Jen Abel: evaluation

Transcript context

…Learn what their challenges are and priorities. They're leaning in, being like, "This feels different." Now this is also the whole part of it's being different. Not only is your product different, not only is your pitch different, the way you're going through the sales process is different. So it's like, "Wow, these guys are good. Okay. All right." So now you could let them talk, let these net-new people talk. Be like, "Hey, I know we haven't had a chance to speak. What do you want to get out of the demo today? I want to make sure I focus for you." Now you're leaning a little bit more into these net-new people so they feel the love, okay? And then when you demo the product, 80% of the value comes from 20% of the product. And you have learned on these previous calls what that 20% is. Do not demo everything unless there is some reason to. Because now all of a sudden, this tight frame, this tight narrative you've just crafted and spent all this time with just gets thrown out the door because it's like, "Oh, well, I wouldn't use that. I wouldn't use that. Well, everything she just shared, that's really only over here," and you could just blow the whole thing up. And the amount of times enterprises are like, "Hey, I don't know if we want to spend this much money for half the tool that we wouldn't use half the tool." Now all of a sudden you've just unraveled all the work you've just done. Enterprise sales is super, super, super tight project management. It's super, super tight narrative and framing. Owning that frame. Owning that frame to exactly who these people are. And that's why this role is so hard because it's a lot of improv and it's a lot of leaning in and it's a lot of reading in between the lines. But it's stuff that is doable. It's just psychology. This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs and now with Command. I've been a customer of Mercury's for over six years. I have never once thought about leaving. Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers. They make it so easy. Dare I say fun to send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team. Does your bank have an API, a terminal native CLI or an AI-ready MCP server? I don't think so. And just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts as your financial operator. I've been using Command to transfer money around to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows. And just today, I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year. I just ask, "How much have I made from X over the past year?" 10 seconds later, I have an answer. It is so freaking cool. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a FinTech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA. Members FDIC. How do you deal with someone that's just taking things off track or just talking too long? I imagine that's just a skill and an art, but just any tips there.…

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