VIDEO 1: WHAT IS THE EXPLORE STAGE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Transcription

1 VIDEO 1: WHAT IS THE EXPLORE STAGE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Hello everyone. Welcome to the fourth class of the certification called Explore: Understanding Buyer Context. My name is Pete Caputa. VP Sales at HubSpot. I joined HubSpot in 2007 as a front line sales person where I used everything I ll share with you today. In 2009, I first became a sales manager where I taught this approach to my team - and we continued crushing our numbers. As I became Sales Director then Sales VP, many of my original team members went on to be top performers and sales managers who continue to teach their teams this process. They are now leading the HubSpot sales team to consistent over-performance. I m a big believer that the exploratory phase is the most important part of the selling process; the part where you truly learn how you can best help your prospects, whether they need your help and whether they want it. It s how you can open your prospects eyes to a better world -- when they ll start to believe that you can help them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals --- all within the right timeline and budget. This class will help you duplicate the success we ve had leveraging this exploratory process. But before we jump right in, let s talk about how this class fits into the full inbound sales methodology. The explore stage is the third part in the inbound sales methodology. Inbound salespeople explore the unique challenges and goals these qualified leads are pursuing to assess whether the salesperson s solution is the best fit for the qualified leads context. If so, Inbound salespeople convert these qualified leads into opportunities. So, how do inbound salespeople approach the exploratory process in the right way? 1

2 Here s a simple formula. The right outcome is the product of 3 things. Taking the right approach with the right attitude to figure out the right thing for the prospect. Let s first talk about what the right and wrong approaches look like. Legacy salespeople give presentations too early. They transition right into presentation mode as soon as a buyer expresses a teeny, tiny amount of interest or need. But, premature presentations rarely satisfy anyone. Whether they show it or not, empowered buyers eyes glaze over as they hear the same pitch they already read on the salesperson s website. These uncustomized pitches make legacy salespeople seem overeager and selfish - more interested in making a sale than finding out if they can solve the prospect s problems. Or even worse, the salesperson s generic pitch gets them disqualified because the prospect thinks it s not relevant to their situation. By falling back on a presentation or leading with it out of the gate, legacy salespeople put the burden (and the opportunity) on the prospect to determine whether there is a fit. Because these uncustomized pitches fail to fit the salesperson s solution into the buyer s context, they often do more harm than good. Prospects often humor these legacy salespeople, but rarely will they invite them back. In contrast, when a buyer expresses interest, Inbound salespeople transition into exploratory mode instead of pitch mode. Inbound salespeople recognize they don t have enough understanding of the buyer s context to deliver a personalized presentation yet. They leverage the buyer s initial interest to probe deeper into the buyer s specific goals, challenges, plans, fears and aspirations. In order to effectively pull off this approach, inbound salespeople have a different attitude when they re exploring opportunities with prospects. As experts at what they do, Inbound salespeople can assess whether they can help the buyer much more efficiently and more thoroughly than a buyer can. Through 2

3 the right questioning process and relevant positioning of value, inbound salespeople determine if they are the right solution for the prospect s needs. Inbound salespeople are experts who make themselves generously, but graciously available to help. They are like doctors - there to diagnose and recommend the right solution. They ask the questions that are sometimes difficult to ask (or answer), but are in the best interest of the prospect to consider. Inbound salespeople know their company s best practices and case studies inside and out. They know how their company has helped many companies similar to the ones they re calling. They ve seen many before and after scenarios - prospects who have struggled prior to buying their product or service who later succeeded because of it. This gives an inbound salesperson a unique and powerful perspective. They re capable of developing a plan to help their prospect achieve their goals. Something, their prospects can t do on their own. Inbound salespeople don t just ask questions so they can more easily make a sale. They also always do the right thing. The right thing means making an unbiased decision about whether they can really help a prospect. In the age of the empowered buyer, inbound salespeople know that it s critical to be honest with prospects about the suitability of their product or service. In both B2C and B2B selling, buyers can share their negative experiences online with each other. Negative news spreads quickly online and off. Legacy salespeople, on the other hand, are always eager to move a prospect to the next stage of their sale process - regardless of whether there s a fit. They make short term commissions their primary concern, they put their prospect s best interest on the back burner and their company s reputation on the line. Inbound salespeople do the opposite. They make it their job to figure out why a prospect shouldn't buy from them, as they figure out why they should. And they are very willing to walk away if they can't. By approaching opportunities correctly with the right attitude and with the intention of doing the right thing, the right outcome always happens. 3

