Identifying decision-makers early (Brandon Sedloff, SVP of Sales @ Juniper Square)

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1. 12:05

   stuff to make sure that's going to happen. You're going to give me information, I'm going to share some stuff with you. We're going to go back and forth. Once we do that, we then need to make sure that you have the right things that you need in order to get this done. Do you have the right resources? If it's a technical implementation, do you have the right budget? And so, there's “a process for that. And you're going to ask them, what is that process? And you're going to ask them” upfront. And if they don't really know and they can't give you specifics of who they need to go to, how long that takes, what any hurdles are, then that's a little yellow flag for you that you need to dig in there because there is no predefined process. And that's a lot of the area

   In Buying process discovery

2. 16:14

   And what you find is usually the request for a client reference gets deprioritized relative to other things, but will always come back up when you get close to an actual decision. The other thing that you can do is if you work for a company that has the benefit of having case studies or other things that are available off the shelf, you can always insert those in. You could drop a link. “You could refer them to there and ask them, is this the type of client reference you're looking for?” And if it's not, and they say, no, I want to talk to somebody on the phone. Great. Who do you want to talk to? Both client type, persona. Do you want to talk to the CFO? Do you want to talk to the implementation team? Do you want to talk to the end users? Who do you want to talk to? What are the specific things you want to know? Do you want to know, do they like us? Are we reputable? Do you want to know how the product integrates with another product? What do you want to know?

   In Proof relevance and matching

3. 16:18

   The other thing that you can do is if you work for a company that has the benefit of having case studies or other things that are available off the shelf, you can always insert those in. You could drop a link. You could refer them to there and ask them, is this the type of client reference you're looking for? “And if it's not, and they say, no, I want to talk to somebody on the phone.” Great. Who do you want to talk to? Both client type, persona. Do you want to talk to the CFO? Do you want to talk to the implementation team? Do you want to talk to the end users? Who do you want to talk to? What are the specific things you want to know? Do you want to know, do they like us? Are we reputable? Do you want to know how the product integrates with another product? What do you want to know? And then when is your team available?

   In Customer reference programs

4. 28:11

   you need to rip out. And my guess is Juniper Square is typically not the cheapest. How do you go about creating or stealing budget in a rip and replace type of environment? Yeah, it's a great question. I think that one thing not to do that a lot of reps do and lead with is they disparage their competition. “You should never disparage your competition because you have to remember that eight out” of 10 times, the person that you're trying to convince to change is the person who made the decision to go with said solution. So if you immediately put them on defense, threaten them, make them think that they've made a bad decision or disparage the group that they're working with, you're probably going to end up disqualifying yourself.

   In Existing solution objections

5. 28:26

   their competition. You should never disparage your competition because you have to remember that eight out of 10 times, the person that you're trying to convince to change is the person who made the decision to go with said solution. So if you immediately put them on defense, threaten them, make them think that they've “made a bad decision or disparage the group that they're working with, you're probably” going to end up disqualifying yourself. The second thing that you have to remember, and I'm deliberately answering the question this way because the tactics are fine. Tactics are easy. You can find tactics a lot of places. Everybody has their own shtick, but you have to understand kind of the approach. How is the person on the other end of the conversation thinking about it? And that informs which of the many tactics you use.

   In Incumbent vendor objections

6. 29:51

   And you can do that by referencing peers. I understand that you're on this product. And I wanted to let you know that we recently brought over these two companies in your space from this product. And here's what they told us once they were on board. So it's not about you saying why your product or service is better. It's not about anything else. “It's about, here's what your peers are saying about their change in solution provider and” why it might be relevant to you. Would it make Make sense to talk, right? Again, if you ask a no question, if you follow Josh Braun on LinkedIn, he talks a lot about this. If you ask a no question like, would it be crazy or maybe this was Chris Voss, I don't know. Would it be crazy for me to spend 20 minutes learning a little bit more about your business

   In Proof relevance and matching

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