130: What World Class Sales Coaching Looks Like With Dave Kennett

Thank you to our sponsors, LeadIQ, Costello, SalesLoft, WorkRamp, and Dialpad for helping us produce this podcast. Head over to jbarrows.com slash blog for the highlights of this episode and explore resources you can use right away. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrow's Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. I had a little bit of a relaxing one, not ever as relaxing as I'd like it to be, but back on Monday, ready to rock the week, and here with a very interesting guest today because we're going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart because it's something I know all reps should be doing or companies should be doing, but they don't do enough of, including myself, which is coaching.

But Dave Kinnett over at Replays, CEO over at Replays, you want to say hi to everybody, give a little background on where you're coming from these days. You bet. Thanks, John. Hi, everyone. Great to be here. Yeah, so Replays, quick background on Replays. We really serve the market to assist on a couple of things. Number one, I'll explain how we help sales leaders. Number two, I'll explain how we help sales reps. So being a senior sales leader for years myself and specifically in tech, despite the fact I care deeply about coaching and I consider myself someone who really makes it a priority, my team never got coached as much as I should have. There's just no question about it. I always fell short in that area.

I thought, you know, there's got to be a better way. And, you know, from if you were to ask the average sales rep today, hey, how many hours per month you get coached? I mean, typically what we've heard, especially from recent polls, is less than three hours per month. And, you know, John, it's unfair to put that all on the sales leader because systemically sales leaders are often set up to just unfortunately not have the time. And so Replays exists to assist sales coaches to be really an extension of their sales coaching arm in an on-demand way. So Replays provides on-demand sales tune-ups from some of the world's best inside sales coaches. So folks that have been in a sales function for many years and then gone on to leadership and then been a coach.

We've all heard of scenarios where a coach will come in, but they've actually never been in sales. And so what we want to make sure is when a sales rep looks at the LinkedIn profile of one of our coaches, they're going to be like, all right, I can learn from that person. And so we then just review discovery calls and demos. They send us the recordings, hence the name Replays. We replay those and provide video recorded feedback. And along with a quick two-pager of here's what you could do differently and here's what went well. And then we do live one-on-one Zoom coaching calls, just quick touches for half an hour. So the idea is, you know, it's sort of on-demand coaching to assist the sales leader when they're going through a busy time.

And it helps the sales reps to, you know, improve their sales process. I love it. And I think you're feeling a major, because I felt, like I said, when I did the interview, like I fall into this gap problem, right? I mean, I got one rep, I got Morgan, and you'd think that I have time to, you know, to listen to his calls and to coach and all that. But I'm running my own business here. And I will say, like, we use Gong, right, for our recordings. And I thought, okay, great, now I can listen to his recordings. But every half-hour call that he has, as far as a discovery call, that's another half hour that I have to take out of my day to go listen to. And then, so it's actually not even a half an hour, it's probably 45 minutes to an hour for every disco call that he does.

And that's an hour away from a prospect that I could be meeting with, a client that I could be meeting with, like that type of thing. So as much as I know, and I'm the same with you, it's like, I love coaching. I love, you know, working with reps to, I mean, that's why I do what I do, right? I mean, I'm similar to you, where I always consider myself a sales rep that happens to train. I'm not a trainer. Because if you haven't done this job in the past six months, like, don't tell me how to do this fucking job. So, but before we kind of talk about, because I do want to get into what you see as a lot of the, you know, the common challenges with discovery and demos and those type of things. But let's, I want to take a step back and just pick your brain about, like, how do we actually, let's say replays doesn't exist for a second.

Understanding that coaching is the biggest thing that can make a difference. But also understanding that we're in such a short-term results-oriented world in the sense that you've got to hit your monthly quota. You've got, and that's why I think most managers, even though they know coaching is the thing that they should be doing more of, they have no time to because they're chasing deals. They're trying to close stuff. Is there a way, and I'm actually seeing organizations punt on the whole idea of managers being good at coaching. And they're actually hiring internal coaches, like a dedicated internal coach. That's all their job is to walk, go around, work with individual reps on coaching and that type of stuff.

Is that the answer? Like, because we've been chasing this coaching thing for a long time. I've been in sales for 23 years now. And this whole idea of coaching and that type of thing has been a challenge since I got into sales. And it's a continued, and I know that's why you built this company, but what do the best organizations who don't need you, what are they doing to help drive that coaching as part of the process, as opposed to something that's a default crap? I got to go do this. Are you seeing anybody who's doing this right? Yeah, there's not a ton of companies doing it right, but they're certainly out there. There's no question. And the ones that do, I mean, there's a few commonalities.

Number one, they systematize it, right? So they build it in into the fabric of the culture systemically. So they will, at least on a weekly basis, be doing role plays in their sales huddles. Ideally, they would be creating an environment where they're doing role plays daily with their sales reps. So, you know, one quick tip, actually, that I strongly recommend, and I've deployed this myself, is you create a, first you have to create a safe environment, right? One where people feel comfortable being vulnerable. You know, you and I both know through sales training that there's no scarier thing for a sales rep to do than to actually pitch in front of all their peers, right? And so, you know, if everyone's in the same boat, then my experience has been they get very comfortable very quickly doing it.

And so I would put them in a scenario where daily, they're in a scenario where they're pods of threes. So one person can be the seller, one person can be the customer, the other one's the observer. And then once they go through a role play, you pick a topic, could be differentiators. So here's three minutes of overcome, you know, explain your differentiators or navigate through discovery or whatever. And the best companies out there, I see, are doing that because they know that one, when they've got a one-to-many scenario with someone in sales enablement that's supposed to be coaching, you know, 150 reps. Plus, you've got sales leaders that are a one-to-8 to one-to-12 kind of ratio. You need to supplement that somehow.

So you almost do a coach-to-coaching thing with your team where they get into groups of three and just practice for 15, 20 minutes each day. I love that. And you know what I used to do with my team? It was like, because role playing to me was always interesting. The reason I don't like role playing as a trainer or from an outside vendor is most of the time, going back to your comment about how trainers are usually failed sales professionals, right? Most of the time, a role play from an external trainer like somebody like me is so contrived. It's either set up in a way to make the trainer look awesome because they've done it a million times, so they literally look flawless when they do it. Or it's like a perfect scenario on either side.

It's either the perfect, like, best-case scenario or, like, the worst-case scenario. And life is in the middle, right? So that's why I always – and I always feel like in a role play when an outside vendor comes in, the sales reps are way too concerned with impressing their peers than they are actually mastering whatever the technique is, right? True. Now, internal, I love role play when it comes to, like, especially getting ready for a meeting, right? So right before I'm about to go into a meeting, and my analogy on this one is, like, you play sports, right? Nobody – like, if you play basketball, you don't just jump out on the court starting playing ball, right? Like, you stretch out a little bit.

You take a few shots, that type of stuff. So going into a big meeting, you want to do a little role play about, all right, boss, you're my client. I'm me. I got to try to get to your boss. You object on pricing. Let's roll this out so I can just kind of get the juices flowing there a little bit, right? Yep. But the one that I always love is kind of the – I don't want to say live role play, but it's application role play in the sense that I used to do this where I would take three or four people and I'd put them in a room, especially when it came to cold calling. And everybody would bring in their list. And then we'd do round-robin calls on the speaker phone. Yeah. And that, like, with somebody – and again, safe environment.

