182: Nick Cegelski On Deal Mechanics

What's poppin' y'all, it's your boy James, Say What Sales Buckley, and we're here for you with another episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. Huge shout out to our partners, SalesLoft Gong, Vidyard, Proposify, ZoomInfo, and Rise. Thank you for the continued support that you show us on a day-to-day basis. Today, our guest is Nick Segelsky of SharePoint Technologies. Nick's an experienced enterprise account executive with a ton of useful insights that he gleaned from his career growth thus far, and boy, is he ready for this interview. He's the co-host of 30 Minutes to President's Club, a great person to learn from when it comes to sales, content, and professionalism as well.

The way that we speak to our prospects matters, and Nick and John are going to dive deep into those little awkward moments that we experience with our prospects and how to handle them. The JBSales team can now be followed on Instagram. Just search JBSalesTraining, all one word, and we'll see you on your Instagram feed. You can also subscribe to JBSales On Demand to become a certified JBSales professional at ondemand.jbarrows.com. Join our community, step up your game, learn some new techniques, and see more results. That is the name of the game. With us in your corner, you will always have somewhere to learn to sell better. Let's give it to Nick and John in the studio to make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody.

This is John Barrows making it happen Monday. Hopefully you had a fantastic weekend. I am still enjoying my time here in Aruba so that I can quarantine in warm weather as opposed to bad weather in Boston. The bad news is it's kind of disconnected me with everything from Boston. So like sports and all that other stuff, I actually haven't been paying attention to, which I think is a healthy thing. But that said, I am excited to have our guest on today because, well, for a lot of different reasons, because he's an actual practitioner. He's going to get out there and he's selling right now every day. But he's also got a whole bunch of other things that he's working on as well. So, Nick, what's going on?

Enterprise AE over at SharePoint. How are you doing, brother? John, I'm doing great. I'm really pumped to be on this show because I owe a lot of my success to you. It's all about execution, man. I appreciate that. Let's get into that, though. Talk to us about your background because, you know, we had talked briefly about your journey to where you are, where you are right now, and how you went from that SDR role. So, talk us through kind of background and where you are right now, and then let's put some, we're going to talk about deal advancement, deal mechanics here, pipeline stuff today. Yep. So, 15 seconds on me. Well, maybe 45. Let's see how long I can get it done. I was a college wrestler.

I stumbled into sales because I kind of tried starting a business in college and it didn't really work out, but I really liked the business development side of it. And so, after college, I stumbled into one of those like really brutal SDR jobs where you're just hammering the phone. You don't really get any training. You're making half what the OTE was because they sold you on some dream. And I'm like, okay, I like this sales thing. I really like the psychology side of it. I like the discipline and how that's tied to your success in sales. But at that point, I was like, okay, I want to get into an actual closing role. I want to get into an AE role. So, I hammered a bunch of applications. I somehow got a company to take a chance on me and get into an AE role.

And on day one, I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I need to go make it happen and actually find some success. So, I live in LA. I'm always stuck in traffic. You can probably relate. Well, when you were in Boston, John. So, I started listening to podcasts every time I was stuck in traffic. And yours was one of them. And the ideas around consistent prospecting and the stuff around even flipping your voicemails, saying the value prop before your contact information, all of that stuff started to add up. And so, I started to actually really, really succeed in my first AE role. A couple years later, I've now stumbled into selling legal technology, a really exciting field. But I'm an enterprise AE.

And I've set myself up to do a lot, lot better than I did in my first SDR job. And outside of that, I'm like, okay, I love podcasts. So, I'm a podcast host also. I run a show called 30 Minutes to President's Club. And then I also dump all of my commissions that I make from sales into real estate. I own a number of rental properties in Houston, Texas. Nice. So, you've got a bunch of side hustles going on. So, talk to me about that podcast, 30 Minutes to President's Club. Yep. What's the kind of theme there? Well, so the idea behind the show is there's a ton of sales podcasts out there. And they really fall into one of two buckets. One is it's like super long format. The host and the guest ramble about everything from the sports to the weather.

And it's like, I don't have time to make it through a three-hour show where only an hour of it is actually good. And then the other half, it shows where they spend a lot of time talking about things that sound really good. Like, you got to sell value or get on the same side of the table as the customer. But as a new sales rep, if you're a 22-year-old sales rep fresh out of college, you don't know what the heck that stuff actually means. And so, what we tried to do with the show was make it only things that salespeople could go out and do, say, or write with a customer that very day to be more successful in their sales. I love that, the tactical execution of it. I think that's where people fall down a lot is like, you know, I think too many people are looking for the silver bullet.

But also, you know, there's not enough people out there showing them how to actually do something and make it their own eventually. But giving them those very, very tactical things to say, just go try this and then maybe morph it to your own vocabulary or whatever you want to do. So, I love that. I did want to back up a little bit because, you know, as I was prepping for this and looking through your LinkedIn profile, I actually started to feel like, shit, man, I ain't doing enough. Because you seem to do a lot for a lot of side hustle stuff, but also in a very specific way because you have that, I mean, healthy human community. You did some PR. You're a head coach or you were a head coach at Beat the Street in Los Angeles.

So, before we dive into those tactical things that we're going to get into with Pipeline, what drives you to do all that extra stuff? Like, where is that coming from from you? Is that what your parents instilled in you or is that just something giving back seems like a good theme for you, right, based on what I see? Yeah, I mean, I think I owe everything to the sport of wrestling, John. I was, like you were saying, I was a head coach of a middle school program in South Central Los Angeles. And, I mean, I owe all of my success to wrestling. It instilled a really important value in me, which is discipline. And I define discipline as doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it.

