That question establishes authority. It shows that you know, right? Shout out Sam McKenna. Shows that you know something about their world and it gets the conversation started off the right foot. So that's tip number one.
Beautiful. What's number two? Number two is you have to then find out the better future they desire. You cannot just sell on pain. Too often we're just like, ooh, find the pain, twist the pain, knife in the pain, salt on. It's, you can't just sell. You actually have to know where they're trying to go as well. And what I see with most reps is they either do one or the other. They try to sell on the future or they try to unsell the now. You need both. So you have to flip it after you've done the problem sessions. So what would you want this to look like? What would this allow you to achieve? How would that feel? What would you do with this? Right? So you now have to get to the better future side of things once you know the problems of the now. So that's tip number two.
Round us out. What's number three? Sell the next step. So you have to sell what you want them to do next. So if that is a demo, if that is bringing someone else onto a call, if that is reading something, you have to sell them on what you want them to do next. And sometimes that requires you to give them a little bit of a tease. There's this huge debate. We'll probably talk about it now. Do you show the product in the disco? Do you not show the product in the discos? You gotta give them enough to want to do what is ever next. And too often reps only focus on selling the product. They don't sell the next step in the process. Why should I want to hop on a demo? Why should I want to bring in my leadership? Why should I want to do a proof of concept? So whatever that next step is, you have to sell that just as heavily as you do your product.
All righty, KD, let's assume that we jump onto a discovery call. You've already set your agenda. And I know one of the first questions you ask is the bucket question. I've heard really generic bucket questions like most revenue leaders care about generating pipeline or closing pipeline. Which is it for you? How do I construct a good bucket question? The first thing I always will call out is tone. Tone drives everything, including in disco. And your goal is you should sound curious in disco. There's actually something called tonal disgruence, where if you don't sound like what you're asking for, it actually creates a distrust. If I ask you for help, but I don't sound like I need help. Hey, Nick, could you help me out real quick? You're already like, what is it, right? Where's that? Hey, dude, Nick, real quick, man. Could you help me for a second? It's too many reps. You can tell their tone is off. But when we're getting into that bucket question, the first is it's always persona-based. Revenue leader is not a persona. So what's the actual persona? Is it sales manager? Is it VP of sales? Is it CRO? And even that is different by industry, right? The VP of sales at a B2C company has different problems than a VP of sales at an enterprise SAS company. So the first is the persona has to be specific, right? And then that's what leads to the being specific. So the one that like Armand is there, you know, they care about revenue growth or pipeline. Those aren't problems. That's not what I'm asking about at all. So the structure here is I speak with persona all day. And it's specific. So that one-liner setting, a social proof line. I speak with people like you all day long. The next line is actually one of the most important parts of the bucket question. They all seem to be struggling with. What this allows for is the safe space to admit you have a problem. We're using social proof the other direction. Where even if you don't think you have that problem, when you hear a lot of other VPs do, you almost actually question yourself a little bit. You're like, wait. Other VPs, maybe, maybe this could be a little bit of a problem for me, but it makes it safe to admit, whereas too often, so tell me your biggest challenges right now. I don't know you. Doesn't work like that. And then we get into the top three problems that that persona deals with. It has to be very, very specific. Again, that's the key to it. And that's why I do the customer interviews. I do a lot of research to find out what are the top problems for personas. And in that one question, I've showed them that I know it removes the BS. You can't lie to me. I know these are problems, so let's just air it out. And I've made it a safe way to answer it. That's the key to building a great bucket question.
