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Folks, if you re liking what you re getting from 30MPC, the number one way you can support us is by subscribing to our newsletter.
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Every week, you only get two emails.
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On Monday, you get a content rollup of everything that dropped last week, and on Fridays, I pick one topic and I personally write a deep dive on things like how to cold call, how to run a discovery call, or even how to hire an AE.
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So if you re liking what you re getting here, take two seconds, go to the show notes, you ll see a button to subscribe to our newsletter, or you can go to 30MPC.com backslash newsletter and do it there.
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We ll catch you soon.
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Cheers.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes to President s Quote.
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My name is Armand Farouk.
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I m here with my co-host, Nick Zygowski.
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And today, for our round two, we have the man of humbling disclaimers.
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We have Charles Mulbauer of CB Insights.
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Nick, why should people listen again?
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I m a little bit biased, but Charles Maubauer taught Armand and I a technique called the humbling disclaimer.
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And we legitimately, three weeks after we recorded with Charles, used the humbling disclaimer to negotiate almost $100,000 off of an apartment building we bought.
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So I don t know, if you want to get better at negotiating and discovery, give this one a listen.
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I feel a little bit uncomfortable saying this, but three, two, one, please listen.
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Today s tip to optimize your sales day is brought to you by Boomerang.
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If you get an email and the action required on that email is going to take you less than two minutes to do, do it on the spot.
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It s not worth adding it to your to-do list, having to look at the item, remember what you need to do.
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That s going to take you more than two minutes anyway.
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So do it on the spot, get it off your plate.
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Now we documented our best templates and tips to help you optimize your sales day with our friends at Boomerang.
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And you can get that documentation for free at the link in the show notes.
0
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This actionable competitive tactic from Clue is the trap question.
0
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Steer discovery toward the winning zone.
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If we re competing with a podcast that has no newsletter or webinar series, we might ask a trap question like, how do you figure out if those podcast listeners are making their way to your mailing list?
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And when you re in a head-to-head, there s no better way to prepare for your next competitive battle than with our trap questions and battle card templates from our friends at Clue.
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The link s in the show notes.
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Today s prospecting tip is brought to you by Supercadence by Influ2, which helps cut through the noise of oversaturated prospecting channels.
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And if you want to get your prospect s attention, you ve got to do stuff a robot would never do.
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One of my favorite plays is getting warm introductions to the accounts that I m targeting via salespeople who work at that account.
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Salespeople help salespeople.
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Another approach could be using Supercadence to run SDR ads to put a face to the name.
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Now, we worked with Influ2 to put together a special toolkit on ways to humanize your outreach, which you can get for free at the link in the show notes.
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Thanks.
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Here s my secret to being a sales superhuman.
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It s auto reminders for everything.
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If I expect any reply from a prospect, I press command H and superhuman pops it right back into my inbox.
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If I don t get a reply in two days, that means if you handle an objection, if you suggest times for a meeting, or if you ask for cuts back on red lines, always create a two day reminder task and assume they will not reply.
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So if you want to follow up on time, every time you can get a free month of superhuman by checking it out in the show notes.
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Let s roll.
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Charles, welcome back to the show.
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You know that we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways, so let s get your three.
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Actionable takeaway number one.
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It is more important to raise problems that your prospect may or may not have instead of asking them to tell you their problems or asking them to uncover.
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their problems for you.
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One way to do that is to say, as you can imagine, we speak with a lot of XYZ teams on a daily basis, or I do, and they share anywhere from one to five or six big things that they re either looking to accomplish or things that they re concerned with or frustrated about.
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It s either one, two, three, four, and five.
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I m curious to what extent any of those strike a chord with you at all, and if not, what do you think comes to mind?
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Great.
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What s number two, Charles?
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Number two are listening triggers.
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There are four or more listening triggers that an AE can pay attention to that should trigger them to stay on point and stay on topic with the prospect and keep the thread.
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One listening trigger that we have here at CB Insights is if the prospect hints to a problem or a goal that sounds something like, Nick,
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we might have an issue with coverage in a certain area of the health care sector.
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So instead of moving on, that might is a hint to a problem.
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And that gives me the right to say, when you say you might have a problem, how do you mean?
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Or when you say you might have a problem, can you tell me a little bit more about that?