And I think if more people bought into that, we'd all be a lot happier. So, yeah, man, I mean, I think the sport of wrestling changed my life. It took me from this sort of chubby sixth grader who didn't have a lot of self-confidence to the man I am right now. So, yeah, I think when you're putting those fortunate situations where you're able to gain access to something or someone or whatever that does change your perspective, I think it's incumbent upon people to pay it forward. So, I love what you're doing, man. Let's talk about this, because you're, I mean, with a theme that we talked about, you know, I talked with sales leadership and, you know, kind of theory about what's, you know, what do we plan on for 2021 and everything else.

But I also love talking to practitioners for the most part. I try to talk to people that say, hey, literally go do this. And deal health, pipeline health, should be a theme for most people. I mean, you've heard me talk about it, and we've said this before, big, fat pipeline solves all problems, right? But it's not just a big, fat pipeline of shit. So, how do you keep your pipeline clean, and how should the audience be thinking about the qualification process to make sure what is in there has a real chance of closing? I think the biggest area that salespeople screw up thinking about their pipeline is they only look at it from one angle. There's really two things that you can do to your pipeline.

You can add to it, and you do that by prospecting, and we can talk prospecting all day. Salespeople love to talk about prospecting, sometimes at the expense of even actually making those phone calls. The other thing you can do to your pipeline is you can call it, and that means taking deals out of it. Now, the best way to take a deal out of your pipeline is to mark it as closed one. But the other 90%, you're probably marking it as lost. I don't think salespeople screw up by misqualifying deals. As much as they bring deals into the pipeline, they work them to some extent, and the deal ends up not being real anymore. Maybe you make it through the demo, and they're like, yeah, yeah, we need to digest this, and we'll get back to you.

And we can talk about that and how to avoid getting caught in that trap. But salespeople, for the most part, are afraid of taking things out of their pipeline because they don't want to screw up their KPI metric of their win-loss ratio. They don't want to have to explain to their boss, hey, I lost this deal. And they don't want to admit to themselves, hey, I lost something, and now my pipeline looks anemic, and it's because I didn't do enough of the daily discipline and hard work of prospecting. The thing is, you have to have a realistic look at your pipeline. You have to take those things out. And I think the best way you do that is you have to focus on getting to the truth with your customer.

I'm less focused. The two things that I focus on as a salesperson is prospecting like a machine and get to the truth with every single deal. So let's talk about that because I think there's an inherent distrust with sales reps, obviously, for reasons we could go into, but I think most people know. And so that trust factor, that transparency factor from the client is critical. But how do you build that trust and that transparency with that client so that, A, is it us being as blunt and as direct, or is there a way that you do it so that you get the clients to come to us and say, you know what, I'm going to be honest with you. This really just isn't the right fit. And that's an objection for the right reasons, not just because they don't want to talk to us type of thing.

The thing that I say to salespeople is, if you sense it, say it. Let's throw a hypothetical out of here, John. I'm showing you a demo of our analytics tool. And you're sitting there and you're, I can tell you're half listening, right? You're checking your email on the side. You're giving me one word answers. Or maybe you're even pushing back a little bit and being like, if I get the feeling that this isn't going well, what most sales reps are going to do is they're going to keep showing the demo. And if I show them this next page, maybe I'll show them this feature, which will get them to say, man, this is great. Send me the contract. What you actually need to do is anytime you sense friction in the deal, you need to call it out.

And it's really simple. All you say is, John, I'm kind of getting the sense that you're not crazy about this analytics tool that I'm showing you. Or, John, I'm kind of getting the feeling that you don't think our pricing is a good fit. John, I'm kind of getting the sense that you feel like Richard Harris might be a better fit for you for your sales training. And you say it not in the sense of, like, you're this angry sales rep trying to win the deal. You feel something you're saying. And maybe if you don't feel super confident with that statement, right, if you're a new salesperson, you're talking to a really senior person, you could end it with, like, am I completely off base with this? And what happens is one of two outcomes is going to happen when you make that statement.

The first is that they agree with you. They don't like the analytics tool. The power of this, though, is you've kind of broken down that buyer-seller dance where, like, you're the salesperson who's just, like, throwing stuff at them to try to get them to buy. And you're super hopeful here. They're like, whoa, wait. I need to pull away from my email. This guy just asked me if I don't like the thing that I'm showing. Well, cool. Now you've shown that you're sort of comfortable with them being real with you. Now, if they agree with you there, they don't like the analytics tool, they're going to tell you. And hopefully, now you have a chance to dig into why. Now you can handle the objection. But until you get to them actually articulating that they don't like this thing, you can't handle that.

You have to ask. The other outcome here is they disagree with you and say, no, I actually like this thing. And this is also powerful because, again, you've pattern interrupted. You're no longer the seller who's trying to, like, be all happy and great. And, like, you've got your blinders on if this is the best demo in the world. You want real feedback. And so you've sort of broken that pattern. The other thing is they're now going to defend that they do like the thing that you're showing. And that's really powerful. When the customer articulates that they do like this thing, it's a lot harder a week later for them to be like, oh, I didn't really see the value in it. Because now they've told you it's a cognitive dissonance thing.

So the big thing here to, like, get to the truth is you have to ask for the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts. And most salespeople don't want to encounter that pain. Yeah, I think that bluntness, there's a difference between being direct and being rude. And I think, you know, we all got to find out what that line is by trial and error. Because my line is different than your line. You know what I mean? Anybody. So, but you do have to push up to find that out and getting to that truth. Because, you know, what about this when you feel it, where the customer is giving you all the head bobs and, hey, this thing's great. But you know that there's something there that probably is not the right fit for them.