It doesn't matter if you screw up here. The learning that – the self-coaching that happens in that scenario is better than any coaching that I could ever give because it's live. It's like the kid screws up, person shreds them, and then, okay, let's talk about that. That was a disaster. The next person is going to do something different, right? And then improve, improve, improve. So talking about – because I think the point there is some tips for companies that don't have a quote-unquote solution is delegate, right? Almost like a train-the-trainer or a coach-the-coach, right? So you can have other people within the organization coaching each other on certain strengths and weaknesses. Yep. So let's – but then let's talk about, like, the common mistakes you see that people need to be coached on, right?

So if we broke down the majority of what you do, it's inside sales. But this isn't just inside sales for prospecting. This is inside sales, like closing business over the phone, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would say the majority of our customers are account executives. Okay. So the majority of our – and from what I understand, talking to you and looking at your website, like, these are – these aren't people – like, a lot of people think the bad reps need the coaching. But I'm guessing that you find a lot of the top performers are the ones that you're actually coaching more of. Is that right? Yeah, I would say it's about probably 70, 30, 70% would be reps in their first handful of years. And 30% would be reps that have been doing it for a while, are tenured, and really good reps.

And you're bang on. Like, I – we – every single sales rep has blind spots. And it's interesting because, of course, I'm out there helping in the sales process with replays. And so when I'm talking to an executive group and explaining why I think they should move forward with replays, like, they are judging every single thing I'm saying and how I'm doing it, right? Like, I really got to eat my own dog food. And so, you know, I'll often say to them, you know, they'll say, well, can you help our tenured reps that are selling, like, seven-figure deals have been doing this for 25 years? My answer is always yes because there – I said there's probably three things you've seen me do in the last 45 minutes that you'd say, ooh, Dave, no, you shouldn't – right?

There's just – and we all have things. And so I do think it's important that everybody take the opportunity to put themselves out there, be vulnerable, and open to feedback. I mean, I'll tell you right now that, I mean, the best athletes in the world, like, yearn for coaching. You know what I mean? I think that, you know, and everybody hates me because I'll bring this up, but the Patriots here in the States, my New England Patriots, right? But, like, Tom Brady, to be Josh – to be his offensive coordinator is actually one of the hardest things out there because it's not like Tom's like, I know what I'm talking about. Get out of my way. I got this. Like, Tom goes to Josh and is like, what do you think about this?

Coach me. And if he doesn't – and if Josh isn't challenging him, Tom Brady – and obviously I'm going to say he's the greatest of all time – like, the greatest of all time quarterback in NFL history is pushing his coaches to coach him to get better because he knows he's never going to – he's got that chip on his shoulder, right? And I think the best sales reps I ever come across are the ones that look for it, that want feedback. Yeah, no question about it. How do you – and I'm dealing with this with Morgan. Morgan, from a coaching standpoint – so I'm pretty direct. I'm pretty in your face, right? And if I don't think you're doing something right, I'm going to tell you straight up. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

I'm going to be like, Dave, you fucked up this. Do this. You know, that type of thing. I find there's a little bit of a generational thing here where the feedback, like negative feedback or constructive criticism is hard for some people to accept. I'll take that back. I don't think it's necessarily a generational thing. But how do you get somebody who thinks they're good to welcome coaching? Like, say I'm a manager right now and you're pitching me on replays, right? Yeah. And I got Morgan on my team, but I'm like, Dave, look, he's good at what he does. The kid's pretty rock solid. He's producing results here. But, man, he fucking hates taking feedback, man. Like, he's really hard at coaching.

Like, how do you break down somebody that or get somebody to be open to feedback and coaching when they're a little bit predisposed not to? Or, like, they almost have a visceral reaction to negative feedback. Have you encountered that with some of the, like, manager like me is like, I love this idea, Dave. I can't coach anybody. Come in here. I got some problem children here. There's going to be a few people in there that go tell you to fuck yourself. Like, how do you deal with those people that think they know they're better than they are? Yeah, we have some tough customers for sure. And I have a lot of respect for them. And often, you know, they are very, very good. And I find that the proof's usually in the pudding, right?

So we will review one of their demos and slash discovery calls. We will always give them, you know, two or three key things to work on. So there might be 15 things throughout the course of 45 minutes. But we want to make it bite-sized, digestible action items that they can run with and not overwhelming. And so with those two or three things, you know, be very straight with them, right? Like, these two or three things can be, you know, an absolute game changer for you. And it's up to them whether they deploy it or not. What we find is those ones that are a little resistant at first and reluctant, I will watch their next demo a few weeks later and I'll see that they deployed those things. So they'll kind of talk out both sides of them.

They're like, oh, yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then they actually do it. So that's why I say that the proof's kind of in the pudding in terms of, A, the value that a coach can bring. But, B, in terms of them, you know, their actions speak louder than their words. There's going to be folks, of course, that aren't coachable. And that's fine. Good on them. You know, I've actually had customers. You've probably had this before as well, John, where they said, okay, you know, you can coach these five people. The sixth person, though, like, just trust me, it's not even worth it. Don't bother. And so we don't. And I'm fine with that because I want to work with people that want to learn, you know, as I'm sure you do.

And if they don't, like, I'm totally good with that because we all have the prerogative to participate or not participate, right? I say that, you know, I gave this, I gave it up a long time ago. I used to be, because when I took this, I took this training when I, you know, it was called Basho back in the day. And it made such a difference for me. Like, it really did. I was like, holy shit, finally something that works, right? So then when I was, when I turned to be a trainer, when I would train a group of 30 or 40 reps, I would want to connect with every one of them. You know what I mean? I'd be like, no, no, you have to pay attention. This shit works, right? So if you're in your, if you're on your iPhone in the back of the room and you're not paying attention, like, I would almost physically try to get you engaged.

Be like, dude, no, you got to pay. Now I've given up on that because I was obviously very disappointed with how many people, how few people gave a shit, right? And so now what I look for is, is the ones who want, to your point, who want to be coached, who want to learn, right? And it's usually, and I hate to say it, it's like the 20%, you know, and it's the 80-20 thing. It's like 80% of people will be like, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll take some coaching. 20% are like, fuck no, man. I need some help here. Like, I want to learn. Those are the ones that I love working with. And ultimately, the people that I'm trying to force feed something is never going to work anyways because you can't give help to somebody that doesn't believe that they need help, right?

No, no, you can't. And I'm very quick to go to the sales leader and say, hey, you might want this person to opt out because they're not getting the value. You're not getting the value. Like, save that replace credit for someone that wants it. You know, again, respectfully, right? Like, that's a total prerogative. I just want to make sure that if, you know, we're spending time to help people, they want to be helped. And so my experience has very much been the same. But in the vast majority of cases, people want to learn. And it's amazing how thirsty sales reps are for knowledge, right? They want to learn. They're dying to learn more about sales process. Yeah. Well, I think it's because we don't learn.

