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Sales tips: connect with emotion, improve your discovery process, and use these GTM tools to help

Connect with emotion, discovery trick, and tools you need

January 21, 2022

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Friday, January 21st, 2022

Techniques on how to connect with your prospect’s emotional side and improve your discovery process followed by Dan Parelskin's top 5 GTM tools.

  

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

#1 - 6 ways to better connect with your prospect’s emotional side

Humans buy with emotion, justify with logic.

It's not called a business JUSTIFICATION by accident. So how do you connect with a prospect's emotional side? These techniques will help.

  1. Frame problems using emotional words

    1. Don't say: revenue is down / costs are up

    2. Do say: you are FRUSTRATED that revenue is down / you are STRUGGLING with the rising costs

  2. Label and highlight the emotions you hear from your prospect (hat tip: Chris Voss)

    1. Don't say: OK / I'm sorry to hear that

    2. Do say: Sounds like you are FRUSTRATED with your flat revenue

  3. Be empathetic, not sympathetic to their plight. Empathize with them, don't pity them.

    1. Don't think: I feel sorry for them (sympathy)

    2. Do wonder: What must it be like to be going through this (empathy)

  4. Understand their personal pain. Personal pain, right now, is a big driver for change

    1. Don't ask: how is the company affected by this problem

    2. Do ask: how is this problem affecting YOU

  5. Understand their personal gain. Personal gain, right now, is also a big driver for change

    1. Don't ask: how is the company going to gain from fixing this

    2. Do ask: how are YOU going to feel or be viewed once this is fixed

  6. Stories. People connect with stories better than they do with facts & figures

    1. Don't just: tell customer stories with business and logical impacts

    2. But also: include how the PERSON at your prospect was experiencing problems, the actions THEY took, and how THEY gained

#2 - One powerful tip to improve your discovery process (just 1!)

"I ask too many questions." "I ask too few questions." "My questions are lame." "I felt way too needy asking those questions." "That one question was really good.... oh wait, this time it wasn't." "I've no idea what to ask next."

That's how I've thought about my own discovery questions at various times over my career. How do you think about your own discovery process? Or...what does your boss tell you about it?

I've found that sellers tend to ask too many situational or factual questions and not enough impact or outcomes questions.

  • Situational questions: how many, how long, what do you use, how happy are you... etc

  • Impact questions: what's the business impact of that problem, who is impacted by that problem, how do you measure the impact

  • Outcome questions: if you were to fix it what would happen, who would be grateful, how would you measure success

Between informal meetings. Speed date events with executives. Meetings with leaders. Time is short. And valuable! So, what questions do you ask to make your time with the prospect count? What questions get to the most valuable conversation as fast as possible? What questions are the most appropriate for the level of the person you are meeting with?

Challenge for you

Give yourself the constraint of identifying just 3 questions...and then, and only then, figure out what questions you would ask if you could only ask 5.

Giving yourself just 3 questions will ensure you are valuable, effective and focused.

#3 - Dan Parelskin, Vice President of Sales at Axis Security, shares his top 5 Sales GTM tools

  1. Conversation Intelligence - Ramp/educate/coach new hires and listen to customers better (we use Chorus.ai, impressed with Gong)

  2. Engagement Automation - Personalized engagement at scale (we use Outreach, impressed with Salesloft)

  3. Contact Intelligence - Accurate contact data and integration at scale (we use Seamless.AI, impressed with Apollo.io and ZoomInfo)

  4. Revenue Intelligence - Easier forecasting for AEs and more visibility for leaders (we use Clari and Kluster, impressed with BoostUp.ai)

  5. Proposal Automation - Proposals in a consistent, informative and "on-brand" wrapper (we use DealHub.io)

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3 things from me

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Something for job seekers

  • My good friends at CyberGRX are hiring right now. Join John Mayhall and the team and help transform how 3rd party cybersecurity risk management is done. Openings >>>

  • Axis Security is helping their customers transform how they do secure remote access to support the modern workplace. Dan Parelskin is leading a stellar team that is taking on big, well-known players … and winning. Openings >>>

  Dad joke of the week

How does a penguin build its house?

-Igloos it together

 

Wishing you growth and accomplishment next week,

Andrew Monaghan

Chief Bluebird

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