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7: No guessing! · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get real.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you actually know all you need to about your opportunity, or have you maybe guessed a few of the details?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: No guessing is one of the rules in Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play by Mahan Kazla and Randy Eilig.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales is the most important team in a B2B company, that complacency is the enemy, and taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 26 years of experience in B2B sales to bring you small, actionable ideas every day to help you get better.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, stop me if this has happened to you before.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're going through a deal review and you find yourself providing answers to questions that you're not 100% certain you know are true.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as you say the words, you feel a little bit uneasy that you're probably guessing or reaching a little bit with the answers that you're giving.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you wonder if they're true, you wonder if you really know it, and you wonder if you heard the right things from the prospect.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've done it.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was more junior, when I was fresher in a sales role, I probably wasn't as vulnerable as I should have been.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I probably dug my heels a little bit, saying, no, no, no, I do know this and it's true and all the rest of it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I got more experienced and as I got more confident in myself and more vulnerable, I was actually willing to say, you know what, you're right.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that perhaps as well as I should, and was willing to then go and fill the gaps.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know when I was a sales leader, when I ran sales teams, you get that spidey sense that uh someone's reaching a little bit for the answers.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, your job as a leader is to try and coach them a little bit so that they realize that too, and are able to then have the plans to go off and and uh and fill the gaps.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's easier as you approach your prospects, it's easier if you approach uh the way you deal with people in meetings and things like that, that if you have the concept of you're not going to guess anything.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's one of the key concepts, one of the underlying principles of the book, uh, Let's Get Real or Net Let's Not Play by Mahan Kazla and Randy Eilig.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So to read from the book, they talk about this as one of their rallying calls and is one of the core fundamentals of the book.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they say if our intent is to help clients succeed, we have both the right and the obligation not to guess about the key elements of that success.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Getting real is partly defined by our ability to stop guessing and find out what is really going on.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of the opportunity, let's not guess what problems clients are trying to solve and or what results they want to achieve.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not guess about how those problems are defined and how we would recognize when the results are achieved.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not guess about the financial and intangible impact of the problems and results.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not guess about who or what else is affected by the current situation and the proposed solution.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not guess about what has stopped the organization from resolving these challenges before now.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then in terms of resources, let's not guess about when clients need the results in place, about what kind of people or resources they are willing to commit, and about how much money they're willing to invest to get the results they want.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in terms of decisions, let's not guess about the steps they need to take to make a well-informed decision.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not guess about what decisions get made in each step, who is involved in making them, and when those decisions will be happened.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, let's not guess about what criteria they will use to make the decision and the issues they want addressed in order to feel comfortable and confident about the decisions they make.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's read straight from the book.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not a huge section, but it comes up again and again and again during the book about not guessing and making sure we understand things.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love about that is all the examples they gave are all the ones that we kind of, as salespeople, might reach and might guess for as opposed to really dig in and try and understand.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm sure there's lots of you listening to this and say, Well, I don't guess all those things, and and no doubt that's true.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I bet you, if you're honest with yourself, as you look at your deals you're working on right now, there's probably some things that you think you might know, but do you really?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Has it been a very conscious and intentional conversation with a prospect to truly understand these things?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe have you implied some of the answers or implied some of the facts that you think you have based on the conversations you've been having?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So my ask of you from this is to really wrap your head around the idea of no guessing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you realize that you've got gaps or you realize that there's things you don't perhaps understand as well as you should have done, then you got your action plan to go back out to the prospect and and ask them and say, look, you know, I should have asked this before now, but I didn't.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let me bring it up with you right now and then dig into the area that uh that you need to go back into.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and also in meetings going forward, you know, sit in your debrief and say, Did all the things I write down, were they explicitly said and understood?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe perhaps I kind of implied it uh afterwards or implied it during the meeting from what they were saying.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where you start to become more of a guesser than a fact gatherer.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge is become someone who doesn't guess.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you think would get value.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Co-workers, teammates, your boss, your head of sales, even that guy you worked with two companies ago who could probably do some help.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, just overshare it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the few times it's cool to do that.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Your podcast app will have a share button.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Please click it and share it wide and far.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get the book mentioned in this episode for free, simply go to bite sizesales.com forward slash free book.
• 7:24
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• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Unstoppable gives you habit-forming action notes on great sales books such as Spin Selling, Never Split the Difference, New Sales Simplify, The Challenger Sale, and many more.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: In there you get the best ideas from these books, all organized in a straightforward and easy to implement way, and designed for you to take action and transform your results.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: All the equivalent of three cups of coffee per month.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Start now and get your free book by going to bite sizeales.com forward slash free book.