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88: 3 tips to connect better with prospects · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales at B2B startups should be easier than we often make it, and that it's plain wrong that sales teams at startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams at their bigger and more well-known competitors do.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a seller or sales leader at a B2B startup, you're in the right place, especially if you're at a cybersecurity company.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 88.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Recording this on a beautiful fall day here in Colorado.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to believe, but uh it's warm.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's 70 degrees outside right here in Colorado.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know in different parts of North America when I'm talking to everyone out there that others are experienced this prolonged warm weather, which is great, not so good for the ski season here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um heading up to the mountains this weekend, coming up with the family and some neighbors.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope there's some snow because right now it's hard to believe there will be any at all.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: The topic for today is how to connect better with our prospects.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know how when you go meet someone, your first meeting, early stage meetings, it's someone quite senior, but you just don't seem to connect with them.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lack of connection, maybe further down the sales cycle on their part, there's a lack of desire to change, to take a risk on what they're doing with our technology.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a real lack of depth in the relationship and what's going on between our two companies and between ourselves and the decision maker.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's often a sign that uh we're not connecting properly with that person.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lack of an emotional connection.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting when you look at the a lot of the sales training that's out there, a lot of it is actually centered around thinking about very logical things when people buy.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about positioning ourselves for the betterment of the company, the team, impacting KPIs, solving problems which are business problems, and having business outcomes.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is, though, is we as humans, what we tend to do is buy an emotion and justify with logic.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's true in our personal lives, and it's been proven in research, that's often the case in business lives as well.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that dissimilar to thinking about the Simon Sinek talk from many years ago now, but starting with why.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: He uses the Apple example of they talk about, you know, think different rather than the speed of the processor.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine what might have been the trajectory of Apple over the last 20 years if their main selling proposition was, well, we got a 100 gigahertz processor versus the Dell one, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not that compelling for many of us.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this whole idea of really connecting with people on an emotional level is actually quite important.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of the ways that it manifests itself is when we think about ROI.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: ROI is something that's very logical.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to spend this much and get a return.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Think carefully though, what is the wording that we use to describe the ROI thought?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: What we do is we talk about an ROI justification.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We don't talk about the ROI decision.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that goes back to the idea that we buy with emotion, justify with logic.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: What often happens is the decision is made to go down a certain path, and then someone's given the task of justifying the decision on an ROI basis.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when it gets presented to the right people, they can say, here is the best option for us for these reasons, and here is the justification from an ROI standpoint about why this makes sense.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to think carefully about the difference between logic and emotion.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we do get overly focused on the logical side because you know, when people talk about our products internally, it's all about how much better they are.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're faster, they're more impactful, it's got more features that do different things.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh often it's not the case by thinking about the personal impact this is going to have on our prospects.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're not thinking about the emotional connection that we can have with our prospects, we're not using all the tools at our disposal to connect with our prospect and keep moving our sales forward.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here are three ways to better connect with your prospects to help in your sales cycles.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here is way number one, and that is to use emotional words in our conversations.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, words matter, whether they're how we describe what we do, the questions that we ask, the words that we use in a conversation, it all matters, especially when we think about the emotional connection with someone.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's true.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone, whether it's a business discussion, a personal discussion, if the other person feels like you can describe their problems, understand their problems, really connect with them using words at a deeper level, they're more likely to believe that you have their best interests at heart and that you have the solution to the problems in a business environment.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: One of the more impactful books that came out in the last five years or so was Never Split the Difference from Chris Voss.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure many of you have read the book or at least heard of it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big takeaways from that book was how important it is to connect with someone emotionally and so show empathy when you're working with people.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Chris Voss gives some examples about how to do that from the FBI world, which are of course uh transferable into the business world.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're thinking about the words that we use, rather than sticking with the real logical words, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Costs and things are slow and not fast enough, and revenues not high enough, and we need to increase revenue, or we're gonna miss plans, or the KPIs not being hit.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: These are all factual, logical things.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: A simple tweak can actually help you connect better with your prospect.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that is by using emotional words in front of these other words I just mentioned.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than saying costs are too high, what you can say is it sounds like you're frustrated that costs are so high.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or what you could do if you're using other customers as examples, you could see other people just like you, other CISOs, other security leaders are often frustrated that the costs are so high in this area.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, what other emotional words can you swap in there?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can use frustrated, vulnerable, fed up, you know, they're worried that, they're concerned that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you think about vulnerable, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than talking very factually about maybe gaps and the protections inside an environment, what you can talk about is other security leaders often feel a little bit vulnerable that they haven't really cracked the code on how to solve their cloud data protection problem, how to do network security more effectively in this cloud-first world.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you can put in, you know, they're feeling a little bit vulnerable, they're feeling a little bit uneasy.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: These are emotional words that if that person is also feeling a little bit like that, they're more likely to go, yeah, you know, that's kind of it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I feel about this, right?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So use these emotional words in front of the more logical words we're perhaps more used to sticking with.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that we get rid of those logical words, we actually make them more powerful by adding the emotional ones in there as well.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's way number one.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Way number two is to dig for the personal outcomes.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: As you said before, people buy with emotion but justify with logic.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, it kind of makes sense that we need to be thinking about well, what's the emotional reason why someone would pick this option or go down a certain path?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is the personal pain or the personal gain that they're trying to either achieve or avoid by making a decision?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that's true in the cybersecurity world is there are certain CISOs out there who are much more naturally inclined to want to buy from and support early stage cybersecurity companies.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that easy to do.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: At a startup, you are not the least risk option for them.