David Weiss: Discovery - How MEDDIC Changed his life

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Today's conversation is with David Weiss. He's the CEO and founder of DealDoc and the CRO of The Sales Collected. He's also an author of Your Definitive Sales Career Guide and Sales Success Stories. This conversation was pretty tactical and mostly focused around the importance of discovery throughout the sales process. David talks about how he was a top performer early in his career, but one of his mentors challenged him to take it to the next level and introduced him to the discovery process called Medic, which changed his life.

We dug into the details of Medic and why it's so important now more than ever. We also discussed how it's evident today that many sales reps have lost sight of or never really had a grasp of the fundamentals, which makes things even harder in a down economy. There are a lot of tactics and techniques highlighted in this episode that I hope you can implement and use today. Let's make it happen. What's happening, Make It Happen family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong Vidyard and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes.

Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar. And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. David Weiss, what's going on, my friends?

I'm really excited to have you on this podcast and have this conversation. How you been, man? Good job. Thanks for having me on, man. I think we've talked earlier, like, you know, a longtime listener, first time caller. I'm super excited for the conversation and the jam out. And as I was prepping for this too, because I've been following you for a while, I love the content you're putting out there. And there was a few things that really struck me, especially with where we are right now. So to frame this conversation before we get into a little bit of background, David, is we're going to talk about, you know, why it's more important now than ever to really get detailed into your qualification process, into your deals and inspect the shit out of them.

Because whatever is in your pipeline right now, I almost guarantee you is in danger in some way, shape or form. So that's where we're going to dive into. But David, why don't you give us a little background of where you're coming from? And if you don't mind hitting on what I read about you, which was you were a star performer in so many ways, but then you got a punch in the mouth kind of midway through your career and woke up a little bit and took it to a whole nother level. So if you could put that in context, I think that'd be great. Yeah, Tom, for sure. So, shoot, 15, 20 years, sales, sales leadership, spent a lot of time in enterprise, you know, big companies you've heard of, like early stage SaaS, like CareerBuild was one of the very early SaaS companies, went over at Monster.

But the story you're talking about is ADP. So I spent six years in senior sales leadership, ADP, leading half the country for them. And then, you know, I decided I was done with payroll and I really wanted to get the sales tech. So I went over to Outreach, loved it over there, had some fun, then went over and led an enterprise sales for Seismic. So selling to, you know, salespeople and sales leaders and marketing and enablement and all of that. But the story you're talking about was ADP. So, you know, I was a mid, you know, two, three, $400,000, you know, W-2 guy, consistent year over year over year. And I really felt like I was, you know, dialed in. I mean, I was first in sales at ADP, then I was in leadership, always hit my number, you know, always in that like 120, 130% camp, those types of things.

And this is where like a, I normally dread leadership changes, like dread them. Like, I'm like, I can't wait for this new a-hole to come in and just ruin my life. Because that's like most of the time. But this one was different. A guy by the name of Gregory Donovan, him and I still talk, shoot, almost weekly, you know, all these years later. Like, he's become a mentor and a close friend. He came in and really pushed me. He introduced me to MedPick, which we'll probably chat on somewhat today. But it was new to me. And when I first was introduced to it, it was this whole like, who is this guy? Who does he think he is? I'm already doing great. I'm already a top performer. You know, I can't do any more.

Yada, yada, yada. And he kind of, you know, pushed me on it. And then I pushed back as I, that's who I am. And, you know, he didn't fire me, which was cool. And, you know, I kind of went on along the way, but then during our coaching calls, our pipeline calls, he'd be like, hey, what's the business case for this? How well aligned are we are to the economic buyer? Hey, have we built in and achieved me intentionally? How well aligned on decision criteria are we? Like, do we really understand their buying process? We implemented a mutual action plan. He just asked me the questions. And, you know, I would answer them or answer them wrong or not have enough detail. And then he just pushed me a little more.

And eventually I realized he was med picking me on every single, you know, op. And I was like, okay, shit, I need to learn this. So I learned it. The year I learned it, 180% of plan, 220% of plan. Got in charge of a team, worst team in ADP. In one year teaching them med pick, we became the number one team in ADP. Literally Vienna, Austria, President's Club, shake in the hand of Carlos Rodriguez, our CEO. And I credit that ultimate pick. And so, you know, I got, you know, challenged hard and learned a lot. And now I'm one of those guys just evangelizes and tries to teach others because I want people to, you know, be as successful as this thing helped me be. So, yeah. I love it, man. I think, and that, you know, and well, and now round it out to what are you doing now?

Just because I think that adds the cherry on top for the context. Yeah, so now I'm the chief revenue officer of a sales coaching and training and process building organization. But I'm also founder of an app called DealDoc where I literally took my playbook, my deal inspection checklist, my knowledge of med pick, built my own methodology around it, color coded it. And it's now literally an app in the app store. Android is coming out in three weeks. And people can just go in there, drinking a beer, having a glass of wine, sitting on the couch, clicking yes, no on some questions. And now I'll color code their deal. They can share it with their boss. It tells them exactly where all their gaps are.

