Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.
The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.
The following are notes from Ep. 161 – Is Discovery All That Important?
In this episode, Tom and Tab are joined by sales expert, leader, and former client turned partner of ASLAN, John Ferguson.
John, Tom and Tab unpack the importance of Discovery, the big mistakes most sellers make, how to do it right, and why it matters. The goal of these interviews is to equip, encourage, and elevate our listeners – and that’s exactly what our guest does this week.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the full transcript:
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to another episode of Sales with Aslan. I’m in the studio with my co pilot, co host, doctor Tab Norris. How are you doing today, Tab?
00:23
Tab Norris
Good. It’s always a pleasure.
I got a pilot and a doctor there. I really love when I get to do both fly around and help people copilot.
00:39
Tom Stanfill
Well, I never stick to it to one descriptor for you, Tab. There’s just too many that work. You are you’ve been recognized by the Podcast Association of America as the number one cohost or at least in the running. You’re in the running. I think you’ve been nominated. That’s what it is. I’m sorry. You haven’t won yet. You’ve been nominated, but I love your confidence. Oh, gosh, if I’ve got a vote, Tab, you’re going to get it.
01:06
Tab Norris
John co-host is really difficult.
01:09
Tab Norris
I have like three, it’s different. I’m like the vice president.
01:11
Tom Stanfill
That’s what we like to say. Well, Tab is talking to our guest. He’s a mister, not a doctor, although he is part of the faculty of DePaul University in the area of sales excellence. I think that’s what it is. We’ll clarify here in a minute, but we have John Ferguson on the show with us today. He’s going to be talking to us about a subject called most of probably people have heard of it, discovery. The importance of discovery, or is it important? We’re going to debate that with John, but before we get into the topic, Tab, we need to introduce this man. For those of us that aren’t familiar with Mr. Ferguson, he has been EVP of several large sales organizations. He’s been a CEO. We met him when he was running North America Sales for Getty Images and helped build that organization from a fledgling 200 million dollar company.
02:02
Tom Stanfill
I think it was around 200, 300 million to over what? Billion.
02:06
John Ferguson
Yeah, billion and a half. Billion.
02:08
Tom Stanfill
Billion and a half. So he understands sales. We’re lucky enough to call him one of our partners. He’s worked with us for Tab. How many years?
02:16
Tab Norris
Golly, ten years?
John Ferguson
Six years.
Tab Norris
It feels like but you’ve jammed ten into six, there’s no doubt.
02:23
John Ferguson
That’s right.
02:24
Tom Stanfill
No, but I love having you on the show, John, because I always learn something when I meet with you, talk with you, and hear you talk about best practices. For those who are joining us for the first time, the purpose of the show is to quit, to encourage and to elevate. We do that by bringing people on the show who are really what I think of as the one percenters, the people who are the best at what they do. John Ferguson, you definitely fit in that category. So good to see you, my friend.
02:53
John Ferguson
Good to see you. Thank you for having me.
02:55
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We talked about this show. You wanted to talk about discovery and the importance of discovery. Why was that on your radar? What were you thinking?
03:06
John Ferguson
Well, before we get to that, you left out, I think, a very important thing when you went over my background okay, which was that I was a former client. I hope everybody inferred that from your.
03:17
Tom Stanfill
Introduction, okay, you say you became aware.
03:20
John Ferguson
Of me at Getty Images. It was, in fact, because I hired the two of you.
03:26
Tab Norris
That was something that we probably should have left out.
03:30
Tom Stanfill
He actually gave us money. Tab that is yes, I forgot that. I will never forget that meeting. John, as I’m presenting our solution to your organization. You were walking around the back of the room like, about to explode. You were like, this is what we need to do. We’ve got to hail this. You’ve got a process. We got to get this implemented. You’re like, you were just and then he had his fly to Seattle to meet with the board, and you were a little nervous about that. You were making sure I just was dating you.
04:02
John Ferguson
I didn’t know how you were going to perform in front of my parents.
04:07
Tom Stanfill
It was like this high level beating. Tab we got the CFO, the CEO, I don’t know who else, and probably one of the board members. John was coaching me, as he should have. And it was a little tense. I mean, it was like, okay, we’re going to come in and we’re going to say, this is what we’re going to do. It was one of those meetings where people are going to be staring at us, and hopefully we’ve got our act together. After, with that tension, the CEO, the first thing that says goes Aslan, oh, yeah, Lyon Witch in the Wardrobe. We start talking about reading that book to my kids. We had the side conversation for like, ten minutes, and John is like, yeah, it was great.
04:42
John Ferguson
Yeah, well, it was a good I tell everybody. Other part of my introduction is I liked it so much, I now work here, another part of the introduction, and love every minute of it, but it was a great time. As I look at any good sales process, it was interesting to watch our organization go from the needs analysis. Do we have a problem? Can we solve it? How do we solve it? To going out to what I always tell my clients who are interested in the story, the usual suspects. Because I had 26 years of sales experience. From Miller Hyman, to Sandler, to action, to strategic selling, spin selling, and then aslan you’re like, who is Aslen? What do you do? It was pretty clear, and I’ve shared the story a lot, that after spending half a day or a day with you, that this would be the way that were to move.
05:40
John Ferguson
So, yeah, all of that’s fun to reminisce about. But it was good for our organization. It was good for our sellers, and then. I didn’t know it, but it was extremely good for our coaches, our sales leaders, which was the next wave of what we did. I think the story goes, you like it so much, somehow you find your way back working with them. That’s what leads us to where we are.
