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

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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. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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 meeting structure

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

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