Cutting your days to close in half through light speed discovery (Justin Welsh, Founder at JW Strategic Advisory)

Description

Listen

Quoted on this wiki

Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.

1. 1:13

   Since I went out on my own 14 months ago, I'm on a ton of sales calls, and discovery is a weak point for most salespeople, and they miss a lot of nuance that they can use inside of the sales call. So I'll give you a quick example. For me, it's all about understanding technical pain. So when you hear someone say something that's a technical challenge, that is the cue to “begin digging in.” So that's L1, technical pain. L2 is really the historical pain or gain where it's like, okay, interesting. What have you done in the past to try and address that challenge? How did it work? Why did it work? If it didn't, why not? You're starting to peel the onion back a little bit more. The next level is financial pain and gain, right?

   In Problem and impact discovery

2. 1:41

   How did it work? Why did it work? If it didn't, why not? You're starting to peel the onion back a little bit more. The next level is financial pain and gain, right? So trying to understand if we could eliminate that challenge, what does that mean for your business in terms of revenue? Or if we can install something new because we recognize there's opportunity cost for “not doing something, what might that mean revenue-wise for you or your business?” That's sort of the next L3. And then L4 is really personal pain or gain. So it's really trying to understand how high of a priority it is for that very specific person that you're talking to. There might be multiple call points in an account. How urgent or how high of a priority is it to that specific person? And they'll generally give you one of three answers.

   In Cost of inaction

3. 2:13

   person that you're talking to. There might be multiple call points in an account. How urgent or how high of a priority is it to that specific person? And they'll generally give you one of three answers. They want to move right away. And if they want to move right away, you want to understand, is there anything that might get in their way and change that priority? They might say it's a specific date in the future. “And if so, you want to dig in and understand why that date's important.” Or they might be completely nonspecific. And in that case, it gives you an opportunity to really understand, is it truly urgent and is it truly a priority for them? So that's sort of one thing that I see people miss a lot. So that would be tip number one. Oh, man, we could have a whole show based on that. Let's get number two, Justin. Sure.

   In Deferred-prospect follow-up

4. 2:16

   How urgent or how high of a priority is it to that specific person? And they'll generally give you one of three answers. They want to move right away. And if they want to move right away, you want to understand, is there anything that might get in their way and change that priority? They might say it's a specific date in the future. And if so, you want to dig in and understand why that date's important. “Or they might be completely nonspecific.” And in that case, it gives you an opportunity to really understand, is it truly urgent and is it truly a priority for them? So that's sort of one thing that I see people miss a lot. So that would be tip number one. Oh, man, we could have a whole show based on that. Let's get number two, Justin. Sure. Tip number two is really just using an upfront contract to shorten the sale.

   In Ambiguous reply handling

5. 2:22

   They want to move right away. And if they want to move right away, you want to understand, is there anything that might get in their way and change that priority? They might say it's a specific date in the future. And if so, you want to dig in and understand why that date's important. Or they might be completely nonspecific. And in that case, it gives you an opportunity to really understand, is it truly urgent and “is it truly a priority for them?” So that's sort of one thing that I see people miss a lot. So that would be tip number one. Oh, man, we could have a whole show based on that. Let's get number two, Justin. Sure. Tip number two is really just using an upfront contract to shorten the sale. And this is probably the thing I spend the most time when I'm coaching reps is just almost their unwillingness to use it.

   In Objection diagnosis and probing

6. 2:52

   Sure. Tip number two is really just using an upfront contract to shorten the sale. And this is probably the thing I spend the most time when I'm coaching reps is just almost their unwillingness to use it. And for me, the speed or velocity of SMB SaaS, which I come from, is all about getting next steps. And you don't get next steps at the end of a sales call. “You get next steps in the beginning of a sales call.” That is the whole purpose. So generally, I would say something like, hey, by the end of this call, I'd like you to be in a position where you're either interested and we plan a logical next step like a second meeting or you're completely not interested. You tell me that candidly and we avoid wasting each other's time. Is that fair?