4 On any individual call, any of the following 3 things might happen. determining a fit and getting buy in for next steps or determining it'll never be a fit or determining it s not a fit right now Determining when a buyer is not a good fit is just as good of an outcome as when they are. Why? Well, inbound salespeople avoid spending time with prospects who won t move forward - time they can redirect towards finding and helping buyers who need help, want help and can be helped. The next video will walk through how you can go about executing the explore stage to uncover more about the buyer s context. VIDEO 2: HOW DO INBOUND SALESPEOPLE EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES? Now that we ve talked about the right way to approach opportunities, let s talk very practically about how to do it. In order to execute this call, you ll have an exploratory conversation guide like this one that you can use. Using this guide, we ll walk you through a logical flow for an exploratory conversation so that you re in control, but your prospect feels like they are being empowered to make the right decisions. Of course, for the prospects who you can truly help, that ll mean making the decision to hire you. The first step in any call with a prospect should be rapport building. There s a lot written about building rapport and why you should do it. So, we won t rehash that here. Instead, let s jump into the meat of the call. After building rapport, recap what you learned and shared from previous conversations. 4

5 In your initial call, you should have set some expectations and secured buy-in for how this call would go. You might have said something like this. You: Based on the challenges you re facing and your interest in the insights I just shared, would you like to setup a call to explore how I might be able to help you? The Prospect answers: Yes. And you respond: Ok. I ll be prepared to discuss how we ve helped other companies with similar challenges. I ll provide some ideas that you might be able to immediately implement. If it makes sense, we can talk deeper about your goals, current plans and anything else that we might be able to help with. Does that sound like a good agenda? To get your follow up call off to a good start, the easiest thing to do is pick up where you left off with something like, The other day, when we spoke, you shared a few challenges that you re frustrated with. You mentioned that it was preventing you from achieving some important company goals. Can you expand a bit more on what you re dealing with? Many prospects will repeat what you discussed and expand on their challenges, giving you a bunch of detail. Getting them to open up right away is a great way to get started. You should ask follow up questions and repeat back some of these issues, so that they know you re listening effectively. By getting them talking first, you can ensure your agenda will be focused on the challenges they ve acknowledged. Next, you should set an agenda for the call. When setting your agenda, you should be leveraging what you discovered about them from your research, your initial conversation, and anything they just shared with you during the beginning of the conversation. 5

6 In order to set an agenda, recap what they shared with you. Here s an example of how that conversation could go: You might start, We can definitely cover that today. Before we get too far into that topic, though, I suggest we set an agenda. I know we booked [60] minutes today. Does that still work? Prospect would of course say, Yes. You might respond: Typically, a good goal for this call is to really figure out how I can best help you. I ve worked with [100s] of companies like yours who were struggling with the challenge you ve acknowledged. I can certainly share some advice based on my previous work with them. But, I find that everyone is a bit different. So, it usually makes sense for me to understand much more context about your goals, other challenges you ve faced or anticipate facing, any relevant plans you have in place, as well as timelines and other constraints you might have. Are you comfortable having that conversation today? Prospect: Yes. That sounds refreshing, actually, compared to most salespeople who just want to talk at me about how awesome they are. Salesperson: Great. I suggest we treat this conversation like a 2 way dialog. I have a bunch of questions for you. I m sure you ll have some questions that I will certainly answer for you. Then, at the end of the call we can decide whether it makes sense for us to continue discussing how we can more formally help you? Does that sound like a good plan to you? Prospect: Yes. You: Great. Can you start by sharing your goals for taking this call? Most of the time, if you ve done your research and had a great connect call, they will say yes and you ll be off and running. Next up, focus on their challenges first. 6