06:01
Tom Stanfill
That was a great call when you said, hey, I want to talk to you about joining us on the website, that was great. I want to say, if you’re a sales leader and you’re talking about or thinking about developing your sales team the way that you did it, John, where you required people to implement and coach and follow up and reinforce and follow the process not that people didn’t want to, but you said, look, we’re going to do this. Like, if we’re going to do it right. You ensured the team could coach, and there was a cadence to that and that we measured performance. Because of that, you saw tremendous results. I mean, the results were phenomenal.
06:44
John Ferguson
Yeah, they were, and that was key. I mean, that could probably be a whole nother podcast, but yeah, for sure. Like I said, I didn’t really know that upfront as I went into the process and built a budget eventually had to be almost doubled because I knew I was leaving out a critical element, which was the coaching of my coaches. Once the light bulb went off in my head, it was an easy AHA for me. Of course, I had to go sell it internally, which we did. I now believe in those who follow me on LinkedIn, see, and they will. If you follow me on LinkedIn. I really lean into this a lot, which is the difference between a good organization and a great organization is in the quality of and the cadence of the coaching from the leaders. That’s how you go from good to great.
07:30
John Ferguson
You can be a good sales organization, but you’re not going to be great if you don’t have great coaches.
07:36
Tom Stanfill
Everybody heard that phrase. Training has got to be a process, not an event. I mean, everybody says that, but what really happens is you implement the training and you get great feedback and people love it and you feel like you’re done. The pull to move to the next thing is so strong, it’s so hard to say, no, we’re going to coach. Very few organizations actually coach, listen to their observe their reps. If you’re a EP, you can think about when the last time somebody actually listened to your calls, gave you good feedback, implemented a development plan. It just rarely happens. The organizations that do that see results.
08:14
John Ferguson
Yeah. Exponentially, for sure.
08:17
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
08:19
John Ferguson
That’s great.
08:19
Tom Stanfill
So back to the topic at hand. I reached out to you, said, hey, it’s been a while, please join us, I’d love to have you on the show. You said, I’d love to talk about discovery, and that really resonated with me because I just got back from teaching a workshop with Dr. Norris in Munich and we really unpacked it. We spent a lot of time on discovery, and it just reminded me of how critical that is and the mistakes that people make when they want to sell a solution, especially a total solution, not just sell a product or service, but this total solution, how critical discovery is. It’s just most people really struggle with it.
09:00
John Ferguson
Yeah, they do. Curiously, the reason it was on my mind is because I was just working on a couple of projects, but one in particular with a really good customer of ours, the Miller welding team, and just spent three days with them on the single topic. And this was the topic, okay. And it wasn’t just discovery. It was also how we ask the questions, the soft selling skills and all that can’t come with it because they truly believe that this is where it’s won or lost. Right. They have a good process. It starts with engaged, it ends with advanced. There’s build value in there. If you don’t do discovery well, commit to it, understand it’s hard to connect the dots. We’ll get into this from the customers whiteboard to your recommendation, and if you don’t do that, the chances of you winning are decreased significantly.
09:52
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Sometimes I’ll say one of the reasons why discovery is so important is because if you don’t know the truth, like what they really want, what their decision drivers, really, the formal and the informal decision drivers, who’s going to be involved in the process. If you really don’t understand what’s happening inside the organization, you’re never going to really sell your solution. You’re just going to be on the outside because there’s just the formal things people say and the information that most people will get, but that’s not really what’s going on.
10:30
John Ferguson
That’s right. And easy way to visualize it’s. Generic. You can only be selling a generic product or solution if you haven’t done the time or done discovery well. You can’t connect the dots. We don’t know the truth, as you say. That’s key.
10:45
Tom Stanfill
So let’s talk about the big mistakes. I’d like to kind of talk about what you typically see because you’re constantly working with sellers tab. I’d love to see you chime in on this. What do you guys typically see as the biggest mistakes people make in discovery in that process where they’re saying, okay, I’m supposed to I know I’m supposed to ask some questions. Everybody agrees with that, right? I’m supposed to ask questions and then build value based on those questions. What do you typically see most sellers miss?
11:22
John Ferguson
Again, this goes back to why I wanted to pick this topic. Not only was it relevant to a couple of my key customers at the time, but going back into my 26 years of sales experience, and especially in the six years that I’ve added to that. By the way, I still have to sell within, aslan we have customers, we have competitors, of course.
11:41
Tom Stanfill
Right.
11:44
John Ferguson
Besides the tactical, what really happens is because we’re generally good at what we do. If we’re in sales, we’re pretty good at what we do. We wing it. We skip it. We know it. We make the big A word, which is assumed. When you assume you’re on a pretty fast path to getting it wrong, it’s very hard to guess correctly or even to guess closely. The biggest mistake in terms of that as a concept is to think, I got it right.
12:14
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
12:14
John Ferguson
I often like to say we’re on Zoom, but I’m holding up a blank sheet of paper. I often work with sales teams where we’ll pull up to a discovery meeting by car or Uber or any other, or walking if it’s in the city. I’ll see the salesperson walk in with a blank sheet of paper. I’ll ask a simple question, well, where are the questions? Where’s the organization of your thoughts? Where’s the things that are going to be important? What’s important for you to learn today?