Love it. And I think that's where I want to dive into because I wrote a post yesterday that actually did pretty well. I mean, you know, from an engagement standpoint, there's about 200 comments on it already in 20, which is pretty decent. So it obviously struck a nerve. And it was about how I feel like we've lost sight of the fundamentals in sales. You know, I think especially in the tech SaaS world, a lot of people have been throwing money and people and technology at the problem without really addressing the root cause of sales skills, sales fundamentals. And I think you and I are probably on the same page here with this, which is that, you know, we all know the sale lives and dies in discovery, right?

If you do not do the right discovery, you just kind of skipping through and then you get happy years and then you end up getting kicked in the teeth when the deal doesn't sign. Or when you don't show the economic buyer the true impact of what you can bring to the table for them. So you lose to our biggest competitor, which is no, you know, no decision. Right. So, so what are you seeing right now as far as those? I mean, you were a good, you were good, right? You were, you were top of the class. Was it a mentality thing for you? And let's translate that to what do you think is happening today with sellers? Because I think they're, I think a lot of people think they're better than they are at selling.

And I think a lot of people are, are probably beating themselves up right now because they don't think they're as good as they should be. So what was that realization like for you? And how can we translate that to some of the people right now who are kind of sitting there looking at their pipeline going, holy shit. I thought I was a top performer, but maybe I was a little inflated because of how aggressive things have been flowing these past 10 years in SaaS. Yeah, man. I mean, there's, there's like three threads you just pulled, like what's happening at discovery, which I want to get back to and talk about that. Because I think there's some elements, you know, what's, what's made me, you know, top of class, all that stuff.

Like, um, I'll, I'll go bottom. Let's go bottom up. Um, so how am I top of format? How does that translate? So like one, I always believed in being responsible for my own business. So when we were talking about pipe, like if, if it was Forex covers that I needed, I did Forex. I held my team's accountable to doing their Forex individually. And then SDRs and, uh, investors and marketing and current customers and referrals. And, you know, everything else was just gravy, like fantastic. Like that's where 200% performance comes in, but you need to be responsible for your core business. So that was always part of it. Then in ADP drum, listen to me. You got to run a good sales process. Like you got to inspect your deals.

Um, you got to do all the fundamentals correctly. And what I've found like leading top performers and, you know, having some success myself is that, you know, it's not top performers. Aren't better at one thing or another. They are literally masters of all of it. Like they have mastered discovery. They've, they've mastered pain-based solution, uh, demoing where it's like, you know, I'm going to isolate things to like three vignettes tied to the problem. I'm going to, you know, hammer on, tell, show, tell. I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm about to show you. I'm going to nail it directly to what I learned in discovery. We're then going to unpack it, implicate it, business case around it, ripple effect, you know, move to the next, move to the next, save time for like, who else should be involved.

Like they do that. They've mastered negotiation. They've mastered building business cases. They leverage everybody around them to get to all the players that they need. They fundamentally just never stopped learning and trying to perfect the craft. And they've broken the craft down into these like micro chunks of like, here's a thing that I need to get better at. And then another thing, another thing, another thing. Oh, let me put it all back together. Like that's some, like student of the game. Like that's the way that I've seen, you know, the best people out there. Like that's what you need to do to be like that level. Yeah, it, you know, I always bring, you know, the, the analogies across the board, right?

And a lot of people hate this because they watched him kill everybody for 20 years, but Tom Brady, right? Tom Brady was, is, and I don't care, I'm not even having the debate anymore, the greatest of all time. And I think the hardest, what do you got? Nice. Ah, there you go. So I can't show up my, my, uh, I got a Brady jersey right over there signed by him in a jacket. I got a video of him signing my jacket, which is actually pretty awesome. But he, I think the hardest job, uh, in the NFL for years was Josh McDaniels because Tom Brady, as good as he was, he was in the, he was the first one in the, in the video room after the game. He was dissecting nuanced little small pieces and he was pushing Josh McDaniels to coach him.

And he wanted to be coached. He wanted to get better. And I think that's the, I look at right now, there are, look, there are absolutely just hard drive drivers. And I don't care if it's generational. Like it's not, it's like, there are certain groups of people, regardless of what generation they're from. But I do think there's a false sense of security that has, has crept in here in the past 10 years of, you know, because of the growth at all costs, because of how frothy the market has been that like, I'm good. And I think that like going back to it, I think a lot of these people who thought they were at that upper echelon are now realizing that they're not. And I, there might be having a little bit of a crisis, a crisis of conscience here of shit.

And so with that, do you, you just kind of outlines, like looking at every little piece of the process. If you were one of those top performers right now, what would your, but you're now getting crushed. You haven't hit your quota for the past two or three months. You see the writing on the wall that if you don't do this, their pipeline isn't there right now. So you're a fucking mess across the board, right? Like you don't know what you don't know as far as what's working and what's not. So you're scrambling right now. Where would you even start if you were that person, um, in that situation? Yeah. And it's so breaking down pipe versus deal, get back to owning your own pipe. Yeah. Um, that, that can be really, really hard.