I mean, like, we're not educated in this profession, right? So, and, you know, that's where I wrote the book, you know, get introduced to kids earlier and stuff like that. But it's like one of those things where, you know, the whole you're born with it, I think, is total bullshit. Everybody's born with it. Everybody's born with the ability to converse with people and have a conversation and ask questions, right? But, you know, the whole, all that they're a born sales rep. I think that's historically why it hasn't been educated in schools is because there's been this prevailing perception that, ah, you kind of either have it, yeah, have it if you don't, right? Right. So then when we get in and we get into sales and we start figuring it out on our own, it's like every, like, new, holy shit, yeah, like, there's something new, there's something new, there's something new.

It's like golf. My analogy there is, like, golf. You can't shoot a zero in golf, right? Right. Like, you can always get better in golf. You can, you know, tweak that, whatever it is. It's like sales. You can't be perfect in sales. And if you ever think you are, I guarantee you you're not, and somebody else is going to smoke you, right? So I think that I agree with you. There is a thirst there, but I think it's an inherent thirst because everybody's looking for how do I, you know, how do I get better? How do I fix this, you know, wherever I am right now and take it to that next level? Yeah. No, absolutely. So let's talk about taking it to that next level. What are some of the common, if we were to break down, and I'm guessing the three main categories that you focus on, right?

Discovery, demos, presentations, whatever, and then closing calls, right? If you kind of broke the sales process down, it's those three buckets. What are some of the biggest coachable moments, I would say? I don't want to say mistakes, but coachable moments that you find in the discovery phase that reps are just consistently doing wrong, if you will, or consistently could be doing better in the discovery phase? Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the folks that I hired as a sales manager years ago called those do-differentlys. And so that's actually, I've adopted that. I know there's a number of companies that use it. So we call those coaching moments do-differentlys, the learning opportunities.

So the do-differentlys in the first part of the sales call, in terms of discovery, you know what? Number one, basics, is having the webcam on. I'm so surprised at how many sales professionals are gun-shy from doing that. And yet, you know, you and I see all the time how when people do that, they never go back because they realize what they were missing. They realize that there's this sort of personal face-to-face aspect that helps you build trust and credibility and rapport. Not to mention, you can read nonverbal cues, right? It's not like you would take a meeting and go to someone's office and be like, I'm just going to sit on this side of the wall and let's talk through the wall, right? Right.

So that's number one, is webcam on. And actually, just to put a pin on that one, too, what I found is by putting the webcam on, not only does it help me read and understand you a little bit better, but it also forces me to pay attention. So what I've done here, like, I love it because, you know, I'm taking my notes, right? And I even do this, by the way, I will have my camera on every single time, even if you don't turn yours on, okay? I won't force you to turn yours like I use Zoom, right? I won't force you to turn yours on, but I'll put mine on. And inevitably, when they see me, they'll put theirs on, but sometimes it's not. Even if they don't put it on, it's a benefit to me. Because what happens is, is as I'm taking notes, I'm seeing what they're seeing.

And there are plenty of times, I work in my office here, so you see, this is my backdrop, make it look somewhat professional. But there are times where I'm sitting there, you know, and I'll just be kind of like, leaning back in my chair, you know, like, checking my emails, you know, playing with my phone or something like that, because I've gone through the same call 50 times before, or whatever, right? And, and, and I'll, you know, and I'll, I'll get lazy with my sales call, right? But if I'm on camera, and I'm seeing what you're seeing there, I sure as shit gonna be paying attention. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, like, yep, I'm Johnny on the spot. Look at me, I'm taking notes. You know what I mean?

So it's, so it's not only does it help you read verbal cues, but I find it helps me stay focused, because I know what they're looking at. And it keeps me from being distracted on my email on something else or whatever it is. A lot of times I get distracted. Yeah, no, for sure. It's a great, great thing to hold the sales rep accountable as well. I find the same thing. I guess the other thing in discovery, put simply, is people that start doing it a lot of the time, right? They're like, oh, you know what? I got enough info from these, you know, this half page of notes from the SDR, and I'm just gonna run with that. And I just can't tell you how often we see that. I mean, we watch hundreds of hours of discovery and demo calls, and this is a very rampant problem.

So for folks that are listening, if you're doing it, hey, don't worry, you're not alone. A lot of people do it. But I would suggest that you should stop doing it today and spend a bit more time on discovery. It's so important to help cater the rest of the presentation to their actual needs. The whole presentation, I mean, everything lives and dies, in my opinion, with discovery. Right, yeah. Like, all that information you gather. And let's talk about what's important in discovery, right? Because there's the qualification stuff, right? You know, the BANT shit or whatever, you know, MEDIC, pick a f***ing acronym, who gives a s***? What do you think is the most critical part of discovery that people screw up on the most?

Because, like, I actually fundamentally don't like any of those acronyms, by the way. I don't like BANT, I don't like MEDIC, I don't like any of them. Because in theory, I understand. But in application, it gives an excuse to a rep to walk away from a deal that just because it doesn't fit into one of those. Like, oh, you don't have budget for this? Never mind. You know what I mean? See you later. But yet, there's a need there so I could create budget if there really was. So what do you think the biggest thing people miss when it comes to, outside of just general discovery and doing it and making sure they reaffirm why they're there to talk and digging through some of the details there? What are some of the biggest pieces that you think they should focus on that they miss more often than not?

I see them being, I see reps in general just reflexively going and doing a checklist. They're like, okay, pain, got it. All right, next. As opposed to sitting there and being like, okay, I hear that pain. I really want to understand what's the impact of that. And, okay, so how does that impact sales? How does it impact customer success? What does that do in terms of your, right? So like taking a pain, sitting there, being very present, being very naturally curious, and then going deeper, right? You know, the term that someone said years ago, and I loved it, and it's always stuck with me, is, you know, let them relive the headache and then you hand them the Tylenol, right? And it's like, that may be an overused cliche, but it's so true.

It's like, you want to get a complete, clear understanding of the pain, and I just don't see that. So acting too much like, all right, this is a checklist, and all right, I'm done that. Let's go on to the screen share now, you know? Can you, are there any hacks or tips that you have for forcing genuine curiosity? And I, cause I, I, I think, I, I think I've been blessed with, I've always been a very genuinely curious person. So for instance, I love being on panels, but I don't like being on the panel. I like being the panel moderator. And it's because I don't, I don't sit there and I don't come with a list of questions. I, I come, I come with one question per person, and then I dig. And, and by the way, like, so podcast for me, right?

The reason I, I really started my podcast was because this is the way I learned. This is the way I don't learn by reading. I don't learn by, by, you know, watching a video of something I learned by getting people who are smarter than me on and being genuinely curious about their situation. Right. And I don't know if I learned that. I don't know if I was blessed with that or, you know, my upbringing that my parents instilled that in me or whatever. But I think that you, you hit on something that I, I really struggle with, which is how do you get reps to give a shit and, and genuinely care about like the question as opposed to just checking off the box and going through the motions? Like, can you, I know you can kind of coach that, but I guess is there, are there things or crutches that you can give to reps to help them become more genuinely curious?

Well, there's a couple of things that come to mind. Um, I think the idea, um, I think most people are, and most salespeople by nature are probably pretty curious. I think that what's holding them back is something in their mind that they feel they don't have permission to do it, or they feel it's cheesy, or they feel that it's taking too much of the prospect's time. So I feel like the root of the issue isn't that they don't know how to do it. It's that they feel that they don't have permission to do it. And they're afraid to feel this comfort doing it, which then to answer your question, how do you make them feel more comfortable? It's practice. I think it's role play. I think it's like, literally, I think of a, so I've got three little kids.