How do you bring that up with it? It's almost like giving them an objection that they don't have yet. But, you know, eventually probably could come up. So how do you address that? This is actually one of the best ways to accelerate the deal. Because what you're doing is, like, any good customer is going to go through the due diligence related to buying your thing. So a prime example of this might be, like, the IT security conversation. Like, you know that might be an issue. Okay, you're selling cloud SaaS technology. And, like, I sell the law firms. That is sometimes, like, it's a no-go for them. They're just not comfortable with cloud. And I think you have to proactively bring that up. And, again, you're no longer the sales rep who's trying to, like, push this thing through through a back alley.

You're like, hey, one of the things that folks typically want to talk about with us is cloud security. And it's usually something that they're really concerned about. Would you be against scheduling that conversation next week? You need to put, like, if you put that out there, one, again, you're the salesperson looking for the truth, not the deal. And there's a big difference there. Two, I think you actually accelerate your sales cycle by presenting the objection to them. Because what you want to do with deals that come into your pipeline is get them in or out as quickly as possible. And when you bring up the objection, if it's a legitimate thing that's going to kill the deal, you want to know about that as quickly as possible.

But I think a lot of salespeople are, like, they're anxious about the volume of their pipeline. And so they hope that that thing is never going to come up. Well, what's actually going to happen is you're going to get all the way to the end of the deal. And they're going to say, wait a minute, we never talked about this. And now you've wasted all of your time and the customer's time on a deal that was never a deal. I'm there with you. I actually proactively bring up, based on when I qualify them and discover whatever their needs are, and I know my training's a fit, but, right? I know there's something there, but there's something that I, based on what you said, is probably going to be, I'll actually bring that up.

Be like, you know what? I'm excited about our conversation. I do think we can make a difference here. I will say something you brought up concerned me a little bit as far as the fit here. Would you mind if I kind of shared my thoughts on this? You know, you had said earlier you wanted a methodology. And look, I have common language structure, but I wouldn't consider what we do as a methodology, soup to nuts, all the way top down the board. So help me understand the longevity of what you're looking for here, because I want to make sure that you're comparing this to what your priorities are. And again, being proactive about my deficiencies, about what we're not good at, but telling them why we're not good at it and why we don't think it's really that important.

And if it is because it aligns with their priorities, then you should probably go talk to Richard Harris, somebody else that fits those priorities. And giving that referral to somebody and walking away is so powerful. But it's so hard to do because these reps are being asked every day that every deal matters, every call matters. So they're so afraid to walk away from something that doesn't really fit. But I wish more leadership would hone in on that. No, these are the type of clients we want, and I don't want anybody else that doesn't fit that mold. And look, if you don't have a huge pipeline, but you have the right pipeline, I'm going to reward that as opposed to the activity metrics that I'm holding you accountable for.

So why do you think most leaders don't take that approach of far more quality over quantity at this point? I think the fear is looking at the pipeline and having it reveal the uncomfortable truth that you didn't do enough prospecting at the front end. And leaders are afraid of that also. They're nervous to see that their salespeople weren't making it like they weren't prospecting the way that they should be. And daily discipline related to prospecting is really, really hard. It's a slog. It's a grind. And a lot of salespeople will find excuses not to do it because they have such a big pipeline. I'm working so many deals. Like you had my buddy Armand on the show a couple months ago, and one of the things that he talked about was like time blocking and being really effective and efficient with your time to be able to carry a larger volume of pipe.

And the thing is, if 40% of your pipeline is crap, you're wasting every call that you make to someone to check in or touch base. And, hey, have you finished digesting our demo from last month is a call that could have been made to a new customer. And so that's part of the reason why you have to take things that aren't real out of the pipeline. Because now those 20 check-in calls that you made on Tuesday afternoon, that's an hour of cold calling you could have done. And you bring in one new deal that way. And so I want a really lean pipeline. Yeah, it's funny. My old boss, who I really don't like, is the only person that I, to this day, probably would say something to. If I saw him on the street, I'd probably tell him to fuck himself.

But I will tell you the one thing I learned from him. He was – and I don't like the hardcore clothes. I don't like the Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross type of bullshit. But he was one of those people. He would be in a meeting and I would be shadowing him in a meeting just as a, you know, with him. We'd go on site, whatever. And he would say some shit that I was just like, oh my – like crossed to me that barrier of rude versus direct and being like straight up rude. And in the meeting of like five, ten people, look, are you guys going to move forward or not? You know what I mean? Like that type of thing where it was like, oh my God, dude. Like why? Like so awkward. But – and I would walk out of those meetings and be like, dude, what did you just do there?

Like I think if you just soft rolled that a little bit, that client was like – they were vibing. They were interested in this. But you just like came with the thunder there. And they just immediately had this visceral reaction. And he was like, well, it is what it is. I fail fast, right? And as much as I – at first I'm like, that guy's an asshole. But man, his pipeline was so accurate. He was by far the most accurate forecaster in the whole company because he got things in or out. No was a fine answer for him. And not only was the training he was looking for, and now that I know this doing training, it was also the fit from a personality standpoint. Because there are some clients that for me as an example, I could probably get good value out of our training.

