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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It means a lot of different things to a lot of different companies. What I think when I think of casual value selling is as a rep, you've got to be comfortable and adept at kind of calculating ROI or calculating value on the fly. That's kind of like my big tip number two and whatever that means for your business. People sell different products. “Calculating ROI means different things” I sell to construction companies. I sell a project management software to construction companies. So for us, we're constantly calculating the cost of the inefficiencies that they have without Procore and then ideally we're calculating ROI on the fly with them and giving them a rough estimate of where Procore can return for them.
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
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. So I'll start by saying, if I'm expected to show product on this call, and I actually think a lot