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. 169 – Influence Starts Here – Part 2
In this episode, Tom and Tab continue their conversation about how effective discovery starts with building a Discovery Roadmap. They take us through a simple framework to ensure you’re prepared, how to keep the decision maker engaged in the process and create a competitive advantage by asking the right questions.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the full transcript:
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to another episode of Sales with Aslan where Tab and I work diligently to eliminate the hard sell. Tab, as I’m sure our listeners know, we’re following up to our last session on developing a Discovery Roadmap. Yes, last episode and our kind of series on back to the basics, developing the fundamentals so we can crush it in 2023. We talked about the first two P’s of a Discovery Roadmap. Should we review them real quickly?
00:50
Tab Norris
You are speaking my language. I’m big review guy. I like it. Let’s get reset review.
00:56
Tom Stanfill
The first P to give you some context here, this last episode, obviously that’s helpful.
01:05
Tab Norris
Stop right now, go listen and come.
01:08
Tom Stanfill
Out to do that. We’ve talked about the importance of building a discovery framework and the framework that we’re recommending is built around five P’s. The first P is profile. What do you need to know about the customer that will help you develop intelligent questions? Right? You don’t want to spend a lot of time asking customers things they already know and things that they’re telling you that only help you, that don’t help them. It also helps you develop intelligent questions, like I said. So what’s the profile? What’s happening in the market? What’s the thing you need to know about their company organization, individual size, market pressure, what they’re currently doing, et cetera. The second one is the point of view, right? Tab, point of view. We talked about the bridge. Where are they now? Where do they need to be? What’s their desired destination? Everybody has a bridge where they are now desired destination, what do they really want there’s?
01:59
Tom Stanfill
The formal, their informal desires and then what’s their plan to get there? That was the point of view is just really uncovering the bridge and any pain associated another P, tab pain associated with implementing the plan. So that was the first two P. Now we’re on to the third P. Are you ready, Tab?
02:21
Tab Norris
I am ready.
02:22
Tom Stanfill
Are you ready? This is where you show up as a consultant. This is the P where the questions that you’re asking get them to turn and go. You’re not only asking me questions, you’re adding value by the questions that you ask. This third p is called pitfalls. Pitfalls. In other words, what is the pitfalls in the plan? Now, Tab, that may be a little odd word. You could call it your assessment of their plan or problems with their plans. What we found is I think Pitfalls helps you. It’s first of all, it’s a P.
03:02
Tab Norris
It is which is really critical and.
03:05
Tom Stanfill
It’S a good word picture because I.
03:06
Tab Norris
Can just see myself walking along and there’s a pit and I fall into it.
03:10
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, exactly. These are Pitfalls in their plans. It’s not just problems because they may tell you, here’s my problems. These are pitfalls in their plan. In other words, things they do not know.
03:23
Tab Norris
So unconscious problems.
03:25
Tom Stanfill
Unconscious problems. You could call them gaps. What is it that they don’t know? You want to ask questions to highlight that. For example, a simple example in our world is they want to train. We want to grow sales. That’s their destination. We want to increase engagement. Maybe one of the informal drivers that a leader might have is, I want to create a legacy. I want to invest in my people, or I care about people. That’s their destination, their plan. Part of their plan is to train. I want to train my sales organization. Great. That’s part of well, one of the Pitfalls often we see in the plan is they don’t think about developing their leaders. Change happens one to one. Not in a workshop. One of the pitfalls can be, are you developing your leaders? Right. So that’s an example in our world. Every sales rep knows that certain things have to happen for this initiative.
04:26
Tom Stanfill
The problem they solve, there are certain things that have to happen. Pitfalls is designed to ask questions to reveal. That perfect.
04:37
Tab Norris
I agree with you. It’s almost like you got your starter set in profile and point of view.
04:43
Tom Stanfill
Really important.
04:45
Tab Norris
You said this on the last podcast. That I think is really important. This is the coach coming out in Me Walk before you run. Just maybe you start with just profile and point of view to kind of get started and get rolling. You graduate to these Pitfalls because to your point, this is where the power is. This is where you start selling people that they love you forever. I mean, they’re like, thank you. It’s almost like they’re grateful that they have this relationship with you as a salesperson.
