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[Music] I'm Mario Martinez Jr CEO and founder of ingresso and we are the creators of fly.io the free personal writing assistant and text expander application on each episode of this podcast you will hear from sales leaders practitioners and influencers to help you grow your sales numbers at scale so get your pen and paper or iPad and keyboard and start taking notes as you're now listening to the modern selling [Music] podcast ladies and gentlemen welcome to this episode of the modern selling podcast and today I've got my boy my friend Mr Richard Harris you actually have heard him on this show before I had him in a few years ago and by the way we are in our seventh season now over 250 episodes going strong here on the modern selling podcast and I'm excited to bring Richard back he is the CEO of the Harris Consulting Group and he has just published or is about to publish a brand new book and you're going to love it guys the sellers Journey Richard welcome to the show L man thank you thanks for having me back and dude I like why you so mellow why you so you down something wrong you okay so holy mackerel God you were shot out of a Canon it's amazing I love it so good to see you I love that one I love that one for all of you we have I was spending some time talking Richard a second ago and he's like hey how's everything going with fly message and I said look let me show you the vision and I said this is what we've done here's what we did we are now these five quadrants and now we're bringing a product under one one thing and he's like and he goes um what wait what did you say what what was your exact I said I said I just said so what have you been up to so what have you been up to yeah what's taking you so long man uh I love you know this is it's been fun having this journey here on the modern selling podcast and uh you know really taking time to have all those that are listening in and actually I've closed deals I've have customers folks that are listening in right now they're actually users of fly message as a result of the podcast it's been a great show man so appreciate that I got to bring the excitement got to bring the energy that's what people are expecting from me and hey this is actually a new look I'm rocking the beard man this is the first time life I know I noticed it earlier I've never had a beard before in my whole entire life so this is age 46 and I finally decided to grow a beard good for you good for you so well man do me a favor some people may or may not know um uh the Great Richard Harris but give us a little background about yourself bro and then about the Harris Consulting Group and then we're going to get into uh actually I have a very special question for you before we get into the sell Journey sure uh well thank you for having me um uh my name is Richard Harris uh grew up in sales all my life was telling someone the other day like I own stock because of my parents at the age of like six in like Texico and I'm like so how much of that gas station do I own and they're like none so um so sales has kind of been in my blood I'm one of the few people who were like went college and I didn't go knew I was going into sales but I knew I was going into business and you know my first job in high school was working at the Gap so I'd had all this experience um so that's sort of the quick version of of that but um what do I do now I uh do sales training and go to market strategies with Founders specifically teaching people how to earn the right to ask questions which questions to ask and when um so they understand the humanity of the sale process sales process not just the functionality and every step and every stage and all those things like there's there's a Humanity piece which I know we're going to dig into uh so that that's the that's the big thing that's what the Harris Consulting Group does and you know it's me unless you ask my kids they all think they own a percentage of the business I'm like no it's like my Texico you own nothing so well they're enabling you H and hopefully you know someday in the future someone will take over the business and keep carrying the torch y i un you want to buy it I I I'd gladly take an offer so um you know I'm I'm listening I'm open fair enough well uh we you you've been a a great sales influencer and someone that of course I've known and respected for a long time and all of you listening in uh you know neat selling uh that's actually what I think Richard is probably the most well known for uh that's that's that's all about you right that's that's yeah that was that was me just like how am I going to differentiate myself when I started this business right and you know know at that point you know I mean B's been around forever but Anam was going on big time you remember Anam right I don't even remember what the acrm s for uh Authority needs something in money but um uh and I was like well I need something right and so I came up with this thing and it stands for need the economic impact of that need access to Authority and timeline and I felt like that was much more modern because even 10 years ago you never got to the authority figure you you had to get access to them right and economic impact isn't about budget it's about how painful is it right now how painful is this dollarization of their pain so that's where it came in in into play and originally I was going to call it neate and I um was G to have a little character drawn and all this stuff and then I was like well no I wanted to do neat and then when I did neat it's a long story sorry it looks like a compass right I've got a North an East e on the east side and then A's at the bottom and T and so I thought oh the compass is kind of cool and so I'll go with neat instead of Nate and tradem market and all that stuff so um that's the quick version that's the history there well listen before I get into talking about the seller's Journey uh everybody wants to know man uh something juicy tell us something nobody knows about you even if they're looking at any or all of your Social profiles it's been