But me and them don't vibe at all. They're like a super regulated industry. Their structure about everything. They don't swear about anything. I have HR invested in all this other stuff. Like, that just ain't me. It's not going to be successful. So as hard as that is to turn that revenue down, I have to go hunting for the right type of revenue. And I think that's where I want to get back to this pipeline. You know, how do you, outside of asking, pausing and being conscious of it, of, hey, this doesn't feel right. Something's off here. Talk to us. But let's take the slide deck down. What are some other questions that you ask or things that you do in the sales process to get that pipeline to be as accurate as it possibly can be?

So let's talk about that question that your boss was asking. Because, and we talked about the spectrum of, like, where your line is. That's all the way, like, you know, super New York right there. Are you going to find a bit or not? So I think you do have to ask the customer to make a decision on every single call. Now, we're not talking about make a decision. Are you going to sign the contract or not? It's are you going to make a decision to move to the next step? And actually, Morgan and I were talking about this a couple weeks ago about, like, booking next steps with customers and not ending up in this land where it's like, hey, check in with me next week. And so I think what this goes back to is the beginning of every call with a customer.

You need to get them to agree that they're going to make a decision on that call to move to the next step or not move to the next step. So the upfront contract. It's part of the upfront contract. It's part of the expectations. But the way you're going to frame it is you almost say, so, right, you know, you check the time, right? You check, all right, you know, is there anything else you wanted to cover today? And then you need to say something along the lines of, look, like, and I'd love to insert some, like, comedy hyperbole in this. Like, look, usually these introductory demos go one of two ways. You're either going to hate this thing and probably think it's the worst thing since canned bread.

And if that's the case, that's okay. You won't hurt my feelings. The other outcome is you might feel like, all right, this thing has a little bit of merit, probably warrants some further exploration. Typically, if that's the case, the next step is X. And what you do is you've got to pose the next step here in the beginning of the call, okay? And one of two things happens there. Either the customer, like, they're going to push back on that. Oh, that's not the next step. The next step we need to do, great. Okay, cool. Now you have more clarity about where that deal is going in the pipeline and great. Now you know what the next step is going to be and you can book that. The other thing is they're going to say, all right, cool, that'll be the next step.

What you've got to do in the beginning of the call, though, is we talked about, like, asking permission and the cognitive dissonance thing. Is if you've confirmed the time, you might say something like, all right, well, given that you and I both have a hard stop at 2.30, would you be against stopping about 10 minutes early to discuss whether or not we move to that next step? And you do this up front in the beginning. And when they agree to that, you set a little timer on your phone to go off 10 minutes early. And it's super awkward because I sometimes feel awkward, like, if you're on a roll with the customer, just, like, stopping. But if you stop the 10 minutes early, like, now you don't end up in that land of, all right, checking in.

Hey, I know we were going to schedule a call to go over pricing. So what you do is you pose the next steps at the beginning of the call, get them to agree to make a decision. And then at the end, you actually have to ask, like, okay, so I know we talked in the beginning about, look, these demos usually go one of two ways. I don't know, did you hate the thing? Yep. And then you can book them for the next meeting. All right, everybody, Nick is a ball of energy and insights. His experience shines through as this conversation moves forward. I'm particularly keen to hear more about what drives our output and that feeling that we all get when something just isn't right. To be highlighted on next week's episode, send me your sales wins at james at jbarrows.com.

Today, we shout out Imran Batla of Global Cloud Solutions. He signed up for JBSales On Demand to gain structure and process to close more deals while still filling his funnel at the same time. He was able to secure five new contracts and manage his over 300 accounts in upstate New York effectively using the skills and techniques that he received from JBSales On Demand. Way to go, Imran. Nice work, buddy. Whether you manage a closed book of business or have green pastures to roam, JBSales On Demand delivers one of the most profoundly effective strategies for managing your sales pipeline. There's so much gold in these hills, you cannot come away without seeing better results. Sign up today to start learning at ondemand.jbarrows.com and become a certified JBSales professional.

You'll love the improvements that you find at JBSales On Demand. Let's get back into the episode. Yeah, I think that, I mean, that follows all the statistics, you know, that Gong, and I know you look at Gong and consume that content as well. And one of those things is the best reps spend, like, I think it's like five to ten times longer talking about next steps than average reps do. And they use the upfront contract to set the stage. And it's funny because that upfront contract, I took, you know, when I was Sandler, early on in my career, I took Sandler. I liked it, but the upfront contract, the way it was delivered to me by the trainer sounded so fucking cheesy. I just disregarded it for 20 years of my career.

I was like, that's dumb. You know, nobody's going to do that. But when I saw the Gong data saying that the best reps do that, I started to rethink it and how I could make it mine, how I could make it so it wasn't cheesy. Because I felt like it was cheesy, you know what I mean? I started the, oh, thank you very much for your coming in today. So here's what we want to talk about. If we do all that stuff, would you feel comfortable taking the next steps? Like, ugh, right? But I had to make it mine. But I think that is so important to set those expectations. And one of the things you brought up is proposing the next step as opposed to allowing the client to. There's a fine line on this one, though, because, you know, I'll give you an example.

Like Gary V, right? He doesn't ever prepare for any meetings. Like I saw an interview with him. He's like, I don't prepare for anything because I want to go in with a fresh mindset and see where this thing goes, okay? I think for somebody like Gary, that works because of who he is and how internally he's so locked into when the client says something, he can adjust, right? But for the rest of us, that's not an easy thing to do there. So, um, so phrase it again for the clients from your standpoint on how you phrase that, set the stage for those next steps without telling the client what to do, right? Because that, that's that danger is like, once you tell them what to do now, all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, kid, this is my buying process, not your selling process.

