Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 104: Simple framework for value oriented discovery

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104: Simple framework for value oriented discovery · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 104 of the Sales Bluebird Podcast, which exists because at B2B startups it's hard to get go to market fit and scale up the business and the sales team.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird provides tips, tricks, experiences, examples, and ideas from people who've been doing this for a long time so that your path to go to market fit is less rocky and you can grow sales faster.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Andrew Monahan, and today it's part three of a three-part series on executing great first meetings.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know how when not enough of your first meetings are converting into opportunities, something is happening or something's not happening often in that first meeting.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Two episodes ago, we used a checklist to figure out what was going wrong.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Last episode, we talked about five ways to use a deck effectively, and this episode we're exploring what it takes to do simple but great discovery.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into it, I want to hear from you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: What questions or topics do you have that are burning through your head right now about how you're doing things and thinking about better ways to optimize and get better at what we do?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: What are those things that are top of mind?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Send them through to me and we can cover them on the pod either myself or with some guests.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you can email me directly at andrew at unstoppable.do or directly with a video or audio message at zipmessage.com forward slash unstoppable.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's zipmessage.com forward slash unstoppable.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Look forward to seeing your suggestions and questions coming through.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Next, our startup of the week, cybersecurity startup of the week is Revelstoke, who came out of stealth just this month in February 2022.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: They are saving SOC leaders time, money, hassle, and improving their agility by their low or no code approach to security orchestration, automation, and response, or SOR, as it's better known.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Cruz was actually on the podcast two, three weeks back, and he is the CEO and is putting together an awesome sales team over there in the coming weeks and months.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Bob's been in cyber sales for 20 years, and he's one of those rare breeds who's uh grown up through sales and is now the CEO and co-founder of Revelstoke.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: He is literally a salesperson, salesperson.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like the idea of working in a startup with a CEO and the co-founder as a salesperson and not a highly technical founder who doesn't really get sales or thinks to get sales that really doesn't, then I encourage you to get in touch with uh Bob over at Revelstoke at Revelstoke.io.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this week we're talking about executing uh first meetings and we're thinking about discovery.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we're going to help our prospects solve problems, we need to really fully understand everything that we need to understand about those problems.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need to go deeper into them, really get truly to understand all the ins and outs of what's going on, the factors involved in the problem, the impacts, and all the rest of it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason, having been in cybersecurity sales or in sales for many years, one of the things I've noticed that's for some reason uh we don't always execute this all that well.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's admit that as a salespeople, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Reasons for it, and three things that I see quite a bit is one is I think we're tempted to rush the discovery.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: It feels a little bit awkward maybe at times.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're not that comfortable, and that means our prospects are not that comfortable, or they're not comfortable having another salesperson ask them questions.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for that reason, we kind of skip through it a little bit and we start talking about what we do.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we rush it sometimes.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we don't ask great questions, we don't get into really challenging questions into the depth that we need to go to to keep it too light, so we didn't get into a really meaningful conversation with our prospect.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing I see is that we're asking the the right questions of the wrong people, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking talking way too detailed with someone really senior, such as a CISO, or we're talking way too transformational and strategic to someone who's lower down in the security organization and they're not able to answer the questions, therefore they feel uncomfortable.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are things I see, I'm sure you feel or you see other things going on as well.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting in the way of executing a great discovery session, which is impactful, but it's simple and gets to the point.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you the idea that I work with my clients on, which is a simple four-box framework.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about these are the four boxes of a valuable and value-oriented discovery.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And quickly, they are you imagine a sheet of paper, actually, don't even imagine it if you don't want to.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put it into the show notes handout to download, and you can download that and take a look at it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're driving right now or at the gym, imagine a sheet of paper with four boxes.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Top left is current situation and current problems, bottom left is the impact of those problems, top right is the ideal future that our prospect is is shooting towards, and the bottom right is the impact, the positive impact if that ideal future is reached, right?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So very simple four boxes on a sheet of paper, and encourage you to download the handout, which will have boxes on there so you can look at that and work through it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me go through each of these boxes in a bit more depth though.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is the current situation and the current problem.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this is often where we start in discovery, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the high-level factual information of what's going on, how many do they have, what other tools do they have in place, what's happening at a high level, how many people are involved, how many employees, where are they based, all the kind of lay of the land information that we we want to get so that we can frame out what we think is going on.