“What you’re trying to do is very quickly, within the first meeting, set expectations around how people buy from you.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 1588
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from David Weiss. David is the Chief Revenue Officer of the Sales Collective and founder of DealDoc. Here he is:
David Weiss: Hello, everyone. This is David Weiss, Chief Revenue Officer of the Sales Collective and founder of DealDoc, your app for deal coaching. On today’s tip, we will be talking about the expedition synchronization play. So in this play, what you’re trying to thwart off, what you’re trying to get around is when people say to you, I don’t want you going over my head, or I make the decision on this, or our sales or our process for buying is this, or we don’t need to build a business case, or all these different things.
What you’re trying to do is very quickly, within the first meeting, set expectations around how people buy from you. Most buyers have not bought lots of solutions. Some have never bought a solution. Some don’t know how to buy a solution. And none of them have bought as many solutions as you have sold. So you know, if you are an expert in your product, your solution, you know what steps are going to be needed to get this across the line and solve the problem that this company and this person and people are ultimately trying to solve. So that is what you are doing with this play.
And to execute on this play, it’s really simple. You create a slide, and on that slide, you have a buyer’s journey. So buyer’s journey with ABC company. And you put little bubbles, all the steps, first meeting, demo meeting, business case building, mutual action plan discussion, multiple stakeholder involvement, end-user interviews, executive conversations, reference calls, info sec review, mutual contracts, MSAs, blah, blah, blah. You just put all the steps, write out all the steps, then hand it to marketing so it is visually looking nice. Then put on it the people that are typically involved in each of these steps.
And the whole thought here is towards the end of that first meeting, you’re walking people through this and saying, look, this is the journey we typically take together. How does this compare to how you all like to buy? And you make some subtle adjustments to it, but it creates almost a little bit of an upfront contract with folks. And it’s a way better upfront contract than the whole, if we agree, we’ll do this. It’s more like this is the journey we’re going to take together. And the reason why that’s important and you put some of these key elements in is when someone says, when you are late in the process and you’re like, Hey, I’d love to now meet with the executive team, review our solution. They’re like, Hey, look, no, I make decisions on this. Or, I don’t want you going over my head or all this. You pulled us out, Look, hey, we talked about this early on. This is just part of our process. We do this for these reasons, and if we don’t, this is the things that we’ve seen happen. You can do this to build mutual action plans, to build business cases, to ensure you get enough end-user interviews. You put all these things in there with a clear explanation of why. And now all of a sudden, this is how you sell, how people who buy your solution buy. It’s not you as a seller. You’re removing that feeling that buyers get when they feel like you’re trying to manipulate them or run game on them or go around them or do something. And all you’re doing is just doing what’s right for the deal. They don’t always see it that way.
This creates alignment on that and makes people feel like, Well, this is what we do. So why would we do it differently with you? Help me understand. So this really does help set really nice expectations on the journey that you’re about to go on and potentially helps overcome or lessen some of those emotional feelings that the person you’re working with is having when you try and execute on those certain things.
So again, this is called the expedition synchronization play. If you like this play, you can find 78 others just like it inside of the sales tactician’s playbook, which exists inside of DealDoc. You can also find it on my LinkedIn profile. Thanks again, everyone. And if I can help you with anything, feel free to reach out.
For links to connect with David and to his entire playbook, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1588. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!