05:18
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. This is where they realize, oh, we should have you involved. You need to be sitting. You need to seat at the table. Things about we’re over here planning. We didn’t think about that. Our plan didn’t include that. This is where you demonstrate that you’ve done this or your organization, because, by the way, it doesn’t have to be what you’ve done. It’s what you’ve learned from others or what you’ve learned by your personal experience. The simplest way to think about it is whatever problem you’re trying to solve with something the customer is trying to solve that’s relevant to the solution that you offer. There’s a way to solve it. There’s the best practices. There’s the things that have to happen for them to be successful. This is one of the questions they always ask, like, what mistakes do people make? They do this. What mistakes?
06:13
Tom Stanfill
We’re in the middle of this initiative, and we’re talking to you about helping us with this initiative. They’ll say, what do other people do that are successful? Another way to ask that question is, what am I missing? What mistakes do people make? Everybody wants to know the model, like, what are the things that have to happen to guarantee success? That’s our goal at the Pitfalls, is to find that. I always like to think of it as like, there’s five things you got to do for this to be successful. If they mentioned three, your Pitfalls are to focus on the other two. If they mentioned three, but they don’t have it perfectly nailed down, then you ask questions related to those three. The goal is to figure out what’s required for them to pull this off. Right. Let’s say something simple that every sales rep knows.
07:07
Tom Stanfill
You’re implementing a new CRM. Like, let’s say you’re a sales rep and you sell CRM, a CRM solution, right?
07:15
Tab Norris
Yeah.
07:15
Tom Stanfill
What has to happen for that to go well? There’s all kinds of issues. There’s adoption, there’s integration, there’s all kinds of customers, a lot of things that have to happen. The question is, what has to happen for that to go well? That’s what drives your questions related to Pitfall. The goal is to nail that down.
07:39
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s good.
07:41
Tom Stanfill
You don’t sell here, but you’re selling by asking the questions because you’re.
07:45
Tab Norris
Getting them thinking, and they’re kind of going, Well, I hadn’t really thought about that.
07:50
Tom Stanfill
I haven’t thought about that. Tell me more about that.
07:52
Tab Norris
Good point.
07:53
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, tell me more about that. I think it’s also a good tab to this is probably a good place to bring up. A lot of times it’s easy to shift from discovery to building value or start talking about our solution, whether we’re building value or not. Because as you start to move into the Pitfalls and they start to go, I hadn’t thought about that, they’ll probably ask questions.
08:20
Tab Norris
Yes.
08:21
Tom Stanfill
How do you do that? What do we need to do? You get excited because you’re like, Now I’ve got the mic, and they want to hear what I have to say, and that feels good. Which is not to say that you don’t want to be prepared to answer their questions because you need to you can’t say, well, I’m not going to answer questions until I’m done with discovery. You want to answer their questions as succinctly as you can so that you can get back into discovery and you don’t run out of time realizing, oh, I’m missing a lot of information.
08:54
Tab Norris
Yeah. Because then you just run down that road. I was just talking to one of our clients the other day, and that’s what he said. They get all excited, they bubble up a couple of these things, and they just take off and they do their thing, and then they get back into discovery, and they realize that from a priority. I’m getting ahead of ourselves on a piece, but this is a low priority, and they just blew all this time, and they’ve talking about all this stuff, and their strategy would have been different if they had done their discovery first. To your point, they couldn’t have just ignored the question, but answer it quickly, get back into it.
09:34
Tom Stanfill
This is also where there may not be a need in the mind of the decision maker. Like, there’s not a need. This is a lot of times where you create a compelling event or you uncover a need that they didn’t know they had. Because my favorite example, the Seinfeld clip we show in training.
09:53
Tab Norris
Oh, gosh, the keys episode.
09:56
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I mean, for those of you people that aren’t aware of that are not 60, you don’t have every episode memorized. We say the Keys episode, you go, oh, I know that episode. Yeah. It’s an episode where Kramer is trying to get George to move to California with him because Kramer wants to be an actor, which that’s a whole nother story in itself. And George says, no, I’m not going. And Kramer says, you’re wasting your life. Like, you need to do something with your life rather than stay in New York. Go with me. Basically, he’s selling them. George is so passionate, goes, I’m not wasting my life. I’m living my life. And he pounds the table. I’m living my life. His destination is stay in New York. Nothing needs to change. No plan needed.
10:43
Tab Norris
Yeah.
