Say This to Start Discovery Calls with Instant Credibility | Jen Allen-Knuth

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1. 3:46

   So specifically, to give you an example, I think a lot of us who sell into the sales buyer here that our customers or our prospects would like to build more pipeline. But where I would much rather get closer to the problem is hearing what is driving “that need for more pipeline.” Is it more competitors? Is it we're not seeing the conversion rate that we have expected or seen in the past? So I'm looking for problem specificity so that I can mirror that in other customers who bring that same problem statement. Today's show was brought to you by 11X, your all in one digital GTM team handling, creating,

   In Replies and meetings

2. 8:28

   So I sell sales training. There's a million sales trainers that exist out there. When I am preparing for a call, I can't just go in and talk about generating more pipeline and converting more pipeline and selling enterprise deals because that makes me sound like everybody else. Instead, what I have to do is I have to come to that call with some sort of hypothesis “around how a specific problem might be contributing to a larger objective” or hurting, actually, a larger objective. And so in order to do that, I have to understand what is it that this company is solving for their customers because that helps me understand what in turn they are selling to their teams, which in turn gives me ideas around problems that might make it harder to do that.

   In Problem and outcome framing

3. 8:39

   because that makes me sound like everybody else. Instead, what I have to do is I have to come to that call with some sort of hypothesis around how a specific problem might be contributing to a larger objective or hurting, actually, a larger objective. And so in order to do that, I have to understand “what is it that this company is solving for their customers” because that helps me understand what in turn they are selling to their teams, which in turn gives me ideas around problems that might make it harder to do that. The second reason, obviously, I sell to sales buyers and marketing buyers, but even if you're selling to a highly technical, let's say you sell to a CIO,

   In Value proposition

4. 26:35

   Because while I'm sure you help with all types of sales training, my guess is you can't help with every single thing a sales org is working on. So how do you start to like steer them into your winning zone or the things that you can actually help with? So before I ever talk solution, what I want to do is to narrow them in on an underappreciated “problem and then get them to size it.” So like the next step before solution is I might say one of the things we were really surprised to find is that when an organization looked at all this pipeline they've been building, they were still seeing a really low conversion rate. So I'm not sure what your conversion rate is, but one of the things that was an unanticipated competitor was not the ability to build pipeline.

   In Belief-based messaging

5. 27:14

   It was actually the ability to convert it late stage. What's interesting is when you look into that, there's a really common culprit for that, which is something called buyer status quo. Now buyer status quo is my niche, right? Like I sell to companies who say they lose to customers being like, we've got a good enough way. So that's my niche. “So what I want them to do is really size the problem of status quo.” The issue is most companies don't look at their pipeline like that. They look at closed loss deals through budget and timing and not responsive and competitor win. So what I'm asking them to do before I get to solution is I'm giving them a way to size the problem where they're the ones that hit the enter button. When they come in and they say, you know, we're not converting or we're not building enough pipeline.

   In Cost-of-inaction messaging