12:40
Tom Stanfill
What are the objectives of this agenda?
12:43
John Ferguson
What would help you moving forward?
12:45
Tom Stanfill
Right.
12:46
John Ferguson
They invariably point at their head for those that are listening, of course, pointing to my head. They’re pointing to their head, and they say, John, they’re all up here. I’m going to see where the conversation goes. They give me this kind of half smile. And I’ve done this before. I know the questions. I’m going to see how the customer engages with me. My answer is always the same, which is, respectfully, you’re not that good. You will forget something. You’ll miss something. You’ll be moving down a path and won’t be able to get back on the path you wanted to, and you’ll forget, and you won’t get what you need. And this helps you. Part of what we’ll talk about is what can you do to help you be prepared? Coincidentally, I should tell you, when I was CEO of a company down in Florida after I left Getty Images and before I came here, and I didn’t really know the power of this at the time, only my thoughts.
13:35
John Ferguson
I had to start doing this when sales people would come into my office, sit across my desk, or across my conference table, and I saw that blank sheet of paper, it didn’t mean it always went bad, but I did ask myself, did they take the time? Are they prepared? How much time should I give them based on what I see? Their performance early, so it didn’t mean it necessarily went bad. I always had this preconceived notion that they were under prepared. They didn’t take it seriously, and therefore, I didn’t take it seriously. They probably didn’t get from me exactly what they needed to make a winning recommendation.
14:10
Tom Stanfill
What is the key, John, if you’re going to fuss a repair, if I’m hearing you say this right, don’t walk them with a blank sheet of paper, have very specific objectives for discovery. What’s the key to doing that? What would you advise?
14:24
John Ferguson
Well, yeah, indirectly, the key is to be prepared. Right. Question is how to be prepared? Well, we actually have answer for that, right. And we talk about that. That is the discovery roadmap. That’s the what? That’s the questions, that’s the subject matter. It’s divided nicely into five P’s. Even if you take away the profile of the company, who it is, and most people do know who it is, it’s their point of view, their plans. It’s the pitfalls and things they should be looking out for, the things that could go wrong or the things you’d like to ask about moving faster, moving slower, if not at all. It’s preferences, how they’re going to make a decision and whom they might choose. Actually, if this is going to happen, priority. In fact, there’s a key word in there. Is there a compelling event? Yeah, right. There a reason that this should happen?
15:09
John Ferguson
If you organize your thoughts around those five P’s, and again, if you take out profile, the four of them, you can come up with great questions that help you nail the objective of what it is you want to learn in each one of those. Working with a sales team, about six months ago, went into a breakout session, worked on a discovery roadmap, came back and I asked for feedback, how’d this exercise go? One of the sales leaders says, well, this was hard. I said, well, what do you mean it was hard? The questions, the thought. He goes. No. The questions. I was working with the team were able to get. What’s going to be hard is essentially what he said is to be intentional, to slow it down, to remember to do this, because we think we’ve got this. We think we will always ask these questions, but in many cases we don’t, because weren’t prepared when we walked through the doors.
16:03
John Ferguson
The first step is simply being prepared. The tool around that is the discovery roadmap.
16:10
Tom Stanfill
Develop a discovery roadmap.
16:11
John Ferguson
Yeah.
16:13
Tab Norris
I wanted to add to this, and I think it connects nicely, John, to what you just said. I think sometimes we’re not prepared, or salespeople are not prepared because we’re not scared. We’re not scared of leaving that meeting without the information. We’re not scared of being at a competitive disadvantage. It’s like you get arrogant. I think you get just so confident versus coming and going, who’s going to make this go away? What am I going to miss? Where my competitors going to come in and swoop in and win and I’m going to lose. It’s like there needs to be that I don’t ever want to lose that. I just had a meeting last week. I’m paranoid. I’m just sitting there talking. I’m going. What’s?
17:01
Tom Stanfill
Lurking.
17:01
Tab Norris
I’m looking at these six faces.
17:03
Tom Stanfill
What’s lurking?
17:04
Tab Norris
What am I going to looking at my peas? What p? I’m sitting there going, what’s going to happen? It’s a lot of times to your point, Thomas, the informal decision driver.
17:14
Tom Stanfill
Under that p I think part of that paranoia tab is the way that I try to think about it when I’m in discovery is what would I do if I were the CEO of that company?
17:28
Tab Norris
That’s good.
17:29
Tom Stanfill
It’s almost like instead of I try to shift from saying I don’t want to lose a deal, which I don’t, and I don’t want to miss something, which I don’t. If I look at it like I’m trying to figure out what are they trying to do and what should they do until I’m convinced I know what I should recommend and I would do if they were hired me as a consultant, not to sell my solution and I was going to make a recommendation as a part time CEO. Whatever. Am I clear enough about what they’re trying to do? And I always picture a bridge. I’m like, Where are you right now? And where do you want to be? That’s always true. By the way, when I think about what they really want, where they want to be, it’s where they really want to be. There’s the level of information that people share when they talk about what they want, and it’s always surfacy.
