Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 112: How to help your prospect understand that you have the solution to their problem

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112: How to help your prospect understand that you have the solution to their problem · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Blue Bird podcast, which exists because at B2B startups, it is hard to get go-to-market fit, grow revenue, and scale the sales team.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird provides tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who've been doing this for many years and in many companies.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: We want your path to go to market fit and beyond to be less rocky so that you can grow sales faster.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Andrew Monahan, and today what we're talking about is being able to connect deeply with our prospects.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into that though, I want to hear from you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: What questions or topics do you want to have answered on the podcast?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's top of mind for you?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's burning a hole in your brain?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's bugging you?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are you facing that's your biggest obstacle in selling right now?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Send them in to me and we can tackle them on the podcast either just by myself or with one of my guests.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can email me directly at andrew at unstoppable.do.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's unstoppable.do.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's do at the end, not dot com.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can video or audio message me at zipmessage.com forward slash unstoppable.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're like me and it's just a lot easier just to uh talk for 30 seconds or a minute rather than having to type it out and take 10 or 15, go to zipmessage.com forward slash unstoppable.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about uh working with our prospects and how we connect with them.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Being aligned with your prospect is the holy grail where you're both going down the same path with the same way of doing it and going after the same goal.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It makes the whole sales process smoother and quicker when there's a shared way of doing all this.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It all starts with a problem.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do this while it speeds deals up, uh you get a drive, you get momentum from your champion or your mobilizer, you get a better access to people during the deal.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And often during the sales cycle, when things aren't going so well, the buying team is a lot more forgiving if they're aligned with you going forward.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you a quick personal story.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, many years ago, I had to go see an ear, nose, and throat surgeon.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been to my primary care doctor.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: They said, There's something going on with your throat.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You need to go see an ENT.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I went there and I met with the surgeon.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And within 30 seconds of me being in there, he said, What you need to have is a tonsilectomy when you take your your tonsils at.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy took zero time really to understand or talk to me or ask me questions or really understand what I was going through, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was going through some pain, and he didn't take any time to try to understand that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he immediately went to what you need to do is have surgery.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when can we book you in?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that was jarring for me.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw the guy again, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I still have my tonsils.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I kind of questioned whether he needed to do it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was a little bit too quick to want to take them out.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it was uh one of those moments where he just went straight to what he wanted to do uh to solve the problem that he thought I had, but I just didn't believe him.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But understanding a problem deeply, unfortunately, this is not what we've been taught.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: What we've been taught in terms of alignment is to align around the solution.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have to do that as well, but we also need to really get alignment around the problem first.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is where things will be easier for us in the sales cycle, if there's a deep alignment around the problem.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is if someone believes that you understand their problem deeply and empathize with them, they are much more likely to believe you have the solution.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say that again.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: If someone believes you understand their problem deeply and empathize with them, they're much more likely to believe that you have the solution.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we as salespeople are a little bit too quick to get to the solution.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that we see it again and again.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of us that are self-aware, you know, we drift, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: We might start off being very good at understanding the problem, but then we get, you know, over time we drift to being very comfortable talking about ourselves.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's what we know, right?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we've been trained on.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at everything you hear from the companies that you work for, I bet you that 80% of it is oriented around the product, the solution, the latest version, the new feature that came out, things like that.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we're making ourselves to be the hero of the story.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you're bombarded with these messages about the internal things, then it's more natural for you over time to end up, that's what you end up talking about.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, all the training that we get is about positioning the product, positioning the solution.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and frankly, you know, when you really want to understand the problem deeply, you have to go deeper than you're comfortable with.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not easy.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the training that we do get on understanding the problem is not about empathizing and really connecting with the prospect.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about, you know, understand the problem so you then can position our stuff as the best stuff for them, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the orientation is a little bit askew sometimes, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about us.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason we're gonna really dig into this problem is so that we've got a better chance of winning the deal, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what all the training is all about.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the you know the diagnosis of the problem, a lot of it's focused on only diagnose the areas that we can solve, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I get it, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's important.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if we really want to get that connection with the prospect, then we need to go deeper into their problem to understand their problem so that we have that connection.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is different.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: The connection is what we're after, right?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We want to re understand it so we can help them.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that we can connect with them deeply, and frankly, it's not that difficult to do.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It needs a bit of work, but it's not that difficult to do.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how to do it a three-step process to do it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: The first step is firstly to understand deeply existing customers.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is the foundation of being able to do this properly.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you know the problems that your customers have solved deeply, there's a fair chance that your future best customers will be very similar and be able to relate to those.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But don't just go with the case study that comes out.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go with the vanilla stuff in the in the wind wire, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go for the story behind the story.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go for the person behind the story.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: What were they facing?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: What were their fears and frustrations?