Podcast episode
Removing the friction from your sales cycle (Todd Caponi, Sales Melon)
30 Minutes to President's Club10 Mar 202128 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 Four Actionable Takeaways: Remove all the bs from the journey Get price out early, and use it to disqualify Acknowledge your competitors’ strengths + highlight where your features match needs Keep negotiation simple by anchoring pricing and trading value for dollars Todd’s Path to President’s Club: Founder of Sales Melon Author of The Transparency Sale Former sales leader @ ExactTarge/SalesForce Former VP of Worldwide Sales & Field Operations @ SAP RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
One example that I know we're going to dig into is, as a CRO in my last role, I was getting 100 to 150 emails a day. I was in 30 to 35 meetings per week. To get through 100 to 150 emails, I could get through them pretty fast, but just imagine video. We're all of a sudden using video to prospect. “Just imagine I've got 20 three-minute videos in those 100 to 150.” Do you think I'm going to spend an hour going through them? We need to understand and get into the shoes of the executives and figure out where the best place is to use those and not ruin them by making them generic, because it's not going to be long now that your executives are going to stop reading or watching videos altogether.
And it's going to make a huge impact almost instantly. All right, Todd, this has been phenomenal. We've got one last question for you. What's one belief or piece of sales dogma that exists out there that you think needs to be scooped up, picked up and dumped into the trash can? Because it's wrong. “it takes 18 touches when you're prospecting” get an executive to engage. Now there's some people that would look at that and go, damn it, I'm stopping at 10. I got to add eight. I'm like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Like why is it taking, why are they rejecting the first 17? That's the question you should be asking yourself, right? There's a reason that it's taking 18.
get an executive to engage. Now there's some people that would look at that and go, damn it, I'm stopping at 10. I got to add eight. I'm like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Like why is it taking, why are they rejecting the first 17? That's the question you should be asking yourself, right? “There's a reason that it's taking 18.” It's because your content and your outreach strategy sucks. I see it in the numbers that we looked at from a pipeline load perspective where I used to think, you know what, a rep at all times needs to have 4x their quota and pipeline at any time, right?
get an executive to engage. Now there's some people that would look at that and go, damn it, I'm stopping at 10. I got to add eight. I'm like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Like why is it taking, why are they rejecting the first 17? That's the question you should be asking yourself, right? “There's a reason that it's taking 18.” It's because your content and your outreach strategy sucks. I see it in the numbers that we looked at from a pipeline load perspective where I used to think, you know what, a rep at all times needs to have 4x their quota and pipeline at any time, right?
at any time, right? And just like you always got a 4x, guess what that would cause the reps to do? Get 4x, which means 75% of their stuff in their pipelines, crap, right? But we forced them to do that. You don't need 18 touches if your content's great. “You don't need 4x your pipeline if your deals are great, right?” There's an opportunity to think differently. And that's one thing that I'm trying to get people to realize. This has been one heck of an interview. We really appreciate your time. Is there anything that you want to plug before we jump off here? Now guys, I just, it was a blast being on here. If anybody wants to reach out, I, my goal is always the outcome.
Yes, you should do some disco before demo or sharing pricing, but you do not have to rake your customers over coals. Chances are they're probably going to need to get out of your way anyway, if they're the type of customer wants to say software or wants to get pricing in the first five minutes. So just get it out of the way. Number two, at that point, you don't need to hide price. You can get it out early. “In fact, you can use it to disqualify early on and then focus on the stuff that actually” matters. Number three, when they're asking about your competitors, do not hide, do not badmouth. Tell them all the reasons your competitors are great and then focus on the things that they care about, which is where you win. And then number four, negotiation does not have to be so overcomplicated folks. It's very simple.