18:15
Tom Stanfill
If you’re really good at discovery, you can get them to tell you what they really want. Because what they really want there’s a quote I heard the other day. What the heart really wants, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. In other words, we figure out what we really want, is going to determine what we do, and we’ll come up with a reason why later. We’ve got to figure out what they really want, and so we can come up with this bridge of, like, where they are, where they want to go, what’s their plan to get there, and then what’s the problem with their plan? That’s what you call the pitfalls, john, what do they need to do? If I can really figure that out versus, okay, you said this, you said that. All right, I’ll go back and propose that I hope that works, which is of the paranoid, no, this is what you should do, because it may not agree with their plan, but I think we need to own that.
19:08
Tom Stanfill
I think a lot of reps don’t own discovery. They’re like with the thing, hey, what do you need me to propose? I was working with an organization the other day, and it’s like, you just tell me what to quote on and I’ll quote it. I’m like, well, how many quotes do you have? Well, I got 80 quotes. Well, what’s your closing ratio? 8%. They’re just providing quotes and they’re not involved.
19:30
John Ferguson
Yeah.
19:31
Tom Stanfill
Does that resonate, John?
19:33
John Ferguson
Yeah, no, it’s great. I just want to build on something each of you said, first tabs about being paranoid. I think that’s exactly right. In fact, when I get the occasional dreaded email or communication john, we’ve decided to go another direction right after I exhale, calm down unclench my fist, because I truly believe I can help everybody. Right. I say to myself, self, there’s couple of things going on here. One, there’s probably a logical reason why they chose somebody else, and that can be found in your discovery. Either you missed something, somebody else did, and I did, who did not, which led the customer that they were a better choice or that product was a better choice. I always try to reflect back, and I’ll never forget one of the first sales. I used to think he came in as a lead or a recommendation from when he was first or second thing, small account I was working on here at Aslan, and they wanted sales training.
20:30
John Ferguson
It was a smaller team. This wasn’t a smaller team. Here’s what we’d like to do. Tell me the difference between a two day and a three day and tell me all about sales training. I thought I was nailing this, and boy, and I’m a salesperson, and I can take you through this. Everything was going great until he said, we chose somebody else. I couldn’t believe it. I muscled up the courage, because, by the way, this case, courage. I said, can I ask why?
20:57
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
20:57
John Ferguson
Because I really thought this was 100% mine. He says, John, we never talked about coaching my sales leaders.
21:06
Tom Stanfill
Wow.
21:08
John Ferguson
I said to myself, you never told me you wanted to also work with your sales leaders.
21:14
Tab Norris
Why didn’t you tell me?
21:17
Tom Stanfill
That goes back to what I was saying earlier. You’re the one that should determine it just part of your because that’s reach your destination. Right.
21:25
John Ferguson
Obviously because somebody drew out of him, hey, this isn’t just about your team, this is about your leaders. By the way, that was a passion for me. How did I miss it? Because somebody brought that up even though he didn’t ask for it. That was the conclusion that he, as a sales leader took, was, this company will better for me.
21:46
Tom Stanfill
This goes back to your blank sheet of paper, though. That’s why I’ve been selling our solution for 28 years. If I go into a blank sheet of paper, I’m going to miss something. You just do. You need to have that checklist that says not all the questions you want to ask. The questions are important, and you should prep by asking, but you can’t look at all your questions. You need to have the checklist of here are the objectives of what I want to uncover. One of those is if you’re going to drive, sustainment or you’re going to transform your sales transition, you got a coach, what are you going to do? That’s got to be one of your checklist. That’s one of your pitfalls to the plan, if you will.
22:22
John Ferguson
You better believe on my roadmap for every customer since then and will always be. What about your sales leadership? Have you considered how you’re going to coach this, how your team will coach this? I did not do that. Lost the deal, no question. Easy peasy to understand why. Hard to correct sometimes, but I’ll never forget it. And it’s a good lesson learned. That’s why discovery is so important. It’s so important.
22:52
Tom Stanfill
Go ahead, John.
22:54
John Ferguson
I was going to just say one other thing. One of the things that I’ve learned, probably more doing this job role experience than even being in sales 100% of the time, is that we fall victim to we’re in sales, we should be convincing. Right? My job is to sell. My job is to be convincing. My job is to convince them to work with me. Well, going back to your visual of a road map, there’s a current state, a future state, that bridge in between, there is really the map that’s going to help them get to the future state. That map is typically initiatives, objectives, strategies. What I like to say is what you doesn’t help them with one or more of those strategies, initiatives, objectives, good luck trying to do. A lot of times we feel that in sales, you’re a customer, I’m a seller.
23:51
John Ferguson
My job is to sell you, not understand you, but to sell you. If you have to reorient and say, well, my job isn’t to sell you, my job is to understand how you’re going to get to your future state, not to mention what is the future state. Right.
24:07
Tom Stanfill
That’s good.
24:08
Tab Norris
Thomas, something reminds me of what you always say, which is regardless of whether they work with us or they work with somebody else, I got to discover this because the truth is the truth. To your point, if you discover that you don’t help them in any of those initiatives, you’re probably not going to be a good fit. When you want to know that, so you don’t continue to pursue because that’s what they need to do. They need to do something different.
24:34
Tom Stanfill
So I love that. Yeah, there’s so many benefits of having an effective discovery meeting. One is like you’re saying, I mean, you figure out what solutions they need, like really need. If you own that process, then you come back and you make recommendations they haven’t even thought of, especially if you’re good at discovery, you’re telling them you’re helping them figure out how better way to solve their problem. You justify the value because what you’re going to accomplish for them. You also eliminate objections because you don’t present things that they don’t need. You also can avoid working on opportunities when you go, look, I’m looking at what you’re trying to accomplish and what you’re going, I can’t help you get there. You need a back surgeon. I’m a knee surgeon. It’s like it’s just obvious. And so you fire them. You say like, I can’t help you.
