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#36: Respect for discovery meetings, entrepreneurs, and pipeline generation

#36: Respect for discovery meetings, entrepreneurs, and pipeline generation

Respect for discovery meetings, entrepreneurs, and pipeline generation

April 29, 2022

Reading time: ~3 min.

Enjoy this week’s email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week

#1 - Don't take discovery meetings lightly

I've listened to 100's, wait no, 1000's of first meetings and one thing is clear...we need to be more focused.It is a critical skill that almost every salesperson does, but few do well. Here are the top 5 things almost everyone can do better.

1. Ask open questions

Too often our questions are closed, or worse, leading (e.g. “don’t you see the need for a blue thingy widget that only we provide?”)Try this: When you listen back to your calls, take note of how many open questions you ask!

2. Ask shorter questions

The never-ending question kills credibility. You know, it goes something like this...“How do you do incident response? Do you do it this way? Or this other way? And if you do it this other way, do you do it that way on Tuesdays or Wednesdays? And, you know, the reason I’m asking is that it’s a core strength of ours and we really have the best one in the market because it is really, really blue.” Try this: Instead, just stop at “How well is your incident response working for you?”

3. Ask fewer, thoughtful questions

The best discovery sessions happen when we ask a few, very good questions that get longer, thoughtful responses from our prospects.Try this: Look at the questions you ask and challenge yourself to cut half of them and then change the rest to get more thoughtful answers.

4. Ask the right questions for the persona

Imagine you are a CRO and a seller comes in and asks you about how many fields you have integrated between your Salesforce and sales engagement tool. Stupid, right? But that’s what happens when we get so focused on our product and ask CISO questions about product-level stuff. Try this: Think through what each persona you are meeting with cares about in their role and tailor your questions for them.

5. Get to impact of problems as fast as you can

We spend way too much dancing around the real issues, focusing on fact and situation questions. (e.g. how many, how often, who does this, etc.) and don’t leave enough time for the big topic...

What is the real impact of the challenges they are facing?

Try this: Challenge yourself to get to a discussion on the impacts of their problems in as short a time as possible. Can you get there in 4 questions? Maybe 3 questions? How about 2?

Time for a dad joke break...

Where do you find a cow with no legs? Wherever you left it.

#2 - Theo Nassar, from sales to entrepreneur

Starting your own business...it's something a lot of us dream about, but never find the courage to execute. So how did Theo Nasser, CEO at Right-Hand Cybersecurity, make the leap from sales to starting his own company?He opens up about his entrepreneurial journey on this week's Sales Bluebird podcast.

How did he make the decision?

That was the easy part for him. Starting a company was always a part of the plan. What it came down to was a conversation between him and his wife about three things:

What were they going to do?
Who were they going to do it with?
Where were they going to do it?

Once he felt confident in the network he had accumulated combined with the problem he had identified, it felt like the right time to take the plunge.

What tools/resources did he use?

Theo joined an accelerator program Entrepreneur First, giving him not only a tremendous amount of community support, but this was also how he met his co-founder.

Check out the full interview for more

Sales Bluebird podcast episode 121>>>If you want to get in touch with Theo, the best way is to contact him on LinkedIn or send him an email.

#3 - Pipeline generation series

I recently launched a Pipeline generation series on the Sales Bluebird podcast, where sales leaders, individual contributors, demand generation practitioners, and experts whose business is all about generating pipeline give their tips.

Listen and subscribe in your favorite podcast player or at

SalesBluebird.com

Pipeline Series #1 with Rick Hill

(7:32)

Rick led a sales team through all sorts of awareness challenges through to acquisition earlier this year. Tune in to learn the top 3 things he implemented to excel in pipeline generation.

Pipeline Series #2 with

Scott McCrady

(3:08)

Scott McCrady, the CEO of SolCyber is an accomplished international executive with broad experience in sales, business development and the operations side of a cloud based and information security based business.

Pipeline Series #3 with Ry

an Reisert

(6:56)