out there a little bit but I willing about it nobody will know this one is that my wife were and I were married on 777 and that date fell into our lap it was someone canceled at at the last minute and we were like okay we'll take it we had no plans for it our oldest son was born on 7708 on our oneye anniversary and no joke he weighed 7.7 PBS um and when you put all those sevens together there's seven of them so so uh that's something most people don't know about that's unique and kind of fun now that is Eerie wow interesting uh okay well that's uh mine doesn't align as well as yours but my wife and I were married on 07 0608 oh cool so we got a 678 inside there but it's it's an opposite order 07608 both of our boys were born uh on the 9th of an individual month so January 9th 0109 and then 0609 and both them were born at the six o'clock hour that's amazing that's cool so you got the same thing yeah it's it's yours is better though yours the seven the seven sevens uh that that's pretty that's pretty interesting when you put them all together and and the fact that you were married on 777 that that's also cool yeah thank you thank you so so so uh biblically people might think that it's the uh sign of completeness yeah so make sure you don't screw that one up huh no no doubt you know no and and and for everybody who's wondering no it doesn't help in Vegas that much it doesn't help in the lottery like you know uh so but uh but it's it's it's a fun story right you know you can't you can't write that stuff it just happens in life it just happens and it makes for good conversation when you're sitting around a table get someone someone get to know you and you be like you know here's a fun fact uh that's actually pretty cool well listen uh the sellers Journey you you are about to Launch the book and feel free to grab it if you've got a copy next to you show it show it on the screen because those who are listening by Audio they can't see it but those that are on video there you are right there the seller Journey it is what's the subtitle it says your guide book to something what what is it again Richard yeah your guide book to closing more deals with neat selling all right so what was the what was the draw behind writing this book why did you do it what started it give us a back so one long overdue right if I were really smart I'd have written it four or five years ago I think it would have done a little better uh for me I mean business has been great uh but the main reason I think most of us in this space write a book is is that it's a calling card right it's one more thing to talk about someone um tends to appreciate the value they can get out of a book for those who are interested in self-learning they enjoy it and it's like a calling card it's like oh it's Richard you know he's you know quote unquote a legit author um not the author title that LinkedIn gives you when you write a post um I you know I don't know if I'm an author like I'm I'm a little more humbl than that but all my friends and family are saying it so you know so it must be true right like I I guess I am that wonderful but my mom says I'm an author so well well if Mom says it then you better believe it yeah exactly because mom always tells you what's true yeah well mom also tells me how to to rearrange the kitchen even though I'm 55 years old so you know so takeing with the grain of salt gotta love Mom y there's a two-state buffer rule between me and my mother and she knows it so all right what's yeah so so it was time to write the book uh and it was it was time to put it all together what was what was the problem the issue the challenge that you saw that you know kind of makes the sell's journey different and it stands out from a lot of the other sales books that are out there yeah so the so the first the main one is that I do not believe there's anything called a buyer's journey I think it's a lie and a myth I think the only thing the buyer has is an experience right the they may the only place they may start a journey is and they go to the App Store okay so yeah but something happened to make you go to the App Store there was some experience right you're talking to for me in sales training right and even for you for for fly message right is something's happening or the lack of something is happening is an experience and therefore they have to go look for something and that journey is created by us the seller and In fairness marketing so it's a buyer's experience and a seller's journey and you have to bring those two things together and you got to do it in a way that's relational appropriate human right um er so that's that was that was the impetus of like well why am I writing this book because I think there's a good story here um and then also I'm a tactician like I tend to be better at the tactics than I do the strategy at a high level like you know I I have friends who are someone like you would be someone like help me figure out this strategy Mario um but I'm very tactical so then there's 13 tactics that are not in people's playbooks that are in the book about you know how to use Ann versus butt or uh um negotiating with procurement or reducing discounts so anyway so I'm going to stop promoting the book sorry there it is well let's actually Deep dive into some of these uh tactics that you talk about um in helping close deals right and versus but and what was the one about procurement I'm curious yeah the one about procurements um partially is how to negotiate well is really sort of how to negotiate but the the main impetus there is that procurement is not the enemy and they don't want to be perceived as the enemy and would you believe it procurement wants to talk to you very soon in the sales cycle not at the end and we've all been coached to think it comes at the end because it's kind of like wrapping up the process and all that stuff and in most cases that's the worst time to bring them in and it's not it's not our fault it's it's you know it's it's our champion it's someone who doesn't even know internally how to work with do anybody here ever had training on how to talk to