Clip: Debe Rapson on applying her challenger sales skills

Clip from Episode 11 featuring: Debe Rapson of Demandbase:

Not long ago I was in a deal with a company that will remain nameless, but they’re a large telecom manufacturing equipment company and we were in a sales cycle, and it was getting very competitive and because I had done so much discovery upfront, I really understood what the client was trying to achieve but my competitor was kind of wooing the client with gifts, and tickets to places and unfortunately the solution that the competitor was offering really and truly didn’t make sense for the client. It wasn’t going to help that person achieve their, you know their goals and it was actually you know probably going to be one of the sticky decisions that sometimes clients make that make them look bad, and we have seen folks get fired over sometimes over those kinds of decisions. So instead of letting it go I decided to just have a heart to heart with the client, and say look whether you decide to move forward with me now, or whether you decide to move forward with demand base later, you know here is what I know  and I kind of took it back to what I had learned in the discovery and provided documentation, on why that competitors solution wasn’t going to meet their needs, and it was a risk right because this person was being wooed and, and I could tell that this person was kind of moving in that direction to go with the decision that wasn’t really going to be good for her or her business. So I kind of stood up and said look, whether you decide now or later you need to know this because at the end of the day we are going to do business at some point in my career, and yours and I want to make sure that I have done all that I can do to steer you in the right direction and to be transparent with you, and the client did a 180 turnaround and thanked me and this person had a pretty big ego. So that was part of the risky stuff of telling this person, hey you are going down the wrong path here right, and did a 180 turnaround and we ended up getting the business, and she told me she really valued me doing that and you know providing the evidence that she needed to really understand why.

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