10:44
Tom Stanfill
Kramer just starts asking him priority, I mean, pitfall questions. So George is passionate. He’s defending his position. Kramer says in a very curious tone, which is important, he was very curious. He wasn’t attacked. He’s like, okay, well, let’s just jump back to so you’ve got an amazing life. Let’s kind of assess that. Let me ask you my pitfall question first one, do you have a job.
11:10
Tab Norris
Which is so great? No, that’s right.
11:20
Tom Stanfill
No. He goes, do you have any money? No. He goes, do you have any reason to get up in the morning? I like the Daily News. You can see George goes from, I’m living my life. I’m passionate, too. I think I’m pretty miserable right now. Yeah.
11:41
Tab Norris
My life is awful.
11:42
Tom Stanfill
What I love about that example, though, is it’s a simple illustration that Kramer knew to focus on money purpose, which is just relationships, right? So he just went down the list. If George would have said, I got this great job and I’m married, or whatever he said, then that would end. Then we don’t have any pitfalls. The plan is good. Stay with the current plan.
12:11
Tab Norris
Your life is too good in New York to leave, so just stay right here.
12:15
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, but it also helps illustrate you need to have that same list. What is your list? Let’s think it’s time to move to the next P tab. Profile point of view, pitfalls, next P. This won’t take a minute, but priorities. The first thing I want to focus on is there a compelling event driving this? Where did this come from? If there is a need you’ve uncovered a need for you. They’re talking about the point of view. You’ve uncovered a need by talking about the priority. You know what? We do need to do this. You’re right. We’re looking for this. We want to know where does this fit in the priorities of the organization. The question I like to ask is, what would happen if you didn’t do this? I’m looking for an emotional response to that question. They’re like, this has to happen. Why does this have to happen?
13:08
Tom Stanfill
Where did this come from? Why is this something you’re talking about? Another way to simply ask this is, what are your priorities for the year? Let’s just list them. We got to get these eight things done. You were on the list, right? Maybe it’s five, and you’re on the list. That’s great. Where does this rank? Yeah, this is number five. How many will you get done? Two.
13:32
Tab Norris
Okay.
13:35
Tom Stanfill
Because this is the thing that I think in selling, and I am the same way we fill in blanks with positive information.
13:44
Tab Norris
We’re overly optimistic sometimes as salespeople. This is it. They’re interested. They’ve got pitfalls. I mean, we’re all over this.
13:52
Tom Stanfill
We’re asking you all these questions, and we’re on this meeting, and we’re passionate about this, and we want to know, and you’re like, but what happens after this meeting? Well, we’ve got to go meet with so and so. Is this on their whiteboard?
14:08
Tab Norris
Is this a priority to them?
14:10
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We haven’t talked to them about it.
14:14
Tab Norris
This may not even be an initiative.
14:17
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. Two ways to think about it, I think, help you, is either where does it rank? Even if where it ranks, and that’s a positive thing, I still want to know two things compelling event and budget. Yeah, right. Compelling event will supersede a budget.
14:33
Tab Norris
I asked a question this week. I said, Why will this whole thing go away?
14:38
Tom Stanfill
Oh, I love that.
14:40
Tab Norris
It was interesting because they go, well, if we have a bad quarter, this whole thing could go away. What are the odds of you having a bad quarter? Yeah, pretty good, actually. It was really interesting, but it’s exactly what it is. It’s almost like you’ve got to have and me. I am overly optimistic, and so I have to make myself be pessimistic. Like, make myself go, it’s probably not going to work out. I think it’s a good position to be in because it just causes you to be more curious. You don’t want to waste your time. I mean, you’re really trying to figure out what’s going on here.
15:20
Tom Stanfill
This is a really interesting thing to have about selling. I don’t think I’ve really thought about this ever before, but to be successful in sales, you do have to have this blend of incredible optimism yes. Accompanied by complimented by the paranoia that nothing’s going to work. It’s like if you’re just paranoid and you’re negative, no one will never talk to you. It’s not going to work. No one’s ever going to talk to me. We’ll never sell this. You’re right, but you have this. But you got to believe. You got to wake up every day going, if I do the work, it’s going to happen somehow I’m going to figure it out. When you get in a deal and this is the way I think about it, big picture, it’s going to happen, it’s going to work. The numbers tell the story. I know it’s going to work.