your internal procurement team no anybody ever talk to their internal procurement team to say when would you want to know if the price was this much this much or this much very few very few of us and so um so that's one of the topics that's in there and then it talks about well how do I approach them what do I say how do I handle it you know how do I make sure that I don't sound like I'm the enemy how do I make sure that I show that I'm on their side because they got a job to do too um and then there's you know how to how to navigate discount and stuff but that's why it's in there is because I don't think anybody's taught it or been talking about it enough I've got some very strong opinions about procurement and the role and function that they serve and or what I would Target as whether or not they bring value but we'll save that too we get to that part let's talk about Ann versus butt and we're not talking about buut so talk a little bit about that some of the strategies that you bring out in in the sellers journey to help us close more deals what should sellers be thinking about the use of these two words when how where Etc so you know I think a lot of people know this I think we don't consciously make the effort and is additive and it's an agreement it means I agree with you hey Mario that's a unique position and I'm curious would you be open to a different idea for just a minute that's me saying and Mario I'm not sure my idea is better and I'm agreeing with Mario right on the flip side of say hey Mario that's a really good thing but what about this well anything I just said before but no longer exists I just disagreed with them and so it turns people off I knew I was going to write this part of the book and I wrote it the book in such a way that when I got to this part of the book I count I had well I didn't count but I had the word or whatever I was using count it I use the word and over a thousand times Mario how many times you think I use the word but I'm going to guess zero no that's not possible I mean I guess it is possible but I didn't do [Laughter] that you don't say but uh I don't know I I'm I'm I I don't know what the guess would be about about 85 times okay so a significant difference between a th to less than 100 yeah and and I did that because I wanted to make sure people who were reading got the point that I'm not yeah that well noie got the point and I just wanted them to understand that I'm not trying to contradict something they already know look there's tons of stuff there's tons of sales books I don't agree with everything I don't expect everybody to agree with me and in fact the very first sentence in my book has my email address so you can email me and tell me you hate it and I'll send you your money back and I just wanted people to understand that that I get that concept and theoretically by the time they get to that part of the book it resonates all right so and and should be used more than but uh and M we should make a conscience effort when we're speaking to our buyers influencers coaches to try to agreement wherever possible yeah and you can use and and disagree I disagree he Mario that's a really neque perspective and can I share something else with you doesn't mean and and I'm sharing I'm not I'm not forcing it allar I'm just going to share it it's up to Mario to decide if he wants to accept this the knowledge of to share and if he likes it or not and nobody's ever going to say no you don't want to share anything the two places I tell people the most to do this are one when you're talking about the competition because we internally get very defensive ourselves and we hate it when it comes up oh no the competition right um and I think the other place is when you are negotiating on on Commercial terms like those any place where there's extra tension and anxiety I think is a great place to try this tactic and see if it helps you know and it's not 100% there are times you could do but I'm not saying you can't I'm just saying be mindful of it so I really like the way you broke that down is that you should be mindful of this when you're talking about the competition uh and when you're negotiating commercial terms with whoever it might be internally yeah um and the idea is is that it Force you as the individual to actually think about how you can phrase something that would show that you're in agreement or that you are at least not confrontational with the word but yeah I think it's more about the lack of Confrontation which and there's like four things I should be adding back to the book but it's too late but it's too late so um I I I think that's the best way to say it and I didn't even say it that way so thank you is that it it helps reduce the confrontation and the friction of those uncomfortable conversations when it works and it's not always going to work I will say this I'm trying to play around with it here here on the podcast obviously as you can see and it's forcing me to pause and think through what I want to say even if I don't necessarily agree with something and when I do that it actually makes me slow things down a bit and I'm thinking hm maybe I need to do this at home with my wife and I might be a little happier yeah and but why would I do that exactly I that's it does slow you down a little bit it does sort of force you to think strategically which I really think is super important about sales right we we are so Tau to go go go go go go go and I know this is important to you too is that if we're not careful that reduces the humanity right it it takes away the human aspect of the conversations any tactic we can use to slow ourselves down I think is a good tactic this just happens to be one of them and I find myself as a really fast talker obviously in the beginning of the show you saw me like boom just just unleash as super super excited now that we're into the meat of the podcast I still speak fast for sure absolutely and that's part of the hype is part of the excitement is part of Who I Am Naturally my wife constantly says to me it's just you're talking way too fast you're too excited I'm like I'm not