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so we're going to talk about building momentum in your deal and making sure that you're maintaining that momentum throughout the sales cycle so Harry do you want to start us off what's something that we can do before we even jump into a discovery call that will get us going and make sure that we're setting oursel up for Success there I think anyone that knows me knows I love outbound and I look at it from this lens the biggest advantage in outbound is that you pick who you go after it's your targeting and tight targeting at that the questions you need to answer before you start outbound play is who business buyer why your hypothesis and when so the when needs to have some urgency built into it examples could be a renewal date for a competitor an external initiative uh a government initiative potentially those are two pretty good examples that you should include in your targeting hypothesis so that you're actually only reaching out to people who have who you believe has some sort of inbuilt urgency if you to make this real if you're selling to accountants every year they have a hectic year end if you're selling to sales teams end of quart is always a busy time end of financial year so you can find those things you can build that into your targeting and begin building momentum and an urgency even before you start reaching out to someone or as you reach out to people as well Leslie you work in the event space as well we're very lucky in the events world that there is inbuilt urgency but if they're 3 months out and you have to execute on a bunch of deliverables that's a targeting hypothesis yeah I would also say when you're out bounding you can set the pace almost from the getg go when someone agrees to take a meeting with you on a cold call or replies to you must say they're interested most people default to that meeting in rather than they need to if someone agrees to a meeting there is nothing stopping you from saying something like hey would tomorrow be too soon and immediately you've got a ton of momentum a ton of velocity and you just naturally building in an urgent deal cycle wins happen a lot quicker than losses do so if you can make things begin quick then they will likely continue that way as well so try your luck when you're getting someone to agree to a meeting to try and book that meeting sooner obviously there's an extra bunch of extra benefits for that for example if you booking being out for two weeks in the future it's much less likely to even happen the no sure rate skyrockets the longer you wait so there's advantages there but it also just going to help set up that deal for fast wins yeah that's a good point actually I didn't even really think about that and it's actually a negative consequence of these booking meeting links you could adjust the available slots to only show you can a couple days and you're far more likely to get that meeting booked in in one to 3 days after the agreement to the call Great Point yeah so it's instead of sharing all of your calendar availability and showing eight weeks in the future you're saying let me just share this like smaller window and there are settings in most the tools that allow you to do that as well you can decide how far in advance and if you have different links for different use cases recommend doing that now the other thing I'm thinking about now is if you give someone a reason why they're more likely to accept your off so maybe you explain why you've only got availability in the next 3 days you have an event you have whatever and it could be hopefully true you said something so beautifully about coming with an opinion formed and like being able to offer the buckets and I thought it was just a unique take on the bucket question yeah talk us through that well I stole that from Kevin dorsy so I'm not I can't take all the credit for it a bucket question is a way to Anchor the conversation around a business initiative that has impact and it goes something like most people we speak to are experiencing this context or current state and this is the impact or they are experiencing this pressure from their executive team to do this for this reason and this business impact do either of those resonate with you or if I completely missed where you're coming from what we want to try and avoid is separate the buyers who are just curious or maybe have a small technical pain to the buyers that actually have a business initiative and actually have relevant context in a current state that needs solving more urgently than others love that and I think just the whole conversation here momentum velocity whatever you want to call it all of that is only helped when you do read Discovery and uncover a problem that's only going to make them want to change sooner so the entrical is a lot of where the rest of your deals cycle will be set up just by asking the right questions understanding is there a problem that they're really Keen to solve and if there is the momentum should help for itself because you can use that to drive the rest of the timeline inbound leads you can even ask people hey seems like you're looking into this when were you hoping to have a something in place and then they're going to say well we were aiming for July what's driving that timeline what's making July significant and ideally what you can uncover is something that's going to help anchor the deal timeline in their goals yes because we all want to close deals as soon as possible right if they tell us we need it in July because of accounting year end or we've got a big event in August that going to be all tied up for you can then begin to work backwards and set the date to help them Reach that goal and that timeline they've given you understanding the why behind that timeline well like keep coming back to their why and then for you're never just following up or just checking in you're saying hey I know you were hoping to get this done because of this and all of your steps can link back to their goals and their why yeah going back to the why I know okay give me an emoji your favorite emoji in the chat if this Rings true to you but I think all of us have the best intentions of setting next steps on Discovery calls and like making sure that we book that it's like core foundational sales 101 is to always have that next step next step I do s what's your next step your manager's going to come ask you but you got to be ready talk to me if you have been in this position give me an emoji in the chat if you have the best intentions of setting next steps and then it just like time flies and the person is like I got to run Sorry by and hangs up the phone and you're like damn it did not get those next steps anyone else been there before happens to me daily what do you do to make sure that