16:09
Tom Stanfill
Right. When I get in a deal, like a specific deal, I get super negative.
16:15
Tab Norris
Yeah, I’ve watched that. You’re the reason I’m like that you trained me. I mean, I watched you. You’re very good at that.
16:21
Tom Stanfill
It’s still a gravitational pull, though. I will say the gravitational pull to me is positive. To see it. If I’m on my game, meaning I’m prepared. I work really hard to kill a deal. Yeah, try to kill it. By the way, killing a deal might be just later.
16:42
Tab Norris
I find when I try to kill deals, it either kills them or it just jacks them up. There’s a big win when you try to kill deals.
16:50
Tom Stanfill
There’s also some credibility thing that happens when you try to kill deals. Just like, look, for this to happen, you got to do this and this. I don’t know if you’re prepared for that. And like we’re prepared for that. Exactly.
17:04
Tab Norris
You’re talking about a major commitment here. It’s going to cost three or four times what you think it’s going to cost, and I just don’t think you.
17:09
Tom Stanfill
Can pay for it. Well, there is that side of it, but the other side of it is there’s a credibility that you have when you’re not trying to beg, borrow, and steal a deal. You’re like, look, this is what I do. I’m not a knee surgeon looking for a lot of surgeries. Right. I’m going to try to talk you out of the surgery because you really don’t want to have surgery versus you need surgery, please do surgery. I’m a knee surgeon that doesn’t have any business.
17:37
Tab Norris
Yeah, I’m all at a knees right now.
17:39
Tom Stanfill
How about you? Would you like a knee surgery? Surgery tab? I always go to Orthopedics. I don’t know.
17:47
Tab Norris
That’s kind of because you’ve lived it.
17:50
Tom Stanfill
All right, so profile point of view, pitfalls priorities. The way that I think about this is when should they invest? When and if should they invest? Preference. By the way, I think this is a good point to bring up all of these questions. When you’re in discovery, you’re answering this from the customer’s perspective, not your perspective.
18:12
Tab Norris
Yeah, very true.
18:14
Tom Stanfill
This isn’t what should be. This is what is. You’re trying to uncover what is now along the lines. You’re going to uncover what should be. You want them you want to get their perspective. You know, what’s their priority. Now, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t push. You go, you think this is priority number five? I believe, based on what you told me, it needs to be number two. So that’s your job right now. Your job is to influence them to move up to a priority, or their budget is really small because it’s not a top priority, and you want to change that. What you want to know is the truth. The goal of discovery is to uncover the truth. That leads us to our last P tab. Last p is preferences? The first four were completely geared to uncovering what solution do they need, right?
19:11
Tom Stanfill
Uncovering what solution they need. The last one is determining what solution provider. Just because they need a solution doesn’t mean they’re going to choose you. The first four like, okay, what do you need? How do I quote this? How would I build it? How do I propose it? What you think you need. What I think you need. Okay, so we know we want to solve the problem. We know you need the solution. Now you have options. You can talk to multiple people. How are you going to choose who is going to choose, and how are you going to choose from one solution provider or the other? This is the one that most people miss. This is the one honestly, I’m most the one that has to make it on my list.
19:58
Tab Norris
I miss this one the most, hands down.
20:02
Tom Stanfill
The reason is because the people you’re talking to, it just feels so natural to assume they’re the ones driving it because they’re driving all the questions. They’re the most engaged. It feels like you’re moving backwards to kind of go, well, moving beyond the people that you have. It’s also kind of I’d rather not know. It’s like, this is where exactly?
20:25
Tab Norris
I don’t want to know if it’s.
20:26
Tom Stanfill
Going to go work, it’s more work. But here’s the key. When you’re in earlier, the quicker you find out this information, the more successful you’re going to because if you wait until the end, it’s too late.
20:39
Tab Norris
Yeah.
20:40
Tom Stanfill
Like, if you wait till the end, you’re like, okay, now we want you to be here next Thursday, and we want you to tell us we’re going to have a virtual meeting and we want you to pitch your solution. Well, who’s going to be there? Well, it’s just going to be us, too.
20:49
Tab Norris
You’ll?