even excited I'm just this is normal this is and we've been married for 15 years I'm like I'm totally normal honey everything's normal she's like no it's not you're way too fast let me record you uh so but when you do these types of intentional changes to your thinking process like an versus but when you do that it forces you to slow down and think because not every buyer can accept the fast-paced talking individual that's going to be rattling off words just like this rather they're processing what it is that you're saying and they're formulating what they should say next or what might trigger a response or a feeling or emotion or something like that so this helps us Us Al together really slow down to think and put ourselves in the what you call the buyer's experience yes the buyer's experience yeah it really ties back into that buyer's experience am I wrong you are correct you're 100% correct I have a test for you though oh not a test but but you were talking about your conversation with your wife and how she says this and then you rambled like Mario does and you said but which meant you were disagreeing with your F so oh crap you caught me you make sure she goes back and hears that episode so that part but anyway uh yeah I I I agree it it is about the experience that we have and that we can offer to people um through a journey there is a journey we just want to make it meaningful to them all right let's talk about procurement negotiating with procurement now I believe many sellers in this mid-market segment oftentimes don't get to a procurement organization when they're selling to midm Market that's usually at the business the line of business and legal that's usually the folks you've got procurement is generally for what I've seen in that fortune maybe 1,000 uh it could be lower it could be absolutely lower um but definitely the Fortune 1,000 and above you're going to usually find some sort of procurement individual inside there yes and we can also think about it is the CFO okay because the CFO rolls the same way that a procurement team does right uh they're busier they don't go do the shopping around like a procurement team they don't necessarily go do all the research they sort of delegate it back there's still a lot of similarities in that so as as people are listening to this keep in mind that that this isn't just about procurement it it I wrote it that way and we'll talk about the the suggestions I have uh but it it it aligns when you're talking to that CFO or that CEO um and even the VP of sales like sometimes if you're selling to a VP they're all everybody's trying to save a dime like they're like including us so there's there's lots of ways so what do you want to know specifically though I I'll go wherever you want on this one well let me just take a step back here and I'm I'm positive that I'm sure I have somebody in procurement that listens to the selling podcast uh for sure so everything I'm saying here is based upon experience not based upon talking about any one individual so I think that's super important to identify um that's my disclaimer there but for now because now I can unleash the full power of my thinking here um with that in mind look I have negotiated $120 million contracts and I've negotiated down to a $2,500 contract right and and everything in between um I have never had an experience where procurement added any value yep I have never had an experience where procurement added any value in fact uh if I can think back on every single sale across 27 years where I've ever engaged with procurement it was the business uh individual who basically did all the negotiating all of the uh identification of the who the what the how and then passed it off because procurement was just a rubber stamp process yeah now I think there's some value in some cases where you can start gleaning some information from a procurement person to help you through process but in most cases it's the budget owner the business owner who has the budget not procurement so procurement is more of the rubber stamp do we have net 45 do we have this do we have that you know can we take risk this can we take risk on that and so that's where I I've seen that at so I'm I'm I'm curious about your experience with negot with procurement and when you bring them in and how that process works that you've seen so there's a couple of things so one this conversation uh came from a good friend of mine Alan tarkowski um if you've never had him on you should have him on um really smart guy he was coaching me on this I then had client negotiations with General Electric and then I came up with this idea about a year and a half ago and I've done some podcast hosting with procurement people from Mercedes-Benz with a very large software company one of the two biggest who I'm not allowed to mention but you can probably figure it out um and I've had several conversations and they actually go in and they teach some of this stuff they actually do teach so I am to to your point okay now we're talking about the Fortune 100 or the Fortune 50 get it no worries that being said I've talked to other procurement people and to kind of confirm and they're like yeah that that's kind of what I would like so the first thing to remember is that procurements not the enemy they have a job to do too depending on the organization and how big they are procurement job is also to go research what's in the marketplace now I don't know if that's been your experience or by the time you got to the Mario that that it was kind of like already a done deal right so that's a part of it now what procurement doesn't have the power to do theoretically but I think they scare the hell out of us is if I'm into one of these big contracts I'm not talking about a $2,500 contract to make procurement could say well we're just going to have to go with the competition well if I've already put in 50 hours with my person and believe me you probably have procure I you know I will then turn around to procurement at that moment say well I'm a little confused I've spent this much time on this your team has spent This Much Time