We go on road trips all the time. I can't tell you how many times we've played 20 questions and, you know, you sit there and you think about the insightful questions and it's so neat to hear. And then sometimes they're, they're not insightful. Right. And I'm like, okay, this rate is going to be 150 questions. Let's think bigger and go. And so honestly utilizing, I find that personally thinking through things that way to be helpful, right. In, in utilizing that with the sales team and being like, okay, there's a pain point. It's in this bag here. I'm not going to show you what it is and let's see who can get it with the least number of questions we're going to invite into groups and go, you know, like just something like that alone where it gets people thinking, okay, wait a sec.

I got to be very selective about how I proceed, which is in a real life environment in a call. You don't want to take 45 minutes doing something that should take 10 or 15. Um, and then I, I think, uh, then, then let's face it. Once you have really kind of hit your stride in a sales role and organization, you know, the general sort of top of funnel questions you need to ask. And then the follow on questions in general. Right. So I think having a general guideline or list, but handy, right. And almost forcing it being like, okay, until you sort of have gone through these, you're not doing a screen share. Like you got to get through to these. And so I know it's kind of forcing that natural curious side, but the reality is sometimes people just need to know they have permission to do it.

And so I guess that leads to my question. How, how much do you recommend reps prepare questions versus, uh, more of just a general guideline for how the conversation should go. Right. So, cause, cause I, I get, you'd need to ask very, you know, I call them doctor checkup questions. Like you do need to know, like for me, right. I need to know how many sales reps do you have? What's your average deal size? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are kind of table stakes. Right. But as far as like real questions, like I'm preparing for Dave, um, I, I'm going to go into replays. I'm doing a little bit of homework. I know these are some typical problems that CEOs have of fast growing companies like his. So these are like five questions I I'm preparing specifically for Dave versus doing some homework, kind of going in there with a loose agenda of how I want to see things roll and then letting it fly.

Like what are your, where are you on that spectrum? Yeah, I think, well, the thing is we got to meet, uh, sales reps at where they are in terms of their training and their experience and their comfort level, right. Is what we find. And so, uh, some just really, um, naturally are going to do the research and going to ask the, the very interesting specific questions. Others are going to, that's not their superpower. And so they're actually as much as I, I hate scripting. I can't stand it. Um, but some account executives just, you know, they're great at some other things, but not that. So they actually require the guideposts for a little while where it's like, okay, these are the things you need to ask.

And then that becomes second nature and then they can be a bit more present in the call. So I just found that there's no one size fits all right. Everyone needs, um, a very specific, um, sort of, um, solution for, for that problem that you're talking about. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm kind of in the middle. I always think you should come with two or three questions that are very specific to the person based on your research that you've done so that just, cause you, you know, you can show how prepared you are by the types of questions you ask. Right. And I think that I don't care how good anybody gets in sales, going back to nobody can be perfect. I think the number one thing that everybody can get better at is asking better questions.

Right. Is, is to ask better questions, to understand what you're getting at and have a reason for your questions and those types of things. So, um, I do that and then, and then I, I've, I've, I had to force this on myself, um, to ask layering questions. Right. So going back to, again, I've been, I think I've been blessed with being genuine and curious, but once I, it's like, it's funny, I train on like closing techniques and, and objection handling skills. And at first I was like, this is cheesy, like these, these techniques, right. But what was interesting for me was when they were labeled, when it was labeled a certain thing, it actually helped me figure out when, how, and where to use it.

So I'll give you an example, layering questions, layering questions, you know, genuine, that's genuine curiosity. Like, tell me more about that. Could you give me an example of, could you clarify for me those types of things? Right. So that to me forced my genuine curiosity because I always, a lot of times I would ask a question or somebody would even ask me a question and my gut response was just to give them the answer. Right. Like you did it. There it is. And a lot of times I can't tell you how many times early in my career that I've answered a question, gone on for five, 10 minutes about something. And then at the end, somebody has been like, well, what I meant to say was, and then I'll be like, ah, son of a bitch.

You know what I mean? Like, okay, sorry about that. Right. So now I've actually, I actually, I'm a visual person. So I put layering questions up in front of my phone and, and highlighted them, say, make sure you, unless the answer is blatantly obvious, make sure you ask a layering question. Like, tell me more about that. Give me an example of those types of things. And it, that kind of now ingrained in me to that's my MO right now. I'm almost always saying, tell me more. So I start with one big one and then flow to see where it goes. I love that. And that's one of the recommendations we have is to always, and this is one thing is I've been telling my reps for years, cause it's helped me for years is, is, um, have a list of questions that what you're calling, calling layering questions that help get you unstuck so that you'll never, ever get stuck because sometimes you're at a dead end.

You're like, I don't know where to go from here. And it's like, oh, great. There's that question that I knew I was going to need it sometime. There it is. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Cause you can, you kind of have to have your go-tos just in case you, you come across somebody that's like, yep, nope. Yep. You know, it's like, oh shit. So, all right. So discovery, asking better questions and doing the actual discovery and getting really to the, and that, and you said a word there that I think is really important that I'm honing in on a lot more, which is impact, right? Like what's the real impact of, of making this decision or not, not just do you want to do this, but like what happens if you don't do this, right?

What are some of the other, let's, let's stay on discovery for a little while. What are some other areas where reps tend to fall down, um, and, and some tips to fix it? Yeah. I find that often they feel like they, um, need to, there's this like discomfort with asking a number of questions without giving a bunch back. And what happens then is I see reps that'll do a one-to-one ratio. I'm going to ask you a question, you answer it. And I feel like I need to talk a little bit about our solution and you don't, right? Like, yeah, it's important to keep it somewhat natural and flowing, but it's okay to do a little bit of, um, uh, you know, prepare them for the fact that, you know, if you don't mind, I'm just going to ask you a handful of questions here over the next couple of minutes, just to make sure that we're providing the best solution for you.

Is that okay? And then once you get your, their permission, it's like, Hey, they know, they know that you're going to ask questions and that's okay. But sometimes we find the discovery is taking way too long because they're actually using it to sell too much. And don't get me wrong. Like you and I both know it's important to weave in the odd quick customer story or validation. Like, yeah, we see that all the time. Here's what our customers say about that. And then move on to the next one. But I see reps getting stuck way too often and taking, uh, basically that the presentation part of their, uh, or the demo part ends up being in part of their discovery, which just makes everything far too fragmented.

Yeah, that's funny. I have, I have actually the opposite problem. I, I get it. Like I do 30 minute disco calls and then, you know, I share whatever the solution is. Right. But, uh, I find myself, you know, 25 minutes in being like, Oh shit. Uh, I haven't talked at all about what my solution is. And so like, I've actually had to tell, like figure out ways to shut myself up and stop being so genuinely curious and really focus on the stuff that matters because then what happens is I, I, I get the exact opposite problem was I developed shit loads of rapport. I grabbed, you know, I showed a ton of value in the conversation, uh, and my expertise, but then like, Oh, yeah, by the way, here's the training and this is what it does.

