Triangulating the truth to forecast better and drive timelines (Devin Reed, Head of Content Strategy @ Gong)

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1. 1:37

   All right, right into it. That's why I like you guys. All right. So first, the best cold call opening line I've ever come up with. You ready for it? Hey, Nick, this is Devin calling with Gong. Did I catch you at a good time? If there is such a thing? All I did was add if there is such a thing. And the reason it's worked is because it calls out “the annoyance of my call, which is, I know there's no such thing as a good time. I'm calling it out.” My goal was a laugh. If I just got a little like, I'll take it. Anything more than that, even better. But their guard was down and I would open it up to a decent cold call. I don't know if I was great at it, but that line worked for me. Hit the tone, hit the pause. It'll work great. Beautiful, Devin. What's your second one? Number two is have a big idea for your

   In Pattern-interrupt cold call openers

2. 1:48

   thing? All I did was add if there is such a thing. And the reason it's worked is because it calls out the annoyance of my call, which is, I know there's no such thing as a good time. I'm calling it out. My goal was a laugh. If I just got a little like, I'll take it. Anything more than that, “even better. But their guard was down and I would open it up to a decent cold call.” I was great at it, but that line worked for me. Hit the tone, hit the pause. It'll work great. Beautiful, Devin. What's your second one? Number two is have a big idea for your C-level meetings. So I think a lot of people try to tell a C-level exec about their business,

   In Cold call openers

3. 3:05

   to learn what a true buying process is. So at Gong, we were kind of like SMB when we're getting started. And then I moved into the mid-market team as we established that. And we started learning the buying process got really complicated. And somebody in sales ops was saying something different than in sales and someone in procurement. And so what I learned was if you're multi-threaded, “ask the same line of questions to everybody that you're talking to.” One of two things is going to happen. One, everyone's singing the same tune. You know that you have the buying process mapped out pretty confidently. Go ahead and run forward towards your deal. Or you'd start to see discrepancies in the answers. And let's say question one, two, and three, everyone's pretty much the same. But then you get to number four and you're getting

   In Multi-threaded prospecting

4. 8:59

   it and go, okay, what would prevent us from you getting gong long-term? And then that's where the objections, potential blockers come in. It's like, oh, we know Steve, you know, he's always involved in tech decisions and he's kind of a hard ass. Awesome. I love hearing that. When was the last time Steve said no and why? When was the last time Steve said yes and why? And then you start to prep “okay, now let's go meet with Steve together.” things you're going to do and things you're going to avoid with Steve or metaphorical Steve here. I want to sort of take this idea of like the full truth, lying thing back to one of the first things that you said in the beginning, which is the triangulation of the truth and how they actually are going to buy. And I guess it's all fine and dandy if Arman tells you the exact same buying

   In Multi-threaded prospecting

5. 18:27

   passes, we get on the call and you tell me that you haven't done it yet, I can hold you accountable. And I can tell you, hey, we can't move on and get this thing. We know this compelling event for you because always make sure it's about the client. We're going to miss that date if we don't get caught up. So hey, is it fair to ask you to get that done by Thursday? And I'll make sure I get “my next line item here done by Thursday as well. Let's meet Friday to make sure that we're aligned” and we know what the next phase is. I guess I'm curious about the compelling event stuff because you sell to sales leaders and I feel like sales, it's always just like, yeah, we got to sell more. We got to sell more. We got to sell more. So I guess I'm curious, what sort of compelling events do you guys use and how do you attach the sale to that? There's a ton. So we're very calendar-focused

   In Discovery next-step agreement

6. 24:05

   and make you feel like you're missing out of that group. And so instead, what you want to do is instead of listing the biggest enterprises, which I get it, you're aiming for credibility. You want to say that we're trusted by the biggest and the best, but that only works if you're selling to the biggest and the best. I'm not in that. I'm just the best. I'm just kidding. “So what you want to do is pick things like geography, industry,” size of company, and the specific problem that they're trying to solve. So for example, if you say, Hey, we work with Outreach, Groove, and other technology companies that are around 500 employees and sell to salespeople who are also trying to solve 123, whatever that is. Now you've created a little group of like, Oh, so you know exactly about me

   In Proof relevance and matching

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