on it what's the difference in the Delta here that you're talking about okay 2% I get it is that really worth them going and doing another 50 hours of this and going back through security and it and all this stuff because if it is you know I'll go back to the champion and you know we'll communicate this I'm hoping we can find a way to work this out so procurement doesn't always have all the power that we think they do now there are times where a procurement person might say we're not buying from a startup unless you discount it right now you got to still have a negotiation in a conversation around it that being said they don't have as much power as we think they do so that's the first thing second thing because of what I was saying procurement wants to see it sooner than later they don't want to be there at the end of the you know in the last two weeks of December with everything and it's kind of like if we can say that to our champion internally like hey you know and you find this is the best way to say it is like hey our most successful and happiest customers Mario have brought us in at this point to talk to procurement because we know there's a lot of backend stuff over there how comfortable are you with that right now so you're again I'm asking for permission I'm not demanding it I'm not saying well when can I talk to them it's like I'm giving them this hey you know this is what happy people do or say hey just to make sure you don't have to go back to procurement and relook at four other things which might happen it our experience has been our happi as customers introduce us sooner so we can get that process rolling and because a lot of salespeople are champions if you're a buyer you don't know that either you don't know how procurement Works other than that piece I agree with you Mario they often are a rubber stamp it's got to go there the question is depending on the size of the deal and the company you're working with it can be a little it can feel more adversarial than I think we wanted to based on the fact that that's just because that's what we've always been told yeah you know I think the biggest challenge that I've seen is is when a procurement person comes into the very first discussion looking for additional discounts but that's so easy to handle it's so easy it's so easy so first thing is whenever you talk about pricing or budget anytime they bring up those words because they will I immediately say more than happy to talk about commercial terms I shift that word specifically because commercial terms means there is an exchange of money for goods and services that have value if it's a budget or price that all that means is sell x27 on somebody's freaking spreadsheet right so one it's a mental game switch it to commercial terms because it implies a negotiation you know I also learned it from a guy from from England and I was like that sounds really professional I'm going to use that word so um of course he had an English accent so that you know in America we always think that that's way cooler um so that's the first thing right the other thing that I will say around discounting is is you know okay well what kind of discount here role play with me Mario be PR tell me tell me what kind of tell me you know you want a discount uh Richard we want to have a discount uh because we feel like this is a little bit too expensive for us and the budget uh frankly doesn't quite allow this totally understand that and and Commercial terms are always important just out of curiosity Mario what what what's comfortable for you well what we'd like for you to do is put your best foot forward and your best pricing yeah and and I appreciate that Mario I get it that feels a little unfair like a teeter totter you know our our pricing is based on what the market Bears we've done a really good job of understanding it and if you're asking me for something I'll entertain it I just think you should go first since you're the one asking what would you really like it to be that makes it simple got it are we still role playing yeah keep going yeah keep going well what we've seen in terms of competitive bids for this is roughly there's a 30% Delta where you where you need to be got it so um and I I totally understand I respect that it sounds like they're a little desperate and I'll explain why you know when I was talking to Sarah who's you know who's really the going to be the user and the decision maker Sarah explained that we beat this competition here this competition here and this competition there and in addition to that the pain that y'all are experiencing it's about a $250,000 a year pain so you know our service is you know $60,000 you know you're asking for 30% off you know you're asking for a $20,000 difference I appreciate it I respect it I guess the question is for $20,000 versus a $250,000 paying and it's going to happen every year are is that worth making Sarah go back and spend another 15 or 20 hours of her time on this and then another two or three hours of your time and legal's time I mean it's an option I just I just want to make sure I understand everything from your perspective what do you think I could save $20,000 that's what I would do and they won't be able to do these three functions that have an economic impact of this yeah so I what you're doing is is you're you're really turning that conversation into what it is that you knew or found out or researched prior to this conversation that helps you put together a business case for the sales opportunity and and that makes a lot of sense and but I think the the missing Gap here Richard is what I what I see is most sellers don't have those details that you just mentioned and that's what economic impact is that's when you figure out someone's pain because that pain is the dollarization of the problem economic impact is about how much it's affecting you now Roi which is another scare Tech is it's about a return turn on some future thing that nobody can actually truly predict and if I can address the economic impact which I did I effectively talked about the ROI so part of this problem because I get