More Qualified Pipeline

Stop WASTING valuable discovery meetings.

Happy Thursday to 11,792 SaaS sales professionals!

Today's newsletter is 1 technique that will help you ace your discovery calls.

As a result you will convert more meetings into pipeline.👇

Member Spotlight:

Stop wasting meetings

Deals are won and lost in the discovery call.

Unfortunately, most sellers are winging it. As a result, they have low conversion on the pipeline they worked so hard on generating.

The first meeting with a new prospect sets the tone for the entire relationship.

Remember: booking a meeting through outbound is the first SALE. Agreeing to meet with you is the first YES from a prospect.

Let's make it count!

Set the upfront contract.

You cannot control whether a prospect will buy from you.

But you CAN control your level of preparation and professionalism.

The upfront contract delivers exactly that: a great buyer experience.

There's 3 components of a good upfront contract:

1. The Why: purpose and goal of the meeting
2. The agenda: setting expectations
3. Possible outcomes: thinking 1 step ahead.

Let's dive into each one step by step.

1. Why are they meeting with you?

• Why is the prospect giving you their valuable time? What's in it for them?
  What value are you going to provide in that meeting?
• It's important to remind the prospect in order to avoid no shows or postponing.

Also, your Why MUST be centered around a painful business problem.

Your Why can NEVER be: "we will show you our great solution".

Make your discovery calls all about

• Diagnosing painful problems
• Quantifying the business impact
• Showing a path to solving the issue.

Something likes this:

Hi John,

Thanks for agreeing to meet next Friday @2pm.

The goal of our meeting will be to identify what causes your lack of data insights and explore ways how we can help.

2. Set expectations

There's nothing worse than a prospect who comes into the meeting expecting a demo. Or getting too impatient to answer your questions.

Therefore, send the agenda upfront and ask for agreement.

A few tips on that:

• Spend 5 minute with intro & summarizing your research & assumptions. Show you have done your homework. Never ask questions you can google!
• Spend 15 minutes asking GAP discovery questions. Make sure to quantify upfront how many questions you'er going to ask. This is especially helpful for busy execs.
• Spend no more than 5 minutes talking about your company, solutions and products. Show a sneak peek demo if you have to.

Sample agenda:

A quick overview of how that call's gonna go: 30 minutes

• 0-5: summary of my research assumptions
• 5-20: 3 high level questions to understand your challenges
• 20-25: a sneek peek of how we could potentially help
• 25-30: next steps

3. Possible outcomes

This is the most important piece of your upfront contract!

What can the prospect expect as next steps after the call?

That way you are already thinking 1 step ahead like a chess player.

Also, it's a great way to qualify/disqualify prospects upfront.

Prepare your prospect for 3 possible scenarios:

• You mutually decide it's a good fit and that the timing is right to start a sales cycle. In this case you will introduce a mutual action plan.
• You mutually decide it's a good fit but the timing isn't right yet. In this case you will discuss how you stay in touch and put this prospect on a nurture sequence.
• You mutually decide it's not a good fit. In this case you part ways as friends.

That's a wrap! Below is an example of what your finished upfront contract could look like:

Hi John,

Thanks for agreeing to meet next Friday @2pm.

The goal of our meeting will be to identify what causes your lack of data insights and explore ways how we can help.

A quick overview of how that call's gonna go:

30 minutes
0/5: summary of my research findings
5-20: 3 high level questions to understand your challenges
20-25: a sneak peek of how we can potentially help
25-30: next steps
Depending on our discussion there's 3 ways this can go:

We determine this is a good fit and the timing is right, therefore we will build a mutual project plan together.
We determine this can be a good fit but the timing is not right, therefore we will discuss the best ways to stay in touch.
We determine this is not a good fit. In this case we part ways as friends.
Does this approach work for you or did you have something different in mind?

Best,
Christian

 

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