Um, that if you haven't worked that muscle in a while, or if only been working a little bit, like, you know, go make friends, go make best friends with the top SDR in the business right now. And whatever they're doing, you now own us. Hey, you do it. They're doing it. Create alignment. Um, if you're not, you know, posting on social media about the problem you solve, how you solve it, connecting with your buyers, they're, um, commenting and building authentic relationships, not spamming them, like liking their stuff, commenting on their stuff, being a thought leader in the space, sharing your thought leadership with them around that problem, what others are doing to solve it. If you are not doing that, you, you need to.

So like, to me, those are like basic marketing awareness, demand gen, um, and then, you know, self pipe gen, like start there, then, you know, carry it through to the deal itself. Look at where like you're having fallout and conversion. So if your first meetings aren't converting at like 90% to second meetings, you're either meeting with the wrong person or you didn't do the right level of discovery to get to the, you know, the problem. If your demos aren't converting to, we need to build a business case and we need to involve more stakeholders, like stop showing everything about your platform. Please, for love of God, don't like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's insights and analytics at the end.

And we're out of time and fucking what questions do you have? Like start getting to the micro vignette learnings where it's like, here's the problem. You said here's exactly how we solve it. Let's talk about the implications of solving. Let's talk about the ripple effects of who else this impacts. Let's agree that this, we did solve it and who else needs to be involved in future steps on this. Do that again. Second, third time. Well, all right. Now get really good. And this is where I wanted to go back to discovery where so many people fail in discovery is that they do it once, they do it twice and they think it ends. Discovery to me in the modern buyer is circular. I have a conversation with someone I found pain.

I show them how we can solve it. Who else does this impact? Back to discovery. I had a conversation with another person. Who else does that? And you are literally circling back four, five, six, 10 times. And that's just maybe at the director level and maybe across departments because the solution that you have likely impacts different departments, whether it be marketing, sales, operations, finance, HR, what have you in different ways. And then there's layers inside of those. And like, to me, one of the biggest failures of people is they don't get to the end user. They don't get to the actual person with the pain. The one that doesn't make the decision. The one that doesn't have a say, but the one that is experiencing the effing problem.

And if you can get to 10, 15 of those people and start really understanding how your solutions can impact that and turn them into a voice speaking for you. And you could put each of those people's pictures on a slide, all the problems. And now you're at the director VP level with their functional issues as well. You have now created a wave. You've created, you know, a very loud microphone. You've created many voices in organizations screaming for change that they didn't know they needed. And that's where so many people fail. It's like, you do not do that circular motion. Yeah. It actually brings in my early days of my first job out of college was DeWalt Power Tools, right? And it was a weird, it was a kind of an event marketing slash sales, but we didn't have any real quotas.

And our job was to drive around construction sites and basically evangelize DeWalt and, you know, do cool stuff. So it was a blast. And I remember, I don't know if that, like, I don't know why I took this approach. Maybe it was because I just knew I wasn't the smartest kid out there, but I, you know, and I always loved tools, but you know, DeWalt would bring us into the factory. We'd rip apart the tools. We'd understand that the gears were metal and these competitive differentiators and all this bullshit. And then I would go out to the field and most of my other colleagues would go straight to the foreman, right? They would go straight to the foreman on the job site and be like, hey, we got these DeWalt tools.

They're awesome. They're better gears and this, that, and the other thing. And okay. And I remember, I think I maybe did that a couple of times and just felt like I got the, oh yeah, sounds good. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll take a look at them, you know, next time we buy, but no commitment, no real interest, you know, just the blow up. And so I started just walking onto the job sites and looking at the guys who were using the tools and like these big burly construction guys who were just beating the ever living shit out of these, these, you know, drills and saws and everything like that. And I'd be like, hey, uh, you mind if I grab, you know, brought them lunch, you know what I mean? Something like that.

And I'd be like, Hey, um, that Makita drill that you're using there, why do you like it? Well, it's in a, and, and, and, well, what are some of the things that kind of bother you about it? Well, this, that, the other thing. I'd be like, have you ever seen the DeWalt version of that? Well, no. Oh, well, here's it. Here it is. Like, look, I don't know if it's better or worse, but would you mind just beating the shit out of this thing for the next? I'll give it to you for free. Will you mind just beating the shit out of it for like a week or so? And if I come back in a week, you just give me some insights on the differences between the Makita and the DeWalt. Yeah, sure. No problem. I'd come back.

Right. And they'd be like, oh, dude, this thing was fucking tent. You know, this thing does this and this is so much easier. Like I don't get a cramp. I don't do this or whatever. And I dropped it off to site, you know, three, fours up and it still works. And I'd be like, okay, cool. Thanks. And I would do that with like three, four or five. And then I would walk into the foreman's office and say, hey, I've been working with your crew here for the past couple of weeks. And I know these Makita drills are good, but they're giving them blisters. They crap out after this type of thing. And they're getting really frustrated. And the DeWalt thing actually does this. And then it was like taking candy from a baby, you know what I mean?