you always capture those like clear next steps before your Callins knowing that a deal with no next steps is so much more like with go closed lost go dark on you worst case best case scenario if you don't book the next steps is you going to have to chase them play some email tennis to get the call on the calendar worst case you never hear from them again the deal's gone already right so in my mind a lot of what we're going to talk about today and in the upcoming bit throughout the entire deal same expectations so at the very beginning of the call use what you know if you've done any sound training would be called UNR contract and in that agenda when you said the the call hey is it good if we set five minutes towards the end just to make sure that we can agree on what next steps would be if they even apply might be the case that you might find we're not offit today but if we are what we can do is take the last five minutes this school to decide where we go from here then what you're literally going to do just pull out your phone and set a timer put it on silent for 25 minutes regardless of what happens happening that 25 minute Mark you're going to stop the call there and say hey love to keep chatting but we did agree that we'd make sure we have 5 minutes at the end here to align on next steps to continue this conversation and then it's where do we go from here right so no matter what you've always got enough time and in that giving yourself five minutes instead of two minutes there's any push back there it gives you time to explore that because if someone is pushing back on me for next steps that's normally a orange or potentially even a red flag that potentially they're just not interested motivated to solve the issue that they come to me with or they're just too polite to tell me hey this just isn't going to be on our top five priorities for the next quarter so I want to have time to dig into that if it is an objection or if it isn't I can then set expectations for what that next step's going to be you know figure out who else might want to be involved in that and start multis reading the deal in that five minutes as well yeah leaving yourself some time last thing on that list was actually listen and I think this is something that we want to like I I want to just hear your thoughts on in terms of how we're engaging in our calls with our prospects with our customers with anybody I I've made this mistake many many times and I've also been on the Bier side where I have a call with a rep and they talk at me for 24 minutes and I'm basically working for 21 of those minutes but nodding yeah and then the screen doing something else and I don't want to spend time with them afterwards I think that's why a lot of deals sto or get slowed down because there's just not that Vibe or that that factor in there but I think that starts a lot of times with listening and asking good questions moving into the next piece it's like after the conversation happens after we do Discovery I feel like this is a place where a lot of us naturally think about building momentum like how are we going to pull people in how are we going to have them take those next steps they have to make a decision now right they have the information they have the map of what's in front of you now how can we be compelling in our followup and whether that's an email or your process your next steps talk to me about recap email what has to be involved what are you doing to make sure you set yourself up for Success there yeah so I I had this recap email drilled into me from an early stage when I first started selling into Tech you obviously are going to recap everything you've heard and and clarify I like to try and do that in my own words as much as possible but also mirror some of their language in there as well so I'm going to list you know context problem impact ideally those are going to be my three bullet points I'm going to say hey so and so great chance you like you do me a favor take a look at this email make sure it all looks correct and then I'm going go into this is what I heard the context the problem the impact and then I'm going to say And to clarify this is what we agreed upon as next steps and then I'm going to list out at minimum one next step ideally if I'm able to book that if I'm not then I'm already kind of skeptical about the deal but there might be multiple things bit of homework for them some more things you might be sharing some people you might be involving from your team and resources you need to make that happen and then again I'm going offici the email off once again just let me know if this all looks okay drop a response and I'm asking them for a response to the email as well because I want them to respond because again that's an early indicator of me of level of Engagement from the buyer they responded to email saying yep that's right that's all accurate looking forward to the next call I know immediately that I've got someone who's more engaged someone who just sees the email and ignores it yeah it's it's a champion test if you have someone at the right level it's a champion test if they've agreed to give you access to something data or whatever you can actually track that in your next step I used work with a great AE is name is Brian Charlton he's at otter now um it's one of the most likable and organized days I've ever been a part of he has very high conversion and buyers loved him he would map out the buyer Committee in advance obviously we were already targeting them so it quite easy he would find our links to these people so it's like oh your CTO as an investor and you're you know they're part of craft or whatever the hell and he would raise it really early in the call and he'd say hey did you come to us because your CTO is friends with my CEO and maybe they recommend like and he what he's doing there is one mapping out the bio committee and validating things but two getting ahead of the awkwardness of waiting for someone to introduce you to someone to power and then maybe at the end of the call they'll say hey I thought this written really well do you mind me just sending the recap to Bob right or Sarah you know because he's already opened up that Avenue I I think it's definitely worth like coming with those names if you know that your deals don't go anywhere if you don't involve Persona a and Persona B TI come with those names you know who they are generally soe of the cool when you're doing your research not only you're going to come with a hypothesis you can say hey typically the folks who are going to want to be involved in this next cool is this person because of this I saw that might be Leslie at sber and and by sharing that name you're only making it easier for them to involve people which is a huge part of building momentum the more people