Katie, could you give a couple examples of things that you're selling now, things that you've sold in the past, just so folks can hear a couple examples of what good bucket questions sound like? If I'm talking to a controller, and I say, hey, look, Nick, I talk with controllers all day, when I can get them on the phone, because oftentimes I can't get them on the phone because they're chasing down receipts. They're buried at the end of the month trying to close out the books. The transactions don't match and it takes them so long to collect all this information. I mean, does that sound like your world too? That's going to speak to a controller. You should be getting an over 70% yes rate to the bucket question. If 70% of the personas aren't saying yes to that, it means your buckets are wrong. You don't understand what the actual problems are. So that would be an example, right? If I'm talking to a VP of sales, let's say I'm selling an email tool. They, you know, I talk with VPs all day long. They all seem to be struggling with trying to figure out deliverability. Accounts are getting shut down too quick. Do they let their reps write the emails or not write the emails? Response rates are down. I mean, are you seeing that too? So it's very specific. A VP of sales is dealing with those things right now. And the last thing I'll throw in here is, is also how you sell through questions. Would I ask about those problems if I couldn't solve them? So I'm building a level of confidence and curiosity. I wouldn't ask, you know, like, struggling with deliverability, and they're like, yeah, it sucks, we can't help you with that, but it's good to know that you're struggling with deliverability. I'm already planting the seed that I can solve these things. When I sold ERP software to law firms, we also sold to controllers. But the bucket questions I would ask them were not the same bucket question that you just suggested for a controller because we didn't help with the stuff that you just talked about. So my question is, I've got maybe a two-part question. Question one is, what if I sell a very straightforward product that only helps with one thing? How do I figure out what bucket I'm going to ask about if there's really only one problem I solve? And then maybe attached to that is like, how do I even build this in the first place if I'm a rep listening to this? I don't even know where to start.
The beauty is if you solve one main use case, it actually makes the other two buckets throwaway buckets. They don't even have to be good, right? What it does is it makes it easy to answer. So like the science of selling covers this in the book well, it's like the difference between asking a question with leads and asking a leading question. A leading question is like, Nick, you really struggling with pipeline right now? And it's like, it's a leading question, right? We're like, Oh, I feel trapped. Buy it. Whereas, hey, so I mean, a lot of people are struggling with pipeline generation, close rates, connect rates, when you kind of throw them out there, it makes it safe. So if I really only solve one thing, there's always two other things that personas care about. Always. You just throw them out there. It just makes it feel like you're doing it. We used to call this the pizza dough tone. I call it the pizza dough because you're like kind of like doing this with your hands like, you know, this, that, or the other. So that's the first part. The second part is if you don't know the problems that you solve for your prospects, like you're in a lot of trouble already. The easiest way to do this, funny enough for most companies is, and I do this with every company I work with when I consult, when I train as I'll ask the reps every time the top three problems you solve. We help people make more money. We save them time. We increase data visibility. And I go. Those weren't problems, y'all. So the easiest way to do this, what are the benefits of your product? Flip it. That's the problem that it solves. Oh, we save them time. Benefit. What's the opposite of saving time? Wasting time. What are they wasting time on right now? Manual data entry. First bucket. So that's the other place to start is take the benefits of your problem. Flip them. Those are the problems that you solve. And my last is customer interviews. I love customer interviews when I join a company. And there's six questions that I ask. And one of those questions is, what problem were you hoping to solve? That's it. I go ask that of 30, 40 people. I will have my buckets.
I want to double underline one of the things that you just said, which is one of the easiest ways to figure out what problem you solve is just invert the benefit. If you save time, that means they want to avoid wasting time. But then you did something that, I don't know if everyone noticed, you said, what are they wasting time on? That's the problem. Because a lot of people will go generic with the problem, they'll be like, oh, most COOs hate wasting time, and it sounds too generic. So you're bringing it all the way down to the operational problem that they are facing. So my question on that note is, if we use that controller, someone says I'm either chasing down receipts, or my transactions don't match. Those are operational problems or champion problems, and you need to turn those operational problems back into those bigger problems of wasting time, losing money. How do you go from that operational problem to a bigger business problem?