25:19
Tom Stanfill
There’s one other reason that I think it’s so important and this is one thing that I see constantly. They missed. This came up in the workshop last week, tab, is that there is another emotional payoff for leading discovery. Most reps think that when you’re leading a discovery meeting, it’s about information. I think even more important than the information is what happens on the emotional level. The goal in discovery is not to get information so we can build our case to win. The goal is to create a receptivity to ultimately them wanting to say, I want to know what you have to say because emotions are key and especially if you’re really influencing people, you’re completely changing their beliefs about something, about a better way to solve their problem. I think this happened last week and were talking about, hey, you’ve got to take the trip, validate their point of view.
26:10
Tom Stanfill
You’ve got to understand. You’re like, well, what if this one guy said in the past, what if you take the trip and you realize you’re making this major mistake. He started telling the story about how they were in animal health and the Pharma animal health company. The company that they were working with was at 70,000 cattle, and they’re basically going to slaughter all the cattle because it was a government they were working with and they were moving away from production of I think they were cheese. I can’t remember the details, but I’m like, well, you want to change their belief, right? He’s like, yes, I said so. The best way to do that is first understand them, validate their perspective. Let them know you get you respect, not tell them they’re wrong. Right? Until you can communicate and just to validate their point of view, they’re never going to listen to your point of view until they go, yeah, I get it.
27:08
Tom Stanfill
What you’re doing is you’re doing that for these reasons and those reasons are valid and they’re like, yes, you create the opportunity to share something different versus you’re an idiot, listen to me.
27:19
Tab Norris
And it’s so hard, isn’t it? I still want to just go to that. You’re so tempted to just go there.
27:26
Tom Stanfill
No, it is the most difficult thing. Of all the things we teach, I would say that’s the most difficult for me is when someone says something completely. Polarized I want to go to. Like, that’s not right. It’s like I thought of the example that comes to mind on my personal level is I remember my daughter would not drive her brother’s car. And I’m like, this is ridiculous, right? Because my brother was given his car and her brother had a car. It was like an old beat up car was given to him. She, for some reason, her car was in the shop or she needed a car. I can’t remember the reasons, but she wouldn’t drive it. My knee jerk reaction was like, oh, you’re too good to drive that car. I stopped, and I’m like, okay, there’s a reason that she doesn’t want to drive that car.
28:25
Tom Stanfill
I’m making a huge assumption that I know why, and it doesn’t necessarily change my perspective or what I want to say, but she’s not going to hear me until I really listen to her. I took the trip, as we say, and she basically started crying. She said, I’m not as secure of a person like Taylor and I can’t drive a car like that because my friends will make fun of me. Basically she’s saying I’m not secure enough. It was like, I had this okay, so that’s what’s going on here. You’re not being spoiled, you’re scared. And she said, yes, and I do.
29:05
John Ferguson
The right dad thing and get her a Mercedes.
29:07
Tom Stanfill
I bought her mercedes. I bought her Mercedes and we worked it out. Yes, I bought a BMW convertible. If it doesn’t change what I want to recommend. We started having a real conversation versus, hey, you need to get your act together and you’re driving this car. Who do you think you are? That’s where influence starts. I think that’s a big miss for most reps because we’re basically saying, you’re wrong. I don’t respect what you think your plans are. You’re wrong. Follow me to the right position. Be like, I don’t know you. I’m not going to do that.
29:48
John Ferguson
Yeah, well, I think reps hard for reps it’s because it’s very seldom coached right. I mean, it’s like your job is to sell. I mean, think about the words we traditionally use with sales team. Go sell more, do more, make more, have more. Nobody says this is the importance of slowing it down, doing it well, developing a roadmap, bouncing it off me, bouncing it off your colleagues. What does it sound like? How did it go? What did we miss? We’re so much into how many meetings? What did they say differently?
30:19
Tom Stanfill
If you say this and I say this, you say this, I say this.
30:23
Tab Norris
Is that new case study we have.
30:25
John Ferguson
We just gave you exactly.
30:28
Tom Stanfill
One of the things that Drum always be is their willingness to listen is more important than your ability to communicate. If you can get somebody on the other side of the table to say what do you think I should do? It is easy to sell, and the best way to get them in that position is to care and respect their point of view. There’s a reason you think that way. There’s a reason you act that way. There’s something you really want. There’s something I don’t understand. I’m talking to my grandson about rap. I don’t get rap. She’s talking to me. I know I don’t get it, but there’s some reason. I went to a concert with him and his dad, and everybody is listening to these rap songs, and they’re all going nuts. I mean, people were holding their phone up and they were taping themselves or not taping.
31:15
Tom Stanfill
They were videoing themselves. Taping themselves. That shows my age. They’re videoing themselves while they’re singing songs to somebody else on the phone, and they’re all going nut. I don’t get it. Are they all wrong and I’m right? Yes. There’s something I don’t get. Either I can say, hey, there’s a reason you like it and there’s something I’m missing, right, or you’re wrong. And that’s not music to them. That’s the situation that we’re often in when we hear somebody say, hey, we’re going to slaughter 70,000 cows and close down the business, and you’re like, that’s just not right.
