Matt Dixon: evaluation

Transcript context

…How do we do it? The first thing is we've got to judge their level of indecision, we've got to figure out what we're dealing with. The second thing is we've got to offer a recommendation. The third thing is we've got to get them to stop doing endless research and start trusting us and limiting, we call limit the exploration, and the T is we've got to the derisk the deal. We've got to take some risk off the table, and we establish that safety net for the customer so they feel like we've got their back. Maybe we talk about each of those. I'll start with the J because it's first, but also I think the way, while it's kind of linear, I would encourage listeners don't think about this as a process where it's like I do step one, two, three, four, J-O-L-T. Think of it as it starts with the J, and the J tells you what the next step is. Is it the T? Is it the L? Is it the O? Is it the O, and then we got to deal with the T. Then, we got to go back to the O because it comes up again. Think of it as sort of the dividing rod. How do we figure out what's got the customer nervous? This is a really, really, really tricky thing because, and I've likened indecision to the carbon monoxide poisoning of sales. It's everywhere, but it's odorless, it's tasteless, but you need a carbon monoxide detector, and that's what the J is. How do we get fear of failure on the table? The problem with this is that, and I think most of your listeners will be familiar with this, everybody, especially customers suffers and senior executives especially, especially, suffer from what's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is they think they're better at things than they really are and decisiveness is one of those things that buyers will think they will say they think they're decisive. In fact, if you surveyed your customers, not that they recommend this, and you add 100 of them, if they consider themselves to be decisive folks, like 99 out of 100 will say, "Absolutely, yes, I make the tough calls. I manage from the gut. I live on the edge as an executive making those big calls," but the research tells a very different story. It turns out that 87% of buyers in our two and a half million sales calls we studied, either showed moderate or high levels of indecision. The folks who are not worried about fear or failure were 13%. Yeah, those people do exist. By the way, if you find one of those people, you should sell them everything as soon as possible because they're making the decision quite literally on the dollars and cents and the ROI and whether it makes sense for their business. It's a rational decision for them, but for the rest, they're dealing with a lot of emotion, and that emotion is all wrapped up with fear of failure. ROI and whether it makes sense for their business. It's a rational decision for them, but for the rest, they're dealing with a lot of emotion, and that emotion is all wrapped up with fear of failure. What's so tough about this is that it's not just Dunning-Kruger like we think we're more decisive than we really are, even if your customer knows that they're indecisive or they're worried about failing or how their boss is going to perceive them, if this purchase doesn't pan out, they don't like talking about it because it's embarrassing. They don't want to talk about like, "God, I got to tell you this better pay off because if it doesn't, I'm already on thin ice with my boss. She doesn't like me already. This is going to be the last straw." Nobody's going to say that stuff. How do we get on the table? One of the things we don't think works particularly well are classic open-ended questions like, "Lenny, do you find when you go to the Cheesecake factory, do you leave satisfied or hungry because you can't decide what to order?" I guess, it's not great approaches with customers, you'll end the sale pretty quickly because again, your customers find that kind of offensive. They'd like to think of themselves as decisive people. We found a technique, this is actually not in the book, we found it after we wrote the book, called pings and echoes that high performers use. Think of the way a surface ship might detect a submarine in the water using sonar. They send a ping out into the water and they're listening, if you will, using sonar for the reflection back and the reflection tells them, is it a friendly submarine, an enemy submarine? Is it just a whale? Is it heading towards us? Away from us? At what speed are they about to torpedo us? All that good stuff. We want to do the same thing in sales. The way this works is that a salesperson will try to articulate but in a non, not to out the customer, but to get confirmation or refutation, if you will, that what they've articulated is actually a concern for their buyer. Hypothetically, let's imagine we're talking about a purchase and we've had a lot of great conversations. I've shown you a lot of demos. You guys have liked everything we've shown. We showed you partner options. We showed you different configurations. We did POC over here. We did a pilot over there. You guys are just eating it all up, but I'm kind of getting the sneaking feeling that you guys actually don't know what you want and we've shown you a lot and we've probably made that problem worse. What I might say to you is, "Lenny, I'm just curious if we could calibrate here for just a moment, and there's a reason I'm asking this, which is a lot of the customers at this point in our process of working together, they get almost overwhelmed with all the options, and look, I probably made this worse. We're very proud of what we do. I want to show you, paint the art of the possible, but I also know if we're going to do business together, you told me right away budgets are limited and you can't have it all. You've got to decide what's nice to happen and what's need to happen. ble, but I also know if we're going to do business together, you told me right away budgets are limited and you can't have it all. You've got to decide what's nice to happen and what's need to happen. I'm just curious, are you and your team clear on what would be in and out of the proposal?" What's going to happen is one of two things, one you might say, or a few things, you might say, "You know what? No, we don't know and we have liked everything you've shown us, but as you said, we can't have it all. So, we'd be really curious to know what do other companies like us start with? How do we get going? What are the things we can do without and we can maybe add later on down the road," or you might get the customer says, "No, no, no, we were just being polite. There's a lot of stuff you showed us that we're not actually that interested in. It's cool, but it's just not for us. We are very clear on what we want. So, let me share that with you now. However, what I'm really concerned about is once we get this kind of specked out and configured and priced, I'm going to take it to the CFO because I've got to get her approval on this and I can't build our business case on the claim you guys make about improving sales productivity by 10% because she'll laugh me out of her office. Help me get grounded in what's a believable outcome for us so that I can sell it and I can be confident we're going to actually hit it." Again, it's not designed to embarrass the customer, it's designed to get this on the table so it can be recognized and dealt with and contextualized. You're totally normal. Everybody struggles with this. There's a lot of stuff we throw in front of people and it ends up doing some harm. They don't know what to pick. Let me be of service and value to you. That's the first thing that we point to and that's going to tell us, okay, is it a choice problem? They're overwhelmed. They don't know what to choose, like that example we just used. Is it that they're just doing endless research and they feel like they haven't really come down the learning curve yet around this purchase or is it, no, I don't actually know that we're going to get what we're paying for here and we screw this stuff up every day of the week at twice a Sunday and I don't think it's going to be any different and then I'm going to get blamed, so help me manage the downside risk, but it tells us kind of where to go next on that journey, if that makes sense.…

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