It's when the person that cares about business problems gets involved. This is also something to remember. Does the controller care about losing money? There's different problems per persona, which I called out. Talking about revenue loss. We're talking about missing targets to the director of sales operations. They're too far removed from that as a care point. So actually, I'm not bringing that up to them. I'm bringing that up when I can get the next person on. And when we get to selling the next point is actually part of how this works. Is if we get to that, it's like, all right, now look, Armand, we know this is going to make your life easier with the receipts and the collection, but we also know when's the last time your CFO cared about receipts? They're going to care about X, Y, and Z. And I'd love to set up a call where we can show them how it will help them so that I can help you, but I'm not bringing up the big business case to someone that doesn't care about the big business case. What happens with the med pics and the spice of the world is like trying to get this economic connection to someone that's not connected to the economics. They don't actually care about those things, right? Oh, what if the economics aren't there? Then you could lose your job. Okay, good luck. Good connecting those dots, you know, so where do you take the call instead? Because I think your typical salesperson who understands maybe spiced or medpick is yep, I know I need to get the operational problem, but then I need to spend the rest of my discovery effort quantifying that pain and they're really trying to get to the impact. And to your point, I'm meeting with someone who doesn't really care about that. So my question is, once you've identified that problem, are you doing deeper exploration of that problem? Are you jumping to, here's how finally can help solve that problem? Or are you going in a different direction?
No, no, no. So we got the problem, right? So now this is the beauty. We asked a bucket question. Are you seeing that too? The vast majority of people are going to say, yes, but we got to remember we gave them three to four options. Yeah. So the next obvious question is, and this I'll throw this as a tip, sellers too often are filler words are positive and you have to be very careful here in discovery. What are most reps filler words? Cool. Great. Awesome. Sweet. Nice. Perfect. So you just asked a bucket question. Like a lot of people don't know these problems. Are you seeing this too? They're like, Oh yeah, we're seeing that. Yeah. Great. Good. Great. Sweet. Uh, no. Like, no. You're reconfirming that, first of all, that the problem is okay, but two, they just told you had a problem and your response was, Nice. Stop it. Okay, it should be a down tone, right? Ooh. Shoot. Uh, you too, I know. The worst, right? My favorite, my favorite post-bucket question phrase is, Oh, doesn't that suck? Cause if I can get you to say that sucks in the first 45 seconds of a disco call, I've got you. I've got you. You've literally just told me the status quo sucks. First, we acknowledge there, but now, so which one's most top of mind right now? Which one is most top of mind right now? Which one is bogging you down the most? Which one is really the bane of your existence? You can tell I'm applying negative labels to each one of these things. I'm trying to move them away from the status quo. They say, well, yeah, the, God, our, our deliverability is garbage. Like it, nothing seems to be getting through. Okay, now I've got their number one problem. From there, impact. And this is, people get really weird with asking impact questions, right? And I don't know why. It's like, people forget like what impact means. Impact means what is the problem causing, okay? So how do you find out what the problem causes? As you ask, right? So let's say it's the deliverability. Yeah, no, deliverability has been really, really tough right now. Okay, yeah, no, we're seeing that a lot. So what's that causing for you? And this is very important. So it's called a separator tone. When you emphasize the word you, it makes it sound like you care about only them. So this actually applies to selling, networking, meeting new people. If you're networking, conferences, right? Almost always, what do people, the first question someone asks you at a conference is almost always what? What do you do? If you ask it that way, you sound like everybody else. If you use a separator tone, it sounds like this. What do you do? And you emphasize the you. It makes it sound like, I don't care what everybody else does. So what do you do for work? So when you ask the question, so what's that causing for you? Emphasis. But then, you know what we're about to do? We're about to give them three more leads. So what's that causing for you? I mean, open rates down, like no one's responding back, like you're constantly just throwing out these things because one, it makes it easier to answer and two, it continues to establish credibility and