It wasn't hard to sell at that point because they were like, wait a minute, my guys will be happier and they'll be more productive with your shit versus that one. I don't care how much, like, unless it's like five times more expensive. I don't give a shit. Yeah. If I'm going to buy drills, I'll buy those instead of those. Okay, thanks. Right. And it ingrained in me that the, the bottom up approach is just as important because if you don't have a story to tell at the top, you're going to, you're, you're, you got that one swing and you're fucked. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm, and by the way, I've done that here recently, even because of the panic, because of what's going on in the marketplace and holy shit, I got an email.

I got a meeting with a C level or a CRO or something like that. And it's like, I'm so excited to show you this thing that we got. Cause I can, it's going to be awesome. And it's like, yeah, yeah, sure. Uh-huh. Okay. Uh, yeah. Why don't you send us over, you know, send me over a link to that. And follow me next week. And then it fucking goes. Yeah, dude. Top down, bottom up. It's funny. I think you and I have similar backgrounds. So I started, um, my career at Aramark and, and I was selling uniforms, but one of the uniforms I was selling is we're fire protected uniforms. So I did the exact same thing. What I would do, I put on steel toe boots, hard hat and a suit. Nice. You can literally walk into any manufacturing facility in the world with steel toe boots, a hard hat and a suit.

They will think you fucking are like an investor from somewhere. Like they, they, they don't question you. And I would literally walk up to the guys that were wearing the uniforms and I'd be like, Hey, can I ask you a question? Like, I'm looking at it. Like you've got holes here. You've got, you know, they're tattered there. The buttons are missing. Like, have you ever burned yourself? Because, you know, some slide or something went through this and they would show me their arms covered in burn holes. And I would take a picture of the guy, take a picture of their arm, talk to the next one, talk to the next one, ask their feedback. I'd literally collect it. And then I'd walk into the GM's office and I'd say, Hey, I just talked to, so, so, so, so here's them.

Um, do you know that you've like literally are injuring your people every single day because of this? Do you know, like, you're like, they're literally scarring themselves every single day on the floor because of this. And, you know, and I was like, did you know that your company that supplies these today are supposed to be replacing them because it's, it's an HR issue. It's a safety issue. You know, you've health hazards that can come from, you know, open wounds from slag burns. Like, I was like, do you know that? And they're like, they're not replacing those. I thought they were. My guys aren't telling me to your point. Early guys, they just fricking deal with it. As soon as I point out, they're making phone calls like in the office with me right now, trying to get ahold of their company.

And they're switching suit. So, like, it's, it's exactly that. You got to get to the voice of the people. Love it. So, what do you think out of all this, like, so for some people might know, not know what MedPIC is, but it just for everybody's clarification, it's, it's metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, identify pain, champions, and competition. So, it's a lot. Is there one that stands out for you that's more important than other, David? Because, and I'll make the analogy with, with, you know, kind of old school bants, right? Budget, authority, need, and timeline. Yeah. Which I always kind of thought was a terrible approach because it, what it did was it disqualified people that were not supposed to be disqualified, in my opinion.

To me, it, the only thing that matters in BANT, quite frankly, is need. Mm-hmm. Because if there's real need for impact reasons and all that other stuff, I can find budget. If I'm a decent enough sales rep, I can find budget. I can get to the economic buyer. I can, you know, I can, I can expedite a timeline, right? If there's real need. Yeah. Um, so, with MedPIC, how do you see it as far as the priorities of it? Yes. Or does it all have to be kind of, you got to make sure you check off all those boxes or it doesn't matter? All right. Let's, a couple things. One, BANT. I, I like BANT. I like BANT for inbound. Okay. If someone's going to need, hey, help me with some budget. What's your authority?

You know, who makes decisions? What do you need? What do you need to buy? Makes sense. It's the worst thing in the entire world for outbound. Like, literally, you can't have something worse because they don't, they don't have budget. You just can't, they don't have authority. But on what? Needs? You need to create need. Timeline? But what time? So, like, throw, throw BANT out for outbound. Inbound, there, there's some value there. But, let's, um, let's get to MedPIC. So, a couple, there's some really huge, huge misconceptions on MedPIC in the market. One, it is not linear. You don't, like, MedPIC your clients that. You don't show up meeting one and like, Hey, um, so what are your metrics? Like, that's not, you don't do that.

Please, for the love of God. It is not a sales process. It is not linear. Your, the best way to think about MedPIC. Challenger. Spin. Shout out to Keenan Gap. Um, you know, whatever the heck you, your sales process is, your stages are, MedPIC sits on top of it. It is not counter to it. It sits on top. It is your gap analysis checklist. So, hey, let me think about my deal. Have I built a business case yet? No. What could I use to build a business case? Metrics. What metrics do I have? How well pulled through are they? Have I met my economic buyer yet? Have they validated my business case? No. Maybe I need to find one. Do I know who's signing? How do I get to them? Is, are my deal problems aligned to their executive priorities and business goals?