you got involved in the deal more points of contact the more problems you're talking about and the more it becomes a team initiative that actually has a momentum internally for them as well but I think that so many of our problems are solved by managing people's expectations so both of you are talking about setting these moments up in advance for people to succeed and if we just tell them that so like before we send the email tell them on the end of your call that you're sending them an email you want them to respond asking them if we can involve other people and sending the email to other people who should be involved or here's what typically works at other companies like not everybody buys our software our solution every day how can we set up our buyers for success in buying you know I just thought of a really basic one is like send the follow-up email urgently after the call like set the tone I've made this mistake loads of times I get the followup out like 24 hours 48 hours later I actually think that should be a sackable offense to have a half an hour block before and after every intro cour that half an hour beforehand made me make sure I was ready and prepped and brought those names and the half an hour after was meant I to get the recap email right away while I was remembering things and didn't have to go back and listen to the cool to remember the exact details getting out right away as well it it it's velocity in your end which increases the velocity on their end and their likess to reciprocate that urgency so if you can send it right away afterwards it's going to be fresh it's going to be easy for you to do I'm going to send this to you right afterwards can you do me a favor let me know the em looks accurate like you said expectations then ask again in the email can you let me know this all looks accurate please respond I want to talk about our key Champion if you will and we are building people internally in their organization who we want to then go take this conversation to internal stakeholders how many stakeholders are involved in your deals on average this is just a topic that's changed over the past 10 years or so since I starting sales in at least everyone's always talking about there's a decision maker but now that in more complex sales Cycles software Services Solutions Consulting there's always going to be more than one person who feels like they need to say even if though there's an economic B technically who's going to sign it and and be the final check mark there's often way more people I think Gartner's latest research which was in 2021 showed that there are on average 12 stakeholders in a B2B buying decision and even though you may not see all those people you're probably engaging with half of those folks and there's a bunch of people in the background now you have to get someone to go and show other people stuff and that's where you have to really go heavy and Champion the neighor which talk about how to do that yeah maybe it's marketing and events type stuff the CMO will validate and bless the concept early for example but then they'll default to the team on the actual mechanics and decision and choice and they're very explicit about that it's actually a really positive trait in an executive that's willing to do that obviously I think deep down they will have the veto power but often they'll say hey I trust my team to make these decisions keep me posted perfect example for a deal run and yeah I think you got a hedge for that right there isn't really you may think the CMO is your decision maker but they're going to listen to their team internally before they listen to you yeah they want to hear from the demand Jen and the the social media person maybe who knows there there's always going to be meeting at some point in a business of a size probably anywhere even M and pop shops even my business it's me my wife and I've got one employee thank God I would want to yeah I know right HR nightmare I was make decisions I'm just happy you have her yeah well if I was making a big purchase I would 100% consult with her she's an accountant by the way everyone she's got account she's an account she's very i' 100% consult fan I'd probably talk to my employee as well to make sure they were in on it as well and the reality is the seller whoever's trying to sell me on this solution probably won't be on a call with myself my wife and my employee so it comes down to my ability to get them bought in if I believe it's something that we should move forward with sometimes our Champions aren't as good as selling our Solutions and highlighting the need as well as we are which is why it's so important to make sure you're equipping these people to go and have that conversation in a compelling way to get people who bought in on it when you aren't in the room to do that for them mhm what are some ways that we can enable those Champions to to go sell on our behalf when they can't rearticulate the same way like they're not trained in our solution or offering our product the same way we are how can we enable them to go sell internally on our behalf I think it starts from that Discovery call that intro call should we call it because a lot can happen more than discovery on that call but that even that recap you you start to Anchor The Narrative when you recap their problems their impacts and the context of that sharing that with with people makes it easy for them so you basically make it easy for them to get people up to speed recap always get New Perspectives on those things but also hedge hedge for the fact that there's probably going to be people who don't get involved in the course and do everything you can to share their individual context but also all the questions that you know they're probably going to have so when I sell to it buyers they always want to know about integration security clear stuff apis and all that if I know 100% they're going to want to ask those questions and I don't have access to them I'm going to share the documentation ahead of time and say hey typically when the IT person gets involved they want to know do we have an open API what is our Security registration level like is it sock 2 do we have that report obviously you to get an NDA for some of those things and you can share that one way to do that is in attachments on the email but that's where I would start to default to more of a deal room in that's in that case yeah it's hard to do this on a discovery call like to really uncover this you can the great ones can but if you have a good relationship you've got to really uncover the personal win for whoever you're working with there has to be something in it for them the reality is there is a political or a social win for people whether you explicitly talk about it or not if you uncover that they more likely to