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where in the conversation, either they come in with, well, here's what's happening, here's my problem, or we're able to uncover things with good questions to get to the top level statement around what the problem might be that we should be talking about.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom left is the impact of the problem.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So now that we understand the lay of the land and we've got an inkling about what the problem might be, this is where we want to go deeper into the so what.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this something worth working on?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they and why should we spend time and effort to work on solving this problem with them?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is the big impact?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who's impacted?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a way to measure that impact in some shape or form?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Who's um upset the most?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who's getting the black eyes internally?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where are people getting really upset and causing problems because maybe businesses slow down, things are not happening fast enough, new users are not getting provision through security fast enough, things like that, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the real impact of the problem?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to get to a point where we can both realize that this is a problem we're solving.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Often at this point, what we're looking to get is an understanding priorities as well.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's no good uncovering problems if the ones we uncover and end up talking about are number 50 on the priority list, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Probably don't have a deal there if that's all that we're able to work on with our prospect.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Top right of the sheet of paper is the ideal future.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is, as it might suggest, the the place they want to get to.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: If they were to solve the problem, what would that look like, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: In what way would things change and what would that future look like in terms of maybe it's tech, maybe it's people, maybe it's process, maybe it's outcomes, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we want to understand have they thought through this to say, yeah, this is where I think this needs to go, or are they looking for guidance from us about what is possible?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: If we've got something in our arsenal that is actually quite groundbreaking and unique, maybe they haven't thought through that some of these things are possible, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But we want to understand what their view is of that ideal future.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then bottom right will be the positive impact of getting to that future.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when you get there, who's happiest?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they happiest?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who's getting promoted, right?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who's getting looked on in a good light internally now that things are so much better?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which business units are functioning better, uh, which processes are working faster, things like that, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We understand what that real impact's gonna be.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the simple four boxes of the framework.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you one thing I've observed over the years, and when I was selling, I was I was certainly guilty of this as well at times, which is that we overindex our time on the current situation and the high-level problem, basically the top left-hand box.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: We spend too much time in the top left-hand box and too little time in the other three.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the one the one that side that we we don't tend to do a good job of is right is the right hand side, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the it's the ideal future and the positive impacts if we if we get there.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we we often know that our prospects haven't thought through that side in enough depth, but it doesn't mean to say that we can't have a conversation over there, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you imagine those four boxes, and if if what I'm saying is true, which is we over-index on the current situation, those boxes are not usually evenly distributed across the page in terms of the talk time and the meeting about where the you know the allocation of time is, and they should be more evenly allocated, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Especially as you get senior, if you're talking to CISOs and VPs and EVPs of security, the top left box might even be the smallest one, and the other three might be the biggest ones, right?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what they care about.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: They care about impacts, they care about transformations and where things can go.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you to look at those boxes, be honest with yourself about where you're at, are you spending too much time top left and not enough time in the other ones?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the trick with this is step number one is in each of those boxes, prepare your questions, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Be ready with question prompts in each of those boxes so that in the heat of the moment on a live call, either in person or virtually, you don't have to think up what your questions might be.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got them ready to go, your go-to ones.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're sitting there going, I haven't spent any time in the top right, quickly glance at your sheet of paper and see two or three question prompts to take the conversation in that area.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Super useful to have that prepared as opposed to just relying on instinct at the time to move the conversation in those areas.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the four boxes the current situation and problems, the impact of the problems, the ideal future, and the positive impact of the ideal future as it comes around.
• 11:09
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• 11:14
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• 11:19
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• 11:20
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• 11:25
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• 11:30
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• 11:36
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• 11:42
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• 11:46
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• 11:51
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• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, thank you to Haida Janssen for making all that we do at Sales Bluebird just happen.
• 12:05
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• 12:13
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• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, the dad joke of the week.
• 12:20
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• 12:24
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• 12:27
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• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to you then.