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That gives you the right to then have the prospect tell you what that means.
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And then that ll help themselves build the problem for them for you.
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Round us out, Charles.
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What s number three?
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Number three, it s really cool to ask a prospect how they came up with stuff.
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In other words, if a prospect shares a problem with you that they figured out they have, it s cool to ask them, how did you figure that out?
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How did you know you have that problem?
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When did you realize you actually had that problem?
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Curious what happened?
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Usually that empowers them to actually tell you a story.
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And when you get a process as account executives we re actually taught to tell stories.
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But what s not taught in sales as much.
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is the power to have your prospect tell you a story about something bad that happened to them.
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And that question helps you do that.
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Alrighty, Charles, we ran out of time on the last episode because it was so good.
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And so let s do a recap for everybody before we start digging in here.
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I know you re all about things like the humbling disclaimer.
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Can you do a quick definition recap of the humbling disclaimer before we keep the interview going?
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Absolutely.
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A humbling disclaimer is there to take your insecurity that you might have about asking a difficult question and sharing your insecurity with your prospect, to give your prospect the chance to want to save you from that.
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So an insecurity might sound like any one of the following.
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Armand, I feel a little awkward asking this question, but Nick, I feel a little bit out of bounds asking this question, however,
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Armand, I was brought up as a child not to assume anything, so I apologize, but it sounds like what you re saying is right.
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So I can come up with many humbling disclaimers, but any humbling disclaimer, a.k.a.
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anything you feel weird about asking, I feel really weird asking you a direct question.
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But I was wondering if and that gives the prospect a chance to say something like or to feel something like Armand, don t worry about it.
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That s not such a big deal to ask that.
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And that allows a prospect to be more honest with you, to lean in and to maybe tell you something that they wouldn t have told you otherwise.
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So one of the things I have a hard time with sometimes is if you take a solution like CB Insights, you sell data on the venture space so that people never lose another deal.
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I can always ask them, how are you sourcing deals?
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How long does it take?
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Yada, yada.
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Those are easy questions to ask.
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But I m afraid to ask the partner of a venture firm
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well, how many deals you lose last month that you should have gotten first, right?
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And so what might be a way I use the humbling disclaimer on some of those really tough, quote, unquote, impact questions to soften them up?
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Yeah, it s a good question.
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I find that just in general, impact questions could be one of the most awkward questions to ask somebody.
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Because if I ask an impact question in a very thoughtless way, it s not going to land well with the prospect.
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So I ll give a very simple example.
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If I said, Nick, out of curiosity, what s the impact to your role if you don t hit your quota?
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And you d be like, don t ask me.
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What do you mean, what s the impact?
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That s a stupid question.
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Who doesn t know the impact?
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So there are a couple of different ways to ask the impact.
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One of them is actually raising potential impacts that I would know already to the prospect to let them know I already know what the obvious impacts are.
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This is version one.
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Version one might sound like, Nick, I m not sure how to ask this question using a humbling disclaimer, so pardon me, but besides the obvious impacts,
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to your role if you don t hit your quota, like losing your job potentially, or maybe the morale is low for a while and you re afraid of not hitting your quota the next quarter.
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Besides those obvious impacts, what else might come to mind as something that could be a severe impact to your role besides some of those things?
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That s a more thoughtful way of asking that while using a humbling disclaimer.
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Another way to ask an impact question while using a humbling disclaimer
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would be to ask the prospect if they have sat back and thought about what the impact might be.
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It s a thoughtful way to ask that.
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That could sound something like Armand, I
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recognize this question may be a little bit out of bounds.
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I m not really sure exactly how to ask it.
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But when we talk about the data that you guys haven t had for some time now, I m really curious.
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Have you guys sat back at all and thought about what the impact could be to the team if you don t have this data in the next six months?
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And then I end it with another disclaimer by saying, I m just really curious to understand what it s like to be in your world.
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So sometimes if I m asking a very sensitive question like that, and again, sensitive questions in the impact topic happen more often than not, or the sensitivity is higher in the impact topic more often than not, I ll use a disclaimer at the end of the question, also kind of like a disclaimer sandwich, just to make sure that it lands well.
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So those are two versions to do that.
