Proven Methods for Coaching AEs to Master Discovery and Close More Deals (Sean Gentry, WebFlow) (Sean Gentry, WebFlow)

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1. 1:36

   All right. First, I've got the CYS. This is the call your shot meeting. So every single Monday morning, I tap one of my reps to tee up. It's a peer-led meeting instead of me just spitting some housekeeping facts about the company. They're going to tap every single one of their peer AEs to call their shot for that week. “So whether it's book two meetings with new prospects, whether it's to find five new outbound accounts, whether it's getting that CFO on that value pricing call on Thursday.” They're calling their shot. We're checking in midweek. And then on our team meeting on Friday, we're getting together to celebrate those incremental wins to stack them up month over month, quarter over quarter to help them improve, get their number. Boom. What's number two? All right. So number two is the PTQ is the path to quota.

   In Outbound goals and targets

2. 2:35

   They've got to commit most likely best case. They understand the risk. And then they shoot for a pipeline goal, whether that's 3.5 or 4X. And then through the month, they're tracking essentially their path to quotas. What do they have closed one? What is their quota? What are they pacing towards? What do they need to create in their pipeline to get back to that 4X number? “And they're keeping track of this every single week so that in our one-on-ones, when we meet, we can make sure are they on pace?” Are they on target? Are they behind? 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 Ramp measurement

3. 9:38

   That's the key right there is the risks are the risks associated with achieving the exit criteria for that stage. So oftentimes managers will actually try to de-risk everything that could happen in a deal in the next four stages. But to your point, if you're in the discovery stage, “do you have a real problem with a real champion?” And most of your questions are around that. But if you're in the multi-threading phase, the questions you're going to be asking are, are you having all the right people involved? Or does power really give a damn about that problem? So all you have to do is just figure out, have a list of common things that blow up deals in this stage.

   In Discovery and qualification

4. 22:37

   And so the reps have a very unique and interesting learning curve because they have to learn menu based discovery for so many different competitive landscapes and competitors out there. But if we know like the core principle of Arman, you admitting that you have a problem and that you “want to find out more to solve it, that's the core principle we try to hang our hat on.” we know that like WordPress, we're going to encounter that more than anybody else, we know based off the current customers that we've sold, why they buy Webflow off WordPress. And I think that's like... I've been talking about this for a long time that I think we need to do better enablement of when you started a company, you talk to either current customers or that's

   In Problem and impact discovery

5. 23:23

   thinks people buy. But if we're talking to current customers and they're saying, hey, I bought because WordPress took me too long to make changes or I had to pay a ton of development resources or another option. My reps can have those three things based off their menu. “They get chosen. And then always coaching from us, you can't stop at the first pain.” You have to understand once they say things are too slow, great. So what? Who is that impacting? Is it impacting you? Is it impacting engineering? Is it impacting your design team? Where does it stop? And then great. It's impacting engineering. So what? And it's digging down deeper

   In Problem and impact discovery

6. 26:21

   for the different places they can just poke a solution in. So Sean, once they actually understand these problems that they're looking for, how did you teach your team? How do you actually roll out this discovery framework to your team? I think it starts with the, any type of coaching has to start with education or awareness. “So it's about teaching them and then showing them and then practicing with them.” And so if, let's say we're rolling out a brand new discovery framework, I'm brand new to this, a new company, right? I think part of it is the awareness, like here is what we should be doing, and I'm going to show you how it works. And then more importantly, it's about the practice of let's actually run through it.

   In Ramp and coaching

7. 31:12

   My second is when you are in one-on-ones with your reps, that is the best time to do role plays to prepare for upcoming meetings rather than doing generic role plays in the big team meeting. So do them with reps one-on-one. “Number three, your framework to evaluate early stage deals is do we know that there's a problem?” Do they know that there's a problem? And are they willing to go on a journey with us to solve it? And then number four, way too often leaders are focused on evaluating the late stage deals. So sort your deals by deal size and start with the biggest deals first in your pipe reviews. Alrighty, Nick, how can people help us out?

   In Qualification frameworks

8. 31:19

   So do them with reps one-on-one. Number three, your framework to evaluate early stage deals is do we know that there's a problem? “Do they know that there's a problem?” And are they willing to go on a journey with us to solve it? And then number four, way too often leaders are focused on evaluating the late stage deals. So sort your deals by deal size and start with the biggest deals first in your pipe reviews. Alrighty, Nick, how can people help us out?

   In Qualification frameworks

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