And it's like people like, uh, I need a little bit more meat on that bone. So there's definitely a, there's definitely a middle ground. Um, do you recommend, um, people using agendas? Oh yeah. To set the stage. Okay. Big believer in agendas. And here's why, um, as humans, we like to know where we're going. We feel a little bit more comfortable when we feel like there's, uh, some guideposts and some control on where we're going. And so, you know, the, the message to the sales reps is always being in control. It's not that you want the other person to feel like you're domineering. That's not the point. It's that, um, you want to build in structure. You're wanting to make the most out of your time, but of course your prospects time.

You want to be respectful of every minute. And one way to do that is to say, uh, set an agenda and, and lay out the areas that you want to cover and then check, you know, state the value, check for acceptance. And the idea there, it's kind of like what you alluded to earlier on. We don't want to go off way on a tangent and realize, no, no, that's not what I wanted to cover. And so it's just a great opportunity to level set and make the prospect feel engaged in the process and make them feel that it's about them. Cause it really is about them. Totally. I always tell you if, if you're not using, and I don't mean a 10 point agenda here, like don't, don't scare somebody with a detailed agenda. It's a nice loose one.

Like here's, you know, two or three things I want to make sure that we cover. What else do you want to make sure with the ad here? And if you're not using that, they're in control. You're not. Yeah. Right. And, and, and everybody, every sales rep can, can relate to walking into a meeting with a mental agenda of how they want to see the conversation go. And then five minutes in, they ask you that random ass question. It takes you down the rabbit hole for the next 45 minutes. And then you pick your head up. You realize you got about five minutes left to talk about what you want to talk about. Without an agenda, they can take that. You better be damn good to figure out a way to rile that thing back in.

Right. Whereas with an agenda, Hey, here's what you're here to talk about. What else do you want to talk about? Great. And then you start going through the agenda. And then when they ask that oddball question, you can just lean back and say, Hey, that's a good question. You don't, do you mind if we just kind of get through the original agenda here? And if we have time left at the end, I'll be happy to. My experience is most of the time people say, Oh yeah, sorry, John, let's, let's stay on track here. But if whatever they just brought up is more important than what you were there to talk about, they'll tell you. Yeah. It's like, actually, Dave, I didn't even, shit. I didn't even think about the security side of this.

If we can't address that, you know what? It's actually not worth us having this conversation. So let's, Oh, okay, cool. Now let's go there. But at least you have some control, right? 100%. While we're talking about discovery and agendas, then I feel like we also have to talk about building rapport. Where do you fall on the, you know, before you dive into business, the whole sort of let's build rapport for a minute or two. Uh, so it's funny because I just, um, I, I'm a huge rapport builder, but I can't stand fake rapport. I can't stand reps doing the bullshit fake rapport stuff. And so what I've, I, I, I, uh, I did a podcast recently with, uh, um, this guy drew from crystal nose. Do you know crystal nose?

Uh, I do. Yeah. So crystal nose, it's a dis profile, right? And it gives you a dis profile of anybody that you're connected to love. And what I do is, yeah, exactly. And so what I do is I'll put your name into debt. I'll put your name into that. So say you and I are meeting right now. I actually have your LinkedIn profile right up here. Um, I'll put your name into crystal nose and it'll tell me, uh, let's see. What is Dave? Dave is a predicting personality. Oh, it'll come up here, but that'll kind of dictate my rapport building with you. Because if it says you're a high D, like you're a high D like me, right? So you're a, you're a DI, you're a, you're a DI, very similar to me, high risk tolerance, pretty skeptical in the middle of pragmatic and optimistic, right?

So with you and I, I'm going to maybe say something like, Hey man, how was, Thanksgiving, but then right afterwards, I'm going to get into like, get into why are we here? Okay. Whereas somebody who's a little bit more of an, a high I or a high, you know what I mean? I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach, but regardless, I, I, I really loathe. And I think it's so transparent these days when reps do bullshit. Uh, you know, it's like the old days when you walked in, you know, you got taught when you were Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, right? Walking to some guy's office and you see he's a fisherman, right? So, oh yeah, I see you're a fisherman. Let's go because you fished once in your fucking life, right?

It's like, no, don't get me wrong. If you are a legit fisherman and you know what you're talking about when it comes to fishing, dive right into that conversation. But you know, I'll bring in, I'll, I'll keep bringing in Tom Brady and the Patriots here. Like I, I want everybody out there to do not fake rapport build with sports from anybody from Boston. Oh, interesting. Because, because what, because Bostonians and New Yorkers tend to, because we were not, we don't live outside all the time. Like California does, right? California fans are like, they're good fans, right? But they, they got a billion other things to do on a Sunday than watch football. You know what I mean? Here in new England, it's snow and it's shitty outside.

So I'm going to sit here and watch football. Right? So we tend to know just our, our sports education is higher than most. Okay. I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint. I'm just, it is what it is. Okay. Yeah. I can't tell you how many people have tried to pretend like they know what they're talking about when it comes to sports. And within two questions of me asking them, I could tell they're full of shit and it immediately ruins their credibility to me. It immediately ruins it. Like if you pretend like you are, oh yeah. So that game last night with the Patriots, all that was a pretty good game. Like, what do you think about that? It was a horrible game by the way. And it was blatantly, obviously anybody who watched it.

Right. And the Patriots offense is horrendous right now. And Tom Brady is a train wreck with what he's doing right now. Okay. So if you came into this conversation was like, Hey John. Oh yeah. I see you're over in Boston, man. Did you see that game last night? Oh, it was a pretty good game. Right. Cause it ended up, I think it ended up being like 26 to 28. So it actually ended like it was a good game. Right. It was close, but it was not, it was 28 to three, like the whole game. And we scored like three shit bag touchdowns at the end. Yeah. I will literally sniff that out in two seconds. And this car. And then after that, we're done. Right. Like then I'll, I'll placate you and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

But I'll be like, you're some piece of shit sales rep. That's just trying to build rapport just to build rapport. So that's such a good, a good point. And it's like rapport building. So not doing it, uh, can absolutely cause you some demerits, like you say, but doing it, um, and doing the wrong way can definitely cause demerits as well and take out, you know, what I usually call the trust bank, right? You have such a short time to build credibility, trust, rapport. And, uh, if people smell that you're just, uh, not talking, um, uh, truth, then, then they're going to be all over it. So I couldn't agree more. And I love, I'm glad you brought up the disc profiles. Like I love referencing disc with respect to building rapport.

I mean, that is the best tool. I think, you know, it's really for people that have done the disc profiles. It's like, you know, going back to the 20 questions game, this is like a fun game. It's like trying to establish in the first 15 seconds, are they a D or not? And it's like, you know, do they, do they want to just move on or do they want to talk about their weekend, et cetera, et cetera. And so I do think it's important, but it's absolutely key that reps don't assume that rapport building looks the same for everyone all the time. It just doesn't. A quick hack, and then we'll get into the, the other pieces here, presentations and stuff. But a quick hack that I do is I've stopped using, unless again, it's pretty obvious, like that person's a huge Patriots fan, whatever.

