Podcast episode
Triangulating the truth to forecast better and drive timelines (Devin Reed, Head of Content Strategy @ Gong)
30 Minutes to President's Club23 Jun 202129 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 Four Actionable Takeaways: * Understand every step it will take to get a deal done so you can move from a soft yes to commit. * Ask multiple people how the buying process goes so you can better triangulate the truth. * Get ahead of objections by figuring out what has gone right and wrong in past deals. * Beat procurement with multiple champions and multi-threading your negotiations. ====================== Devin’s Path to President’s Club: * Head of Content Strategy @ Gong * B2B Marketing & Sales advisor @ TheReeder.co RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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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
Oftentimes we hear, oh, you just got to talk to me. I'm going to get the deal done. Two weeks later, it's the end of the month. For whatever reason, the deal doesn't happen. So what are some of the common pitfalls that will sink your deal that we can start to ask some of our prospects about? For sure. So I think the one which is like, “Is ask how they bought previous pieces of technology.” It's like, all right, cool. I'm on. Totally. I'm with you, man. I know you're my champion. Hey, last time you bought Outreach, how did that process look? Who else did you ask for input? Don't say who else was involved because that's the old like, oh, you're trying to get to Nick, my boss or whatever. Ask whose input you asked for, which means they're running point guard. And they're deciding who's involved and who
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
employees. And I don't know where they're located, but I'm pretty sure, well, Google might be in my backyard. But you get the idea. I don't identify with any of the companies that you just mentioned. And the whole point of social proof is to create a tribe, a community, a group, 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. We're just not the biggest. 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.
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
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. We're just not the biggest. 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 when I feel understood. And two, you have experience with companies just like me solving
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 when I feel understood. And two, you have experience with companies just like me solving “what I want. Now your social proof is effective.” before we jump off here? Yeah. I've got a new newsletter. It's called the Content Strategy Reader. Free content every Saturday, all about content creation. And if you want, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Talk about sales, talk about content. And I also publish Gong Labs, which is Gong's data-backed sales research blog series. Everybody go follow.