Podcast episode
Why Most Salespeople Fail at Discovery Calls (And How To Fix It) | Mark Nietzel
30 Minutes to President's Club7 Jan 202537 min
Description
ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: Set Multiple Agendas: Before showing a high-level demo, re-establish the agenda. Explain what you'll show, present it, then recap by tying it back to the meeting's outcome. Dangle the Carrot: Identify one problem to address in your demo, then ask for two or three more use cases. Use curiosity to uncover additional discovery points before diving into the demo. Anchor to an Outcome: Start the call by setting a clear decision-oriented goal, such as determining if further evaluation is worth their time. Be Blunt About Goals: In rip-and-replace scenarios, state the stakes directly, like weighing the pain of switching versus the potential benefits. This disarming honesty builds trust. MARK'S PATH TO PRESIDENTS CLUB: Commercial Sales Manager @ Procore Sales Manager, Emerging @ Procore Enterprise Account Executive @ Procore Senior Account Executive, Mid-Market @ Procore RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal Michelle Cecil Episode 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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All right, let's do it. Let's start with number one. My first tip is a crystal clear outcome. So typically when you're doing a purpose agenda outcome to kick off a sales call, which I'm sure you've all gotten coaching about, agenda is important, et cetera, all that jazz. But the outcome I think is really important and what you state is the outcome needs to “be mutually agreed upon with the prospective customer and needs to be clear and succinct” and it needs to be context specific. Every deal is different. I thought of a few examples of context specific outcomes to set that I'll rattle off here. You've got your classic inbound deal. Maybe it's a fast moving deal with a compelling event that wants to buy your product.
they're building highways, they're building roads. The industry knowledge that you have to have in order to have an effective conversation with them is important. So how I would answer your question, Nick, is to say the questions that I'm asking, the quality of my questions, “they are representing my knowledge of the industry. And so I do a lot of social selling.” And so instead of saying, what keeps you up at night? I go, Hey, I talked to a lot of other contractors and these are the top three things that they're suffering from. It's labor productivity. It's not getting paid on change orders. It's paperwork that's being emailed back and forth. And it's not being digitally shared on a mobile app. And so people are losing stuff in translation.
transactional deals and you're doing more outbound selling where you need to earn the rights for these people's time. And so if you begin an outbound call with rattling off a bunch of pain funnel questions without meeting them halfway there, like you said, Armand, these guys are like, well, what the heck? Like you're the one that called me and you're just “drilling me with like 21 questions to begin the call” showing that I understand the industry challenges that you guys run into. I understand the common points. Am I off base with you guys or am I close? That's a lot more working together there as opposed to interrogating you. Well, this is an area that I think a ton of sellers screw things up because they have been so indoctrinated that they have to have a perfect talk to listen
challenges that I posited to them, Hey, these are the top three things I hear from contractors. Are you suffering from the same stuff? And they're like, yeah, we're in the same boat. I probably want to take it one level deeper before I start to prove to them that Procore can actually solve their problems. So I might say, okay, cool. Well, I can think of a million stories “Can you give me an example?” Like, did you lose money on a change order on a job? Did you have rework? Because you were looking at the wrong set of drawing plans. So you poured a bunch of concrete in the wrong area of the job. Can you give me something real? And I'll show you how Procore solves for that during the demo today. I'll actually show you an example of how we fix for that. So I'm looking for something to hang my hat on so that when I actually show the product.
They pick one of those. You're like, all right, let's make it real. Give me an example. And we've talked about this on past episodes where we'll oftentimes ask a magic moment question of, “my guess is you didn't wake up yesterday. When did you actually realize that that was a problem?” And you'll almost always get a painful story in return. Now, one challenge is sellers will just keep interrogating from here. And then eventually the prospect is, can you just tell me what you do or tell me how you're going to help? And so for you, like, how do you start to balance that give and take from this point in the call? I hate to say it depends, but I think it depends on the type of call that I'm on.
They pick one of those. You're like, all right, let's make it real. Give me an example. And we've talked about this on past episodes where we'll oftentimes ask a magic moment question of, my guess is you didn't wake up yesterday. When did you actually realize that that was a problem? “And you'll almost always get a painful story in return.” Now, one challenge is sellers will just keep interrogating from here. And then eventually the prospect is, can you just tell me what you do or tell me how you're going to help? And so for you, like, how do you start to balance that give and take from this point in the call? I hate to say it depends, but I think it depends on the type of call that I'm on.
curious about. So Armand, if you say to me like, hey, thanks for the meeting, learned a lot of good stuff, but we got to get together as a group and think about it. I'd play it cool and say, dude, for sure. Everybody's got to think about it. I'm sure you've got a lot of internal stakeholders that you get to chat with. Just curious, based off the outcome we set at the beginning of this meeting, do you personally think we achieved that? “Or do you feel like there's some questions that are still remaining?” That is really smart. What you're doing is you are anchoring back to the outcome of the meeting is not we're going to set a next step on the books for us to reconnect. The outcome is you are going to make a personal decision as to whether or not you believe this is worth continuing to look at.
What he is doing before showing that demo, however, is, of course, in the beginning of the meeting, setting that purpose agenda outcome. But he is reestablishing that agenda before he gets into that harbor tour. He tells them what he's going to show them, he shows them, and then he tells them what he showed them and anchors back to that outcome. “So don't be afraid to set multiple agendas when you have a meeting that runs in that manner.” Actually, moving backwards for number two, in order to figure out what he's going to show in that agenda, his job in the beginning is to figure out one problem or use case that he could show to the prospect. And then he dangles the carrot and says, hey, I'm going to show you how to solve that problem of you
that you can use to close deals faster. Grab it in the show notes. Number three, going backwards again. At the beginning of your sales call, anchor to an outcome or a decision that you want them to make at the end of the call. It could be as simple as saying, hey, the goal of this call is to figure out whether or not “it's even worth your time to keep evaluating us at Procore.” And lastly, number four, when you are delivering that outcome, do not be afraid to be disarmingly blunt about your role or your interests or the decision they have to make. For example, if you're entering a rip and replace deal, you might literally say, honestly, the goal is to figure out if it's even worth spending two to four times
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