7 People generally don t make changes unless they have a challenge that impedes their progress. If you ve been in sales for awhile, you ve heard phrases like find the problem or identify the pain points. Most prospects won t respond well to Tell me about your pain points or Share all of your problems with me, but most are open to sharing their challenges. A small but powerful wording adjustment. It s best to find multiple challenges for every prospect. It helps to make a list of all of the challenges you solve most frequently for each of the personas, industries or roles you sell to, so that you can prompt your prospects. You might recall this from the Connect class. For example, let s go back to our recruiting firm example and conduct this exercise for Persona A, the VP of Sales at a technology company. The two most common challenges faced by Persona A were low quality of sales job candidates and bandwidth to recruit at the pace the company needed to hit their revenue goals. Here s a few ways that you can bring these types of challenges proactively: Many times, when I m speaking with a VP Recruiting like yourself in the tech industry, they have one of a handful of challenges. It s often x, but a lot of times it s y or z too. Do you ever struggle with any of these things? OR When I hear someone say they have x issue, that often means they are frustrated with [blank challenge]. How about you? Make sure you cover as many challenges as possible. When you start probing for challenges, it s critical to employ Active Listening. 7

8 In short, active listening is a four step process to not only ensure you ve listened, but to make sure your prospect feels heard and understood. The four steps are Truly listen to the prospect. Feed back the content and feeling of the prospect s words. Confirm you heard the prospect correctly. And Ask a relevant follow up question to further clarify your understanding of their situation. I ve written a full guide on Active Listening, which you can find on the resource section of this class page. At some point, you need to switch over from talking about challenges to talking about goals. Most people love talking about their goals. If you ve uncovered a handful of challenges, you can easily change that over to talking about goals. For example, you could ask, You ve shared with me that x, y and z challenges are most important. What goals are they preventing you from achieving? Another way to approach this is by asking them: If you fast forward 1 year from now and look back, what 1 or 2 goals will you have hoped you ve accomplished? You can also share goals that other prospects had that you helped them achieve. For example, I was speaking with a tech company like yours the other day and they mentioned that their goal was to achieve x. Do you have a goal that s similar to that? However you uncover goals, it s important to understand which challenges are preventing them from achieving which goals. For example, ask something like, I m wondering how much you think challenge z is preventing you from achieving goal z? 8

9 The reason to talk about the goals you help them achieve and challenges you can help them overcome is to get them thinking about the quantifiable business value you can provide. All b2b products and services usually help a company do one of three things: make more money, save money or avoid risk. You won t express your value in that way and they may not directly tell you these things out of the gate. But, you need to understand which of these 3 things your product helps them do, so that you can get them to acknowledge it. Once they ve shared an important goal, quantify it. For example, going back to the Tyre Recruiting example, you might ask, How many salespeople do you need and how many do you think you can hire if you do nothing differently? or If you lower the bar and hire more B or C players, how much underperformance would you expect? Both of these questions start to help you understand the financial downside you can help them avoid. When it comes time to having a budget conversation, you ll be much more prepared. Once you have a good understanding of their most important goals, it s time to switch over to their plans. Before you start suggesting solutions to their challenges, it s important to know how they re already thinking of doing things now. Cover the past and the future. For example, you could ask, How have you tried to overcome challenge x? Why didn t it work? and How do you plan to overcome challenge x? At some point, you want your prospect to acknowledge that they don t have a good solution to their challenges and that they re afraid they won t achieve their goals. Ask something like, Are you 100% confident that implementing this plan will help you achieve your goals? Then you want to ask them if they are open to new ways of approach their situation that might be better by saying something like, Sounds like you have some doubt. Would you be open to new ways of solving your challenges? 9

10 Once they confirm that they re worried, you should share some ways to alleviate their concerns. In this section, you should be ready to introduce the things that you do that can help them with their goals and challenges. Ideally, these are things that you are uniquely positioned to help them with - things your competition can t do. Just like your list of pre-determined challenges and goals, you should have a list of these things too. Here s some ways you can start this conversation: You could ask, Would you be open to hearing another way to approach solving challenge x? or Have you thought about trying to do b in order to achieve goal z? or Would it help if I showed you how other companies implemented c in order to eliminate challenge y? or Most companies who struggle with challenge d, find that solution x eliminates 95% of the problem. Do you think that would be an improvement for you? Make sure you confirm that they are indeed interested in implementing several of your solutions. If they aren t, figure out why. Once you discuss them, ask them if they are convinced that your suggestions and ideas will help them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals more assuredly. Now that you ve uncovered challenges and goals and started to reshape their plans, it s critical to understand timeline and urgency. Many companies or individuals have goals that are time-bound. They might have been assigned a timeline or they may have set one for themselves. Ask When do you need to achieve this goal?. If you are helping them solve some challenge - especially ones that are costing them money -, you can ask, How long are you prepared to deal with this challenge? From there, you are in a position to help them think through the steps required between now and the achievement of the goal. If you are selling something that requires an implementation period or just takes time and effort to see results, you should communicate the steps that occur after they sign the dotted line. 10