three, it guides the conversation. This is the beauty, the analogy I always use. Actually, I don't even know if y'all are married and relationships, whatever. If I, if I walk out tonight, right, walk out to talk to wifey, what's up? What's up, wifey? And say, Hey babe, what do you want to do for dinner tonight? How's that going to go? 33 minutes later, you're going to still have not gone somewhere. You'll have scrolled through Uber Eats. You'll have just said, screw it. You're hungry. You're cranky. You're hangry. It is one of the easiest questions to answer. What do you want to do for dinner? But when it, and this, we get to ask open-ended questions. Then we wonder why people have a hard time. Versus if I say, Hey babe, where do you want to grab dinner tonight? I mean, we could grab sushi. There's that new Italian spot that just opened up. We can actually order salads in. That sounds good. One of those selected because it makes it easier to answer, but I didn't feel trapped. So that's the key with the next place. So what's that causing for, for you? Is it like a deliverability, but no one's opening it? Can you not track it? Your response? Yeah, no, our response rates are down. Oh, where are they at right now? Whereas now I'm chasing down receipts every single week. Ugh, how much time you spending on that right now? If you allow discovery to be a conversation, the question has actually become very obvious that you should be asking. It's when people don't think about it as a conversation, think about it as a call. And I'm going to check the boxes as I go. So I've got the problem. I got the number one problem. What is it causing? And then I'm getting into any type of economic or measurable impact, right? What is that? How much time? Where are they at right now? How much has it declined? Okay. Then I'm getting to that point. So that's the flow on the problem side. And then before I moved to better future, I was like, and so what else am I missing? What else am I missing? Then they start to give a little bit more throughout all this. Then we can flip to better future. Okay. So let's talk about what this would look like if we solved it. What would that let you do? What would change? What would change if you didn't have to change down receipts anymore? What would change if your deliverability went up? This would change, and that would change. Notice who's telling who would change. Because a lot of times sellers try to tell them, this, oh man, when you do this, it's going to be better. So what would change if you didn't? What would happen if your emails were actually getting through the inbox? Oh, darn it. Now we're getting into the better future that they desire.
So question on this, Katie, where are you going? Bucket question. Identify the problem. What does this problem mean for you? Figuring out how much time, some sort of quantifiable economic impact. What else? Maybe you go through two or three problems. I can imagine a world where someone's just dumping for 20 minutes straight. And oftentimes, sellers can make the mistake of making discovery feel like an interrogation. If you get through two or three problems, are you doing anything to give back a little bit before you just keep asking? How do you make sure that there's some back and forth?
The more you can get the other person to talk about themselves, the more they like you. It works in selling, too. So the first is like, actually listening is a gift, interestingly enough. Sounding like you actually care is a gift, right? But what I'm setting up for is like, once I know what they care about, that's what allows me to give a proper give. If that makes sense, it's yeah, they've talked about deliverability or they talked about receipt collection. It's like, all right, we're going to schedule another call so I can go into this deeper, but I, you are going to love this. Okay. Imagine a world where your people get to snap a picture of that receipt and it automatically gets pushed through to the system of that transaction. And if they don't, it locks their card up. I just can't wait to show you that next week when we dive on. Now I'm connecting the give to specifically what they. Whereas too often sellers try to give something that has nothing to do with what the problem they're trying to solve, the better future that they want, or anything like that.
I want to go to one thing that you said earlier, which was around, I want to treat this call as a conversation and when I think about it as a conversation and not a call, it ends up being easier. I would agree with that statement except I see reps go into conversations expecting a conversation and the prospect throws a wrench in the conversation by leading the call with so show me what you got or tell me about what you got, or they start to play tug of war, where they ask for the pitch, or they start peppering us with a million questions, and it feels like we lose control of the call. So how do I turn that back into a conversation when I feel like those things are happening?