So go fuck yourself. So how do you phrase it so that somebody gets into that right mindset for that approach? The magic word here is typically, or you could say usually. Yeah. And what you're not saying is, John, after this demo, the next step is for us to go over pricing, because to your point, the CFO is going to say, hell no, it isn't. The next step is you need to talk to my IT team. I don't, I don't care about pricing until we make sure this thing's cleared away. And that's why you say typically customers don't want to feel like you're doing a paint my numbers where it's like, okay, this is the static next steps. But your job as a salesperson is to do the work for the customer. And they don't know, I mean, you've hopefully sold this thing dozens and dozens of times and are able to guide them on, hey, this is how folks typically evaluate us.

And I think you almost want to like something I'll do in the beginning of the process is go over what all those steps are with the customer, right? You know, we have an initial call, we talk a little bit, and then you might even want to carve out in your first, you know, 30 minute call with a customer, a couple of minutes to talk about. Here's how folks like typically go through this process. We usually start with an introductory demo. Then from there, we do this. If that both of those things check out and you feel like, okay, those aren't deal breakers. Like I'll go through an intro demo. And then after that, I'll go over pricing. And I'll say like, those are usually the two big deal breakers for customers.

You might hate the demo. Well, okay. It's not even worth going over pricing. Then you might say the pricing doesn't work. Okay, well, there we go. We probably know we don't need to explore more deeply. But I propose those things and I talk about how those things could be deal breakers for them. Because what I want to do is get that stuff in front of them early and let them know it's okay if those things are a deal breaker. So the magic word here is typically. You're going to say something like, John, these meetings typically go one of two ways. Again, the word typically is there. Either hate this thing and think it's the worst thing that you have ever seen. And look, if that's the case, that's okay.

I didn't build the software. Like, I'm just the guy who shows it to you. So the other outcome is, and so I'm like really leaning towards an extreme, right? You're going to hate this thing. And then the other one's a little bit softer. I'm not going to say you're going to love this thing and think it's going to completely change your business. And this is an area I think a lot of junior sales reps struggle is they think they can replace value. And I don't really like the word value with enthusiasm. This thing's going to completely revolutionize the way that your finance team runs the business. It's going to change your world. Come on, man. No, it's not. It's going to help. It's going to help with a problem that we have.

But so what I do is I sort of temper down the language there. It's like the other outcome is you think, all right, this thing could be helpful for us. And we probably need to explore this a little more deeply and do some due diligence, right? I'm framing it as like you're doing due diligence. You're evaluating this thing to see if it's a fit. You're deciding it's either not a fit or it looks like it could be a fit. Now you're saying typically the next step of that evaluating if it's going to be a fit is most folks want to do an IT review call to make sure that we check some of the boxes related to compliance. Would you be against setting some time at the end of this to take that step? So you're super soft with the, you're not telling them that they're making a decision that it is a fit and you're not telling them that this has to be the next step, but you are offering a guide of where other customers have gone.

And it's okay if they correct you because now you have more clarity into the next step with your pipeline. Exactly. And I think that what, you know, for everybody listening, if you're struggling getting to power, that is a very good way of doing it. So if you, like, I'll give you a perfect example with Morgan when he came, when he came on board here, he was talking to SDRs and SDR managers and he was trying to, but he just couldn't get to power because he wasn't leaving enough time to talk about his next steps. He wasn't setting the right expectations. And he was kind of chicken shit to ask that SDR leader who's like, I got this, Morgan. No, we got to do this. He was chicken shit to ask them.

And so we, it just was interesting how the Gong blog post came out about setting up front contracts and also, you know, time to make it at the end, closing it out. And we worked on that where he would set the expectation where typically the next step was after this, that we bring in your VP of sales, we bring in your CRO, we bring in whoever else is ultimately going to need to make the call on this one. So, you know, do you see that as, as a viable next step if we hit these things that we talk about today? And what happened there is he would get the objection right up front, which would be no, right? A lot of ways, like, no, I'm not going to bring, I'm not going to send you. But then there would be the conversation of, well, wait a minute.

You just said, this is all the stuff that you wanted to see to make you feel comfortable of taking the next steps here. Typically, the next step is to engage with these other people to get their insights and to beat this up a little bit. So why, if we don't cover what we do here, why don't, isn't that an option there? And you can be as bold as you want to be with that approach, but at least it's a, it's a crutch, if you will, that you can use to engage with power if you're having a hard time doing it. Yeah, I mean, I think if you're in that scenario, you think about the way that you actually frame up bringing in the VP of sales to look at this thing. Because that almost feels like you're taking away time from that person.

You might consider framing it like, look, you know, we've gone over this PDF of our, of our training. Usually your, your VP of sales is going to say, no, we don't want to do these three things. And we really want to home in on these two things. And they want a chance to beat us up on how we're going to structure this thing. I don't know if you feel like it'd be a bad idea for us to spend 15 minutes talking to that person. Because now it's no longer, you're bringing, you're bringing all the power to us. It's like, look, they're going to have critical feedback for us. And we want to get that. You might even, you know, what's the best way to communicate with them about, so we can structure this thing right.

So it actually works for your business. Like, I think, again, you're throwing your, like, I, one of my favorite things to do as a sales rep is throw myself under the bus. Like, we screw up as a business. We don't, like, we screw up our implementation sometimes. The product isn't perfect. Again, you're getting, like, you're getting to the truth. It's true. Like, you know your product isn't perfect. You know the onboarding team doesn't nail it 100% of the time, 100% of the time. And when you, like, actually tell the customer that, they feel more confident in your team's ability. Because now you're not posturing as this person who's perfect, this company that's perfect. No solution is perfect. And when you start telling that to people, they feel a lot more comfortable.

