Podcast episode
How I Went From Flat Broke to Closing 7-figure Deals | Johnny Larson
30 Minutes to President's Club10 Dec 202438 min
Description
ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS Ask for Competitor Proposals: If a prospect cites competitor pricing, request their proposal to directly compare offerings and address discrepancies. Rank Negotiation Priorities: When prospects negotiate on multiple factors, ask them to prioritize what matters most, then focus concessions on top-ranked items. Meet Two Key Pricing Criteria: Share pricing only when the prospect acknowledges your solution addresses a critical pain and they influence or approve purchasing decisions. Create a Cost for Discounts: When asked for a discount, request the prospect to identify features or services they are willing to remove, framing concessions as a trade-off. JOHNNY'S PATH TO PRESIDENTS CLUB Commercial Account Executive @ Talkdesk Enterprise Sales Development Manager @Talkdesk Team Lead, Enterprise Sales Development @ Mimeo Enterprise SDR @ Mimeo RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal How to finish a negotiation in one cut 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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you're relevant on that call as it pertains to the person who's going to green light it and the person who's going to sign it. And if you have nothing to do with either of those two functions, I don't want you on my pricing call. So all these different people might want a piece, but at the end of the day, when it comes to the pricing review and it comes to contract negotiations, I only want to deal “with the person who's going to green light it and the person who's going to sign it.” How do you reconcile that with oftentimes what will happen is a very junior person will be sent out as the scout to go click request a demo on six different companies' websites. And then you get on with a IT manager who's like, yeah, I was told to go look at some software.
Furthermore, with typical accounts that are in your industry, they might require a certain degree of vendor due diligence. So I need to know up the chain, who's going to be involved in overseeing that due diligence information, who's going to be involved in this decision-making process. Because before we can transition to a demo or even review pricing, this is standard operating procedure for my team. “We need to identify these items before we can proceed with next steps.” So how can you help me get that information so I can get you on the demo? Let's say it's not a junior person. It's a champion. So a director level person, and then champion introduces you to power. You've won over the champion, you've won over power. Now it's time to go through pricing.
I put my foot down and say, listen, we're obviously not being made whole here, either party. Why don't we either revisit this next Tuesday? My schedule's open. I'll send you an invite right now. Confirm that you got it. Let's take the weekend to kind of take a deep breath. Let's revisit things next week. Or what I'll ask them, I'll blindly ask them, “send me the other proposal you got.” friends that work there. I see their proposals almost weekly. I know what they can and cannot get away with from a pricing perspective. So I can either ask them for the pricing or I can ask you for the pricing. So which do you prefer? And so when I get that pricing and I can do apples to apples, maybe our context and our licenses are off slightly. Maybe their
is the totality of the licenses and the products that accumulate to $2 million versus making sure that you're supported every step of the way. You get that white glove experience through professional services and the deployment is successful knowing how much this product and this part of your business directly correlates “to your organization's bottom line and your revenue and your customer support model.” Is there an opportunity to scale back a little bit on the $2 million from the licenses and the products? Can we revisit this? Because the $1 million in professional services, everything you have in scope, this is what it's going to take to be successful. Bottom line, period, end of story. And if we try to reduce that and we provide you with half-assed support through deployment
TalkDesk does very well. I'm very happy to be at TalkDesk, rep them well, but let's say I'm at a sales organization that's right on the cusp of hitting their yearly number or not. If we take this from three mil down to 2.2 or 2.3, if that brings us over the line or we lose this deal, get the thing done. Wrap it up. We called at three. “If it's 2.2 and we hit our yearly target, everybody gets paid, the customer's happy,” send it out. Here's the pricing approved, send it out. So I think a lot of times the context of the situation, the scenario, the logo, the time of the year, how's your frontline leader doing? How's your REIT RVP doing? Where's the organization to their yearly plan or their first half or second half plan?
Number three, in order to show price in a sales call, your prospect needs to have two things. Number one, they need to admit that your solution is going to remedy a pain that will impact the business. And then number two, the prospect is actually relevant to the final “signature or influencing the ultimate buying decision.” trying to sell a $3 million deal and you get asked for a discount down to $2 million, number one, life isn't that bad. And then number two, you need to isolate the ask and create a cost to the negotiation. In other words, don't just meet them in the middle at 2.5. Ask them which of these