20:49
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. The decision maker is not going to be there, but we’re going to tell the decision maker what our recommendations are. I’m like, oh, boy, now I’ve got to depend on you to sell our solution to the decision maker. You don’t really know what the decision drivers are. Right. So preferences is really about two things. It’s who and it’s about what criteria are they going to use to make the decision between one partner or the other? If you don’t know who, the criteria doesn’t matter because you might know if I say to the evaluator, the person who’s evaluating the solution but not the decision maker, what’s your criteria? They tell me that may not be the right criteria.
21:34
Tab Norris
Yeah.
21:36
Tom Stanfill
I need to know who, and I need to know what criteria they’re going to use to make the decision. I’m going to throw a little tip in your tab.
21:45
Tab Norris
Let’s hear it. Tip me up.
21:47
Tom Stanfill
Always think about so the first thing you need to do is you need to know your list of decision drivers that are typically used. Okay. Let’s just say there’s five.
22:01
Tab Norris
Like, give me an example.
22:03
Tom Stanfill
Your ability to customize or global presence or cost is always wonderful. Integration or experience in our vertical.
22:13
Tab Norris
Okay.
22:14
Tom Stanfill
There’s usually formal, and there’s informal decision drivers. There’s decision drivers that are people will put on a spreadsheet, and they’ll share them with people, and they’ll internally spread them around, and they’ll have a spreadsheet, and everybody ranks from one to five. I’ve seen these spreadsheets and how we stacked up against our competition. I’ll have a row, gas will and have a row, and there’ll be three other companies on there, and then they rank them, and this is what they share. But there’s the informal decision drivers, which.
22:44
Tab Norris
Is probably more important. Right?
22:46
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
22:47
Tab Norris
Usually we’re going to override all the data.
22:50
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Here’s what we like working with. You fit our culture.
22:55
Tab Norris
Yeah.
22:59
Tom Stanfill
Here’s one of the informal decision drivers. We worked with an organization that had kind of a locker room culture, and it wasn’t male dominated, but it was an engineering kind of thing, and it was female male, but it was like a locker room. It was like a very informal culture. They knew that if you couldn’t match that culture, you would not be successful in their order.
23:28
Tab Norris
They’d chew you up and spit you out.
23:32
Tom Stanfill
They were not going to work with a buttoned up partner who couldn’t roll with the punches and couldn’t deal with just to their people. I’m on a call with them, and a lot of times, by the way, the questions they ask will reveal what the decision driver what the informal decision drivers are? The questions they ask a lot of times, they won’t tell you. What’s your informal decision drivers? Well, the things we won’t tell everybody are the following.
24:00
Tab Norris
It’s like a locker room.
24:02
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. They won’t say they might have a kind of stilted category for it.
24:10
Tab Norris
Yeah.
24:11
Tom Stanfill
The questions they ask are very telling. Pay attention to the questions your customer asks. That’s good, because that will hopefully reveal what their decision drivers are, especially the informal ones. This decision maker said, okay, I’m on a call. I’m on a conference call. I’m at the beach. I’m on vacation. I took this call because it was really important. We were the final stages of this project and they have not chosen our firm, but it was one of those last final meetings. The first thing the guy says to me on the call, he goes, what are you wearing? You could tell and they were all around the phone and they were like, what’s this guy going to say to that question? And I’m sure they didn’t practice that. I’m sure. They knew intuitively they needed to kind of push me around a bit and see how I’d respond.
25:10
Tom Stanfill
Let’s see what he can do. I won’t tell you my response.
25:14
Tab Norris
No, we won’t.
25:15
Tom Stanfill
No, but it was something about a Camo mesh thing. Anyway, but they told me after that my response was the reason that we won that project. It was because I understood. Now, again, watching the organization, getting to know, always looking for what are those decision drivers along the way is really critical. Once you define the formal and informal drivers, then what you want to do to help determine which ones are most important. Because you’ve got to decide if they have five or six and some of them have eight, maybe ten, you can’t cover all those. You’ve got to make decisions about which one is most important. I like to do the eye test. Like, when you go to the doctor and they say, does this look better or does this look better? They compare one thing versus the other. Like they’re always going to say, money, right, budget.
26:09
Tom Stanfill
Or if you had to pick global or customization or this, you had to pick between a customized solution or experience in your vertical. Like, which one would you choose? It’s like if you think about it, like somebody’s going on vacation. Like you said, hey, Tom, I’m going on vacation and I’m going to go to this place that you’ve been, but I haven’t. I’m going to Italy and where should I stay? You’ve got criteria. You may not even really formulate it, but you’ve got criteria for me to help you. I’m like, well, you want location, you want ambience, you want food.