get I don't say the word compliance but it sounds a bit too much but like you're more likely to collaboration on that enablement and on that selling internally for you they're as bought in on getting the deal done as you are yes that's always a good feel and because of that you know they're going to go to B for you and you just want to make sure that you make that easy for them by giving them everything they know so if they get asked a question they have the answers available to them but if they're not as good at selling internally then you don't forgo your control over that because chances are whoever you're s to probably isn't as good at communicating their own pains because they might be embarrassed about the fact that some of their business isn't doing as well as it could be but if you recap that then it's you who's kind of said that's the problem and mean they have to go I've messed up and that's why we need to buy this that's actually I didn't even think about that if you're the person that implemented the broken process solution whatever there there has to be some moment where you confront that and confront the awkwardness of it and help the moan it I just thought of a really good story it's English related so when I was a floundering AE with a job I should have never had when I was very young we sold to Tesco which is basically Walmart in England and the guy we were working with was really young and my view VP of sales incredible VP of sales was very cautious about this guy because he was young and he's doing it service management at a place like Tesco it's very serious stuff we're outside actually we'd had a dinner whatever we were outside smoking a cigarette I asked him hey what you know what does this mean for you my vpf sales had teed me up to ask this question and he said I want to be the youngest director in Tesco history and the moment he said that I was like okay and he asked me back and I said I'm basically failing at this job I need this deal to keep job and show that I can actually do this CU I was young in my role too the deal did close and I think he did become the youngest director in Tesco history that's why the higher ups gave him lots of freedom and and and respect because he was charging his way through the business and that's what he wanted to do you didn't get fired right I did oh funny story I actually made president's club that year from a blowing Deal completely blowing deal and the Tesco deal I did a tiny bit of work for like tiny and I made club and I got fired about 3 months later because I but you took the trip yeah and that's actually I took now my wife my then girlfriend y toi that's it's a lot of commitment for a third day I had a mentor who always called this like with the we're sitting at the table having dinner together how do you get them to come sit in the booth next to you and now you're selling alongside each other they're part of your team and I thought that's such a beautiful visualization to think about are there certain questions that you ask to make make sure that they're prepared to do that or certain ways that you tee yourself up for that well make sure you're wearing deod sit on the same side yeah you don't want to smell sure I I would say you know common things that have probably closed killed your deals in the past and again you know the questions that people typically ask and the reasons why people don't buy from you so if you've got someone who's really bought as a champion you can test that in multiple ways but if you feel like you've got someone who's going be a champion they say I'm going to go have a chat with the team when's that going to happen when's your next standing meeting how are you going to communicate that help them plan it out almost like work with them to plan that and then also think of the top two to three objections they might get from each person say what you going to say if this person says this or what if that person feels this way about that yeah you know is there anyone who you think is going to be opposed to this and already kind of get in their mind what they're going to do if something goes on because you just can't control that conversation because you're not there and you're not going to get invited to it most of the time what you can do is prepare that person to be almost as good as you in that conversation if you were there you have to give people consultation period people stakeholders that are involved if you surprise them late with hey a big change they are going to be more against that change than if you involve them early and consult them rather than tell them that this is the change that's going to and there's people like this in every company that don't get considered and it's a big impact of their job a good rep will sniff that out make sure it's delivered in the correct way instead of after the fact we only have a couple minutes left here and in the question and answer anonymous attendee asks what do do you mean by deal room in this context and I want to just really quick like from your perspective what are the things that you include in a deal room what you think has to go in there I'm always going to include a mutual action plan or some form of timeline anchor on their timeline what I've learned in the discovery call hey we want to get this in this place by because of this and then I'm going to work backwards to map out the steps that need to happen to get them there it's going to be like five steps of dates attached and actions that's going to happen I'm also going to include all those FAQs that mentation they're probably going to ask for but if I put them there to start with they don't need them but the mutual action PL definitely won what's happened Recaps documentation I basically want it so that if they were to share this with their boss who hasn't been involved in the conversation they could read it and be completely up to speed immediately on the what the when the why which again is the problem what we're going to do to try and fix it and the when when is this going to happen how is it going to happen and so they've got no questions the the I'm give a quote here and he said quick but I I I saw I'm going to mention KD again out he celebrity here he's in Austin as well we should have had him in but K KD one said the proposal and in this sense I would say deal room beat proposal isn't for the person you've been selling to it's for everyone else it's to basically give them an internal demo to win everyone else over it's not for the people who have been involved your deal it's for all the other people who just want to have a say and if you've got all the answers there you're going to have less problem problems less chance of being shut down at the final step but also get them in get them on board I have nothing to add yeah beautifully