32:00
John Ferguson
Yeah.
32:01
Tab Norris
Any other mistakes, John, that you kind of see?
32:07
John Ferguson
Yeah. We talked about one of the two pillars. One is the actual questions, what are they? The other half is, how do we ask them? Right? In fact, this was a particular focus of the client I was just with, John. We can write them down. There something we could be doing better? There a meta message that’s, by the way, meta message is what the clients actually hearing comes out of your mouth? We believe sometimes what they actually hear is not what we want them to hear. It could be the way we’re asking the questions and they’re right. Is there a little art in this? Of course. It starts with thinking about asking more open ended questions, doing a good job, clarifying your questions. If you’re a part of the Aslon family, something that’s really critical, I think, which is the blindfold principle, which, simply stated, we all have anxiety if we don’t know what’s happening, and so do customers in the discovery process if you don’t tell them what’s happening, why it’s important, actually, even how and what to answer in the question you’re asking.
33:13
John Ferguson
Not going to get what you want, and you’re certainly not going to get the truth. Every day that every time we do this that we can move away from facts and more closer to what’s really happening. The truth not truth versus lie, but truth versus fact, how long, how fast, how hard I’ve been trying or not. If I’m the customer giving you this perspective, the more you get of that, the more your recommendation matches what they said and when your recommendation matches what they’ve said, as you said earlier, Tom, selling gets easy. Yeah, this is the hard part and if you do it right, your recommendation building should be much easier. Never gets totally easy, but much easier.
33:53
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I think you’re uncovering or pointing out a really critical and we kind of touched on this, but I think it’s good to take a deeper dive into the levels of information that people share. We’ve all seen the discovery or been involved in discovery meetings where you can tell it’s surfacy a little stilted and then there’s the discovery meetings when the people kind of lean in and they’re like okay, here’s what’s really going on. What you really need to know is this I don’t think that person or if I were you, I would make sure that this or that person, the ones right. Each of all a of sudden it gets real. You can tell that when you talk to somebody. You can tell I were talking sports, I’m at the weather where you’re from or people like okay, well here’s what’s really going on.
34:40
Tom Stanfill
You’re talking about, I think one of the biggest drivers to that is how we ask questions. It is because remember, decision makers, the real decision makers think they are wasting time talking to a sales rep. That’s why we talk about in the show we want to elevate your role. One of the ways we elevate who you are as a role and not just a salesperson, but somebody who can really help people solve problems is based on the questions you ask them. You really are asking intelligent questions and I think the best way to do that is how you tee up your questions or how you position your questions. Like the one you said about the coaching. John, if you say hey, we believe and I know from my 20 years of experience doing this or running sales organizations that really change happens one to one, it doesn’t really happen in a workshop.
35:32
Tom Stanfill
We understand that most leaders are really not coaching their reps as we would define coaching. Talk to me about how you are changing the way coaches are coaching or what your plan is to drive.
35:47
John Ferguson
Well, to your point, that would have elevated my role because clearly when I was selling just a workshop, I was a sales rep, no question about it. Poor discovery led to a diminished role, no question about it. Good discovery by somebody else elevated the role and they were the winners and I was the loser. It can’t be any more clearer than that. That is the answer and that is what this does. You also point out another thing. It puts you in a position to hear things and determine things you were saying but didn’t call out. That if somebody’s giving you the real information. Part of that is because you’re doing discovery well, but you also then identified what a coach and when you have a coach, you’re getting good information, you’re getting timely information, you’re getting helpful information. Again, it’s one thing to sit down and say, who are the players?
36:35
John Ferguson
Where’s the coach? Who is the decision maker evaluated and all this. Without good discovery and asking questions, you can’t see that develop. And this helps you literally see it. Even if it’s through the phone, even if it’s through zoom, even if it’s through teams, you start to feel this start to develop, and who you can call on to say, how are we doing?
36:54
Tom Stanfill
Right?
36:55
John Ferguson
How are we doing? Particularly when you’re in a competitive race or situation and it goes from many to two or three down to two, you want somebody to say, here’s what’s missing, here’s what’s being said. Here’s what you might have to augment or do, bring this across the finish line.
37:13
Tom Stanfill
A great point. I think another barrier to getting to the real truth, the unfiltered truth, is they’re wrong answers. We all want certain customers to say certain things like, well, we have a budget for this and our budget is big enough to provide this, or we’re not talking to the competition, or we’ve had great experience with your company and really like to include you in the blah, blah. We’re going to do this right now or we’re not going to do this right. There’s wrong answers, and I look at wrong answers, meaning the answers I don’t want to hear as an opportunity. I look at them as like, okay, they just said something that this allows me to demonstrate that I’m not a salesperson. I’m really here to serve them. They tell me things like, hey, we’ve really been working with soandso your competitor, and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing, or we already have this in place, I’m like, okay, well, then my response to that tells them who I am and what my motive is.
38:19
Tom Stanfill
It gives me the greatest opportunity to go deeper. A lot of times these are test kind of situations. Have you found that? Yeah.