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And one of the things that this is sort of leading to is there are times where the prospects are giving you these one-word answers, these two-word answers, right?
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And it s like, how do you do this?
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Huh?
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Yeah, spreadsheets.
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How do you do this?
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Huh?
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Let me look it up on Google.
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And it s not going anywhere.
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And so what do I do to open those folks up and get them talking more and discovery when they re just being a crab?
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The best way to prevent that from happening is obviously in the upfront contract and stuff like that, just to make sure that they know what s coming.
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Because when a prospect doesn t know what s coming, they re going to react that way.
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I find that in my personal relationships, that when people don t give you the reasons why they re about to ask a question, then the question by nature comes off as interrogative.
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So you can prevent that.
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Sometimes a prospect won t know why you re asking a question, and therefore they won t answer it thoughtfully.
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But if they know why you re asking a question, they ll be more inclined to answer it thoughtfully.
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That s one thing.
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The second thing is, of course, if you re preparing them and you re up on contract, they re going to ask a lot of questions.
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Then they ll be also more inclined to answer those more openly.
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So those are two ways to help prevent those.
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But ultimately, if I m not able to prevent someone from being short with me, I m going to call it out and put myself down either in some sort of self-deprecating manner while using humbling disclaimers left and right.
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So I might even say,
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Armand, I appreciate the information you re sharing with me.
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I could be way off here, so I really apologize, but I m getting the sense that what we re looking at is not that interesting for you, just given that it doesn t seem like you re comfortable sharing information with me.
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I could be way off there, but tell me if I m crazy.
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So I m going to do something like that.
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Is that 100 percent?
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Is that always going to land well?
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No, but there s a high chance that that will land well.
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So can you talk about how we inoculate ourselves against getting into a situation like that?
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You sort of alluded to the upfront contract and giving the prospect a sense of, hey, here s what s coming.
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Here s what to expect.
1
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So can you talk through the different elements of the upfront contract and what it looks like to put some safeguards around that conversation?
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Yeah sure we will we use here at CB insights something that we actually learned from Sandler and we like to give credit where credit is due.
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So we use a not a not stands for appreciate naturally of course or obviously and typically.
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I ll just never repeat that one more time appreciate naturally of course typically goes like this.
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Hey Armand appreciate the time here glad we could connect you have a hard stop in our yeah.
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Great.
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Purpose of the call is to determine whether or not we are fit to ultimately work together and whether or not we can help you, let s say with CB Insights, whether or not we can help you track startups and emerging technology.
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Naturally, you re probably going to have a lot of questions for me, assuming this is interesting for you.
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And of course, I m probably going to have a lot of questions for you too, some of which may be direct, just to make sure I fully understand what we can and cannot help you with.
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SPEAKER_03
Would that be okay?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that should be fine.
1
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Cool.
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And T is typically, which is one of two outcomes.
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And typically at the end of this call, Nick, they re really one of two outcomes.
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Either you really hate what we have to say, and there s really zero value, which is not a problem, or there could be enough value here.
1
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And this is somewhat compelling for us to talk about next steps.
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And we ll talk about next steps towards the end of the call.
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Does that work for you?
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Yep.
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So that type of upfront contract,
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At least the middle, the prospect has given you permission to ask questions because they re going to have questions and you re going to have questions.
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And that s cool.
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And they won t forget that.
1
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So the piece, you kind of brushed over it in the beginning.
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You talked about, do you have a hard stop at one o clock?
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And I posted about this on LinkedIn recently.
1
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I posted about the upfront contract and somebody commented and they said, why would you ever give the prospect a chance to cut the call short and say they have a stop sooner?
1
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How would you respond to that, Charles?
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It s an understandable question.
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The way I would respond to that is the more you give prospects an out or a say, the better they will respond.
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And if you give them an out or a say, hey, is a hard stop okay or not?
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And they say it s not, you want them to be honest with you, don t you?
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So if it s not okay, that s okay too.
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It s okay if it s a bad time.
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Because if they re interested, they want to talk more.
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And if you say, I actually have 15 minutes.
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SPEAKER_03
So can we talk about in 15 minutes?
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You say, sure, we can definitely talk in 15 minutes.
1
SPEAKER_03
We just won t be able to get to probably what you want to get to on the demo.