Your VP of sales is going to beat up our training. And they're probably not going to like a couple of the things that you and I here on today's call thought were going to be great. And so, what I'm concerned about is, like, we get into the training and then they get mad that we're showing things that she didn't want us to show. So, would you be against us scheduling some time to talk with that person? But, yeah, again, you frame it up front. You get the objection early. And then you know. And then you can also do the thing where, like, you get to the truth where it's like, you know, we talked about I'm getting the sense. But you might say, you know, you've had a couple meetings with this SDR manager.

You're concerned that you haven't talked to the VP of sales. Well, you need to tell the customer that. John, you know, typically when we've gotten this deep in the process, the VP of sales has met with us. You give us some critical feedback on how we structure this thing. I'm a little concerned because I don't know if that person is aware of the conversations that you and I have been having. And I don't know if you have any feedback for me about what we should be doing differently. Like, you just say, like, I'm the one screwing up. I'm concerned. Help me feel better. What this also does is this eases your, like, pipelining anxiety. Because I don't know if you've ever done this. Like, I look at my pipeline.

Sometimes I'm like, oh, gosh, I'm really nervous about these three deals because we haven't addressed these things with them, these hidden objections. Well, now I know. Like, I want to talk about those with that person because now I know either the deal's in or it's out and I can focus on the right things. Yeah, there's indicators, too. As you go through, there's definite indicators. When somebody says yes to that question versus or whatever question you ask, when they say yes, there's an accelerator. When they say no or whatever, there's a pause. That's a decelerator. And being able to be conscious of those to preemptively address them, I think, is where you start to really master sales, right?

Where you start to say, look, I've seen this rodeo too many times. And when this thing happens, it almost never takes it to the next step. So because of that, I now need to figure out a way to address that in a proper way. And again, I'll go back to that example with Morgan. You know, he's, him and I are two very different people as far as I'm directing in your face. I got no problem asking you, hey, Nick, look, you're going to move forward with this or what, right? He's not, but he had to figure out, same thing with getting to power. I'd be like, hey, Nick, look, at this point, you know, would it make sense to, you know, or the way, I like the way you phrase that, you know, typically next steps are to get some insights and feedback from leadership because there's a lot of times they look at it from a different lens than you do.

So, right, now that's a nice way of doing it, but getting him to get to power, I gave him the authority to just straight up say, hey, look, look, Nick, I used to be an SDR and an SDR manager. I know for a fact that, you know, you and I can come into violent agreement about what we need here for your team. But typically when it goes up to the C level, they shred it for these reasons. So that's why I need to talk to your VPs so that you and I don't waste a lot of time down here. Like I got him to be that bold with the approach. And yeah, some people were like, dude, you know, screw you. Like I got this, you know, and other people were like, yeah, that makes sense, Morgan. And I've gone to bat before for stuff like this and it hasn't happened.

So help me, help me deal with this. Now you have an advocate. You're working together on those things. The other thing. So we talked about like asking for that the next step early in the beginning of the call. The other thing that you could do in that situation is you get to the end of the call. Right. And they've agreed. Okay, Nick, you know, we liked this. Let's go over the pricing together next week. What you now do is you do a little bit of foreshadowing. And this is really, really powerful, right? So, okay, we've gone over this initial demo or PDF talking about our services. You like what you saw there. You want to go over pricing. Here's again where you use the typically language. And you're going to propose.

So you're in call number one. You're in the process of scheduling call number two at the end of that call. What you now do on call number one is you're going to foreshadow if call number two goes well, what will happen on call number three? And so what you might say is, okay, cool. All right. Tuesday at three works for you. Great. I'm sending you a calendar invite after this. So what we'll do in that meeting is we'll go over the pricing. We'll talk about implementation, services, et cetera. And honestly, those calls usually go one of two ways. You might tell me that the pricing is not a fit. And if that's the case, I understand. Like, let me know. I don't want to be the guy that's playing chase and following up with a million emails.

It's okay if it's not a fit. The other outcome, once we go over the pricing next Tuesday, is you say, all right, this thing could work. Typically, the next step from there is we'll meet with your VP of sales and go over the training program. And so what you're doing is you're all the way back in call number one, and you're talking about what could happen on call number three. And what you're doing here is you're taking away the pressure of now. They don't need to make a decision right there, right then about whether or not they introduce you to the VP of sales. They just need to know, all right, we're going to go over pricing next week. And if that looks good, I'm going to introduce you to the VP of sales.

Now, what you're doing here by prefacing, that's a big ask there to say to the SDR manager, I want an intro to the VP of sales. Well, they're going to scrutinize you a lot more on that second call, that pricing call, which you want. They're going to start asking really hard questions because they know you've prefaced, we're going to the VP of sales after this thing. And so you want the hard questions. Part of the reason a lot of deals stall is the customer's like, ah, I don't really want to introduce them to my VP of sales because there's like six questions. I know she's going to ask me and I haven't really gotten them answered. And I feel like kind of awkward telling the salesperson I need another meeting first.

And so that's where your deals start to blow up. By telling them we're taking this big next step in the future, they're going to press you harder, which you want. I love that. You had said something in the notes that you sent over, something I want to clarify, because you said ditch the recap email. Now, I want to tell me what your view of the recap email is and why you should ditch it. Okay. So what 99% of salespeople do when they get off of a demo with three people is they put together an email from their template and they change a couple bullet points to highlight the things the customer really liked. And then right after that demo, they hit send on that email so that the customer has the value cemented in place.