So, like, you're asking all of these types of questions. So, think of MedPIC as like, I like to think of, um, like, let's use the car as an analogy. Your sales process is the car. MedPIC is like your blind spot detector. MedPIC's the thing that makes sure you don't get into a freaking accident and crash your car into something. That's where MedPIC is for. Um, is there one letter that's more important than another? Um, look, I'm a, I'm a big fan of identifying pain, getting into an economic buyer with a business case wrapped around it. You, you do that. You can kind of, you know, solidify the, the why change message. But I think like archetypal sales, like what are the foundational elements of all sales?

Why change? Why us? Yeah. So, why change is, is, is that it's, there's a problem. There's a, there's a financial implication solving it. And there's someone who could sign a check tied to a business priority and get me to the broader team that can then solve. But then you've got things like why us? So those are like, what's your decision criteria? Because to solve that problem, you need things. And if your solution does all of those things perfectly, great. But if there's misalignment, if there's a maturity curve of misalignment, if you do too much or too little, you either need to, you know, find partners or downgrade or their, or, or request because they're going to find something that's skinnier and that better fits.

So like, you know, the, the competition side, the champion side, all of those are kind of like, why us? And, and, and creating that partnership, the decision process, again, why us, how do we get it deployed? So like, there's, there's things here that kind of, you know, tie into both. So are they all important? Yes. They're all important because any gap in one is a risk in the deal that needs to eventually be de-risked. Um, but there's some elements that need to happen first. Like why change first before why us? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's in going back to your comment about how discovery, you know, is, it kills me when I see sales stages and one of the stages, I think we've actually structured reps in a way to think of things in stages.

So we think of, we have to prospecting as a stage and there's interest as a stage, then there's a qualification as a stage. Then discovery is a stage and negotiations as a stage. It's like, and, and I, you know, I, I, the same thing with discovery as far as negotiations, you're always negotiating. Like if you think negotiation starts at the end, when price comes up, you already lost. You weren't negotiating from the minute you get on the phone with somebody, you just have to reframe it. It's the same thing with discovery. It's like, you're constantly re, you know, Hey, let me just confirm this. So how do you document this with the client outside of something like a mutual auction plan? Okay, because there's one thing that I think reps with that mentality of discovery as a stage, they kind of put it there.

They maybe write some notes and then they go to their presentation stage. So what's your approach to aligning with the client of all this information that you're gathering and keeping them accountable for what they're telling you and leveraging that throughout the sales process. Every single one of those conversations. Yeah, that's great. Two things that are first stages. Um, I, I am starting, and I've been posting about this a little bit, but I'm starting to like, create this, like mad scientist view on the world, which is the stage of the sales process. And I'm really starting to like, like you're honing in on it. I think you probably see it the same way I do, where it's not about the stages.

It's about what's happening in the deal. Yeah. And then the information you're gathering in the deal. And that's, you know, one of the reasons I created deal doc is, is for this, there are no stages. It's what's happening in the deal. What, what questions can you answer about where you've been in the deal? What questions in every single deal exists that are left unanswered that you need to go figure out? And it's in, in every single box you check and there's like 80 something boxes in deal doc, you, you're getting closer to the end of the process because you've done the, the necessary things. And like, I'm, I'm really starting to see the world that way. And it's, it's been an interesting shift because I grew up in the same world you just talked about of stages that are like this.

And it's like, no, this is happening. It's all over the fucking place. Um, anyways, back to, uh, how do you document it? How do you share with your client? Um, so another misconception about Medpick, um, Medpick as in its pure form is not for the client and it's actually not even for the leader or the company. Um, it's for the rep. Medpick is for the rep. Medpick is your solution to see your deal and find your gaps that you need to take action against. Now you want to share with you the leader so they can help. Um, it does help the leader and you when it comes to forecast accuracy, that's the place that it's like for the business is that like component, but the rest of Medpick is for you. Um, I don't, um, I don't, in its literal form, ever share Medpick with a client.

What I do share, thinking about the letters, metrics, cold. Here's the business case hypothesis I have. Let's validate it. How do we align it to executive priorities? How do you take it and make it real for you? Who else can we get involved to make sure we're checking all our boxes? Economic buyer. Um, and like I would show the people the business case. So that's like the visual representation, you know, economic buyer is, there isn't so much a, a, I may like show people a account plan of the people I want to talk to in the business and have this like laid out. That's something that I may have, have a visual, but there's more of a conversation on who the economic buyer is, getting a meeting with them.

How do we get the meeting all when timing, all that stuff. Um, decision criteria is a visual scorecard. So that's like a, uh, almost think of it like a reverse RFP where you're going to them with what are your features, functions, problem you solve, and then ranking with them. Nice to have, need to have an aligning with them and providing it so they can carry it through to other competitors. So at the end they can actually, you know, make a decision as opposed to the world of sameness. So you're, you're using that to create contrast. Decision process is your mutual action plan. Paper process layers and, you know, a procurement version of a mutual action plan. Identify pain for me. Again, not showing them in a literal sense, but I'll, I'll create slides where I'll actually have people's pictures on them.

