Hall of Fame: Krysten Conner

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1. 4:21

   make time to practice it. There's a number of ways to practice it, but what works for me is writing it down and saying it out loud. So I have a stack here of very ugly, nonconformist staff of probably 25 different things that are either second level discovery questions or points that I want to really be able to make succinctly in calls. “And so I want to practice it just for muscle memory.” And I have time blocked off on my calendar to practice those. Round us out. What's number three? So number three is create systems, right? Create ways to execute the things that are important. So we were talking before about that James Clear quote in Atomic Habits where he says,

   In Roleplay and simulation

2. 8:55

   because this is what I must know coming out of this call with anyone that I'm with. And so the first thing that I want to do, the first part of the framework, is I want to have instant credibility, but I want to be able to then use that credibility to ask them my first question, “which is essentially a version of like, what's your biggest problem or what keeps you up at night, but not in such a cliched way.” So the way that we do that is I typically ask in discovery, again, to establish credibility and then get them talking and say, you know, Armand, typically whenever VPs of sales join these calls, they're kind of facing a couple issues. They have hiring freezes and budget freezes, but their quotas aren't going down.

   In Discovery question design

3. 10:40

   The second thing is you're establishing credibility and their comfort level goes up because you know the issues they're facing. They know they don't have to educate you. So you've earned trust, you've earned credibility, you've reduced the friction, “and they're primed to talk. And the third reason is it gives them room to correct you.” And people love to correct other people. They especially love to correct salespeople. And so you don't have to be 100% accurate. In fact, it's better if you're not. Because when they tell you, well, actually, yeah, I get that based on the market. But really, what we're dealing

   In Question-led cold call openers

4. 10:40

   The second thing is you're establishing credibility and their comfort level goes up because you know the issues they're facing. They know they don't have to educate you. So you've earned trust, you've earned credibility, you've reduced the friction, “and they're primed to talk. And the third reason is it gives them room to correct you.” And people love to correct other people. They especially love to correct salespeople. And so you don't have to be 100% accurate. In fact, it's better if you're not. Because when they tell you, well, actually, yeah, I get that based on the market. But really, what we're dealing

   In Pain-point messaging

5. 11:57

   that have three to eight different personas or departments. So that's the first way. Because if we deal with sales, sales officer, revenue operations, and marketing, and a VP of marketing cares about pipeline differently than a VP of sales, right? Who's really more interested in “So I have to know who my audience is from a persona level.” my audience is from a power line level. Skip Miller talks about above the line and below the line. So above the line means like generally director and above, VP and above. Above the line cares about risk. They care about market share. And you heard what I just said to him. They're worried

   In Buyer and user personas

6. 13:58

   and those are the questions, the next ones that are on my little note cards. But so if someone says, oh, you know what, we really need more pipeline. Okay, great. What's prompting that need? Right? We want to have that open, that open question next. We don't want to get happy ears and be like, oh, pipeline, I can help you solve that. And then immediately start talking “We want to ask what prompted that need” be facing a pipeline problem. And if I don't know what three or four of those are, I can then really botch the rest of the call and the demo because I'll be talking about things that aren't relevant to them. And so what's key here, folks, is a lot of times people start with open ended

   In Discovery question design

7. 16:52

   But until you know the underlying causes of why that is indeed an issue, you are not able to eloquently and strategically sell. You have to know all of the nitty gritty details behind what is prompting that need in order to actually articulate, hey, here is why we are best suited “So you actually have to show a little restraint where you don't jump on things right” away. I actually want to talk about sort of timing and pacing sort of related to that restraint, because one of the things that you talked about, you made this LinkedIn post where you talked about the matching urgency with the buyer. And you talked about there's, I don't know, a couple different sort of timings or cadences that the customer will have related to wanting to make a

   In Needs and requirements discovery

8. 25:18

   I put them in a nurture sequence just to follow up giving them value-add kind of thought leadership every once in a while. And he just responded out of the blue and he says, basically like, hey, the tool's great, but too expensive. Your best bet is to give me your bottom price and we'll just see if it works. And I was like, well, okay. “So then the next thing I want to find out if price is the issue, is that the only issue,” right? Like, do you love us? You just can't swing the price. And so I asked that and he was like, no, there are other tools that would work. Just give me your bottom price. And I was kind of stunned by that level of, I don't often hear it put that bluntly, even if that's what they mean. So I worked with my team, kind of came up, my colleague, Caroline came up with this beautiful

   In Objection diagnosis and probing

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