And they might spend 15 minutes putting that email together. That's all right. That's a fair amount of time. Like that's pretty efficient. I gave up on doing that about a year and a half ago. Instead, I use this magic device called the phone and I get off a demo with the customer and I go into my Zoom info and I find their direct dial. And I immediately after the demo, call the people in order of seniority of who was on the demo. So I've got a VP of, you know, I've got, I've got a CFO, a director of finance and an IT director on a demo. Soon as the demo ends, instead of spending 15 minutes on putting that email together, I'm picking up the phone and I'm calling John the CFO and I'm saying, John, thanks again for joining the demo just now.

I wanted to ask, was there anything that you were hoping to see or address in today's meeting that we didn't cover? Nine times out of 10, the answer is going to be, no, no, we're good. But like the thing about email is when you send that recap email to three people, not all three people are going to give you feedback right away. And we talk a lot about in sales, the power of the phone, but I think most people only talk about it in the context of prospecting. Cold call. Yeah. I try to spend as little time on email as possible. If I have an internal question or need to get something done internally, I'm not using Slack. I'm not using Teams. I'm not sending an email. I'm calling the person. If the customer emails me a question, I'm picking up the phone and calling them because I want every excuse to talk to them.

And that is really uncomfortable for a junior sales rep. But if you want to improve your phone skills and like selling skills, you want to talk to the customer as much as possible because that is like, you know, you talk about the different levels of information communicated, verbal, nonverbal, like the best way to get information communicated is to talk to the person, not to send an email. So when I call each person after the demo, it has the benefit of, I get more information from each person, but it now gives me an opportunity to start to multi-thread and develop relationships with different people inside the organization, get to power and set concurrent next steps. So let's use the example of, I've been working with a director of finance.

They're looking at my thing. They're looking at my thing. We set up a demo. The CFO is on the demo. We finished the demo. I now have a relationship with that CFO that is going to be as strong as it ever is at this point. We literally just talked. And sometimes people get concerned, oh, I'm going over the director of finance's head. You literally just had a demo with this person and talk with them for 35, 40 minutes. So you can call them and you're asking, hey, was there anything you didn't like we didn't cover? You're trying to make sure you did a good job. So now you call that person and they say, Nick, I really liked what I saw, but we need to spend some more time on your analytics tool. Oh, great.

Let's book that next step. You get that next step booked. Immediately after, you call the IT director. The IT director says, Nick, I really liked it, but we got to make sure this thing passes some security thresholds here. Okay, well, do you want to set up a time to talk with our tech team next week? Yeah, I do. Oh, now I've got two next steps booked concurrently. I just shaved at least a week off of my sales cycle. I'm multi-threading. I've got relationships with different people in the organization. I've broken down that barrier. I can call them again. And what this does for that momentum internally, now when they have their executive meeting next week and they're talking about, all right, we're looking at Nick's tech thing, the IT director is like, all right, don't worry.

We already covered security. The CFO, yeah, we covered the analytics. I really liked it. As opposed to you're there in that meeting and the CFO says, yeah, I really liked the analytics thing. And the IT director says, wait, no, I really got to make sure this thing passes security muster. You get so much momentum and these things start to snowball. So the idea that I have behind ditching the recap email, it's not like I don't have anything against the recap email itself. It's the medium of email is really, really crappy for salespeople. It is slow. People are hesitant to communicate everything. And it prevents you from really multi-threading the way that you need to, especially in an enterprise deal.

Gotcha. Yeah. And I'm glad that clarification because, you know, I'm a huge fan of the summary email, but it's about what they said, not the value that I can bring. Right? So it's like, hey, you said this, your priorities with this, your timelines, this, the challenges, those type of things. Is that accurate? First of all, A, shows active listening. Second of all, when they commit, then that's something for me to hold them accountable for. But I agree that a lot of reps will recap their value to reinforce. And the client doesn't need to know that. They just saw it. They're going to read through your PDFs, whatever it is. You don't need to script that out. But what you heard from them is critical, in my opinion, on that summary email, because that helps from an audit standpoint, basically.

Yeah. And I think that's good. And like, again, part of your job as a salesperson is do the work for the customer. And if you have those one-off conversations with each person after the fact, your recap email could be even more powerful. Because when you send that after you've talked with each person, you send, hey, here's the things we heard from you. Here's what we're doing next. John and I are going to be covering the analytics module next week. And then I'm going to be speaking with Kathy. And she and I are going to be talking about IT security on the 15th. Like, now you've laid out, hey, here's what's happening next. And it's super easy for them to go back to the rest of the team. Because you better believe there's other people internally who are thinking about this decision and have a stake in it who you have never met with.

And it's so easy. Now they can just copy and paste your email. Hey, Nick and John are like, here's the timeline of their evaluation. You're doing the work for the customer. They don't have to think anymore. You're getting each person to propose the next steps, setting them, and then taking action. You talk a lot about phone. To finish up here, what if they don't pick up? What if they don't respond or whatever it is on the phone? Are you leveraging video these days? Yeah, I use video a lot for non-prospecting things. A really good example of this would be like a proposal. So again, we talk about multiple stakeholders, right? So I'm going over pricing with John today on this call. We're doing it live.

Please, like, I don't get salespeople who just blast off the PDF proposal and don't go over it with the customer. You got to give some context for it. Well, if I go over pricing with John, he's going to have some questions. He's going to need some clarification on things. Like, I sell an enterprise-level thing, and there's a lot of different variables at play. So I go over the pricing with that customer, and again, I preface this call with, we talked about the next step thing, but one of the other things I'll preface with is, hey, I'm going to send you a PDF copy of this after the call. What I'm also going to do as soon as this call ends is I'm going to film myself going over this proposal for seven or eight minutes and covering some of the things that you, like, deem important on today's meeting.