11 Timeline conversation transition easily into conversation about consequences. As a prospect talks through their timeline and plan, you should begin to understand how eager they are to change. If they are engaged heavily in planning, that means they are usually pretty serious about doing something different. Some sellers confuse challenges with consequences. They are different things, though. Consequences are usually really bad things that would result from inaction or making the wrong decision. For example if your gums bleed when you brush your teeth, it could mean you have gum disease, which leads to some really bad things - even losing your teeth if you don t go to the dentist and find out what s wrong. While bleeding gums might be a slightly uncomfortable challenge, losing teeth is a horrible consequence. It s best if you can get your prospect to verbalize the consequences of sticking with the status quo. You can ask, If you don t achieve this goal, what happens to the company? What happens to you? What happens to others (your boss, coworkers, or others)? or How important is overcoming this challenge to your company? On the flip side of negative consequences are positive implications. Implications are often implied within goals. For example, someone might receive a promotion if they achieve a goal. A company will grow if they hit their revenue targets. But, it s best to talk through these things and fully understand what happens next. If you can get your prospect thinking about what they will do next when they achieve their goal, overcome a challenge and/or avoid a consequence, they ll start to visualize what success looks like. What you want to hear are things like I m going to Disney World! Ask questions like, When you achieve goal x, what will you do next? or When you no longer have to worry about consequence y, how will you feel? or Who stands to gain the most when this plan works? Often times, this will help you understand personal motivations of different decision makers. 11

12 Next thing to cover is authority. Legacy salespeople typically ask authority questions first. But, it doesn t make much sense any more. Buying has radically changed in the last decade. With information at the fingertips of everyone, more junior people are tasked with doing research, meaning they are key, but certainly not the key people in making the decision. With more transparent workplaces, people are empowered to share company priorities, which means you can find out what s going on inside a company from more people. With executives busier and more risk-averse than ever, decisions must be blessed by more and more people, which means there are likely many people involved in making a decision. As a result, the right time to ask about decision making processes is later on after you understand goals, challenges, plans, timelines, consequences and implications. Understanding all of these things helps you better understand why different people are involved. For example, if consequences or implications impact different people, you now understand why different people are involved in the decision. Of course, there is no substitute for asking the questions. Here are some ways to find out. First, make sure your contact(s) are bought in by asking, Are you convinced that we can help you better than anyone else? Assuming you have buy-in ask, How have decisions been made like this in the past? and Who needs to be involved in this decision? You might want to be prepared with a suggestion such as, Usually, when my clients are making this decision, the following people need to be involved: CFO, VP Sales and the VP Sales Operations. Who covers those responsibilities for your firm? If you re selling to small business owners, it might sound more like, Do you usually discuss decisions like this with anyone in your family or other trusted advisors? The final thing to understand is how your prospect will fund any investment they must make to implement their new plan. 12

13 You should look at this from their perspective, not yours. To do that, consider any costs involved to execute their plan, not just the cost of your solution. Also, discuss time investments as well as financial investments requirements. It s critical that the budget conversations comes after the challenges, goals, consequences and plan section. In each of these conversations above, you ll get a feel for numbers that will impact what they should be willing to spend. Like in their goal conversation, you should have determined how much money they stand to gain or save. In the plan conversation, you can determine what the cost of the alternative plans they ve tried, considered - or are currently spending on - inferior solutions. Understanding the cost of challenges or consequences can also compel an investment that can eliminate or avoid them. At this point, ask a direct question about their financial situation. Use what you know about how much you can save them or make them. Something like, Based on our conversation, it seems like you are spending x dollars on a solution that s not helping you get where you want to go. What did you plan to invest so that you re 100% confident that you ll achieve your goals? Notice how there was no mention of price. There was no mention of discounting to close the deal. There was no If I can do this for you, will you move forward now? Those are ways that legacy salespeople arm wrestle their prospects into decisions. That s what salespeople say who are interested in their own short term goals, who are willing to compromise their long term relationships and who gamble their chances of receiving referrals. Inbound salespeople focus on guiding and advising prospects who value their differentiation. If you hastily covered goals, challenges, plans, consequences, you will find yourself in a position where prospects have the upper hand in negotiations on price. But, If you thoroughly explore the opportunities using this framework, you will find yourself in a position where you are the best choice for your prospect and their decision will be to pay your price or continue to deal with their challenges, miss their goals and face the consequences of a poor decision. 13