Um, I actually use my research on the account that I do, uh, beforehand as my rapport building. So I'll be like, Hey Dave, you know, before we get started here, man, you know, as I'm in prep for this meeting today, I was on your website and I actually noticed like recently you guys just did blah, blah, blah. Like that seems pretty cool, man. Like, like what, what led to that? You know, that's my report. Cause what I'm doing there is, um, I'm letting, you know, I prep for this meeting, right? But I'm talking about something that's not directly related to what we're there to talk about, but it's interesting based on my research on you, or it's something like in your background, right? So I can say, Hey Dave, you know, I actually noticed he used to be the VP of, uh, uh, buddy build and, you know, and it looks like it was acquired by, uh, Apple.

Like what was that experience? Like, you know what I mean? And that's what I'll use as my rapport as opposed to, Oh, I see you're a fisherman. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great idea. And we see reps do that. And then the one caution to reps there is once they do that and it's naturally turning to business because you're asking them about business and then they don't go back to the agenda. Cause they're like, Oh, okay. We're already in it. Let's just stay. I'm just like, no, you got to revert it back to, okay, great. Hey, before we dive in, I really just would want to put a quick agenda together. What we're going to go through. Love it. Cool. Let's talk about the presentation. So now we've gone through the demo.

We've asked the right questions and we prepared a little bit, right? We, we get some layering stuff there. So we're asking, trying to find the impact. Um, now it's time. All right, Dave, I've discovered all this stuff. Now it's my time to shine. Now, now I'm going to show you the demo, which is my literal least favorite part of the entire sales process for sales reps pitching to me. I fucking hate demos, um, because they're all exactly the same. They all start with, and I'll, and, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but they all start with, Hey Dave, you know, thanks for your time. I've got about a 30 minute demo here that I'd like to go through with you. And if you have any questions as we go through it, just let me know.

Okay. And then they press play and they go through every fucking slide. Like they were badge for in bootcamp and then they pause intermittently and go, does that make sense? Does that make sense? And then at the end they say, okay, you know, can I send you a proposal? So like, that's the MO for almost every shitty demo there is. Uh, uh, uh, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm, cause you watch more of them than I do. What are some of the, what are some of those areas that, that reps really fall down on when it comes to demos? Well, the, um, the first one, and you mentioned it is, I look at it as two different categories. So if you've got an interesting, I don't know, SaaS product or what have you, the demos really well, that's great.

If you're in a situation where you don't, you've got a product that just doesn't, isn't demoable right over, over a screen. Services, right? Sales training. What's that? Sales training, like services, right? They're brutal. You can't demo service, right? Right. Then you have to kind of default to slides. And like, you know, one thing I hate more than demos is slides. And so, um, no matter what, um, if you're in the scenario of you're with the SaaS company and you've got a really cool, um, uh, technology that you can demo, minimize the number of slides. I'm like, make it, you know, less than three or zero is fine and get right into the show and tell, um, those that have, those that have PowerPoint slides, it's just tougher.

And, um, you just need to make it more interactive, right? Really make it more of a two-way conversation. Uh, so that's the first thing I would say, minimize slides if you can. The second is as you're going through, you know, like you say, there's so many cookie cutter, um, sort of versions out there. And typically after, um, let's say you take your typical demo and let's say it is half an hour and let's say it's, you can put that into five different areas of the demo that they want to show. Well, um, at the end of sort of each area of the demo, hopefully they're checking in. The problem is we see a lot of people checking in going, any questions? Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Exactly what you said.

And this is where you can really, like sales reps can really turn their game around. If they, they take time on that, you're 20% of the way through and you sit there and you're like, love to understand, uh, what your thoughts on what, what you just saw there, or, you know, and we talked about earlier, you know, a mix of layered questions, right? And maybe you're like, I love to understand how you would envision this being deployed in your organization relative to the current solution. Or, you know, when you talked earlier about the fact that it's being deployed by the marketing team, what do you think their thoughts would be on that versus what they have today? Or a leading questions like, you know, would, would this be an improvement over what you have point is there's a bunch of different directions you can go.

And it's just so important. And it's so seldomly done until the very end, right? That, you know, it's great at the end, if they're saying, so are you leaning in? What'd you think? Okay. That's good. But we need to know as sales professionals, as we go through the presentation, where they're leaning in and out. So we can address it there and then, because we might not have an opportunity later on. And also, what's, what's really important, because I can't tell you, and I used to fall into this, I actually wrote a blog post a little while ago called sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief that people only buy 10 to 20% of whatever you're selling, that they don't, they, the other stuff they'll get to later.

And that's customer successes, you know, problem. But people really what they're going to buy, they don't give a shit about the entire slide deck. They only care about the part that's most relevant to them. And I used to be so bad with this because, you know, I used to do face-to-face meetings and I used to sit there and somebody told me, you know, early in my career, two ears, one mouth, make sure the client speaks more than you, blah, blah, blah. Right. So I would ask 35 minutes worth of questions, literally 35 minutes worth of questions. And at the end of those 35 minutes, and by the way, it didn't matter what you said in those 35 minutes. Like if you had computers, you were getting my pitch.

And I was like, oh, thank you so much. So, so anyways, you know, in June of 2000, we were founded by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would, then I would go there and then you get our account manager and we sold outsourced IT services. And I can't tell you how often I would spend five to 50, five to 10 minutes talking about the value of an account manager. Right. Yeah. What I should have done was said, um, Hey, quick question. Do you guys, for your existing solution, you guys got an account manager, single point of contact, that whole thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We, we got one too. I could argue that ours are better than yours. Whatever. That's not, that's not really that important. What's really important is based on what you said earlier.

Right. So that I think carving your presentation up, I, I, I, how do you get kids away from, because I think that's the fear. It's like, we, we beat them over the head as far as like when they get on board with their, uh, with their ramp and they have to memorize the slide deck and they have to give us their pitch so they can get their fucking badge. Right. And now when they get out, left out into the real world, they, they're afraid to go off script. They're afraid to take that slide deck and say, that's a piece of shit. Let's just have a conversation or I have to show every single slide. And I think after 20 years of doing this, you and I, you know, we can look at that and say, okay, but you know, when you're in your twenties, that's, that's your pitch, man.

So, so how do you, how do you coach a rep to just don't go through the whole slide deck? Only go, only highlight it. Is there, is there a way that you can coach reps to, to, to, to learn to relax a little bit? Yeah. I call it playing jazz, right? It's like, you need to empower your sales team. And so for the sales leaders that are listening to, yeah, they need to understand how to articulate value, et cetera, et cetera, but let them play jazz, right? Let them ad lib and throw in their own sort of fingerprints on things. And so, um, I, I guess our guidepost on that is, um, put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Would you want to sit through 20 slides? God, no. God, no. Would you want to only talk 5% of the time if you were the prospect?

No. Okay. So there's two things right off the bat that, you know, we can put ourself in the prospect's shoes and we know let's, you know, slim down the number of slides. Let's make it more conversational. And then I think, you know, to me, it's really understanding, um, what are the key differentiators of my organization that I'm going to try and pitch to you to see if it lines up with your needs and how can I best articulate that through empirical data? So, you know, you and I both know that, um, anyone in sales, no, there's a stigma, unfortunately from a lot of people that, oh, it's a salesperson. They're just going to say what they need to say to get the sale. And a lot of people don't think that, but a lot of people do.