What they've told me, the problem we solve, how we solve in the value to them. And I will build more and more slides is that I've got decks with like 10 slides and pictures and things where it's like, here's all the people that I've talked to, all the things we're doing for them and categorize them in different departments and levels. So like, that's really understanding pain when you can show that and like, it's the voices of the masses. When you get into champions, that's more, you know, conversation, account planning, that type of stuff. Competition on that one, very simply, like the, the visual representation competition outside of just putting people in a box and helping people understand like people buy from them for these reasons, us for these reasons.

Here's the value and do you see the differences and all that stuff. Um, the visual representation of it is often like, here's us, here's the competitors green check. And here's all the things we do, you know, green check marks, green check marks, X's, you know, it's that type of thing. So like, that's where it comes to life from that perspective. What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heap. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content, all of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day.

$365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly a hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly ask me anything sessions where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it. This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. Yeah, I mean, I try to do it in a very informal way of just documenting on a simple summary email after each conversation.

Like, hey, David, thanks for your time. A few things I got out of this, like current impact of this, the criteria, those type of things, just to get that confirmation and that investment on their ends, right? Because it's actually a huge indicator for me. This little stupid thing that I see the summary email, if you respond to that, my close ratios are through the roof. If you don't respond to it, my spidey senses go up because I'm like, if you and I, David, if we just had this conversation and then afterwards I tell you, hey, David, before I go, there's some next steps, right? I'm going to briefly summarize what I was able to gain from our conversation. Could you just email me back to let me know if it's all accurate, if I missed anything here, right?

And then I put in some of that MedPix stuff as far as impact and these type of things, like are we agreeing on this or timeline and everything else? If you do not respond to that, if you don't, all I'm looking for is, yep, all that looks pretty good or, you know, you might have missed something or this is off. If you respond to it, I know I'm in great shape. But if you don't, I'm going to say I'm in trouble, trouble, but I have to start thinking to myself, okay, why didn't they confirm on this stuff? Because they don't want to be held accountable to it. And that's a lot of the times that people below the power line, above the power line, like people above the power line tend to have no problem responding because they know lying is a waste of time and whatever.

And you actually just did their job for them. Whereas people below the power line are like, eh, it's not that they're lying. It's just that they know their lives change so often that they don't want to commit to anything in writing. No, I think it's spot on. It's actually really interesting. Like, yes, the response equals engagement, confirmation, validation. When I was at Our Reach, Our Reach has this, like, little bar in their platform that, you know, light blue, dark blue. I forget which. It's a light blue. Light blue is you. Dark blue is the client or vice versa. I'm blanking on it. But regardless, you can tell the health of a deal by the amount of back and forth communication. And if you actually see, like, a disproportionate side of it, you're like, ooh, something's wrong on one side or another.

Well, that goes back to deal velocity, too, right? I mean, I tell, you know, we do a scorecard approach to deals, like the holistic deal, like gives and gets and all this other stuff. Like, the one that gives is more time to make a decision. And that one right there, and whether they ask for it or not, right, if they flake on you, because everybody knows the closer a deal gets to closure, the faster the interactions go, right? We're going back and forth on timelines, we're going back and forth on contracts, all that stuff. The longer the interactions go between you and the client, the less likely your deal is to close. So that deal health of, you know, the engagement back and forth, not just one way, is a critical thing to pay attention to as well.

What's your definition of champion? Because the reason I ask this is because I think champion is, quite frankly, one of the most overused phrases in sales, and it's a feel-good phrase. Because I got a champion, I got a champion, right? And most of the time, what they consider a champion is nowhere near what I would consider a champion. It's somebody who's willing to take their call, somebody who's friendly with them, somebody who'll give up, but they say maybe stuff like, hey, you didn't hear from me, but this is what's going on. And thanks for the intel, but if I can't use it, what's, you know. So how do you, I don't think there's one universal definition of a champion. I think every company should define it themselves so that they know when they say the word exactly what it means.

What's your definition? Yeah, man, I love it. One, yes, common language. I wrote a post recently on champions, and it's, to me, it's like the difference, if you are late when someone a champion, it's like calling them your BFF when they're really an acquaintance. And it's like, that can cause a lot of freaking problems. So my definition of champion, they have access to power. And the reason why they need to have access to power is because they're sitting, they need to be in the room where the decision's being made to influence the decision. If they don't have access to power and they're not in that room, they could be other things, but they're not a champion. They need to be willing to sell for you when you are not there.

Like that's, whether they, whether you agree they need access to power or not, if they aren't selling to you when you're not there, they literally cannot. Fundamentally, it needs to be part of every freaking definition. Like that's, that's the action of the champion is they are selling for you when you are not there. The last one, and this is where so many people get it wrong, is they need to be tested. So you need to be having conversations with them to prep for meetings. You need to be asking them for insider information in super tactful ways. I mean, it could be something that's like, hey, who are we competing against? And what is your business like about them versus us? And, and, and how do we, you know, re-clarify or double down on those areas?