And then I'll send it to you, and that way, because I'm sure there's other people who probably need to look at this proposal, you don't have to go re-explain yourself to every single person. And so, again, I'm doing the work for the customer. I'm making their job easier, but I also have an opportunity to insert my voice and some context into this thing. So that video, and now I can see how many times that video is watched also, and that's when it gets really powerful. But I think, you know, you want to talk about multi-threading, and you've got a bunch of different people who are looking at this thing, and what's it going to cost? And if you just send that PDF with no context, it's great that you went over it with your champion.

But now you're, if you just send the PDF after the fact, you're expecting your champion to take time out of their super busy schedule and go over that pricing with six or seven or eight different people, and to be able to sell it and explain it in the detail that you could. Now, this also has the impact if you film the video, they now hear your voice. They're a little more familiar with you. Now, next week after the demo, if you call the CFO, she knows you. She knows you. She heard you on that pricing video. I can talk to this guy. We have a relationship. It's really, that's my favorite use of video, way more than prospecting. I agree. Delivering proposals, and also I use video for handling objections.

So when that objection comes up, obviously, if you get the email objection, right, you know, first thing, I try to pick up the phone right there and say, hey, can we talk about this? Hopefully, they'll pick up. If they don't, though, I fire off a video, say, hey, Nick, look, I got your email, man. Look, I get it. Q1's always crazy for everybody. Say it was a timeline, timing, you know, example. But I'm a little confused because you had said earlier in the conversation that Q1 was really critical for you if you didn't get out of the gate moving forward. And now you're pushing this to Q2. So I must have missed something here. Would you mind getting back on the call for five, ten minutes just to give me some so we can reset expectations?

And really, the goal there is just to get them on a call so I can talk to them and see if I can deal with that objection the right way as opposed to me trying to fire off some well-scripted email around it. Yeah, John, the other thing that you talk about a lot is, like, you talk about the Gary V thing, if content is king, context is God. And I think you can also do this when you're sending marketing collateral because, okay, right, our job is I've got a marketing collateral library of a hundred different things. And, like, I don't want to send all of those to the customer. And so my job as a sales rep is to share the right things with them. But also, like, if I'm sending a case study to a customer, there might just be one paragraph that's super, super relevant to them.

I'll film myself going over that specific piece of the collateral. Hey, one of the things you wanted to see was a case study with one of our customers in the manufacturing space. Here's the case study. I also filmed a video talking for 30 seconds about the implication that I think is most relevant to your use case. You're going to watch the 27-second video, and your voice is in it again, your context is in it again, you're highlighting the important piece as opposed to, oh, great, here's a three-page PDF for me to root through and try to find something that I can justify to my boss. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants to read anymore. Nobody wants to look through all the details. They just want the summary.

That's why everybody flips to the pricing page and goes, here it is. So, you know, if you can put some context around it about the highlights, and that's really where it goes back to the qualification or discovery, understanding what those priorities are, matching yours up, making sure there's a fit. And if there's not, walk away like we had talked about or say, hey, I'm a little concerned here, but then hammering those on your summary to say, hey, look, you said this. This is the stuff that aligns with that. If those are still your priorities, I'm excited to get going with you. Right. And I'd stay in positive, but also putting some structure around it and giving the client outs all along the way to make, to your point, make them feel more comfortable with the fact that you're just not some sales rep saying everything's going to be rosy after you implement this because everybody knows it's not.

So, awesome, man. Well, look, hard stop here coming up for both of us, but really enjoy the conversation. What else? What else? What do you want people to know? Like, where can they find you? What are you doing these days? Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah. Follow me on LinkedIn. My first name's easy. It's Nick. My last name's a little tougher. It's Segelski. C-E-G-E-L-S-K-I. I accept all LinkedIn requests except the ones that are trying to sell me more leads or SEO services. Especially the ones on LinkedIn, right? Yeah, but no, get with me on LinkedIn. If you want to listen to my podcast, listen to Make It Happen Mondays first because it's a little better. But if you want to hear me ramble more about sales, best practices, give me a listen at 30 Minutes to Pres in this club.

That's awesome. Thanks, Nick, man. I appreciate it. And look, everybody out there, hopefully you got as much value out of this conversation as I did. And it gets you to do something a little bit differently, right? Whether it's ask that harder question, get that deal that's the 20%er that's been sitting in your pipeline for the past six months out or whatever it is. But let's just get a little bit better moving forward here in 2021, right? So, as I always say at the end, look, even if you're having a shitty day, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because if you made somebody smile, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So, get out there. Let's go make it happen and let's have some fun doing it.

All right? Thanks, Nick. All right, everyone, that's a wrap for this episode. And Nick has thrown some incredibly helpful perspective out there, right? I love the way that he uses real-life examples and rebuttals and objections that we hear all the time in this episode. Thanks again for coming out, Nick. It's always enlightening, my friend. Subscribe to JB Sales On Demand to start learning today at ondemand.jbarrows.com. The roadmap to sales success looks different for everyone depending on your vertical, the training that you receive, ideal prospects, and many more variables. An approach that creates a systematic process is what's needed to remain consistently growing in the right direction.

We deliver that at JB Sales On Demand. The skills there will take your sales career to new heights and take you places that you've never dreamed of. It will all be there and will be there with you every step of the way, helping you to sell better. See you next week, everybody.