38:27
John Ferguson
It reminds me one of the questions you asked right at the beginning of this is, why is this important to you? There was an AHA moment for me on this side of the table of facilitation that I never really knew in sales. There’s a lot I’ve learned facilitating that I wish I would have known earlier in my sales year. We all like to say salespeople are great listeners, two ears, one mouth. You need to listen to customer talk and easy things to say, easy to even think about. What I’ve really learned is that great salespeople, of course, are great listeners, but they’re great listeners because they ask great questions. Okay, what forces you to be a good listener are the questions you ask. It’s the opposite of your relevant questions. It’s the opposite of questions you should already know. What you were saying, Tom, it’s the opposite of questions that pigeonhole you as a sales rep and moves you more to a trusted advisor.
39:19
John Ferguson
You said it best when you say, the way I respond or the questions I ask tells the customer what kind of a partner I can be. Right? Because if they’re easy questions or what I would like to call a dime a dozen questions, like, the one that bothers me the most is what keeps you up at night? Yeah, who the heck cares? You’re not going to get the right answer. It is not a good question. There are thousands of salespeople that will ask that question and think they’re brilliant, and no customer knows how to answer that. There’s never one thing. There’s never a thing. I think when I’ve heard that question ask, they usually joke and say, my young child or my marriage or something else is keeping me up at night right now. What do you mean by that question? You have to lead them down the path of what do you mean?
40:06
John Ferguson
Be precise. Say I have a question about your investment in because this would help me determine the following.
40:11
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Or, I know that typically when people when customers that I work with want to solve this problem, they typically do three or four things. Of those three or four things, which one of those are you most concerned about? Does that make sense? You’re zeroing in on the same thing. Where is there a problem? Like, where do you might need outside expertise? Or where is my solution? I think it all goes back to motive. Like, if they feel like it’s a salesy thing, it’s like the question, how are you? Like, some people ask the question, how are you? And people answer that question. Some people ask that question, how are you? Like, it doesn’t matter because they feel like they’re being manipulated. The thing is, we got to keep reminding ourselves and this is so evident in discovery, his motive is transparent. When we’re asking questions, they can tell we’re sincerely trying to figure out how we can help them, or they can tell that we’re trying to engineer them into a corner so that we can make our point.
41:12
Tom Stanfill
My wife can tell that.
41:15
John Ferguson
Yeah, well, no doubt. I mean, let’s make sure everybody heard that your motive is transparent. If your motive is you want to be a partner, they will realize that you’ll be reflected in the questions you ask. It will be a conversation, not an interrogation. Interrogation is going down your list of questions anytime. That or selling too early. Hey, I was hoping that I could do yes, we do that, and we do it really well, and I could get you a good price.
41:39
Tom Stanfill
Discovery is over, right?
41:40
John Ferguson
It’s done.
41:41
Tom Stanfill
You said the thing. You met, you said the magic word, and now yeah.
41:46
John Ferguson
So be inquisitive. Be curious. One of the clips that I hope we clear for use in our business is a good clip from Ted Lasso. The be curious clip darts. He talks to the other guy about, if only people would ask me questions, I would have told him the truth. Like, have you ever played darts? You hate to be so obvious, but that’s exactly what customers say to us. Not literally, but in their mind all the time. There is so much I would tell you if only you would ask. Yeah, if only you would ask. So we have to be intentional. We have to slow it down. We have to be prepared, and we have to think about the questions we’re asking. Great sales people are great listeners, but they’re great listeners because they ask great questions.
42:31
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I want to close on my end, and I want to give it back to you, too, and see how you guys want to wrap up this up with your kind of final advice. I’ll say two things that I think if I had to net it out and say, we’ll help you the most discoveries, one, clear your cache. What I mean by that is our brains work against us when we’re in discovery. It really does. You can see this when you’ve been in relationships with somebody for a long time. Our brain works against us. It says, Look, I already know that I don’t need to listen anymore. It really does that automatically. Like, our brain wants to filter through information, say, ignore that, because we get 10,000 messages. As soon as somebody starts saying something sounds familiar, our brain literally says, I got that. Move on.
43:14
Tom Stanfill
If we got to clear our cache and download what they’re saying as if we’d never heard it before. That is a decision and a choice that is really working against our nature, really. It’s our instincts. And I think that’s key. The other thing I would say that I think helps me the most is I’m not and I kind of mentioned this because I do this with my wife I am not an attorney when I’m in discovery, because an attorney has an agenda. Like, they’re trying to make their case, and they’re getting information to then ultimately put together their case. They’re taking a deposition, and they kind of need to back you in a corner to make their case. Right. Were you there on the 27? Did you not say this? So that we can use that, right. Sales reps like, I got you now. What would happen to you if you solved this problem or if you didn’t solve this problem, what would happen?
44:06
Tom Stanfill
It kind of has that feeling and the way that I like to think about it is I’m a journalist, I have no agenda and I’m writing a story. At the end of this discovery, I’m going to put my story in writing back to them and say, is this what I heard you say? Right. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to ask questions that they haven’t thought about or go down categories of thinking that maybe they haven’t considered. Ultimately I’m going to write their story. I’m going to write down, this is what you want, this is what you’re planning to get there, this is what you think you need. I’m going to get the information that helps me also make recommendation later. In discovery, I’m just going to be a journalist and I find that to be people like to be interviewed, right? They like that.
44:52
Tom Stanfill
They like the attention. They like you listening, they like you taking notes. If again, if it’s the purpose of us just to understand, I’ll turn it back over to you guys. Any final tips?
45:04
Tab Norris
Like the big take away from John Ferguson?
45:11
Tom Stanfill
If you had to say, what’s the key to discovery? One thing.