Because I know our competition may have done a better job, fall on sword, you know, in those, but we can do that too. How do we convey that? And who do we need to convey it to? You know, can you help me validate a business case? Can you help me get to the economic buyer and set a meeting with them? You know, it's, it's all of, it's all of those things. And the other part of being, of this testing of champions, and it kind of goes back to like this concept of discovery where it never ends. You can't just test them, them show up and all of a sudden like, oh yeah, that's my champion for life. Like you need to watch for these like small dynamic changes. If they used to respond to you in 24 hours and now it's 72, problem.

If they used to give you inside information, they're being a little bit more guarded, problem. Like you need to look for any change in the temperature of the champion, because if you, because when that happens, like to your point of Spidey sense, Spidey sense needs to freaking go off because your competition just got a leg up. The priorities just changed. Something happened that they haven't told you about yet. And you need to go figure that out fast because that's your deal dying, but you don't realize. Yeah. And I think that's where, you know, early in my career, it was, you know, you literally ask somebody to be your champion, like in a very direct way in a lot of ways. But that was such a false positive because again, I guess, sure, John, be your champion.

You know what I mean? And even if I know what that happens, yeah. If I didn't even explain what it means, they would say, yeah, sure, because, you know, they'll say that to anybody. I mean, so how do you, let's, let's go just a little bit deeper on the access to power piece of it and being in the room. It's rare that, how would you even, how, how would you figure that out without being obvious about it? Like, so are you there in the room when this decision is made? You know what I mean? Like, what's the decision-making process and who's involved? You know what I mean? Like those very robotic, you know, approaches to figuring this out. I, I love the testing. I, cause I do that all the time too.

It's like, I, I kind of throw out little nuggets and see if you'll go get them for, right. Or if you'll respond or whatever it is. So that kind of tells me, okay, yeah, this guy's giving me the intel that I need. He's getting back to me in a timely fashion. He's in it with me. But that also presents a false narrative with, hey, this is my guy. This is my woman. And they're going to go fight for me. How do you test the, they're going to go fight for me for the ultimate thing? Not this little piece of shit tech stuff that I have to learn about, or maybe a little bit of budget stuff. But they're going to be in the room and they have access. They, they literally are in the room when that comes. How do you get, how do you figure that out?

Yeah. So there's, there's layers to this. Um, one of them is like, do they have the title of champion? Like that, that's, and that's an easy one. Look at, look at a fricking org chart. Understand the org chart. Like if, if you're dealing with a CRO, are they, you know, depending on the size of the org, EVP, SVP, VP sales. Yep. If they're not like, they, they're in, and there is, you know, there you go. Um, so basic org chart stuff is, it is an easy way to find it. Um, asking them to like, the, this is where some of the validation exercises come in. So it's like, Hey, help me understand. Uh, I know. So John Barrows is our, is our economic buyer. Okay. Um, what are John's like key priorities? When's the last time you met with John?

And like, what are, what are some of like the OKRs or things that he's responsible for that he is driving and having conversation to disseminate and, and, you know, run through the organization. Like things like that. Um, business case. Hey, look, we want to make sure that we're tying this business case to, to John's priorities. Um, you know, what are those? Are we doing that? What's the ripple effect for all of those? Like, how does this tie to the things that he's talking about? Hey, um, can you help us get a meeting with John? I'd love to talk to him and, and, you know, do some of this validation. So it's like, you're, you're more like asking about the individual, what they care about, getting access to them, getting validation with them.

Um, it's, it's, it's those things. Um, and then look, man, you did call it out. And I know they're absolutely trite, but it's like, Hey, how does it, how do decisions get made within your organization? Who is going to be involved in that? You know, is this like a, you guys just, you know, send an email to, to John and say, like, we recommend this person, or are you guys going to get together and talk about it? And like, who's going to be there when you're talking about it? Like there is some of those questions that even though trite, you know, can get asked and you can get answered. So, I mean, there's, there's just, you know, layers to it. And it's, you know, you got to just got to validate and ask lots of questions.

Yeah, I think that, that one is to me, the most telling is when you ask somebody, so, so what's, you know, for, okay, the decision, let's, let's jump to the end here. And we got to present this, right? Say we've gone through this whole process. You got now, now you guys have to present whatever it is. Just walk me through what that meeting looks like. Yeah. Just, is it, because I want to, and the reason, and this was, I coach a lot on making sure you have a reason for your question or reason what you're doing is to kind of help them understand. Well, so the reason I ask is I want to put you in the best position possible to make sure if you believe this. So is that, to your point, are you just going to email it to them?

Are you going to, is this, are, is this like a weekly meeting thing? And are we on the agenda? And if we're on the agenda, where are we on the agenda? And what are the other things on that agenda that are probably more important? Or is this a dedicated meeting that you are presenting to a group of people, right? Because those are three very different scenarios. And I can back into the problem with each one of those, or at least my experience with each one of those to help coach that person on the best way to bring that through. Yeah, and another layer to that is like, hey, when you're in that meeting, what kind of questions do you think you're going to be asked? Yeah. If they can't answer that, they're not in the meeting.