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: What were the problems they were experiencing on the personal level and understand the impacts all around that?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to go deeper than just the case study when you understand those existing customers.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Step two is be prepared to emotionally explain those to your prospect.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I say emotionally, I don't mean you know with tears in your eyes, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just mean use a manner, use a way to talk to them.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a much more emotional than factual.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the fact is we in technology are way too boring.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's so boring.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's logical, it's factual, it's all about speeds and feeds, it's ROIs and you know, all these things, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying those are not important, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it's what we what it dominates everything about technology, are all these logical things, which are boring, they're dry, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's kind of break this, break this down and take uh uh uh a way to work with a prospect and see if I can contrast a boring way to do it with a much more interesting way to do it that's gonna allow you to connect with your prospects.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's imagine we're talking to a security leader, right?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Early stage conversation, and we're throwing out our, you know, people like you tell me, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll do this in two ways and you know, figure out which one you think might connect with the prospect better, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I could start off like this.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk with security leaders just like you, they tell me that it's expensive to provision new users when they come on board into the company.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: They tell me also that their opex is really high and it's higher than what finance really wants.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, they tell me that they need to reduce the response time to incidents by two days.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so that's that's way number one.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Way number two, when I talk with security leaders just like you, they tell me they just can't stomach how expensive it is to do something simple like provision a new user.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is not rocket science, for goodness sake, but it is 2022, and it's got to come down in terms of the cost to do a simple thing like provision a new user.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: They tell me also they're under a lot of pressure from the finance people about reducing the opex to run the team.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a constant pressure, and it's frankly grinding to hear this at every single quarterly review that they go through.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: That constant refrain from finance about bringing down this team's opex and all different ways that we should be looking at doing it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they tell me they really feel the pressure to do that consistently.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, what they also tell me is they're frustrated that it's taking six days to do an initial response after an incident.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Six days.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if they want to be best in class, and they do, and just kill it every time there's an incident, they need it to be below four days.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there's two ways to do it, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I essentially the three same bullets, just told in a different way.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, as you think about how that was described, which one did you warn to?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Which one do you think your prospect might relate to better?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which one um is gonna have the deeper connection?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Back to back to our point.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they believe that we understand their problem and empathize with them, which one of these is gonna do that?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I would argue that the the second option is the one that's gonna do that better than the first one.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, step number three, and to finish off the process, use great questions to draw the prospect into a meaningful conversation.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is what closes the loop that you opened up beforehand, right?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is it's really simple to do, but you gotta be intentional about how you do it.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't use lame questions, right?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if we've just been through those three bullets I talked about, right?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: What you can do is say, does this make sense?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Does this resonate?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about that, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: What you really gotta do is sit there and ask them specifically.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these are just what I've heard from others.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really interested, though, in your experiences.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do any of you, any of the things top of mind with you right now fit into any of these bullets I talked about, these stories I talked about?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you have a different set of challenges that it would be good for us to have a conversation about?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a much more engaging question than just does this make sense or anything like that, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then once they start talking, you can say, tell me more about that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really fascinated with what you said, and then dig deeper and deeper and deeper.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this three-step process that's gonna get you there.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, the reason we're doing this is if your prospect believes you understand their problem deeply, they are much more likely to believe that you have the solution.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me close one loop I opened at the start, which is my story with the ENT.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's imagine that instead of me going in there and him telling me in 30 seconds I needed surgery to take my tonsils at.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: What if the conversation had gone differently?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: What if he sat there and said, Andrew, you know, I'm I'm curious, uh, what's going on right now?
• 12:46
  unknown: Right.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, you know, I'm getting this thing with my sore throat and all the rest of it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Oh, tell me more.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, well, you know, what happens is when I do this, this, and this, and this, this, and this happens.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Oh, that sounds, you know, that's that sounds like it might be rough, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is it quite painful to swallow when all that's going on?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You go, yeah, it is.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It sucks.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I can drink, but I can't eat this, this, and this.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if I do, I really have to kind of take some pills.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, and what if you'd also said, you know, um, sometimes what happens with patients who have that is they also have this kind of really nagging pain down their hearing tube there.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you get that as well?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: They go, yeah, I do.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do, right?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: It happens again and again.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like the infection spreads from here to here, and you know, it really bugs me when I do it, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: If he just had that conversation with me where he'd been interested in what I was experiencing and then also shown that others just like me have experienced this other thing as well.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would have much more likely believed that the right solution for me would have been to have my tonsils eye, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been engaged in a conversation.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would have felt like he empathized with me.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would have felt like he was the real expert.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like that he cared about my success, not him just racking up another bill to do another surgery.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That would have probably had a completely different outcome for him, and maybe for me as well.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows, right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's it's being able to do that that's going to allow us to really connect with a prospect so they can see that we understand their problem deeply, we empathize with them, and therefore they are more likely to believe that we have the solution.