And so the extent to which the sales professional can talk through the lens of their customers and say, so it's not me, Dave telling you that replays is good. It's like, John, I have to tell you when you talk to our customers and what they're constantly saying is we help organizations improve the reps, improve their win rate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then, um, I can't tell you how many, how many pitches we see where there's either zero customer stories that are shared. Right. Or, um, there's like one customer story shared. It's the same case study they've been using for four years. And, and, and they, they also just say, well, I'll send you the case study as opposed to, Hey, the prospects right here.

Let me walk you through a 30 to 45 second version of it. So I can share that with you. So we say have three to five customer stories ready to go that articulate the differentiators. We call it the what, the so what, and the customer story. Love it. Yeah. I mean, I tell people all the time, like when you're to get ramped at a company, like, especially if you're new, the best thing you can do is read the case studies, grab every case study, learn how to tell the story, go talk to the AE that sold it. Um, you know what I mean? And, and understand, ideally even talk to the customer to say, Hey, really what happened here? Can I ask you some follow-up questions? Because that that's better than any product demo you'll ever give.

If you can genuinely understand the nuances of the story and the challenges and articulate the challenges and make the connection before you even present, right? Because I learned this from Gong and a few others where like, you got to get the person to believe that in the before, before you can pitch them on the after. Too many people focus on the outcome of look at how great we made this client's life, right? But if I don't believe that this is me, then you'll never get me to believe that you can do that for me. So I, you have to relate to me first to say, you know, is that a, are you, you know, we had this other client where this was, it sounded like a similar challenge. Is that the same challenge you're faced with?

Yeah, that's definitely my challenge. Okay, great. Well, based on that, now I got you. Now let me tell you what I can do versus, Hey, look at all this awesome stuff we did for this logo client that is on our website and everybody can read about and is completely irrelevant to what your situation is, but it logo sounds good. You know what I mean? Oh man, totally, totally. Um, any other kind of small, like things that during the, during the demo piece? Oh, and I'm sorry. I'm going to, I got one. Please, everybody take the first three slides of your stupid demo and throw them out the window. The ones about your company background, your customer list and your awards, please throw them out the fucking window.

And ask the client before you start, Hey, how much of our background do you really need to know here? Cause I'd really like to get to you first, you know, what's most important, which is you. So any other small tips like that on demos that people can leverage to make sure that they're at least putting themselves in the best position to close it out? Well, I love that tip. We always say, build this into your process. How much do you know about our organization, right? Level set right off the bat. The other would be the titles of the folks in the room. So what's the seniority level, right? And it sounds like a no brainer, but the truth is people, uh, so often don't take the time to think through, okay, who is the economic buyer?

Who's the decision maker? Um, but who's the person that's probably running with this. And so I need to kind of cater to them as well. So checking out the LinkedIn profiles, uh, not being afraid to ask, Hey, can you walk me through the buying for the decision-making process and et cetera. Um, but ensuring that, you know, I watched a demo the other day and there was, um, a general manager was, was the prospect of this massive organization and the sales rep, uh, was asking the same very granular details of metrics that they would have asked, um, like the, the sort of manager of logistics and this poor general manager, of course, they don't know the answers to these metrics. It's too micro for their day to day.

And so they feel almost put out or embarrassed. And, and so it's like, okay, think through if, uh, based on who's going to be on the other end of, uh, of that video, what you need to ask, what's important to them and what can you learn it and what a gift, if you've got someone more senior on the call, like what a great opportunity to ask some more important sort of organizational questions to see how your solution might line up with helping them. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's those doctor checkup questions again, which are important for people below the power line, feature function type oriented stuff, but above the executives, if you ask executives, feature function, like doctor checkup questions, you will lose them in a heartbeat.

Yeah. And so you've got to ask those bigger picture questions. So I agree with that wholeheartedly. Closing biggest mistakes. So I got a call Dave, you know, you've, we've gone through the demo, you've gone through my trial. I now am sitting there. I I'm excited. Right. Cause this, well, I'm, I'm also scared shitless. Cause this is the point of, you know, no return here. Um, first of all, talk, talk to me about closing calls. How do you even set those up? Right. So, uh, there's two, to me, there's two things. So with a less enterprise-y kind of deal, you're going to leave 10 minutes at the end of the call to actually try and almost close it, right? Get to the point where you walk through pricing, you check for acceptance on the pricing, talking about lower budget stuff, you know, under 5k AR, that kind of thing.

Um, as it gets higher and you're setting up. And so the biggest thing we see there that people don't do is they leave two minutes to talk about pricing, decision-making process, next step. So that would be my one big like piece of advice for account executives that are listening. If you've got less of an enterprise-y sale, more transactional, leave five to 10 minutes at the end to really discuss decision-making process, pricing, et cetera, because that's where you're going to get the sale. Right. Um, and then in terms of the enterprise, uh, motion where you're setting up a closing call, I mean, I get excited just thinking of the idea of setting up a closing call, right? It's, um, you want to, um, I think be, well, first of all, you want to line up when you're having the closing call relative to when they're evaluating other folks.

So playing anchor, right? So if they've already told you in your discovery that it's you and three other contenders, you hopefully have built a good enough rapport at this stage that your champion on the other end, you say, Hey, can I, can I play anchor? Like I just, we want to help you through the decision-making process. Can you put me as the last call? And then, and then of course the benefit of the customer there is you can help walk them through the buying decision. The obvious benefit to the rep is they can hear everything that they, uh, they can hear deposition the competitors relative to what they're hearing. So that's number one. Um, you know, number two is, you know, back to kind of the, the challenger sale methodology, right?

It's like not being uncomfortable asking what a lot of reps would consider uncomfortable questions. And that is, you know, what are your thoughts on the pricing? There's too often people discount too quickly. We know that sales reps are tired of hearing that, right? Yet it still happens all the time and it devalues. And they're still going to ask you for a discount when you get to the very, very end. So, you know, in those closing calls, stand firm in the value, if you truly believe in the value, right? And talk about the fact that it's a cost value equation and, and talk about the value piece. I can't stress that enough. Proactive discounting is one of the saddest things I've, I, you're, it's just pathetic.

Like when I, now don't get me wrong. When I ask for a discount, totally different story. But if you proactively put a proposal in front of me and knock five grand off the top or 10 grand off the top out of the gate, I'm sitting there. First of all, I'm like, what the hell is your pricing about anyway? So now I know there's so much margin in there that you're already willing to cut off 10 to 20% out of the gate without me even asking. Like now you're done, right? And you might've built up great rapport with me and, and all of a sudden, and then you offer that discount. And I literally, I'm like, ah, dude, like really? Like I thought you were actually a decent sales rep here and now you're cheapening the entire experience because by the way, what you sold me value wise was here.

And then by knocking that price off without me even asking, now I'm questioning the value of your solution. Forget about the overall, you know, solution itself. So proactive discounting is the saddest thing I've ever seen. Yeah. And it's like, now you're thinking too, in that scenario, well, if I don't keep asking for a further discount, it just means that I'm not as good a negotiator as the person before or after me that they're telling to. Clearly there's room to move. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I actually, I set up closing calls. I'll say, so say Dave, and here's a little tip that I tell reps is like, say you say you're going to make a decision on Friday. I'll be like, great Dave.