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But it s no problem.
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Let s talk about what you might find interesting.
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And I ll tell you a little bit about where we can and cannot help.
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We ll take it from there.
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So we just want honesty is really what we want.
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And when we have honesty from the prospect, we always know where we re at.
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I m going to say one thing.
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Great account executives.
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are not afraid to know where they stand.
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They re just not afraid to know.
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Even if the prospect doesn t want to talk more and they tell you that, they re just not afraid to know where they really, really stand.
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And as long as you re not afraid, you ll get the prospect to be honest with you.
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And that s the benefit of doing stuff like that.
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As a new seller, sometimes I d get in a discovery call and I d get really, really nervous and I d freeze.
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And my brain would not have, like, I wouldn t know what question to ask to keep the conversation going and me learning more.
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Like, I literally didn t even know, like, what is the first question I should ask.
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which might be different depending upon your sale, but like, I would get into meetings, I d be like, so, and I d like sort of wait for the customer to start the business conversation.
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And that might work for somebody like Armand, who s like kind of directing to the point and they ll get into business sooner.
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But for me, because like, I will make some small talk in the beginning, it just ends up dragging out and out and out.
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And then if I m selling to someone like Armand, they hate me because I ve talked about the weather for 10 minutes.
1
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Hey guys, this is Armand from the future.
1
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We just got off recording with Charles Mollbauer for a round two, and he went through a killer three, four, five minute monologue on how to run a discovery call from beginning to end.
1
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And so we slice it up, dice it up so that you have one five minute playbook on how to do discovery.
1
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Here it goes right now.
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Cheers.
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So the quote-unquote small talk happens before the upfront contract, but the small talk that we try to encourage here at CB Insights is actual discussion about something relevant to their team, ideally.
1
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So, you know, by the way, before, hey, glad we could connect, Armand.
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Do you have a hard stop?
1
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Yeah.
1
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By the way, before we kick off the conversation, I just wanted to let you know
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I noticed that you guys did invest in this company, or you just came out with this product, and I thought that was really cool.
1
SPEAKER_03
I don t know to what extent that was something that you were involved in.
1
SPEAKER_03
I was curious to understand, thought I d ask, or having a conversation when I m present.
1
SPEAKER_03
Oh, that s really interesting.
1
SPEAKER_03
I didn t know that.
1
SPEAKER_03
That s so cool.
1
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I think what you guys do is really cool.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, that s great.
1
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Purpose of the call right now, I m getting to the upfront contract.
1
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Upfront contract.
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After the upfront contract, this is basically we re doing a roadmap now.
1
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Once we have the upfront contract settled,
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We ll say, by the way, was there anything else you wanted to accomplish from this call outside of the agenda that I had?
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Yes or no?
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What is it?
1
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Cool.
1
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By the way, I m not sure what your familiarity is with CB Insights, if at all.
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Usually they don t have any.
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Then I might ask for permission.
1
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Cool.
1
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Would it be helpful if I gave you just some quick context on a high level about what we do and then we ll take it from there?
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Yep.
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The high level context is like 25 seconds max.
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So that might sound something like, cool, what we do is very simple.
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We help ensure that you guys have peace of mind around never missing a startup or giving you a high probability of not missing a startup, as well as ensuring that you have all the early warning signals to catch the right startup to spend time with so it doesn t have a negative impact on your build by partner or other strategy internally.
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So that s a little bit about what we do.
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And now I m now kicking it off to the prospect.
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Every innovation team that we talked to is a little bit different.
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Curious to understand a little bit about how your team operates and how you guys track startups and emerging tech.
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SPEAKER_03
Cool.
1
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I scratched the itch.
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Now they re telling me a little bit about what they do.
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So I want to know, one, what do you do?
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Two, I want to know, how do you do it?
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Can you help me understand how you guys actually track startups and emerging tech?
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Just really curious to understand.
1
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They re going to tell me how they do things.
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I, of course, am going to ask a number of clarifying questions.
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Oh, does that mean this?
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Does that mean that?
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Are you separating this?
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Are you separating that?
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Oh, got it.
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After those two points, I am now going to hammer home the raising problems question, which I did at the beginning of this conversation, which sounds like,
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At the beginning of the call, right, just so you know, I speak with a lot of other teams.
