Podcast episode
Amplifying authenticity to soft close across the sales cycle (JC Pollard, Mid-Market Account Executive @ Gong)
30 Minutes to President's Club2 Aug 202334 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 But wait, there's even more Gong x 30MPC at our Master Class Series :) FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS Use the 3x3 after your opener: “I noticed this, this, and this about you…how familiar are you with what we do?” Be outrageously authentic. Example: “I would’ve been fired if I only closed deals with allocated budget.” Set the expectation for three call outcomes upfront. At the end, tell them you think we’re at a 1 (which means buying this now), and ask them to validate that. Use a soft close to skip a pilot. You’re either ready to move now, which gives us commercial flexibility, or need us to invest more time and resources to prove the use case. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB Mid-Market Account Executive @ Gong Enterprise Business Development Representative @ TigerConnect Head of Personal Training @ University of Oregon RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
Show moreShow less
Listen
Loading the recording
This recording could not be loaded.Open the audio file
Quoted on this wiki
Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
end up booking that meeting in the end. I know it's a little annoying, but could I get your permission to get tip number two? I suppose I could give you a second tip. Second thing I want to talk about is recognizing the fact that our buyers have probably not bought us before, but we've sold our stuff a lot of times. “So it's about proactively outlining the buying process throughout the entire sales cycle.” And that shows up in a bunch of different ways like setting strong agendas, making recommendations for next steps, as opposed to leaving it up to your buyer on where they want to take it from there. Quick example of this is at the end of a call saying, Hey, there's typically two ways that buyers who are excited about Gong like to take it from here.
what's actually standing between that no and a yes, so you can expedite the process. All righty, folks, JC has taken us from cold call to close. JC, you're a cold calling machine. So let's take this one from the top. How do you open your cold calls? “I like opening my cold calls in whatever way I feel like on that day, based on my mood.” The key is I want it to feel authentic and I want to have a ton of conviction when I do it. So if I'm a cold calling Nick on a Friday, it might be like, Nick, happy Friday. I'm sure the thing you want to do more than anything in the world right now is sit on a cold call. But putting that aside, could I very briefly explain why I'm standing between you and your weekend?
The key is I want it to feel authentic and I want to have a ton of conviction when I do it. So if I'm a cold calling Nick on a Friday, it might be like, Nick, happy Friday. I'm sure the thing you want to do more than anything in the world right now is sit on a cold call. But putting that aside, could I very briefly explain why I'm standing between you and your weekend? “It's like delivering energy and it's standing out and it's sounding authentic.” I would argue that the majority of cold calls fail in that first 30 seconds, you have to
If not, let me know and I'll let you get to your weekend. And notice how I'm already planting the seed that the next step here is setting up a demo. So it's kind of like a soft close in the cold call. Already outlining like where ideally we're taking it from here, as opposed to waiting to the end of the call to ask for time. “And then ideally, they're giving me permission to launch into my actual Gong pitch.” Well, two intentional things that I see that you're doing here. One, you did a callback to what I said earlier, which again, makes it feel human, makes it feel fun. That is important. I think sometimes folks get so rigid with, here's how the call's got to go that they forget to be like, you're supposed to meet your buddy, like, I hope you're going to get something good.
something good. Anyways, can I get 35 seconds? Also, I like that you called out the fact that the intent of this, what I would call a CFO of a law firm, that person had worried that I was about to drag them through a 17 minute discovery call on the cold call. And when you say, hey, the reason I'm calling isn't to take up a ton of your time. “It's to figure out if we should talk.” That changes their perspective from, I got to get this guy off the phone to, okay, I'm going to give them the 35 seconds to figure out if we're going to meet. You're showing that you're going to respect the interruption that you are making right there. So they say, yeah, you got 35 seconds. The clock's ticking. What's the pitch sound like going back to those like three pieces of research you did?
test deals. First of all, is if you don't feel any friction throughout the sales cycle, that's a really alarming thing. If you talk through list price and they don't have any objections, if they don't ask any questions about what a pilot can look at all the site, “that's alarming to me because I'm like, you don't feel that invested in it.” The second thing I'd look for is if you're talking to one person and they're not willing to take you to other people internally, that to me is a huge indication that that deal might not be that real. I need to see that people are willing to go out on a limb and bring in additional stakeholders to our conversation. That gives me confidence they're actually invested in it.
Quotes are verbatim and belong to their publishers. Where a quote has been translated, the original wording is kept below it.