14 Now that we ve walked through what the entire exploratory conversation might sound like, here s how to easily remember this flow buying a framework and an acronym. I m sure you noticed a few words that I used over and over again in the exploratory conversation: Challenges, Goals, Plans, Timeline, Consequences, Implications, Authority, Budget. We abbreviate them as CGPT, CI & AB. Exploring new business opportunities requires you to absorb a lot of information. Having a framework helps you accomplish a few really important things: 1. Understanding: It ensures you don t miss details that are important in understanding your buyer s context. 2. Effective Communication: It helps you to have a structure for communicating your prospect s story back to them, helping them know that you heard them. 3. Advising: The framework helps you position your products and services as a solution to your buyer s challenges - given that their situation is at least somewhat unique compared to others. Let s walk through each of these and how to summarize your call and begin transitioning to the next step in the inbound selling process. Most qualification frameworks are designed to help salespeople quickly qualify or disqualify a prospect. They are designed for the narrow-minded, behind-quota or even greedy salespeople. You ve probably heard of BANT or maybe ANUM. While these are effective for identifying ready to buy prospects, they are not that effective in helping prospects understand the value of a differentiated offering or switching providers when they are happy. These also aren t great for prospects who just don t know they have a challenge yet. When discussed in the correct order, CGPT, CI and then BA, a salesperson can understand someone s entire context, regardless of whether they were looking for something or not. 14

15 This framework also helps you communicate what you ve learned back to your prospect. Since the framework includes buyer friendly terms and in a sequence that is logical to a buyer, you can use it to summarize your understanding of their context. By communicating it back to your prospect, you re aiding them in making the decision to buy from you. By asking them to reflect on their goals, challenges, plans and timelines, you re getting them to think critically about their situation. These four prospect-friendly words help you understand their unique context through a twoway dialog. Once you understand their context, you re in a much better position to start influencing their future. By suggesting new plans, helping them quantify consequences, thinking through decision making processes and setting a budget, you re helping them plan for a better future. It is a service to them instead of a tool for you. Once you ve covered everything with your prospect, verbally recap your understanding to your prospect. This helps them realize you fully understand their context. Here s how this recap might sound: Salesperson: Before we wrap up, would it be ok if I share my understanding of our conversation today? Prospect: Yes, That d be great. Salesperson: As I understand it, your goals are x, y and z. Challenge a and b currently stand in the way of achieving these goals. Your current plan is to implement a and b. But, you re worried about challenge c cropping up as you start to implement plan a. Additionally, you ve already tried a and it didn t work. So, you re worried that a and b just won t get you to your goal. Today, we discussed a few alternative plans that might be able to help you get to overcome all of your challenges and achieve your goals. Based on our discussion today, you seem confident that this new plan will get you where you need to go, help you avoid consequence c and do it all within a timeline and budget that that will be acceptable to the whole team. 15

16 Did I miss anything important? Prospect: That was an excellent recap. I appreciate how effectively you listened during this call and really helped me brainstorm solutions. I m really excited for next steps. Of course, it doesn t always go that easily. So, be prepared to go slow, confirm things as you say them and book more time if you are not on the exact same page. Another way to recap the conversation is to send an using the CGPT framework. It should say the exact same thing you said verbally. While you might have several similar conversations on a weekly basis, your prospect probably hasn t. Putting it in writing helps you get on the same page as well, if there are any lingering disconnects. Recap s also help keep everyone on the same page as time goes forward. It also helps your prospect with internal communication. Lastly, this framework will help you in the next step of the inbound selling methodology, the advise stage. Legacy salespeople give presentations that are generic. Inbound salespeople give presentations that are customized to the context of the buyer. You now have the buyer s full context that you can use to deliver a very customized presentation, proposal, contract or demonstration. Before you move on to that class, though, let s talk about the final step in your exploratory process: getting buy in and commitment to move forward. We already talked about how to summarize the conversation using the exploratory framework. Before doing that, you should ask your prospect what they took away from the call. You can ask, What were your take-aways from this call? Another favorite is, Was this call helpful for you? [pause] Why? Assuming you had an impact on their plan, you should hear something like, You ve definitely opened my eyes to better ways of accomplishing our goals. I m anxious to implement what we ve discussed. 16