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This is what they tell me.
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These are the problems that they have.
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And I m curious to what extent either that resonates with you, and if not, what comes to mind, or you can say, I m curious to what extent that surprises you at all.
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I like asking that question.
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Curious to what extent that surprises you.
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Because if they re in the game, they re gonna be like, no, that doesn t surprise me at all.
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And if they bite on a problem, now I can say,
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I have to assume maybe you ve tried to address that on your own and maybe either you try to, and you couldn t find the right solution or you try to, but realize didn t have enough resources internally to do it.
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SPEAKER_01
So maybe that s why you re talking to me, but before you ever spoke to me, like, what d you try to do before that?
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So I want to get a sense of like, not just what the problem is, but yeah, this is how we realized it.
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This is how long it s been happening.
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And this is what we tried to do about it, but it sucked.
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And so that s why I m talking to you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So as the accountant, I always want to know, why are you talking to me still?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why are you still on the phone with me?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why, why, why?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so once I have all that information, then, and I peel the onion a little bit, I might even ask an impact question when I m ready, but I want to get at least a fair understanding as to what their pain is.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll be like, oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it s sometimes a prospect will tell me a story when I ve asked them, how did you figure out that that s been an issue for you?
2
SPEAKER_01
They ll tell me a story.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I love when a prospect tells me a story because that s like, it s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
How often does a prospect tell me an actual story that happened to them where they, a competitor found something ahead of them.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, wow, that sucks.
2
SPEAKER_01
I d be like, yeah, it was terrible.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now there s like a bond.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
But now I can move on.
2
SPEAKER_01
The way I ll move on and say, cool, I appreciate you sharing all that information with me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll ask for permission again.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll say, would it be helpful if I can give you some context on where we might be helpful here and give you some understanding as to where we could help you potentially?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then I m going to go into a greater, more tailored pitch.
2
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned A, B, and C. We do D, E, and F, and this is where we might be able to help you.
2
SPEAKER_01
After that, I m going to pause and say, I ll pause here and see what questions you might have for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not going to say any questions you might have for me on that.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like thoughtless.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I m going to pause here.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m curious what questions you might have for me, a.k.a.
2
SPEAKER_01
because who wouldn t have questions on what I just said.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now I m going to give the prospect a chance to ask me a few questions.
2
SPEAKER_01
One, two and three.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll answer it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll answer it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll answer it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then we ll move on to.
2
SPEAKER_01
Great.
2
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate the questions that you re asking me, Armand.
2
SPEAKER_01
The challenge here is.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re just talking about how we might be able to help you.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you re probably really going to want to see it for yourself to make a full determination as to where we can actually help you and where we can t.
2
SPEAKER_01
I guess, pretending that we can help you, do you think it would make sense for us to show you how we can help you on another call?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I m doing a little pretending, bringing the future to the present, which we ll talk about.
2
SPEAKER_01
Assuming we can help you, do you think it would make sense to talk more about that on another call?
2
SPEAKER_01
Instead of saying, I think we should talk on another call.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think we should.
2
SPEAKER_01
I d love to see how we can help you on another call.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying I think, I love, we should.
2
SPEAKER_01
That language is gone from my vocabulary.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s you told me this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Assuming we can help you, do you think it would make sense for us to talk again?
2
SPEAKER_01
And if they say yes, great.
2
SPEAKER_01
If they say no, that s another conversation.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s kind of like the roadmap of any just discovery call.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course, you have discovery and demos that happen at the same time, but it s still going to have a similar roadmap.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it would be helpful for the audience to recap like the order of operations that you just went through.
2
SPEAKER_00
And dude, every time someone asks me, like, how do I get started on discovery?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m literally going to send them those five minutes of monologue.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cause you literally just walked through a discovery call.
2
SPEAKER_00
So step one, when I was selling insurance, we used to call this the approach.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whereas the first thing you re asking them after you set up that upfront contract is you re asking them, Hey, how much do you know about CB insights?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because if you just start pounding them with this, go questions are gonna be like, I don t even know what you do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
From there, you might give them the 20 second, very short, here s what we do type of thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So after you know how much context they have about CBN sites, and you ve given them a little spiel, you ask them how they re doing things today.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right?