people asking for negotiation training all the time it's like it's not the negotiation training is the fact that they suck at Discovery skills because they can't get to economic impact right now here's the one other piece this is this is the killer piece is to say hey Mario I hear you and I understand you're looking for some discount here's here's what we can do there's a way for both of us to leverage this you know this this pricing in commercial terms you're talking about we can offer 2% for marketing support with a customer quote another 2% for a case study and that's presuming weall have a good success right if we don't I know you're not renewing we can also offer another 3% on prepayment of a contract and another 2% on you know uh a multi-year contract or more licenses which of those seems the most appealing to you yes so in that case you are giving but you're getting and that's a really nice way uh it reminds me of a conversation I just had as you know we're in our um last half of our our precede round and I was uh going through a call with a VC this was the fifth call and I had four calls already with each to the founders and I thought hm what is it that they want to know on this call that we haven't already talked about and I was just sitting there thinking and I was thinking uh because I also invest in companies personally myself and I was thinking if the company's been around for almost a year what would I want to know I'd want to know their pipeline so so what I did was is uh I turned around and I said let me go look inside of HubSpot because you know I'm I've always mandated the use of HubSpot for the pipeline um and I went back and I looked and I was like oh my God shame on me shame on me I had them all in my head but not none of them documented so about 30 minutes before the call with the VC I put them all into the pipeline and sure enough on that call they turned around and they said well tell me what what what does the the sales L growth motion look like how how are you going to you know how you g to make this happen and I said are are you asking to see my Pipeline and they said we'd love to see the pipeline do you have a pipeline to show I said well absolutely let me show you in you're live and they want to go through each deal right that's economic impact yeah you anticipate that need and but I think that is a Miss step in a lost art where you show up to a discussion and you haven't anticipated the need and what you just demonstrated there uh is anticipating an individual needs like I'll give you 2% in exchange for a case study 3% in exchange for yeah so there's there's one more that I will throw in there that I I forgot to throw into the role play because when you get to the bigger companies they're not going to give you a quote and they're not going to let you you know the other one is oh we do 2% for a quote and 2% for a logo and 2% for a case study and 2% for prepayment and 2% for a longer contract the other one that everybody can negotiate with and procurement really doesn't give a about is the net terms everybody wants net terms of 60 right if you can understand and go Google how to figure out the present value of money if I can say to to to Mario look Mario I can get you another 2% uh you know present value of money is this you know can you go from net 60 to net 15 now all of a sudden I can get to net 20 net 30 procurement loses nothing from net and proc all I wouldn't say all a lot of what procurement is judged on is how much of a discount they get what's their Delta right they got a big old leaderboard and a pipeline too this deal and here's the current and here's the market rate and here's all this stuff so that's another one um the last piece I'll say on this and I'll shut up because I know I'm ranting a lot but you know you ask me here um the interesting thing is when you get to that pricing discussion earlier in the pricing discussion they say well you know we'd like a discount of this percent one of the first things you can just say hey I understand you're asking it makes sense everybody asks are pricing based on what the market will bear I you know what would you like how would you like to proceed again Mario brought it up of like well the competition so I knew where I was going there's not a CFO or a a procurement person that I've run into in 10 plus years of this um where they know how to answer that question but they don't know how to respond to what the market will bear because if they have done their research they know I'm right now if there's somebody coming in at a 30% discount okay well I better I better know that that's what that company does and I better know how I differentiate and show the economic impact to that so anyway I'll shut up on that topic but um I always like to make sure people have all these little thoughts that are in head because I you know because a lot of times people will be there oh we can't use their logo they're not going to give me a quote General Electric's not going to even let me mention them as a customer or you know whatever so okay we'll ask for net terms so it's funny you mention that because um in our Bingo LLC days we had well over 200 clients that we worked with from the largest of large cisos all the way down to uh the world's largest vanilla extract company with 15 sellers Virginia Dare right every statement of work that went out had a mate of three things you will be a customer reference you will be a customer do a testimonial video uh and we do get to use your logo it's in my contract too dude like it's like make them Redline that stuff out exactly and so you it's like when we negotiate this is like okay well let's save this topic like let's get to the easy stuff first I like what they come on the call let's get to the easy stuff here we'll never allow this like well actually this is pretty important to us this is why we gave you the pricing that we gave you was in exchange for being able to get these elements here well we just undo that okay well let's get through all the other stuff before we get back to this right well then the price goes up so exactly exactly