“One of the most powerful things you can do is own what you’re not and own it.” – Jason Walker in today’s Tip 1350
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Jason Walker on Sales Success Stories Interview
Jason Walker on LinkedIn
Hairy Deal Guy
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. For today’s tip, I’ve got a short excerpt from an interview that the audience and I did with Jason Walker at the Sales Success Summit last week. Here’s a taste:
Audience 1: Hi Jason! As sales reps, we often feel really handcuffed by our product, what it has, what it doesn’t have. You mentioned that at your last company you started when it was pretty bare bones. Obviously, you’re finding your new company now when it’s just getting started. How do you navigate that selling motion without selling vaporware? And how do those conversations change as the product develops?
Jason Walker: Yeah. I mean. It’s a really hard question to answer in terms of how you approach that. Because what I’ve learned as we’ve kind of gone through this process of going from a start-up to a full-fledged business is one of the most powerful things you can do is own what you’re not and own it, because either A. You’re trying to sell to the wrong customer or B. They’re the right customer and they don’t care what you don’t do. Because roadmap selling, future selling is just a disaster and very hairy, very hairy. Like, if you can own what you do and what you don’t do, your deals will be cleaner, your customers will be happier, and hopefully, more revenue will come into the business and better development and better stuff to sell well.
Scott Ingram: And that’s part of that trust, right? When you can talk about those things transparently, you’re like, we suck at this. We’re not the right solution for that. But we’re great at that. People aren’t used to hearing that.
Jason Walker: Exactly. But if someone asked me a price, I’m going to give them pricing if I can, with context. Pricing doesn’t matter because I don’t know your solution. So this is pointless to look at, but we can talk about it if you want to see it, but I don’t want to hide it because that even well, I got to have this conversation before I can give you a price, just as red flag. This guy just wants me for all my money. If I lose that once, I lose it forever, and it’s not worth it.
Scott Ingram: Say more about that because this is a whole topic in and of itself, this idea of at what point do you share price? What if you don’t know enough? Just having that context, it sounds like you’re on the side of, hey, the buyer wants to know price. Let’s give them an idea.
Jason Walker: Yeah. Well, how many times have we heard this week or during the conference that somebody closed the deal significantly higher than the original quote was because you understood the problem and were able to produce way more value. And I don’t know if it’s applicable for everybody, but also there’s a huge, huge need or a lot of holes in sales processes around consensus selling and internal collaboration on the customer side. Understanding how do I influence those, I don’t have the ability to influence.
Scott Ingram: Awesome. The Hairy Deal man himself.
Audience 2: Oh, I hope that’s my moniker from now on.
Jason Walker: Check your hair out, though.
Audience 2: Hey, Jason, I’m going to ask a question that Scott usually asks, but he hasn’t asked yet, which is, what’s your origin story? And how did that your family, your friends, your background, how did that contribute to your sales reps?
Jason Walker: Happy to answer that. Do you want to save that or do you want to answer that?
Scott Ingram: No, answer, yes the question.
Jason Walker: Just making sure.
Scott Ingram: I love it. Why don’t you just ask all the rest of my questions? I’m going to see this.
Jason Walker: They really don’t want me on again.
Scott Ingram: To hear Jason’s answer to that question, and so much more, the really is a lot to this story. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/1350 and we’ll have link to that interview and to connect with Jason as well as find out who the Hairy Deal guy is. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!