☠️ Make Discovery Awesome
+ Last Call For January AE Bootcamp
Sign up for January’s Account Executive bootcamp ends tonight!
There’s good news and great news!
The good news is I’ve extended the massive discount (use code VIP at checkout).
The great news is, while there’s been a ton of interest in the bootcamp (nearly 1,000 people have checked it out over the past couple weeks), due to SKO season and year end being in January for a lot of SaaS sellers, many folks who wanted to join couldn’t because of scheduling conflicts.
Why is that great for you?
That means I’m giving wayyy more attention to those that join the January bootcamp because it will be a smaller class. With 5 sessions and 7.5 hours total of meeting time, that’s basically a month’s worth of mentorship for the same price as a 1 hour coaching session.
I’ll take the L for bad scheduling but you can still take the W for crazy good bang for the buck.
Sign up here before it’s too late.
Important correction from last week’s newsletter. I used Social Paradigm®, which is the intellectual property of HOFFMAN, LLC. All rights reserved. 2024.
Arguably the best sales training I’ve ever received was from MJ Hoffman. So I wanted to make sure I didn’t step on any toes and highly recommend you check out his world-class sales content. Loved going through his program back in my TriNet days.
Okay, on to today’s topic. Everyone obsesses in discovery about asking the right questions. And without a doubt, there are such things as dumb questions that sellers must absolutley avoid asking (think like: “Tell me about your business.” 🤮). But what if I told you it would be far more effective to obsess over giving info than trying to get info?
Say what???
I know, stay with me. Let’s just play this out for a moment. Buyers have a negative opinion of sales right off that bat. On top of that, we talked about how the buyer/seller relationship is one of conflicting interests. So the buyer is just expecting a bad experience by default.
Now we deliver on that bad experience expectation by turning discovery calls into an interrogation. Playing 21 questions with little to no return for the buyer, who’s skepticism and frustration grows as they feel these answers could be used against them later on without having enough info to decide if there’s value to the seller’s solution.
You see the issue? Discovery becomes a selfish act in an already negative dynamic. And that’s assuming the discovery is any good, which most are not! So how to remedy this?
Enter the Gottman Institute and the idea of Social Bidding. The famous John Gottman refers to bids as “the fundamental unit of emotional communication.” So the way we can improve the buyer/seller relationship dramaticlly from negative to neutral, or better yet positive, is by social bidding to our buyers.
But what can we bid on? Things like pricing, competition, or implementation.
The things that the buyer expects the seller to withhold or lie about. This completely throws buyers off when a seller makes a bid without them having to ask. It is unexpectedly delightful.
Meme
😬Me: *Books meeting and starts dancing* 🤩
Invite: *Gets declined*
Me: *Still celebrating with my SDR friends, completely unaware* 😬
Events & Updates
I’ll launch the sign up for the February Account Executive bootcamp next week. Stay tuned!
This Gottman's concept is very similar to Eric Berne's strokes theory.