well because that be exactly there's there's a couple of thoughts too um I just want to bring this up is that legal and procurement sometimes are separate departments and if you're not careful I call it getting unbundled you think that your contract and your pricing are are tied together they're bundled together they don't so if legal starts to redline stuff but you've agreed to some pricing over here but legal says you got to take this stuff out well now you've got a problem and the biggest problem you're going to have is internally where you're like God we just gave them that price but now they're taking this stuff out and now you got to go battle internally and get blamed for something that nobody ever trains you on how to do in the first place so um be mindful of this unbundling thing and you can agree to like hey I think we can do that but I've got to confirm with procurement or hey procurement I can look that but I got to wait till I see what legal changes because if legal changes something then everything changes right so but I agree with you 100% um that stuff should be in your contract and you'd be surprised how many companies and big companies don't even Redline it out they don't even Redline it out and it doesn't mean I go back to everyone and force them to do it right so but it's there and it makes that part A whole lot easier you know to go get permission so we started analyzing our contracts and in 70% of all of our contracts we had a guarantee that they will we can use their logo we can use their uh that testimonial we can build a case study and then what we did was is in the negotiations for those other 30% that said absolutely not we got it down to we can at least use your logo right and and and and we gave up and exchange for some other term because like this was super important to us and so those are like anybody listening it right now now if you are not listening to what Richard and I are saying go March into your legals teams and say modify our statement of work our order form our contract modify it right now and absolutely and whatever you use CSA MSA and say add in these three elements and bury it in the terms and conditions and then use that as a leverage point it's you you'll be amazed at how many companies will say yes yes yes yes we'll do that right and it makes sense for you to have a meaningful conversation around when the discount comes up yes it gives you it shows this G get piece right that's that's a really important piece the the last thing that I would say around um around the shoot I forgot what it was I'll have to it'll come back in and I'll interrupt whatever we go that's okay let me give you this one so so we had a contract that uh we did and um procurement came back uh to it and they had redlined it and um one of the Clauses they had put into the contract was uh that they wanted the right to be able to terminate for convenience okay that we we've seen that before no problem so so much for the ARR yeah well well so so so here was the the gotcha the gotcha are our terms and conditions already covered that which is if you if you terminate uh for convenience then you have the fees that you would have to still pay for the remainder of the term because that that helps to lock it in right the ARR so they came back and they added in a whole new clause and it was basically they wanted the rights to terminate for convenience and get this we'll prepay you the money but whatever we don't use you have to pay us back that was what they had inside there and so I I looked at this and I said this is the oddest request I've ever seen so basically we are signing a contract with no contract and they said what do you mean by that I said this is a contract with no contract essentially you pay us $100,000 and in one month from now you say I'm canceling for convenience and now I owe you 90 M so wait a minute there's no contract they're like well of course there's a contract I said there's no contract nor is there a term so I said here's I'll tell you what you do if you really want this clause in here's what's going to happen uh I'm going to charge you double the price so instead of 100,000 it's $200,000 with the right to cancel and oh by the way let me ask you this question if a customer said to you because they sell products if a customer said and put this Clause to you and your legal team which legal was on the phone with with me what would be your reaction what would be your reaction to this when and they all they they were quiet quiet on the phone nobody had a word to say and I said by your silence that's the best it indicates that you would not accept a term like this because this is a term that is just so crazy like who who does that that's not a contract right so if you want to terminate something by all means you have the right to terminate but you still have the penalty which is you owe the money right so unless of course there's a material breach yeah and you just use the word but the right way right okay you want to do that but if you do because now I'm going to disagree with everything you said so um this was the thing that they came back to me when you get introduced to procurement one of the first pieces this is what my buddy Allan taught me is to say hey hey Mario thank you you know I know we're going to talk about commercial terms at some point Mario can you help me understand a little bit though about your role like are you just guiding me through the process are you a liaison to Legal like I want to make sure that when I'm working with you I I get it's going to be we're going to have a commercial term discussion I just don't want to be that pain in the butt vendor that you sometimes get so help me understand how you do this in your worldle by the way that is the best way to introduce yourself to procurement cuz now it's just like sales it's all about them it's all about their pain it's all about their time and we aren't seen as this confrontational jerky salesperson so you that was what I forgot but I wanted to make sure we got to that part too one of my favorite stories is we were negotiating a million-dollar