2 things sales mess up

Chris Orlob on how to do better discovery and build better business cases

👋 Hey, Toni from Growblocks here! Welcome to another Revenue Letter! Every week, I share cases, personal stories and frameworks for GTM leaders and RevOps.

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There is nothing more frustrating than:

• Working on a campaign 

• Spending money on ads 

• Have SDRs work those leads 

• Finally get to a booked meeting 

And then: 

Have the AE crash and flunk the sales process. 

I have seen this myself many times. And the realization that every single link in the chain needs to work out hits you really hard. 

Especially since, at that point in the funnel, you already spent a TON of money. Failures there hurt just so much more. 

This is what I chatted about with Chris Orlob a few weeks ago. 

And while this might have been ok in the past, it’s not ok anymore:

“We’ve transitioned from the go-go days of B2B tech where you didn’t have to sell, you just took orders. You just had to get in front of someone who had a wallet and close deals. So it didn’t take a lot of sales acumen”

- Chris Orlob

So, how can we make our reps better? 

In this post, I’ll share some of Chris’ thoughts (and my experiences) on how to approach it and the 2 skills that too many reps are missing.

Where we fail at discovery

If you ask a typical rep if they did a good discovery, they’ll say yes.

But what happens when you ask them about the customer's pain?

“They need better coaching/visibility/metrics”

But are those pains? Are those actual problems the customer faces?

No, they’re solutions - proactive things that you do to solve a problem. Too many reps fail to peel back the layers of the onion.

The best reps are able to take a step back and recognize customers, in this case, are expressing their needs in terms of solutions.

“I understand you want a better [solution(s)], but what’s going on in your business to prioritize that?”

This way we can avoid the all-too-common recency bias.

“Once you find the need behind the need, it’s about validating if it’s a top priority or not”

- Chris Orlob

Typically, when you ask a prospect about a problem, they’ll talk about it like it’s the worst thing in the world. But in reality, it’s only because it happened to them this morning.

But what happens when they get off the call? 

Their Slack is lighting up like a Christmas tree, they have 200 unanswered emails, and they’re on calls all day. By that afternoon, they’d completely forgotten about the problem they spoke with you about.

That’s why the best reps pressure test the problem halfway through discovery.

Is this problem something we should be anchoring our relationship to? Is this something you’ll care about in a week from now?

A lot of reps are too scared to ask, because they’re too scared of what they’re going to hear.

But for the reps that do, they’re able to contextualize the problem and leave with a better idea if this is a sale that they can close, or if it’s not a big enough pain to invest time into.

Why a lot of business cases suck

“The salesperson shouldn't be the author of the business case, they should be the editor of the business case. You should be pulling in insights and data and information from the range of champions that you've built and then creating the business case based on their insights.” -Chris Orlob

I don’t know if most salespeople understand what a business case is.

Because what do you usually hear when a buyer asks for one?

“Sure, I’ll send you a couple of case studies”

Or

“No problem, here’s an ROI calculator”

Neither of those are business cases (Chris’ breaks down the differences in his pclub article). 

A business case is a writeup that explains

• The customer's situation, 

• Their current problem(s)

• The financial ramifications of their problem 

• Your proposed solution fixes their problem

• Resources that they’ll need to invest in with your solution

The last point I think is important (and usually most missed). No matter how self-serve you think your product is:

• It’s going to take time to implement

• It’s going to cost the customer (in time or money)

• And it’s going to take work to see an ROI

By being clear with your prospect from the jump that it’s going to take time, attention and resources, you’re able to build instant credibility and trust. Exactly the kind of business case they can take to the decision-maker.

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On The Podcasts This Week

• Mikkel and I talked about why deals die - and how to fix it

• Should you pick fights with competitors? Raul and I debate if (and when) you should consider it

• Frank Nardi (CRO at Cin7) joins us to share lessons from running high-velocity sales