Podcast episode
Mutually establishing the buying process by being more direct (Tom Hemmingsen, Head of Mid-Market and Sales Dev @ Thrive)
30 Minutes to President's Club30 Mar 202228 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS Always confirm that you have the right people and processes mapped out. Drive velocity with critical events like renewal date or company initiative. Lean on your manager to ask the hard questions once you get to power. Leverage mutual action plans to hold prospects accountable. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB Head of Mid-Market and Sales Dev @ Thrive Former Senior Director, Commercial Sales @ Five9 RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
Show moreShow less
Listen
Loading the recording
This recording could not be loaded.Open the audio file
Quoted on this wiki
Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
So what I find is actually using that phrase one, mutual fit, will help lower the guard of your prospects to help them understand that you're not just selling them this no matter what, just as much as you're being evaluated on your solution, you're evaluating “them to see if it's a good fit.” So that just creates a great partnership. And then the next one is actually saying the words I like to be direct, speak it into existence. Even if you don't actually feel that comfortable, if you just start saying it, one, you will start to buy.
In Prospecting
first and foremost, take a step back and ask yourself two questions. One, are you working with the right people? And then two, do you have an understanding of what their process is to actually buy? So right before you start spouting off those direct questions, you need to come in with “a game plan that you earn the right to ask those direct questions.” And if it's end of quarter, you actually know that it could be feasible. Okay, so starting with the are you speaking to the right people? I mean, they may not be your champion may not be the person who can actually get legal turned around, get procurement turned around, if it's a smaller company, you know, get it in front of the CEO's desk so they can actually sign.
So outside of those two, I'd say you obviously just want to start with that as early as possible. Because if you start to talk about timelines and their process early on, then that's just going to give you a better understanding. Because what you really want to do is tie it back to what you've already discussed and “have that mutual agreement and partnership throughout the entire prospecting phase.” So you don't want to just say, hey, like you want to always be able to tie back to we've talked about this, you said that you wanted to get things done by this date, here's the people involved. And here's what your buying process is, okay, great. How are we tracking? Now?
The founders are Austin and Ryan, great people, understand sales. And what Accord does is create a really collaborative environment where you can create that mutual action plan together. So outside of however you're doing it, first and foremost, what I would say is before you're asking them and grilling them about what their process is, “you become the vulnerable one and you talk about what your process is.” Okay. So that can also really help more inexperienced buyers as well for you to say, okay, so we've done a discovery call. We've done a demo. We've maybe even talked pricing. Now sales process from there is going to vary based off what solution you're selling, what space you're in enterprise, SMB, mid-market, etc.