No. Oh, they're going to want to know this, they're going to want to know that, they're going to want to know that. Cool. What's your plan for that? How do I, to your point, arm you for that? You know, it's- Oh, by the way, what if they say this? What if they object and they say, oh, and this is one that's bitten me in the ass, because I've never been great at getting to the board of directors approach, you know what I mean? Like all the way on the other ends. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many fucking times that I've had my champion, my bot, you know, all things lined up. And then right at the end, you know, some dipshit on the board of directors comes in and says, yeah, yeah, no, no. I've used this guy in the past, you guys should use this guy.

And it's like, and then it all falls apart. So now I've introduced that into my process where I'll ask you, hey, David, just out of curiosity, like, have you, what if the board comes in with a different recommendation? After all this work that you and I do here and working through this, you and I are a violent agreement. And then all of a sudden, and look, the reason I ask is I've done this multiple times, David. And a lot of times, all of a sudden at the last minute, the rug gets pulled out from under us because so that piece right there I've added to the equation, right? Because I forget about that stuff. And I want to coach that person on how to deal with that objection, how to deal with that scenario.

So how many, I guess, worst case, because you don't want to scare them either, right? How many worst case scenarios do you paint for them? Do you run it like a deal review you would run with your rep? Probably not. And I'm not asking them 86 questions, but yeah, I think you need to ask and prep them in the right ways. And I think there's ways to get ahead of that too. And you know this, but like for your audience, you could see who the board is. Like just go freaking look at where they've been and what they've done. And if they've, you know, deployed one of your competitors, you should know like what your competitors have, what you have. Normally on websites, this is often public, you know, the big deals.

Go see, like go check that ahead of time. Have that be a part of your account plan. You should always have, you know, investor relationships, board relationships, you know, executive relationships and the mapping of those things. And, you know, a lot of times people that do sit on public boards, you know, your board, if you're public, this is not the biggest community in the world. Like they likely know each other or have some degree of connection all the time. But if there's, you know, six, seven, 10 people on the board and there's 10 on the other side, math says they may run in a similar circle at some point. So like there's ways to make connections, figure things out, do this ahead of time.

And then you can surface that, bring that to your champion and say, hey, look, let's do my homework. Saw all these things. What's your feedback on that? So there's that, but then also to your point, if you haven't done that or don't know that or there isn't connection, like just, you know, setting some of these like key things for them to start thinking about. Yeah. And I think that ultimately what it comes down to is once you really kind of identify that you do have a real champion through whatever way you want to test that, empowering them to be you in the meeting. Ideally have you in that meeting and then you can work together, obviously. But, you know, usually nine times out of 10, it's not going to be in the room.

So you got to have your advocate there. So awesome, David. Look, I, you know, I think we could talk about deal health and advancement and discovery for, for hours here. Cause I think it is that important of a topic. I mean, ultimately you and I both know the deal lives and dies in discovery. And if we don't do it and that, again, it's not a stage, it's the route. Um, so important, but, uh, why don't we tell the audience a little bit more about, uh, where they can find out more information, talk to them about deal doc. And, and, uh, because I think that's a, is that it? By the way, is deal doc, like an individual rep can sign up for that. It doesn't have to be an organization. Dude, I built it for the rep, $6 and 99 cents.

Nice. Like I, I, I make, I make little, I make little to no money on this. Like I barely cover my like development increase costs. Like, yes, if it gets mass population, I'll make money. But, um, I really want to, I, I do things to help the sales community. I, I've made money. I've done well. I'm, I'm the type of person I wake up every single day just to help people. Um, it's just what I care about. Um, I want sellers just to be better sellers. It's all I care about. Um, so yes, I built it. So it's accessible to every rep. It's in the Apple app store. It's $6.99. Deal doc. One word. Um, Android's coming in like three to four weeks. Um, where can people find me? Uh, you know, chief revenue officer, the sales collective.

So, you know, check us out there. I'm on LinkedIn. I literally post every single day, something deal related, um, to help salespeople with these things. So I, I geek out on, I love it. I coach Google on it. I coach teams on it. Um, so I'm just always here trying to just help people, you know, win deals. And for everybody listening, uh, it's David Weiss, W E I S S. So look him up on LinkedIn, look up deal doc, uh, and all the other cool stuff and get some cool content coming out of him from a daily basis. So David, thank you all so much for coming in. And I appreciate you coming on and it has been great talking to you. Like I said, uh, I think we've been running in parallel, uh, circles here for a while and it's good to connect.

John, absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on, sir. Absolutely. All right, everybody. Thank you all for listening as always. And like I always say, look, if you're having a bad day, if you think you're having a bad day, go home or make somebody smile today. Cause, uh, if you make somebody smile, then you know, you had a good day in the world. And it's a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much for listening. I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads.

And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it. In return, I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you. I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses. I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join.

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