Podcast episode
How to Eliminate the 'No Decision' Risk and Close More Deals (Brian LaManna, Gong)
30 Minutes to President's Club17 Sept 202436 min
Description
FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS Multi Single-Threading: After a big team meeting, send individual follow-up messages to key stakeholders. This helps build relationships without asking for anything, creating future points of contact. Daily Pipeline Review: Every day, look at your deals and think of specific actions to increase your chances of winning, maintaining daily momentum across opportunities. Win One Stakeholder at a Time: Focus on winning over stakeholders one by one at different stages—manager during discovery, director during the demo, and VP at the big team meeting. Structured Sales Cycle: Brian’s sales process follows a clear path: discovery, demo, big team demo, pilot, and finally commercial negotiation. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB Senior Mid-Market Account Executive @ Gong Mid-Market Account Executive @ Gong Commercial Account Executive @ Gong Senior Commercial Account Executive @ Gong Enterprise Account Executive @ BrightEdge RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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It's usually around 30 minutes where I'm going to start to learn a little bit about their business, share a little bit about Gong, and maybe show them one screen within platform. The second stage is going to be a demo, typically with that same stakeholder. And then from there, I'm starting to get wider and asking my main point of contact “who else needs to be involved in that cycle, even making recommendations on who would typically be involved in a sales cycle” based on folks that evaluate Gong. So typically around the third or fourth step in the sales process. I actually want to go back to step two in the sales cycle where you're doing a discovery call and then you're doing a one-to-one demo with that same stakeholder. And I assume that you have the right champion.
Well, it's really smart when you introduce that ask for power up front in the beginning, because what you're not doing is, in the last three minutes of the meeting, being like, by the way, we need to get this in front of Jim now, and the customer's like, wait, what, huh? “When you introduce it up front, and assuming they agree with it, now they have the entire” meeting, and they know at the end you're going to ask for the introduction to their boss. And what they're going to do is, they're actually going to scrutinize your solution a little bit more, they're going to pay a little more attention, they're going to ask more questions, because they know at the end you're going to make that ask to get to power. But then also, when you, in that up front contract, say, hey, we probably need to get
because what you're not doing is, in the last three minutes of the meeting, being like, by the way, we need to get this in front of Jim now, and the customer's like, wait, what, huh? When you introduce it up front, and assuming they agree with it, now they have the entire meeting, and they know at the end you're going to ask for the introduction to their boss. “And what they're going to do is, they're actually going to scrutinize your solution a little bit” more, they're going to pay a little more attention, they're going to ask more questions, because they know at the end you're going to make that ask to get to power. But then also, when you, in that up front contract, say, hey, we probably need to get this in front of Jim next, if they strongly disagree with that, well, now you have an opportunity to talk with them about that, and it's not a surprise anymore, and you can actually
by the way, we need to get this in front of Jim now, and the customer's like, wait, what, huh? When you introduce it up front, and assuming they agree with it, now they have the entire meeting, and they know at the end you're going to ask for the introduction to their boss. And what they're going to do is, they're actually going to scrutinize your solution a little bit “more, they're going to pay a little more attention, they're going to ask more questions,” because they know at the end you're going to make that ask to get to power. But then also, when you, in that up front contract, say, hey, we probably need to get this in front of Jim next, if they strongly disagree with that, well, now you have an opportunity to talk with them about that, and it's not a surprise anymore, and you can actually
sure you could, but you would have to be so bought in and you would have to trust that sales rep. You'd have to know that they're the ultimate professional. You'd have to feel like, man, this solution would really help us to be able to want to put your equity on the line. I think about it the same way for my prospects. Like, they can always get you to power, “but it's on you to showcase that you're prepared. You're asking good discovery questions. You're” truly hitting all of their needs and their requirements. So it's really about that process from start to finish of pre-call prep, upfront contract, nailing the demo discovery call, and then making that prescription strong at the end. And if you've done everything right up until that point, you'll get that result you want more times than not.
let's say, for example, you're meeting with the director of mid-market sales and they're like, sure, we can have our VP, but also director of SMB, director of enterprise, director of strategic, director of international. We got to win all of these other departmental leads on board. How do you prevent yourself from doing that super wide big team presentation? “Yeah. At that point, I'd probably want to run more discovery and start with more of the end in mind” of like, where are we trying to get to? So with Gong, we'll oftentimes run pilots or proof of concepts as a really great way to How to Eliminate the No Decision Risk and Close More Deals