Challenging your customer to ensure the best mutual fit (Stephen Guerguy, Enterprise Sales Leader @ Monte Carlo)

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1. 18:00

   next month or next quarter, then yeah, you're in a pretty disadvantageous position. And you might not be able to win that deal. So, I like to hit that head on and run towards that one. And so, like, hey, I know that we can only do about 50% of the stuff that you want to do. Does it still make sense to do a POC? Does it still make sense to ask for your time? “I want to be super respectful of your time.” Seems like we're just not there yet. And allow them to either A, stop the eval now and save your time and theirs, because you're not going to win it, or B, they'll actually start selling you on why you are uniquely positioned. Oh, hey, listen, like, it's not a big deal.

   In Disqualification

2. 19:55

   need nine months to run this process. But oftentimes, if it's like, yeah, I'm just kicking tires, trying to figure it out, probably going to make a decision by the end of the year where we're in a code freeze because we're in retail. They'll be like, hey, totally makes sense. Honestly, like, as a company, we didn't even exist two years ago. So, why don't I do this? “Why don't I reconnect with you in about four or five months?” And that way, we're going to have, like, a ton... What are the things you're looking for?

   In Not now and re-engagement

3. 24:37

   And it's not that big of a deal for them. So in a world in which you are not giving any discounts or commercial concessions, how do you hold people to very specific timelines to make sure that your month or your quarter doesn't get blown up? “Yeah, so I'll try to figure this out as early as possible in the process to understand, is there a real natural internal compelling event?” If I'm selling analytics and their contract expires with the incumbent on June 30, then they need something in place by like maybe June 1st to do the migration. So that makes sense. It's amazing when customers have internal compelling events. I'd say now four out of five times, customers don't have internal compelling events.

   In Buying signals and triggers

4. 28:07

   You don't know who the CTO is if you don't do the prep. You don't know if Mary's six months in or six years into the role. You don't know if she's just new to the organization. You don't know if she's going to be the economic buyer or someone else is going to be. You haven't talked to any of potentially your technology partners. “If I'm in the data ecosystem, I might call folks at Fivetran or Snowflake or a HiTouch” and say, hey, have you sold to this company before? What was that process like? If you're not doing that prep, even just reading about their stock price plummeting two weeks prior, that's super important. And when salespeople get comfortable in their own rhythm and they're confident and they're crushing it and they're doing well, it's probably the easiest thing that they forget to do.

   In Technology and integration partners

5. 28:15

   You don't know if she's just new to the organization. You don't know if she's going to be the economic buyer or someone else is going to be. You haven't talked to any of potentially your technology partners. If I'm in the data ecosystem, I might call folks at Fivetran or Snowflake or a HiTouch and say, hey, have you sold to this company before? “What was that process like?” If you're not doing that prep, even just reading about their stock price plummeting two weeks prior, that's super important. And when salespeople get comfortable in their own rhythm and they're confident and they're crushing it and they're doing well, it's probably the easiest thing that they forget to do. And it's super important. Beautiful.

   In Technology and integration partners