One thing, this assumes you set a good agenda and upfront contract. It's part of it, right? So if the very beginning of the call is, Hey, so the goal of this call is at the start, I need to ask a few questions, understand like your world a little bit. So I make sure I only show the things that make sense to you. Would that be okay? 99% of people are going to say yes to that. And then you can lead to the upfront contract, which is cool. And then based off that, if we have time today, show you a little bit of the product, maybe we could get into pricing if we need to, but we can dive into it. So I'm seeding the idea that you'll get to it because here's the other reality with if you don't do that, we'll keep using relationship examples because people can relate to them. If you're in an argument with your partner, are you really listening to them when they're talking? So if a prospect really wants to see the product, but you didn't tell them they're going to get to see the product, even when you're talking, all they're thinking about is when do I get to see it? Whereas if I say, and don't worry, I'm going to show you a little bit of the product today as well. And I'm like, Oh, I can shelve that a little bit. That's the first way. The second way, and this is something I'm a huge proponent of, is you don't have to. And in fact, I think most people ask too many questions in discovery. You actually can discover through the product. So if someone says, all right, I love this stuff, y'all, I would love to see the product today. I say, cool. I got a question to ask you. So I know where to start. What question am I about to ask y'all? Bucket. The bucket question. All right. Okay, cool. We do a lot of things. I got one question to ask before we start. A lot of VPs. They're struggling with X, Y, and Z. Are you seeing that too right now? No, we're seeing that kid. Which one is the biggest? So I know where to start. Deliverability. Cool, gotcha. Where is your deliverability right now? You can take the same questions and place them within the product presentation as well. They don't have to be so front-loaded. And this is an art that a lot of sellers don't have. The rest of the questions are all going to happen through the presentation. And often times that's actually the best time to ask it. If someone's really steamrolling you, like really, really steamrolling you, that is where as a seller you actually do have to take a step back and say, Hey, you know, Nick. I feel like I'll be doing you a disservice showing you things that I don't know you need to see. And the last thing I want to do is waste your time. There's three things that I would love to know. So I can show you what you actually need to see here. Would that be okay? Most people say yes to that. Very few people like no. And even then. All right, cool. I'm gonna dive in, but just be ready. I'm gonna ask you questions throughout this. Is that okay? No, okay, so you would like me to present to you with no questions or back and forth? Yes, okay. I blow this up to an extreme because I think y'all can tell it's not gonna get there, and if it does, that person wasn't gonna buy anyway. I don't care.
Katie, I think one other thing that makes your questions, as a prospect, I would be okay with you asking those questions, is it's clear that your intention with those questions is to figure out what to show me. And a lot of sellers make the mistake of giving people situational question fatigue, where it's like, how many employees do you have? How big is your team? What email software are you using? How many emails do you send a month? Could you give some examples of like questions that you oftentimes see sellers ask that are a waste of time or are the wrong types of questions to ask that will typically piss your prospects off?
So anything that's Googleable, nothing Googleable should ever be asked. This is part of the prep work. How long they've been there? What is the company about? Who else is involved? Like the amount of times like even then, like people ask, okay, who's your VP? You don't even know who my VP is. Situational questions, I actually think are far better suited for the demo itself. When do I want to know what tool they're using for whatever? When I get to that part of the demo, when do I want to find out how many seats they use? That is a perfect place to ask when I'm showing the admin part of the product. So this is where you would set up all your users. Now, how many people would you put in here? Quick tip, by the way, that's called the make them hold it question. How many users would you put in here? I'm asking them to picture the using of the product. It's an ownership question. Discovery is about the problem. The situation stopping. Truthfully, this is where a lot of reps go wrong. Is they're asking situational questions, hoping to hear a problem. So walk me through your expense management process now. And they're hoping that the person's like, Oh, it's busted. I hate it. But really, you know, we collect everything at the end of the month. If we don't have it, we hit up the individuals. And what that turns into is actually a reconfirmation process where they're reconfirming what they're doing is right, versus that's why I lead with the problem. What problems am I hoping that they have? Let me ask if they have them. Because the other reality here too is sellers, if they don't have a problem you solve, there's nothing to sell. There's nothing to sell. That's the point of discovery. You got people in pipelines right now that don't even have problems, but they're in the pipeline somehow. If you can limit the number of how do you do this questions to as few as possible during discovery, those are oftentimes the questions that will frustrate your prospects the most. And to your point, a lot of sellers will ask, how do you plan compensation today? And one in three prospects will say, Oh, it's brutal. And so it fools you into thinking that that's a problem question, but it's not a problem question. It's a process question. What's the question behind the question? Just ask that. Right? So like, how quickly are your reps ramping? How many repetitions are they getting? Stop hoping that they're just going to divulge it because you got to remember sellers, but we're not gonna be completely transparent with you. I don't know you. So I'm not just gonna sit there and be like, oh god, Armand, I've been looking forward to this call all week. Our onboarding is broken. In fact, I'm embarrassed by our onboarding. I don't even know I have a job. It's that bad right now. I'm not gonna tell you all that. So sellers, the process questions save for later or ask the question behind the question when you're going into the process.