26:43
Tab Norris
Yeah.
26:43
Tom Stanfill
You’d be like, I’m just thinking, I’m just going to go and I don’t know how close it is. The ocean. I don’t know. Is there an ocean? I have to help you make that decision by saying, how much time are you going to spend your room.
27:01
Tab Norris
At all?
27:02
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, like in helping you narrow that down, because people have it, you may have sold your solution hundreds of times, but they may have only bought it once or never.
27:12
Tab Norris
Yeah.
27:13
Tom Stanfill
As you do all this, you’re coaching them and back to what we said on our last podcast. You’re influencing the decision more and selling while you’re effectively walking the customer through this process of helping them evaluate what to do. This is where you’re influencing. This is where you’re demonstrating you’re the partner. Yeah.
27:38
Tab Norris
That was a huge flip for me when I finally realized that and made that change. Sales got a whole lot more fun and it got a lot more effective. To your point, it’s very freeing because you have to trust it, though. I don’t think I trusted it. A lot of our listeners may be the same way. It’s like if you’re a younger, newer salesperson, it’s hard to trust. It’s like, my gosh, it has such impact when you’re sitting there going, this is somebody that is really here to help me make a wise decision. It’s hard to fake that they know if you are or you are not.
28:17
Tom Stanfill
The thing is, if you’re dropping the rope, this is something we always see. Jasmine, you’re not tug of war. You’re not doing the tug of war trying to pull them to your solution, but you’re dropping a rope and just you’re curious. I’m just trying to help you figure out I don’t care what hotel right now in Discovery. I’m a journalist. I don’t care what hotel in Italy you stay in. I’m just trying to figure out what hotel you need. Now, if it turns out you need my hotel, I have a hotel and I’d like you to stay there. That’s true.
28:42
Tab Norris
But right now I’m doing right now.
28:44
Tom Stanfill
That’S not what I’m doing right now. I’m trying to figure out where you want to stay. Because if it turns out my hotel is on the ocean, it’s all about view and you care about food and city. But here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to pitch you and I’m going to send you proposals and I’m going to follow up and we’re going to do this thing over and over again. You’re not going to tell me you’re not going to take the time to educate me on why you’ve decided somebody else is better. You’re just going to ignore me and I’m going to waste all of this time versus figuring out we need to drive the process of figuring out what they need and then we fulfill that need in Discovery. How we lead this process, I think, is where we really build value and we separate ourselves as a partner and from the competition.
29:29
Tom Stanfill
The bottom line, other people aren’t doing this. It’s not doing too different.
29:34
Tab Norris
Yes, I agree.
29:36
Tom Stanfill
I think we ought to close with helping our listeners think about discovery in two ways. We’ve talked about the framework. We’ve talked about the five PS and how that kind of the framework of driving the discussion. We talked about the first episode, how they want to talk about the solution. Right. You sell a certain thing and they’re going to say they’re going to try to answer your question. I do want to distinguish you can use the Five PS around a solution, a specific solution, like if you. Sell health care or life insurance or, I don’t know what, a voice and data system, a copier, whatever. You can sell medical advice. You can build your questions around the same five piece, right? Where are you now with the current equipment you have and where do you want to be and what are you thinking about? Well, we want to replace it in this.
30:41
Tom Stanfill
I mean, it can be driven around a specific solution. What I think it’s also important to know is if you move up the organization, you need to also have applied the five PS to a business. Let’s talk about your business, let’s talk about your department. You move from operations level, it’s going to be probably more around a solution, same five P. If you move up and you’re talking about a department or you move up to the executive, you’re talking about company. The five PS are related to the department. The five PS related to company. You can use the same five P’s for either way you’re talking about the business, what’s happening at business level, or you can use the same five PS is what’s happening in a solution.
31:30
Tab Norris
That’s what I love about that roadmap and it’s interchangeable and you do the same thing, but your questions are different as you’re preparing. I don’t know if you do it this way, but if I’m getting ready, if it’s a business, a high level, I’ve memorized the roadmap now, I’ve done it so long. I come up with, I think through all of those categories and I think at least I write down a couple of questions and I may not even ask them. It just gets me thinking of it. Don’t forget, these are some critical elements in each one of these categories that I just need to be aware of and that it really does help. They’re going to be different if I’m talking operations, they’re going to be different questions. Same five PS, but different questions.