17 Before suggesting next steps, ask What do you think we should do next? If you conducted the exploratory conversation thoroughly using the framework, they are likely to answer, Can we get started?. It might not be that simple, of course, if it s a more complex purchase. If you covered Authority well, you should understand their buying process at this point, of course. So if there are additional steps in it, now would be the time to ask or suggest how you can work together on those next steps. If you sell a product or a tangible service, you might be accustomed to putting a presentation together, developing an implementation plan or writing a proposal or contract. Whatever the next steps, now is the time to get commitment from them. Let s recap. To make it simpler for you, we ve put together an exploratory call guide. Work with your team to fill in the call guide with standard questions you might ask on your calls. Then, before each call, customize your plan based on what you already know about the prospect. On the call, have a plan for building rapport, recapping previous conversations and setting an agenda. Then, have questions prepared to uncover your prospect s context including their challenges, goals, plans, timeline, consequences, implications, authority and budget. At the end of your call, recap what you ve learned using the CGPCT, CI, AB framework. Then, get buy-in that you re the right solution for them and commitment to the right next steps. The next video will walk through an example of going through the explore stage. 17

18 VIDEO 3: EXAMPLE COMPANY #1 Welcome back folks. This is Mark Roberge. Let s put everything together from the Explore class into an example. We ll use the fictitious company from Class #1, Tyre Recruiting, and apply the Explore best practices to that company. The cornerstone to executing the explore stage is an exploratory guide. This guide outlines the key exploratory steps for the salesperson. These steps are largely based on the CGPT, CI, AB framework that Pete walked you through. The guide also suggests questions the salesperson can use at each step. Not all questions should be used. They are simply suggestions for the salesperson. The exploratory steps by Tyre recruiters, and corresponding entries in the exploratory guide, are as follows. The guide first directs Tyre recruiters to build rapport with the buyer. They may ask about the buyer s kids or sports or the weather in their area. Next they recap the last conversation. They may something like: As we discussed Julie, attrition in the sales team increased in the second half of Most of the attrition occurred in new sales hire segments. You want to improve the quality of sales hires in 2016 to turn this trend around. Do I have this information correct? Would you like to add anything? Next, the recruiters set the agenda. Like this: Typically, a good goal for this call is to really figure out how I can best help you. I ve worked with hundreds of companies like yours who were struggling with sales candidate quality. I can certainly share some advice based on my previous work with them. But, I find that everyone is a bit different. So, it usually makes sense for me to understand much more context about your goals, other challenges you ve faced or anticipate facing, any relevant plans you have in place, as well as timelines and other constraints you might have. Are you comfortable having that conversation today? 18

19 Then they explore the buyer s challenges. Many times, when I m speaking with sales leaders like yourself in the pharmaceutical industry, they have a handful of challenges. Most of the time the struggle finding salespeople fast enough to meet their hiring goals. But sometimes they struggle with finding the right quality or getting their cost per hire in check. Do you ever struggle with these challenges? The recruiters move on to explore the buyer s goals. They may ask: You ve shared with me that decreasing cost per hire is important. What goals are they preventing you from achieving? Then the they explore the buyer s plans to achieve the goals. For example: How have you tried to increase the pace of sales hiring? Why didn t it work? They move on to exploring the buyer s timeline: How long can you live with the cost per hire being where it is? During the next step, exploring negative consequences, the recruiter may ask the buyer: If you don t achieve this goal, what happens to the company? What happens to you? What happens to others, like your boss or co-workers? Similarly, they explore positive implications: When you achieve have successfully hit your sales hiring goals, what will you do next? Tyre recruiters close out the conversation by exploring authority and budget. For authority, they may ask: How have decisions been made like this in the past? For budget, they may ask: It sounds like if you do not increase the pace of sales hiring, you will finish at less than 80% of the company s annual sales goal. What do you plan to invest going forward so that you re 100% confident that you ll hit the sales target? 19