   In Discovery and qualification

7. 3:29

   Is that fair? Most of the time, educated buyers, even uneducated buyers will say, yeah, I don't want to waste your time and I don't want you to waste mine. You've got an agreement for some sort of next step at the end of the call, and then you revisit the upfront contract at the end of the call. You hold them accountable to it. If it's a no, you let them go. If it's a yes, great. “We agree to a next step.” Let's get that. Awesome. What's the last one, Justin? Round us out. Yeah. The last one is one that I've recently really started getting more used to, especially through some of the guys on LinkedIn, like Josh Braun, who talk about it a lot, which is using mirroring to really unpack true objections.

   In Replies and meetings

8. 4:04

   to really unpack true objections. And mirroring, I believe, is from that Chris Voss book, Never Split the Difference. And it's really just sort of spitting back to them the last thing that you heard, raising the tone of your voice a little bit to formulate it as a question. So if someone would say like, hey, Justin, I don't think that that pricing is going to “that pricing isn't going to work for you.” And then you just be quiet. Because most of the time, it's human nature to try and add additional context to what you meant. And what you're hoping to do is really uncover some additional information that you can use to overcome the objection, or make sure that you actually have true clarity around what the real objection is.

   In Price and budget objections

9. 5:38

   it and by the time you're done, you're supposed to have gone through a bunch of different emotions that make you want to purchase something. That's the whole point of long form copy. So I translated it into a sales methodology called pastor, and here's what it stands for. P is pain. So you uncover pain or you plant pain, right? If they don't know they have “you ask enough questions to where you believe you can plant pain.” like trickery and it can be in SMB SaaS. The next thing is A, which is amplification. This is the speed part, right? You got to amplify it. You got to make it existential. You got to really make them feeling dreadful, right? If they don't make a change, there should be a significant negative future. They should be thinking about this negative future. Once

   In Discovery and qualification

10. 5:57

    pain, you ask enough questions to where you believe you can plant pain. That might sound like trickery and it can be in SMB SaaS. The next thing is A, which is amplification. This is the speed part, right? You got to amplify it. You got to make it existential. You got to really make them feeling dreadful, right? If they don't make a change, there should “be a significant negative future.” you've done that, that's the huge tactic for really moving the deal quickly. And then it's onto S, which is telling a story. How do you actually solve that dreadful pain? T is transformation. Let me show you somebody else who was just like you that went through my story and came off the other end as transformed. O is offer. Here's the packages that we have. You make

    In Cost-of-inaction messaging

11. 15:54

    start looking. And so do you have a perspective or a philosophy on how you suss out competition? And then if you proactively mention it at all? So I would often just ask like, Hey, sounds like marketing your practice is top of mind for you right now. I can't imagine that we're the “Who else are you guys looking at? I'd love to learn more.” Like, again, like most of the time, if you've established expertise, they will share that with you. You have to earn that, right? I think if you're a really bad salesperson and you're going through a really poor demo and you're like, tell me who else you guys are looking at. They're like, ah, no, that's all right. But if I just gave a 45 minute and

    In Buying process discovery

12. 21:18

    and context around what they just said. Sure. Rule of two can be used as a replacement for mirroring. There's so many different objection techniques that you can use. I've always liked rule of two. I'll kind of give you an example. Someone says like, oh, this is too expensive. And you say, hey, I get it. Usually when I hear it's too expensive, it's that they're actually not ready to make a “they've been burned in the past.” And so they're sort of hesitant to pull the trigger. And they might be like, actually, it's neither of those things. We're doing a Salesforce installation. And right now that's top priority for us. And it's like, oh, OK, cool. It's really good that I just figured that out because now I can push this deal, you know, it's closed date a month down and not irritate my manager by saying it's going to come in on Monday. And so that's just sort of like an example of rule of two.

    In Price and budget objections

13. 22:17

    Maybe they try to use the rule of two somewhere. And it all just ends up becoming a really inorganic conversation. And so how do you think about documenting your plays as a new rep and figuring out like what questions I should be asking where are you using scripts? Are you using general buckets? Like how do we actually learn how to do proper discovery? “We start with scripts.” Right. I'm actually a fan of scripts. And people are like, oh, it takes away the creativity. It's like, cool. Get as creative as hell once you're awesome at this. Right. Like more power to you. But in the beginning, like everyone needs to understand the process. And so for me, like I always built a deck that you could literally read and hopefully make a sale. Right.

    In New-rep onboarding