32:16
Tom Stanfill
That’s a good point. I think it’s also love how you’re talking about this too, because it reminds me to provide a template, a visual template for how to create your roadmap. We talked about the categories, the five P. What I would recommend is have two columns. On the left column is the objectives under each P, these are bullets. If you think about profile, company size, products, competitors, it’s the objective, it’s what information you want to uncover around each of the five. That’s your left column, the right column associated with each one of those objectives is your questions. Your questions are your favorite questions you like to ask to uncover those objectives that you listed on the left side. When you’re in discovery, you’re not going to be able to look at your questions.
33:15
Tab Norris
No, that’s a pre game thing.
33:18
Tom Stanfill
That’s a pre game. Now, it doesn’t mean you won’t write down a couple of your favorite questions to kick off the meeting or around a certain P, but you can only look at a couple of questions. What you can look at is the objectives to remind you. That’s where I always look at those. So, like, when I look down under the P of Preferences, it’ll say Decision Maker and decision drivers. That just reminds me now. I might under Decision drivers, I might have the top three or four or five. That helps me do my eye test. But I can look at that. People don’t mind you stepping back from the conversation for a second and looking at your notes. Yeah.
34:05
Tab Norris
You’ll even say it. Well, I had a couple of other things I definitely wanted to dig into here, but if you just go pull up and start reading questions, that’s not going to work. No, another thing too, Tom, what I find is if you think in the categories, sometimes you ask one really good open ended question and they fill in two boxes, they just start talking.
34:29
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. That’s the best of all discovery meeting. You ask one open ended question, they fill out all 5ft.
34:36
Tab Norris
You’re going, Just stop, I can’t write this fast.
34:38
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Now they’re probably not going to get the priorities. I mean, the Pitfall probably not.
34:42
Tab Norris
You’re going to have to dig a little.
34:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. If you develop and that’s where on that template under Pitfalls, for example, under that left column next to Pitfalls, and you say, these are the five Pitfalls that are typical to the solution that I sell. These are the big ones. And you look at that. What I do on the right side is I just have two questions that I can that’s me. I have more than two. Once you’re really familiar with your discovery framework, you just look to the left side and that will remind you of what you need and that will help you guide the discovery process and you won’t miss something. Tab I think that’s all we have. We want to leave them hungry for more. I think we’re giving them everything.
35:33
Tab Norris
No more peas, though. We end the peas. We’re going to do a session on LS next time. I can’t wait for that linguistic learning.
35:44
Tom Stanfill
Great session.
35:45
Tab Norris
I will tell you, and I’ve been stone a long time, every time I do this, I get inspired to be a better salesperson.
35:53
Tom Stanfill
It’s just great to talk about it. Also, I think it’s good to remind people more important than the information you uncover is how you make the customer feel when they are talking. You may not be getting any new information. By the way, I remember reading this statistic, and I can’t quote it, but I remember reading some statistic that sales reps get less successful the older they get and the more experienced they are. It’s because and I’ve seen this true of my own, it’s like when the customer starts telling me their story. I’ve heard this 100 times. I’ve heard this 200 times exactly, and I haven’t. They start saying things that you say, and so my brain wants to turn off and go, I don’t want to download this again. More important than the information you’re uncovering is you’re communicating how you feel about that human being.
36:49
Tom Stanfill
Those people are talking about what’s most important in their life or at least in the top three their world, their career. When they talk and we demonstrate, we care, we’re curious, and we validate their point of view. Good things happen when you ignore the customer, bad things happen. Hey, I don’t really care about you. I want to get to this thing that I want to tell you about. I want to communicate that I don’t care about you, and what you’re saying is not important. Would you now listen to me and choose me as your partner?
37:21
Tab Norris
Right.
37:22
Tom Stanfill
It’s not a really good strategy tab.
37:24
Tab Norris
No, I’m with you. I think that’s a great closing comment, Tom.
37:28
Tom Stanfill
All right. My friend will listen. As always, we’d love comments, feedback, anything you can tell us on how to serve you better. We’re always open and willing to listen to and adjust along the way. Thank you for joining us for another episode.