45:18
Tab Norris
It’s like there’s one thing, the meaning of life or something. One ticket to happiness.
45:23
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, one ticket to happiness.
45:26
Tab Norris
Maybe there’s a couple. I’m with you. I think that we said before, I think that a lot of times what it is people, they rush, what I mean? Like they have a hard time being patient. I find that people that are really good at discovery, I like your image of the journalist sitting back and just releasing your agenda and just saying, I’m going to figure this out. A lot of it, Tom and John, it’s mindset. It really is mindset. There are skills and there’s preparation that comes into play. I think we can work with that. I think if we can just get the mindset right, then we’re going to be okay. That’s what I always tell people, just do more than you’ve done in the past. That’s a good first step. You’ll start seeing some victories and then you can continue working on your skills.
46:29
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful. John, anything? Any final thoughts? Any final wisdom?
46:33
John Ferguson
Yeah, of course. You are part journalist. You just finished a really great book. You did take a journey, you did sit back and there was a start and a middle and an end to it. I think it is it’s the story, what story do you want to present back doing in your recommendation? If you don’t have the building blocks of that story, it’s going to be somebody else’s story. It’s going to be generic, it’s not going to be about them and nobody’s interested or as interested in somebody else’s story. They’re more interested in theirs. So you have to do it. In the words of Nike, just do it, slow it down, be intentional. It does work against us. There’s a very good reason, because generally speaking, we’re good. We’re in an industry. We know it well. We’ve got the answers. We certainly have the solutions.
47:22
John Ferguson
I don’t think there’s a client we work for that’s had a subpar lower. They produce, they do stuff, they create great stuff. Are we telling our story, or are we repeating back their story? If we can repeat back their story, they’re way more interested in what ours is.
47:40
Tom Stanfill
That’s how you get the words genuinely interested. I encourage people, okay, so just for a day, everybody you meet, ask questions, reflect back on what they say, and don’t say anything. First of all, can you do it? Because if you can’t do it, you can’t ask good questions. That means you talk a lot. Watch the reaction to people when you just lean in and go, tell me more about that. Because most people, when you’re talking, they’re waiting for their turn to talk. It’s like, Are you done yet? So I can talk. There’s not another person. Both of you guys do this extremely well. When I talk to you, I feel like you want to hear what I have to say, which makes me want to talk. Most people I talk to, I could tell they’re like, okay, is he done yet? Now he’s done. Are you done?
48:29
Tom Stanfill
Now you’re done? Because I know I’m not supposed to interrupt you, but I certainly don’t care what you said, and I’m going to probably try to use a little word that you said there, maybe because I got to at least act like but when people really generally go, well, that’s amazing. What did you just move John in Chicago? So what’s that like? Or you just did this? You went from you were CEO of what? You taught it to DePaul, and people, like, literally want to know. You really want to know.
48:54
Tab Norris
They’re amazed. I was at dinner last night with a couple, and were with a couple, and he kept going, you really care about this. I’m fascinated by this. I am dying to know about your story. And he’s just like, really? No one’s ever really seemed very interested in this. I’m like, going, Then they’re crazy, because this is an amazing story, and it’s kind of what I was saying. I think I do this a lot. We all do this a lot. I spend so much time talking about tactical, have the right questions and be prepared and ask. It’s all important. I do feel like I probably need to spend more time on mindset. That’s exactly your drill you just gave Tom is a perfect example of that. When we go to the party, let’s all start working on that. We can all do that right now.
49:48
Tab Norris
Everybody listens to this podcast. I don’t think that would hurt any of us.
49:53
Tom Stanfill
You can’t do it for a day. Do it for an hour. Just watch the reaction to people. Now they’re going to talk. What you’ll find is everybody starts talking.
50:07
Tab Norris
What have I done?
50:09
Tom Stanfill
If you put down the context of talking to your customers and you’re meeting their greatest emotional need and by the way, this is what makes you attractive is your willingness to listen to somebody and understand what’s important makes you attractive. By the way, they’re having dorphants firing, it’s like it’s a drug, it’s a dopamine is literally dopamine is going off in their brain as you are listening to their story. Now all of a sudden you want to now swift shift from now I have all this rich information, I know the truth, I know who the decision makers are, what they need, what they really need, what the decision drivers are. Now you have a person on the other side of the table going I really want to know what you have to say. Now you’re in a really good position, but it starts with this phase that we’re talking about.
51:01
Tom Stanfill
John discovers. John, love seeing you, my friend. Thank you for being on our show. We are honored to have you on the team. Tab, always good to see you, my friend. Everybody that joined us for another episode of Sales with Ashley, I hope it was helpful. If it’s not, let us know. We always appreciate Tab. We like feedback, right? Love feeding to get back. Our goal is to be the best resource for you as a seller or a leader and we can’t do that without feedback. So tell us what’s happening. Give us some feedback on the podcast like us, or if you don’t like us, send Tab a message. Don’t send me a message. By the way, I don’t know if it’s selfish, shameless plug, but we talked a lot about the Discovery roadmap and that is a resource that is offered for those of you who bought the book Unreceptive, there is a free resource.
51:53
Tom Stanfill
There’s a whole chapter on Discovery roadmap and a free resource to help you lead more effective discoveries or reach out to us. Tab, John and I are all on LinkedIn and we will send you one of our templates if you want to do that. We’ll be happy to support you in your effort to lead more effective Discovery.