2
SPEAKER_00
From that point on, you re not going into these crazy impact questions.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re raising issues.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you re not making them cringe like crazy or anything like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you re saying here are the six different things we see when we typically see a situation like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do you think?
2
SPEAKER_00
Right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So what we ve gone through is we ve gotten the context.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve gotten their process today.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve raised issues, not as the message, but as the messenger.
2
SPEAKER_00
They ve said, hey, this one or this one is interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so you ve now identified an issue.
2
SPEAKER_00
From there, now you re in humbling disclaimer land.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re digging deeper into that problem.
2
SPEAKER_00
And ideally you start to get them to tell a story, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so like, how d you come to this thing in the first place?
2
SPEAKER_00
From there, now you can start using the humbling disclaimers we talked about earlier in the episode around impact questions.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can actually start bringing that to a high level problem.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I want to say other thing when you, when you are in humbling disclaimer land, you re also in bringing the past to the present land.
2
SPEAKER_01
You give me a problem and I want to talk about the past.
2
SPEAKER_01
When did you come up with that?
2
SPEAKER_01
How did you figure that out?
2
SPEAKER_01
Did you ever do anything about it?
2
SPEAKER_01
It sounds like you tried to do something about it, but you didn t have enough resources.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that what I m hearing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
You might even ask, I recognize this question may be out of bounds and a little weird, but.
2
SPEAKER_01
To what extent do you feel that this problem is big enough to actually potentially invest to solve?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know how to ask that correctly.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I figured I d ask that because it sounds like you haven t really invested any capital of your own to solve that in the past.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I thought I d ask.
2
SPEAKER_01
Curious how you think about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Curious how you think about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Anyway I think I got a little bit out of hand there.
2
SPEAKER_01
But yeah you re in the you re in the bringing the past to the present land.
2
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in a second, I want to talk about your other thing, which is bringing the future to the present.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so we bring in the past to the present, we re getting into the impact of the situation.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then eventually you re doing a recap.
2
SPEAKER_00
We do a, this is what I m hearing, ABC, we do DEF, et cetera, et cetera.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you re saying, Hey, we got five minutes left.
2
SPEAKER_00
Here s the challenge is you re going to want to see this thing before you actually make a decision.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m just going to delineate after bringing the past to the present.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then I m going to say, would it be OK if I can tell you, would it be helpful if I share how we might be able to help you?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is how we can help you.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll pause here and see what questions you might have for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s this?
2
SPEAKER_01
What s that?
2
SPEAKER_01
What s this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s this.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s that.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Great.
2
SPEAKER_01
By the way, Armand, we have like five minutes left.
2
SPEAKER_01
The challenge here is it sounds like we might be able to help you.
2
SPEAKER_01
challenge here is you probably want to see it to make a full determination, pretending that we can help you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think it would make sense to talk about that on another call?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I just wanted to delineate those steps.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sorry if I cut you off there.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, you re good.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then from there, we already have the next steps.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so we ve brought the past to the present.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have our full discovery playbook.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do we do to bring the future to the present?
2
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
I love bringing the future to the present.
2
SPEAKER_01
As an account executive, it s your
2
SPEAKER_01
termination and judgment call from a professional standpoint to determine when you feel in your gut it makes sense to bring the future to the present.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s assume you feel OK doing it before you schedule that next call.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
When would you like to have the next call.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tuesday 330.
2
SPEAKER_01
Awesome.
2
SPEAKER_01
By the way, just out of curiosity, what I didn t ask is, I wasn t sure, assuming, let s pretend we end up working together.
2
SPEAKER_01
I recognize it doesn t happen every single time I speak with somebody.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s pretend we end up working together.
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you guys make decisions on this type of stuff?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I might ask that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I might ask, cool, who else on your team do you think might feel left out if they weren t on the next call?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or who else on your team do you think might feel that it s important to be on the next call also?
2
SPEAKER_01
Fine.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now before the demo, you can say, let s say you didn t ask it on this call.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re asking it on the full demo call.
2
SPEAKER_01
Hey, glad we could kick off our call.
2
SPEAKER_01
You went over some discovery stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
By the way, Nick, assuming you walk away from this call saying, holy cow, Charles, this is unbelievable.
