Hall of Fame: Michelle Cecil

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1. 6:04

   As with everything we pitch or position as salespeople, it almost always comes down to what's been important to Jen, what's been most important to Jen, and how we can align our resources internally at our company to what Jen's needs are. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, it's confirming, do we have a fit to “solve the top priority problems that Jen has at her business?” And so to answer that question, you usually need a committee of people or commitment to collaborate and look into potential solutions that our vendor can offer. So for Jen, if I'm speaking with her and she's wanting probably help understanding how to evaluate something, what I would say is, hey, listen, I would love to come to your

   In Problem and use-case fit

2. 10:51

   your buyer or your champion? I think the first thing is having clarity of mind about what the value is for your buyer to do a meeting like this. So I think starting there, starting from having a customer centric mindset about why it would benefit them to do it is really helpful. “And actually being able to verbalize that, that goes into the prep as well.” If you're able to verbalize really succinctly for your technical solutions engineer, that's coming to the meeting, your manager, your CS person, that's going to be really valuable. That thesis statement about why the customer is doing this or the prospect or the buyer is doing this. Can you give an example of what that might sound like?

   In Pre-meeting value setting

3. 22:08

   I'm going to say, Jen, you said it was one of your top priorities to understand how our change order tool works. Before we get into this tool, can you give me a refresh on how are you managing change now? What's your change order process look like today? And what's wrong with it? Why isn't that working? And then we can get into our tool. “So it gives me an opportunity to sprinkle in intentional discovery during the actual meeting because of that pre-work and the intros.” I cannot let you ask a question, Nick, before saying how much I love that. You think about a six hour meeting, right? I'm sure we've all sat in boring six hour meetings where you just slowly fade into like, I don't care anymore. What a great way to keep your audience engaged and to just absolutely demonstrate that you are active listening,

   In Pre-event outreach

4. 29:42

   in it about, here's what we talked about. And I keep it simple. It doesn't need to be some long, crazy, people aren't going to be impressed by a long email. They're just going to not read it. So it doesn't have to be long, but I send bullet points. Here's what we covered. Here's what we talked about. Here's our outstanding items. “Here's our next steps and try to make it really organized so I can project manage it.” And then I call as many people as I can and thank them for their time and ask them what they thought. And that is the most valuable thing I think we can do after that meeting is call everybody, every single person, no matter who they are. If they don't answer, it's fine. Leave a voicemail, tell them, I just want to say thank you for your time yesterday.

   In Co-selling opportunity management

5. 32:47

   Do this and I promise you will make more money. Number two, the number one multi-threading approach post-meeting. Shocker. Pick up the phone and call as many people as you can who you met at that meeting. First, thank them for their time. And then two, ask them for some feedback. “This will lead to great discovery and next steps,” and it will help you develop relationships all across the account. Today's show is brought to you by Responsive, which helps sales teams respond to RFPs, security questionnaires, and buyer requests faster so deals don't die at the last mile. One great way to drive your deals faster is to run parallel processes instead of linear processes.

   In Post-event follow-up

6. 33:59

   This is what Pipedrive does. If you want to get clear, complete sales visibility, you can use Pipedrive's easy to use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows. We actually put together an entire resource hub with Pipedrive to help you get to President's Club, and you can get them for free in the 30 MPC Pipedrive closures hub. The link is in the show notes. “Number three, when you make the suggestion to your champion to bring folks together for an” on-site meeting, be very prescriptive around what's in it for them, but use Michelle's tip to close with it surfaces skepticism, any concerns so that you're not forcing a next step down their throat. And number four, use a pre-meeting survey to ask questions about the

   In Pre-meeting value setting

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