Um, so when do you want to schedule a brief call so I can get a yes or no from you either way? Yeah. I'll, and I'll say that so I can get a yes or no from you either way. Letting you know it's totally okay to tell me no. Right. And, and this is usually in return for like, say you want to look at references. Oh, John, could you send me over some? Okay, great. When are you going to look at those references? You know, this week? Okay, good. So you're going to, when are you going to make the decision after you look at those references? We'll, we'll be making it by the end of the week. Fantastic. When do you want to talk? Yeah. Oh, we'll get back to you. Uh, no, no, no. Well, you know what? Why don't we just throw a time?

You got your calendar in front of you? You know, why don't we pick a time Friday afternoon? Uh, this way we don't have to play chase. I can get a yes or no from you either way. And, and, you know, and go from there. Yep. Yeah. I love that. I mean, I've, I find by doing that, by the way, if they say no to that, you've lost the, you already lost the deal. Right. Like, you know, you, if they're, if they're hesitant, ah, well, uh, I'll get back to you at Mer, uh, uh, if they're not confident, then you lost it. You probably lost the deal. Yeah. And you then fantastic to know that. Cause you know where to invest your time in terms of your pipeline, your, your, uh, VP or your director, your sales manager is asking you if this is going to close in quarter.

You know, this one probably isn't. You wouldn't have known that if you didn't press it. Exactly. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think asking for that next call, I know like every single thing you see on LinkedIn, et cetera, says always book the next call. Yet I still see so many reps not doing it. And you know what happens? I find that there'll be one of these, they'll say, so this is one of the things we really stress not to do. A rep will be like, okay, well, that was a great call. You know, really looking forward to, uh, hopefully moving forward. Uh, what, what do you think are good next steps? And they, they pass the whole ball over to the prospect. And the minute that happens, as you know, you're giving them the power.

And also if they say anything that's contrary to what your agenda is, now you have to argue with them to get back the mic, as opposed to, you know, what we typically see is important in terms of walking you through your decision-making processes, a getting a meeting on the books, even if it's just a placeholder for sometime next week, B, if you can engage, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then at least you're taking control. And like you say, if they balk at it, it actually just gives you a bit of a tell as to where their heads at any point. I ask questions just to see how you're going to react in a lot of, in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? Like I'll, I'll ask the champion question. I mean, granted I can do it because I sell to VPs of sales and so do you.

So it's a little bit easier for me to do it, but I'll straight up say, so Dave, you're going to be my champion on this one? I love it. Because there's really only two answers to that question, right? The one answer is, Oh fuck. Yeah, John. Yeah. We got to do this, man. Like I am fired up for this training and, and I'm going to help push this. Like let's, let's work on it. Right. That's one, that's one answer. The other answer to that question is anything other than that, literally, if you even hesitate when I say Dave, you're going to be my champion on this one. If you're like, ah, I know I got some work to do. You know what I mean? Another like awkward question I ask is, um, and I love this one, by the way, uh, this one we've practiced the last six months here and it's, it straight up dictates your forecast, which is what happens if you don't make this decision by the date that you want to make it.

So, Hey Dave, so Dave, you want to do training in January, right? Okay, cool. Um, just out of curiosity. So, okay, great. We understand that there's some priorities here. You got aggressive growth targets next year. You're going for your series D round funding, all that stuff. Fantastic. Cool. I just had a curiosity though. Like what happens if you don't make this decision? What happens if you don't do training in January? You know how awkward that question is? I love it. It gets the wheels turning, right? Ooh, you know why? Because, and by the way, uh, again, there's either a real answer to that question or a fluffy answer to that question. Either way, it makes them think of the cost of not moving forward.

Right. Right. And, and usually people below the power line will be like, ah, yeah, I, you know, I guess we'll kind of just keep chugging along. Uh, and with that answer, you either know that you're not talking to the right person or I wouldn't forecast that. Uh, and then the other one is like, if I talk to an executive and say, oh, well, if they don't do it, yeah, we're going to miss our targets, period. Like, and if we miss our targets, we're not going to get that series D and we won't get the evaluation that we should have. And then I won't be able to do this. And it's like, okay, cool. I got something to work with now. Right. I, I, I wish people would be more comfortable getting uncomfortable because that's just the only way you can get better.

Yeah. I think one of the main questions we get is how do I speed up the sales cycle? And that's a perfect example of how to do it. Right. Is, you know, people don't explore enough the, uh, cost of status quo, the cost of them just staying doing what they're doing. And, uh, and also the rep typically that's a symptom of a lack of discovery too. They didn't do enough discovery earlier on to say at the end of the call, they're like, well, we may push this a handful of weeks. Okay. But if you do, you know, I just want to, you know, try and get a sense. Like you mentioned this, this, this, this, and this is a problem today. You're okay with that being a problem for another, you know, a quarter. Like it's like, so I agree.

There's the level of discomfort, um, that a rep is willing to put himself in, in a respectful way to the prospect is usually commensurate to who's on the leaderboard and who's not. Always. And, and to your last point there, as far as like, how hard can you push, right? Like, you know, in expediting the sales process, I tell the store reps all the time, like somebody asked me, John, like, how hard can you push, right? Like say it's coming to the end of the month, like how hard can you, or should you push? I said, well, that is, that answer is in direct proportion to how much it's in your best interest versus how much it's in their best interest. If it's in their best interest because they have to hit a certain mark and if they don't do it by a certain time and all this other stuff, they're going to miss deadlines, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Then you can and should push as hard as you want, right? Because you're doing it in their best interest. And that's, that's fundamental challenger sales stuff, right? But if you're doing it in your best interest, because you got to hit the end of the month, you got to hit the end of the quarter, whatever, then you're just a jackass sales rep. You're just a jackass sales rep. That's a good North Star. I like that. So awesome, man. Well, I think you and I could talk sales all day long, but we got to wrap this up. So let's talk to me. Where can people go to find out more information about Replays? What you guys are doing these days? Learn more about what's, what's going on? People can come to our website.

So it's replays.com. And that's with a Z, right? R-E-P-L-A. I should mention that. Yes, it's with a Z. And, and so also if they go to www.replays.com forward slash Jay Barrows, they'll find, I'm going to consolidate all the main tips that we discussed today. And I'm going to post them in there. Awesome, man. So again, it's R-E-P-L-A-Y-Z, right? Dot com slash Jay Barrows. There'll be a bunch of tips on there. And yeah, you can go see what they're doing. Like I'm looking forward to working with you in the new year, man. I thought this is a, this is a huge need that you're filling here. I wish that organizations were good enough to structure it internally so that they could actually have the coaches do the coaching internally.

But I realized that that is just unfortunately not a reality. So I think you're, you're solving a real big problem here and filling a big gap here. So I applaud what you're doing there, man. Awesome. Thank you so much. And thanks for having me. I really enjoyed our chat. Yeah, absolutely. So everybody, hopefully you got some value out of this, some good nuggets. Um, and, uh, yeah, go check out replays, uh, go check out Dave. I'm sure he's all over LinkedIn and everything else. So feel free to hit them up on any of those. The same with me. And, uh, yeah. So just like I say all the time, everybody, no matter how bad your day went, uh, go make somebody happy today. Go make somebody smile. Cause even if you had the worst day out there, if you made somebody smile, you know, you had a good day.

All right. Let's make it a great week. Everybody make it happen. Thank you all very much.