2
SPEAKER_01
What happens next?
2
SPEAKER_01
What happens after that typically on your end?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the main bringing the future to the present.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I d want to have this guy on the call, that guy on the call.
2
SPEAKER_01
I d want to bring it to procurement, whatever the situation is.
2
SPEAKER_01
You might ask a couple of clarifying questions there, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s a big question to ask.
2
SPEAKER_01
A bringing the future to the present example at the end or at later stage of a deal is we re interested and we potentially might be interested in moving forward.
2
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
Assuming there is high interest internally, I have to assume, you know, not everybody is ready to move forward.
2
SPEAKER_01
They usually have some concerns, whether it be some security concerns or data concerns.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s different for everybody that we talk to.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was curious what potential hesitations or impediments you think there could be internally, if any at all, that might stop us from working together.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I m going to ask that also.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s get ahead of it now.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nick you re probably going to want to talk about it also.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know a lot of times we hear A B and C. Curious if that s something that you feel we need to talk about because that could impede us from working together potentially.
2
SPEAKER_01
So those bringing to the future to the present type of questions is always always helpful.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes they ll say you know I got to bring it depending on the stage of the deal.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s say it s later stage.
3
SPEAKER_00
want to bring this to my team and let s say you have a champion.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
I totally appreciate that you want to bring that to your boss.
3
SPEAKER_00
Out of curiosity, what hesitations do you expect your boss to have about what we talked about today?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you anticipate him or her having an issue with?
3
SPEAKER_00
I also like to do price aside stuff, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Price aside, assuming you re, let s pretend your boss is cool with the price.
3
SPEAKER_00
What other hesitations do you expect your boss to have aside from price?
3
SPEAKER_00
This way I can bring up any potential impediments sooner rather than later.
3
SPEAKER_00
So those are all bringing the future to the present type of questions, of course, depending on the stage of the deal.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, Charles, this has been a playbook episode on discovery almost.
3
SPEAKER_01
This has been phenomenal.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got to move to our final question with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the final question is this.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve talked about a ton of good habits that salespeople should be weaving into their discovery conversations with customers.
3
SPEAKER_01
But now we got to talk about a bad habit.
3
SPEAKER_01
So my question for you is what is one bad habit every salesperson needs to break, dump in the trash and stop doing because it s hurting them more than it s helping?
3
SPEAKER_00
Pretending like you have to come across as an expert
3
SPEAKER_00
in your prospect s space.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that s a bad habit.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s actually better to admit to your prospect that you re not an expert in what they do, because it s the truth.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you are an expert in the problems that your prospect s team usually wants to solve for.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s where you can thrive.
3
SPEAKER_01
Love it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Charles, anything you want to plug before we hop off here?
3
SPEAKER_00
If anybody has any questions on Discovery, that s all I talk about, that s all I think about, that s all I read about, that s all I post about.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hit me up on LinkedIn, Charles Mulbauer.
3
SPEAKER_00
I work at CB Insights and I m happy to answer any of your questions.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s true, everybody.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ask Charles, hey man, how you been?
3
SPEAKER_01
How s your day going?
3
SPEAKER_01
And he only responds with discovery centric things.
3
SPEAKER_01
He asks you a question instead.
3
SPEAKER_01
Actually for real, connect with Charles on LinkedIn.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s got a ton of great discovery content and stick around for a 60 second recap coming up soon.
3
SPEAKER_01
Cheers.
3
SPEAKER_01
Today s tip to optimize your sales day is brought to you by Boomerang.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obsessive checking of your inbox is a total waste of time and brain power.
3
SPEAKER_01
Instead, commit to checking your inbox and responding to email at set times throughout the day.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m a fan of Boomerang s pause inbox function to keep myself from getting distracted by my inbox.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, we documented our best templates and tools to help you optimize your sales day with our friends at Boomerang, and you can get that for free at the link in the show notes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Today s tactic to triple your connect rate is brought to you by rocket reach, who provides data that lets you reach out to the right person at the right account at the right time.
3
SPEAKER_02
Every time you re reaching out to an account, pull down the contacts again.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yes, I know it sucks, but the average tech tenure is two years, which means 50% of the workforce turns over every year.