20 VIDEO 4: EXAMPLE COMPANY #2 Welcome back everyone. I m Dan Tyre, Sales Director at HubSpot. In this video, we ll resume talking about CoGrow Marketing. As we re now covering the explore section of the training, this video will focus on how CoGrow Marketing s senior new business person explores opportunities with their mid-sized professional service firm prospects. We ll put everything together from the Explore class into this example using the exploratory call guide. This guide outlines the key exploratory steps for the salesperson. These steps are largely based on the CGPT, CI, AB framework that Pete walked you through. You should build a custom version of this guide for your salespeople and they should customize the guide before each call based on what they already know about the prospect. Of course the guide suggests questions the salesperson should use at each step of the call or meeting, but not all questions should be used. They are simply suggestions to help guide the conversation. The exploratory steps by CoGrow Marketing, and corresponding entries in the exploratory guide, are as follows. The guide first directs CoGrow s new business people to build rapport with the buyer. Since they had a common connection, they could ask about that. They could also bring up the blog post they shared and ask how it performed. Since they are calling on a law firm that focuses on local business, and they know that they re a chamber member, they can ask them if they went to the chamber event the other night. Next they recap the last conversation. That may something like: As we discussed on our initial call, you aren t happy with your current website. You and your partners feel that it does not accurately reflect the scope, quality and impact that your work has. It s also just not bringing you new clients. Worse, you re losing prospects because smaller, nimbler and more web-savvy firms are being found online instead of you. Their marketing is working. But yours is not. You are interviewing firms like ours to figure out how you can fix thes problem. How you 20

21 can turn your website and blog into a magnet for new business. How is that recap? Would you like to add anything? Next, the new business person sets the agenda. Like this: Typically, a good goal for this call is to really figure out how I can best help you. I ve worked with hundreds of companies like yours who were struggling with sales candidate quality. I can certainly share some advice based on my previous work with them. But, I find that everyone is a bit different. So, it usually makes sense for me to understand much more context about your goals, other challenges you ve faced or anticipate facing, any relevant plans you have in place, as well as timelines and other constraints you might have. Are you comfortable having that conversation today? Then they explore the buyer s challenges. Many times, when I m speaking with partners at law firms like yourselves, they have one or more of a handful of challenges. Most of the time, they ve dabbled with internet marketing over the years, but have never really found success. They re tired of spending money on the next shiny object and tired of redoing their website every 2 years without any kind of measurable ROI. Most of the time they re blogging, but not really getting much benefit from it. And sometimes, they have a web company that s doing some social media, seo and pay per click advertising for them, but they feel like it s a wasted expenditure as nothing really ever seems to improve. Have you ever struggled with any of these issues? CoGrow moves on to explore the connection between the law firm s challenges and their short and long term goals. They may say: Let s step back a bit. Now that we know there are a bunch of issues with marketing the business, does it make sense to talk about your sales and marketing goals? Often, we can work backwards from your goals to figure out the right plan. They might ask some follow up questions to cover goals more fully like, As a partner in the firm, do you have specific client acquisition goals you are responsible for achieving? AND Have you calculated exactly how many website leads you need in order to generate 1 new client? OR Have you calculated the number of leads you need to generate in a year? They might ask a more open ended question that ensures they don t miss any goals important to the buyer. 21

22 Something like, Are there other goals you re hoping to accomplish with your marketing efforts? Then the they explore the buyer s plans to achieve their goals. For example, they ll try to uncover what they ve done already that has worked and hasn t worked by asking something like What are you doing now regularly that helps you acquire clients? and What s working well amongst those things? OR What have you tried in the past that hasn t worked? and What are you thinking of doing next? Then, since they re an agency that offers inbound marketing services, they ll ask a series of questions about how they plan to grow traffic, grow lead volume and turn leads into clients at a higher rate. For example, they might start with an open ended question like, What are you doing to get more traffic to your website? From there, they might drill in a bit to ask questions about blogging. For example, Can more people in your firm contribute to the blog? and Can you blog more frequently? and Are there subject matter experts who could contribute if someone interviewed them and then wrote posts for them? and Have you considered outsourcing some of the writing to external subject matter experts? From there, they might bring up search engine optimization and ask things like, Do you create content that is optimized to rank in search engines? If so, how do you monitor and improve rankings? They ll ask about social media too. Something like, How does your firm manage social media marketing and social selling activities? Then drill into online advertising by asking, Have you thought of doing online advertising with google and LinkedIn? Next up, CoGrow s new business person will bring up converting traffic into leads. They ll transition by asking, Since traffic for traffic s sake doesn t help anyone, what are you doing to convert more of your traffic to leads? They might remind them of how they found their agency and ask something like, You had to complete a form to downloaded an ebook of ours. Have you considered creating an ebook and using it to capture leads on your site? They ll ask about whether they can do a webinar or seminar, or if they re willing to offer a free consultation to qualified b2b clients with a need? 22

