How To Actually Challenge Customers | John Barrows | 30MPC Hall of Fame

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1. 11:15

   the first place. You've gotten the painful stories in the first place. So can you talk about what that process looks like before you start assigning the decision criteria to those priorities? Yeah, you're right. It definitely comes in towards the latter part of a discovery call, right? Because I've done the discovery up to date to find out what the pain is “and is it really a problem worth fixing at this point? And other initiatives that they're dealing” with, which by the way, sidebar is another thing that most reps don't ask. Small nugget here is just make sure you understand all the other initiatives that are going on in the business right now and where this one lines up as far as priority is concerned. Because this might sound interesting, but they might have five other priorities that they need to address. And therefore you're going to be touching base and checking in forever. So I think a lot of this

   In Problem and impact discovery

2. 12:51

   anybody right now. I actually think tell me about your business is one of the most insulting things you could say to somebody. I mean, think about the money people spend on SEO and marketing and everything to tell the world about their business and that you're going to spend the first 10 minutes of a conversation with me on that one. So my point is that there's a checklist I go through to prepare for every meeting. I go on their website. I see what they do. I look at “their LinkedIn profiles. I come up with some theories about what's going on in their industry” and what's going on in their business. I look at news and events and I have all that information. So I'm not saying tell me about your business or tell me about your priorities. I'm saying, hey, you know what, Nick, we're working a lot of other VPs right now in the SaaS industry and some of the trends that are really impacting them are these and some of the priorities are these.

   In Account research sources

3. 15:39

   of shit and that type of stuff. But what they didn't realize or what they didn't pay attention to was after he said no, those are not my priorities, he went on for five minutes about what the trends were that were impacting and how it was challenging. It's not that I knew the perfect answer, it's that guy just gave me five minutes of gold that I could now tie “into and so it's really just more about knowing enough to be curious. And when you do that,” you build credibility, you bring value because you're saying hey, this is what I'm seeing out there based on what everybody else is doing, are you seeing the same stuff? And you're helping them learn, and then you might be able to ask questions to get them to think. I ask very thoughtful questions, I always have a reason for my question, which is another tip out there for everybody. If you ever wonder if you have a good question or not, assume

   In Discovery question design

4. 15:58

   into and so it's really just more about knowing enough to be curious. And when you do that, you build credibility, you bring value because you're saying hey, this is what I'm seeing out there based on what everybody else is doing, are you seeing the same stuff? And you're helping them learn, and then you might be able to ask questions to get them to think. “I ask very thoughtful questions, I always have a reason for my question, which is another” tip out there for everybody. If you ever wonder if you have a good question or not, assume that the person asking you the question is going to say why do you need to know that? And if you don't have a good answer, don't ask the stupid question. So when you say hey, for instance, hey Armand, I was wondering who else you're talking to, who's the competition

   In Discovery question design

5. 16:06

   you build credibility, you bring value because you're saying hey, this is what I'm seeing out there based on what everybody else is doing, are you seeing the same stuff? And you're helping them learn, and then you might be able to ask questions to get them to think. I ask very thoughtful questions, I always have a reason for my question, which is another tip out there for everybody. If you ever wonder if you have a good question or not, assume “that the person asking you the question is going to say why do you need to know that?” And if you don't have a good answer, don't ask the stupid question. So when you say hey, for instance, hey Armand, I was wondering who else you're talking to, who's the competition effectively? And look, the reason I ask is because if you're talking to X, Y, and Z, apples to apples, pretty easy, but if you're talking to A, C, and Y, apples to oranges to lemons, and you're going to have a hard time making this decision, that's why I'm

   In Discovery question design

6. 23:59

   should do it fluidly throughout the old thing so when people are bringing up certain things throughout the conversation I'm like oh it's interesting actually you know what let me show you something real quick here here's the part of art here's how I do that what you do is you kind of show them the piece that is most relevant to what they said that they were interested in and then you pause and you say hey could you explain to me how that “compares to what you're doing now or could you explain to me how that fits” into your existing workflow because the way that you explain to me how it compares to what you're doing now or how it fits into your existing workflow tells me everything I need to know whether or not it made sense and so I'm kind of doing that ebbing and flowing and showing like a piece of it and going from there because the problem that most revs do is they discover which usually

   In Needs and requirements discovery

7. 28:41

   And so reps going through the motions, like if you're trying to automate all this stuff because it's so cool and it's better than what you've been doing, it's a race to the bottom and you're going to be automated out of a job. Fine. Let AI do all the heavy lifting on all this shit. But before you “hit send, before you have that conversation, you better make sure you humanize this and you better” make sure you learn from it and then use it, not just get it to produce something and hit send. It's business acumen on steroids if you use it the right way. But if you try to automate, fuck off. Augment, learn, and be the last mile. Everybody stick around for a 60 second recap

   In Human review of AI outbound

8. 29:38

   this one question, which is what is the one thing that you need to hear from me today to earn the right to get another meeting with you where I will have your undivided attention. Now you can figure out what do you need to do in those five minutes to get a real meeting with that person. Number two “is instead of kicking off your discovery calls by asking the prospect a number of questions,” tell me about your priorities, tell me about your business, what matters most to you right now, lead your meetings with a hypothesis of what you think matters to somebody in that industry, at that company, based on their persona, based upon the projects you even think they're taking.

   In Discovery meeting structure

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