3
SPEAKER_02
So look up the account, pull anyone who was hired and scratch anyone who was left.
3
SPEAKER_02
And one way you can pull verified and accurate data is with Rocketreach.
3
SPEAKER_02
So if you like this, check out their toolkit on eight ways to triple your cold call connects in the show notes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Otter AI s Otter Pilot for Sales gives you the freedom to sell on your discovery calls by taking notes for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the best ways to deepen your discovery is to ask your prospect about the impetus behind their goals.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when a prospect tells me they want to advertise on more sales podcasts, I ll say, well, it s not every day that you wake up and decide you want to sponsor a podcast.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s causing you to even explore this in the first place?
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, we put together the ultimate discovery checklist with our friends at Otter AI, which you can get for free at the link in the show notes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Your ZoomInfo actionable insight tactic is called Jane s Moving Up.
3
SPEAKER_02
Why?
3
SPEAKER_02
Because that s the email subject line you ll use when you get a real-time notice that your prospect, Jane, just got promoted.
3
SPEAKER_02
From there, in the email, explain how ZoomInfo helps rising sales leaders win their first 90 days on the job by highlighting coaching opportunities or supporting a team-wide prospecting push.
3
SPEAKER_02
And you can try out this trigger-based email template for prospect promotion and four other scenarios inspired by ZoomInfo s go-to-market plays.
3
SPEAKER_02
Link in the show notes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Your top four takeaways from the episode with Charles Mollbauer include number one, don t ask your cringy impact questions.
3
SPEAKER_02
Instead, you can say things like, Hey, I m not sure how to ask this, but besides the X, Y, Z obvious impact of the problem, what else happens because of this thing?
3
SPEAKER_02
And it ll make it feel a lot less cringy than what would you do with all that time back in the calendar?
3
SPEAKER_02
Number two, before your tough questions, you can say things in a humbling disclaimer, such as, I recognize this may be out of bounds.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m not sure how to ask this, or I m just curious to know your world a little bit better.
3
SPEAKER_02
Number three, when you re talking about next steps, use let s just pretend language.
3
SPEAKER_02
It sounds like, hey, let s just pretend you walk away blown away by this thing.
3
SPEAKER_02
What happens next here?
3
SPEAKER_02
And then number four, the disco flow.
3
SPEAKER_02
That five-minute monologue was absolute fire.
3
SPEAKER_02
It goes from high-level context about your company to raising some issues, having the customer identify one of those big issues, dig in deep, get them to tell a story, ask them some impact questions, and then recap it all and play it back.
3
SPEAKER_02
Alrighty, those are our four.
3
SPEAKER_01
Nick, how can people help us out?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, the last time we recorded with Charles, I asked people to send me a humbling disclaimer in their LinkedIn connection request, and I got some really funny ones.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so if you re a new listener and you haven t connected with the good-looking hosts, well, send us a LinkedIn request.
3
SPEAKER_01
And instead of trying to sell us leads or saying, your profile looks very interesting, let s connect.
3
SPEAKER_01
Toss a humbling disclaimer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Make me chuckle.
3
SPEAKER_01
I need a smile nowadays.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening, and we ll see you guys next week on 30 Minutes to President s Club.
3
SPEAKER_01
Today s prospecting tip is brought to you by Supercadence by Influ2, which helps cut through the noise of oversaturated prospecting channels.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you want to get your prospect s attention, you ve got to do stuff a robot would never do.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of my favorite plays is getting warm introductions to the accounts that I m targeting via salespeople who work at that account.
3
SPEAKER_01
Salespeople help salespeople.
3
SPEAKER_01
Another approach could be using Supercadence to run SDR ads to put a face to the name.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, we worked with Influ2 to put together a special toolkit
3
SPEAKER_01
on ways to humanize your outreach, which you can get for free at the link in the show notes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Today s tip to optimize your sales day is brought to you by Boomerang.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obsessive checking of your inbox is a total waste of time and brain power.
3
SPEAKER_01
Instead, commit to checking your inbox and responding to email at set times throughout the day.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m a fan of Boomerang s pause inbox function to keep myself from getting distracted by my inbox.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, we documented our best templates and tools to help you optimize your sales day with our friends at Boomerang, and you can get that for free at the link in the show notes.