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a hundred happy customers and multiple deployments just like theirs, they can sometimes or often be seen to be taking a risk to work with you.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it must be something going on that's causing them to want to take that risk.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And definitely there's an element of it is you've got a unique way to solve it, but there's probably something going on in their world that's a personal reason why they want to do that.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was at a company once and we went to talk to one of the more well-known CISOs, let's say.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when he kind of latched onto what we could do for him, he then said you should go and talk to these other two or three SISOs who would probably be open to early stage company discussions as well.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the key things he said was, don't forget to tell them, I got there first.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what he wanted to do was have the brand name around himself, that he was someone that went with early stage companies, found us first, and therefore was maybe the smartest guy in the room, or the one that was out there seemed to be really supporting this whole ecosystem of early stage companies.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So for him, there's definitely a problem to be solved that he wanted to solve, but there was an emotional, a personal thing in there that said that's why he wanted to work with us.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you go about doing that?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get down to that personal impact, the personal gain that that person might have?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I'd encourage you to think about is three levels of your questions when you're doing discovery.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we often stop at either one or two and really get to three.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the three levels are company, team, personal.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're thinking about the problems that a company's having and you're doing your discovery, think about the impacts on the company.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So KPIs and all these sorts of things are important, and we should definitely do that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then dig deeper, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's you know, the problem is that whatever there is, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gap in protection in cloud data, let's say.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean for the team?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: The team that's responsible for that, how are they feeling about this?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: What are they doing?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are they feeling vulnerable?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are they working nights and weekends to try and figure out how to solve it?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is there things going on that's affecting the team?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the one person you're meeting with, what's the impact to them?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for you that there's this gap there?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: How are you thinking about this?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: How are you thinking about the impact if it was to be solved?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you know the two ways to think about it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: How does it affect you currently?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what will be the impact to you going forward if this was solved?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So think about it company, team, personal.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And don't be afraid, once you've earned the right and you've shown you know interest in what's going on, to go down to well, what does this mean for you?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: If this was solved, what's the impact to your team and what's the impact to you?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's way number two.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Way number three is to be empathetic.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, overused word for sure.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's one of these words that's really tough sometimes to really nail.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: What does that really mean?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Be empathetic.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think about it as the ability to step into the shoes of the other person.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's with the goal to understand their feelings and perspectives and not just to use that to then hold it against them that you said this problem and therefore I could solve it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's really think about what it means for them and to use the understanding to guide our own actions, to help them, as opposed to somehow corner them.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit different from kindness or or even pity or something like that.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And don't confuse it with the idea that you know, do unto others as you would have it done unto you, because everyone's different.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: How someone else wants to be understood and empathized with is not necessarily the way that we want to be, we want to be engaged with as well.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you really got to think about stepping into their shoes to understand their world.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You want to seek to understand all that to really understand them as opposed to just tee up your next question or your next point about why our product's gonna be the best thing for them.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a real kind of mental shift sometimes to say, I just want to understand their world.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want to put myself in their shoes.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of my friends in the cybersecurity sales world is actually really good at this.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for him, it is just a natural extension of who he is.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is a naturally curious and empathetic person.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: When he hears prospects talk about what's going on, he's curious to ask the question about why.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when he hears things which are big things that are happening, he takes the time to pause and almost go, wow, that sounds like that's quite a big deal.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: It must be tough to deal with that thing.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes the time to really put himself in the shoes of the person he's talking to.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to the Chris Voss Never Split the Difference book, I want to give you two examples from there about what to do that's gonna help you do this.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: One is to use mirroring.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about mirroring in a sales world, we uh we you know historically think about visual things, right?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: If someone else is leaning forward, we lean forward too.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not a bad thing.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What Chris Voss talks about though is repeating back words to people, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone talks, you know, says a long sentence but then says something like, you know, and it's just broken, what you do is you just repeat back as, you know, it's just broken, and just that simple way just throws it back onto the person to explain more, but in a very curious and empathetic way.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Simple thing about just mirroring the words that you hear shows that you listened, because you're repeating back their words, and it shows that you're curious and really want to understand what it is about that that they think is broken in that example.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is to use labeling.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the idea that if someone sounds either really happy, really positive, or really negative about something, you can call that out.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone is really delighted with, I don't know, how the project was implemented and gives us some sort of indication about that, you can actually label it back.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you're very pleased with how the project has gone.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Simple labeling, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're labeling it as it sounds like you're delighted because they've gone on about how great things are.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the same token from the negative standpoint, if they're frustrated, if they're fed up with dealing with the other vendor, if they're showing that things are not working in a certain way, what you can do is label it and say, it sounds like you're in a bad spot with this other vendor.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or from what you're saying, it sounds like you're really frustrated with your ability to mitigate this type of risk.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or it sounds like from what you're saying, that it's taking the your team way too long to do simple things that should be done faster.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just labeling what you're hearing is a way to show empathy, show that you listened and understood, and you want them to keep talking about it because you're curious about what it means.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there are three ways to connect better.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: One is to use emotional words when you're talking, second one is to really dig for the personal emotional reasons why someone would want to buy or go down a certain path.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one is to be empathetic as well.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Using these three things will help you connect better with your prospects, and with that, good luck and good selling.