contract Richard and I had the gong recorder on on the zoom the zoom call and we were negotiating two-hour session procur and legal were on my my myself and my legal was on and we got to a very very very sticky term and it was uh the rights to terminate uh for convenience the one I just talked about this is a separate contract new different different company different contract and um they had some very stringent terms uh for that they wanted to include so anyways we spent about 20 25 minutes on this topic alone right a two-hour call 25 minutes right so we go through that and at the end in Prin principle we find agreement and so uh they said who's going to take the action item to write this language and my legal team said we we will we'll take the language yes to write this and so they said okay uh and they said let me just recap they recapped on the call is this what we're agreeing to and their legal said yes okay all right so now uh two days later we send over the new agreement and we said here's here here you go two weeks later we get a response back from procurement illegal from the customer and the big red line in this version now was the red line to the red line and they wanted to wipe out the whole clause and so we said hey we are you know looking at these 10 Clauses that we have left we saw that you wiped out what it is that we agree to procurement responds back with we never agreed to that and I respond back with yes you did and they respond back with no we didn't this is not the principal that we we wanted uh we said we wanted this and then I turned around and went to gone y I grabbed the snippet of the recording and the transcript and I sent it to their legal and their procurement and I said you may not have realized what you agreed to but in fact you agreed to this and so we're not in a position to go back on what we already agreed to unless you want to pay a higher fee so if that's the case let me know and then it'll be a 50% increase in the fees because this is not something that we would accept at this price and so um that that uh recording saved me a million dooll account there you go I got it and then what happened was is I called the business owner up and I said business owner I want you to know what procurement illegal are trying to do and they said what we agreed to that what what did you put in and I read the Clause exactly as as we as as uh we had it and they said that's exactly what we agree to I said I know I was on the call she said I'm calling up the chief procurement officer so she called up the chief procurement officer and said this is out of control your team is adding no value whatsoever except slowing down me accomplishing what I need to accomplish and so we have the business owner in this case on our side but that those are the types of experiences where you know you get procurement and then they do these tactics like a two week long delay to respond and then say we never agreed to anything like that and the crazy part is is did you not think I would pull out the transcript well no and and again you know there is procurement training by the way which I'm gonna go take at some point um and uh and they delay it for two weeks one there is a priority thing like they got a lot of stuff on their plate In fairness they have a job to do I get it um and they know that we'll get desperate when it gets closer to the deadline exactly when he get start end of month end of quarter end of year yeah yep yep yep so and that's the the sad part is is uh is uh individuals we've trained buyers on this journey to buy at certain points in time that's what we've trained them to do but um that's the very unfortunate thing well listen Richard has been fabulous having discussion again name of the book and where can people go get it the sellers Journey it is uh on Amazon and anywhere else um Kendall is going to be there and uh what is it Barnes & Noble people like that and there's a ton of ton you know wherever you can get it online it'll be online so it's going through all those distribution places here's what it looks like one more time um I appreciate anybody um taking a look at it yes my real email address is in there and if you hate the book I'll send you your money back just send me an email with your VMO and I'll do it sounds good and if someone wants to get a hold of you connect with you is a Twitter LinkedIn email what's the best way 415596 9149 415596 9149 Mario you know that's my real number because you and I text messages back and forth and um yes you can find me on LinkedIn so make sure if you're reaching out to Richard Richard Harris on LinkedIn please please please send him a personalized connection request and say you heard him on the modern selling podcast don't just click the connect button because he will have no idea where you're from and I judge you we didn't even go down that past but I judge every connection request so we should talk about that one day oh man that that that that's a good one I have over 75 cting my box I use them for trainings and I use him to show sales reps here let's go through what you see here what do you think uh that having been said I feel bad for some of these folks that are you know sending out this crap but nonetheless Richard has been fabulous having you on the show I have one last question for you and that is your all-time favorite movie what is it uh sha Shank Redemption sha Shank Redemption we've had that at least three or four handfuls of time uh that's a popular movie and uh appreciate you sharing that insights and all of you listening in right now hey don't turn that down quite yet listen to this very important message now thanks for listening to the modern selling podcast please do me a huge favor and give the modern selling podcast a five star rating and review on iTunes oh and don't forget if you'd like to say 20 hours or more in a month and increase your productivity go right now and download fly message that's Fly mg. for Free it's your free text expander and personal writing assistant hey thanks for listening in and until the next episode good [Music] selling [Music] [Music]