23 From there, they ll talk about nurturing leads, connecting to leads and turning opportunities into clients. There s a lot they could dive into here and professional services firms are usually awful at much of this. But, they ll start with an open ended question again, What are you doing to convert leads into sales? They might ask 1. Are you doing an newsletter now? OR 2. Do you nurture leads at all based on the content they re reading on your site? OR 1. Do you have someone dedicated to calling leads? OR 2. Do you have multiple approaches to connecting with them? OR 3. Does every partner and associate schedule time, then make calls on a regular basis? AND 1. What does your sales process look like? OR 2. How do you track your current funnel? OR 3. Do you have weekly meetings to review pipeline and brainstorm how you can move deals forward? Once they discover that the law firms plan is pretty incomplete, they ll ask something like, Sounds like you are not doing much of this stuff regularly. Is it because you don t know that these are best practices or because you don t think it s all necessary? And then in order to gauge whether they are really open to taking their advice, they ll ask Have you thought about using an agency like ours to help you build a solid plan? How about an agency that can help you execute this or even execute much of it for you? Usually, all of these things are new to their prospective buyers, so they ll ask, Would it help if I showed you how other firms have used all of these approaches to grow their traffic, leads and sales? Once they ve done a thorough job of reviewing what a good marketing and sales plan looks like, and get buy-in that they want help, they ll move on to talking about timeline. They ll ask What happens if you don t start generating more new clients 23

24 by the end of the year? or Do you have a date when you need to start generating x # of leads? Once they have a firm timeline that seems important, they ll ask about consequences of inaction. For example, If you don t achieve this goal, what happens to the company? or How important is overcoming these challenges to your company? They ll make sure to ask about what happens to people personally as well, since partners and associates are usually committed to building their firm for life, they ll ask What happens to you? and What happens to others (your boss, coworkers, etc)? Uncovering consequences helps CoGrow determine how critical it is for the law firm to do something different. But, they also talk about the positive implications of achieving their goals. For example, they ll ask, When you start hitting your client acquisition goals again, what will you do next? and When you no longer have to worry about losing clients to other local firms, how will you feel? From there, CoGrow needs to understand how the law firm will make a decision. They ll ask, How have decisions been made like this in the past? and Who needs to be involved in this decision? Since they know many professional services firms will get multiple quotes from multiple agencies, they usually ask about whether there is a buying committee, whether they are talking to multiple firms and whether they will vote on who to hire. So, if their buyer is not being forthright, CoGrow usually suggests who should be involved by saying, Usually, when my clients are making this decision, the following people are involved: multiple senior partners, the associates who will drive the ongoing work with our firm and the partner who manages the budget for outsourced services. Often times, there s a vote. How do you do it? Who covers those responsibilities for your firm? Once they ve identified decision making processes, they will discuss how much their law firm prospect is thinking about investing. With the budget conversation, it s important to stress both the upside and downside of inaction. So, they ll preface their budget questions with a recap of why their buyer is even considering an investment. Something like, It sounds like if you do not increase the pace of client acquisition, you run the risk of shrinking your firm. With 25 employees on the 24

25 payroll, this will be fairly devastating to the family culture you ve built over the decades. You also run some personal risk of not being able to retire because your younger associates may jump ship to join growing firms where they stand a better chance of building a career. Is that right? From there, they will ask more direct questions about budget with questions like, 1. Do you have budget set aside to avoid these issues? 2. What do you plan to invest going forward so that you re 100% confident that you ll hit your goals? 3. If I were to come back with a plan that projects we can get you to 5 new clients/quarter, what would you be willing to invest now? Once they ve confirmed challenges, goals, plans, timeline, consequences, implications, authority and budget, CoGrow will recap what they ve learned verbally and in an after they return from the meeting. Before they end the meeting, however, they will get buy-in for the next steps. They ll ask something like, If we can put together a plan that gets you to the goals we ve discussed in the timeline and budget you just shared, when would you want to get started? The next step is the Advise section. We ll talk about how CoGrow gets final commitment and buy-in in the next video. This is also the final stage of the methodology where we ll wrap up the CoGrow example. 25