I'm realizing that we are running out of time and we didn't even get to talking about better future. So we're going to have to record another one with you and we will publish that episode next week. So folks, if you want to hear about getting to that better future, your better future will come next week with next week's episode with Katie. But for the time being, Katie, let's transition to the final question, which is, we've talked about a lot of really great things salespeople should be doing on their discovery calls. Now I want to ask you about a shouldn't. What is one bad habit that you see a lot of salespeople exhibiting on their discovery calls that you think they need to break because it hurts them more than it helps?
Not coming from a genuine place of curiosity. They're asking the questions to ask the questions. I genuinely want to know. What's going on in this individual's world and most sellers don't come across that way. I get pitched all the time. I get discovered all the time and you can tell it. They're not asking because they're actually curious about it. I was walking across the floor to a board meeting, like I'm focused. I'm going to the board meeting and I'm walking behind one of my reps, Chris, and I hear him say this where he says, actually, you know, it doesn't sound like you have much of a problem. It doesn't sound like it's stressing you out very much right now. I mean. I guess what, what caused you to reach out in the first place? It stopped me in my tracks. I was like that where like, Chris was just legit, like curious. I guess, why are we talking? And so I stood there, I wanted to hear how the conversation went and I had to go in because Chris didn't say another word for the next two minutes. Prospect that was just a perfect example of genuinely curious about the prospect. That would be my end tip here.
Phenomenal. Katie, thank you as always for joining us. Everybody stick around for a 60-second recap coming up soon.
All righty folks, it is time for this 2x2 recap from this episode with Katie. Nick, what do you have for your two? Number one is tonality in your discovery questions is imperative. K. D. talked about what he called tone discongruence, which means if you ask a question, but the tonality of your question doesn't match what you're asking, it dramatically decreases the trust that your prospect has in you. So if I go to Armand, Hey Armand, could you give me some help with something? Armand's like, what the hell is he signing me up for? But if I go to Armand, I'm like, hey, Armand, could you help me out with something? Totally different message. Your tone must match your question. Number two. Is. When you're talking to somebody who doesn't care about the economic impact of a problem, don't try to take the discovery call to the depths of economic impact. If you are talking to a manager of operations, they're probably not really somebody that cares about how the bottom line is impacted. Yes, if you ask them, do you care, of course they're going to say yes, but you shouldn't be trying to sell to the depths with them. Save that for when you get to someone who actually cares about the company's balance sheet. Number three, there are three levels of questions Katie is asking to determine problems. The first is, what is the problem? Through a bucket question. Is it deliverability, this or that? Second, what does this problem cause for you? And then third, how can we quantify the impact of that problem? How much time, how much money, etc. And then lastly, number four, the most common way that KD asks these questions is not with leading questions, but with questions with leads. So don't just ask, what does this problem cause for you? Ask, so what does this problem cause for you? Is it, is it this, is it this, or that? And give them a couple of options with leads, so that they can easily snap on to an answer, and that establishes you as an advisor, as well as making it easier for your question to be answered.
All righty, Nick, how could people help us out here?
All right, this is when I have to sell next steps, right? So the next step for you, listener, We didn't get into this episode on selling the better future, but next week, that is what we're going to be covering with KD. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss that episode, you may want to follow or subscribe to the 30 minutes to presidents club podcast. So you get notified right when that episode comes out. And you make sure you are able to learn from KD. So follow or subscribe to 30 minutes to president's club, and we will see you next week on the show immediately when it gets released, because you have subscribed. Thanks for listening.