How to Sell Podcast: Make How You Sell, Why You Win

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:00:00]:
And then building the pain and making them uncomfortable with if you don't do anything about it, this is

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:00:05]:
gonna fester and get worse.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:07]:
Welcome back to another episode of the How to Sell podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi. No decision in the sales process is the worst possible outcome. The reason it's the worst possible outcome, it's because if you've dealt with a prospect and you've progressed the opportunity to appoint a proposal, so you've taken the time to really understand what the problem is, You've determined that there is a benefit, there is an outcome that the prospect wants to work towards, and then you arrive at a point where the prospect decides, hey, I don't wanna move forward. I'm just gonna stay with sales. I'm gonna stay with the status quo. It's not the best outcome, and it's not just because, yes, we, as a salesperson or as a sales professional involved in the process, misses out on, you know, the fantastic feeling we get when we close an opportunity, and the commission, and all the things that come with it. The reality is, if we're working with a client or a prospect to help him with a proposal, to help him put together a business case for change, it means that there is an outcome that we're trying to help him achieve.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:10]:
It means the outcome that we're helping them scope, the solution that we're helping them work towards is something of benefit. It's something that they need to achieve. So the first thing, you know, when we miss out because of no decision, it's a fact, well, the actual client isn't going to achieve the outcome that they want to achieve. But the reality is over 60% of deals are lost to no decision. That's massive when you think about it. But what can you do in that in that situation? What can you do when the client decides as as the committee, the buying committee decides that that I want to progress the opportunity, that I want to progress and go through the pain of change. Because, remember, with any sale that we work on of sales, I'm not talking about the transactional sales. I'm talking about b to b enterprise selling into mid market enterprise opportunities that require multiple people to make a decision, a lot of these opportunities arrive at a point of no decision.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:03]:
And there are things that you can do to avoid arriving at that point, and that's what this week's episode's all about. And I'm pumped. I'm absolutely pumped because we have a Prestinenzi, a practitioner of the Challenger Sale. Her name is Jen Allen, and, yes, the Challenger Sales, for some reason, creates so much debate. Some people either love it or some people absolutely hate it. And if you haven't read the book, I would recommend reading the book, because it for me, I've read the book. I'm like, yes. This is fantastic.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:30]:
I actually really love the book. I love some of the concepts within the book, but I think what's happened is that some people have misinterpreted what the book talks about. And what Jen's gonna talk about today, she's gonna sort of demystify some of the things and the concepts that are in the book, but she's gonna talk about some of the tactics and some of the strategies that she employs every single day to put together large deals, complex sales, where there's multiple stakeholders. And Jen shares a really interesting stat that in an enterprise sale now, there's over 11 people involved in the buying community. Now think about that, over 11 people. It means that during a sales process, we, as sales professionals, need to engage, influence, bring people on, gain consensus. There are multiple stages of commitment that we need that need to take place with multiple stakeholders, and it requires strategy, it requires a lot of thought, and it requires an intentional focus on really making sure there's alignment on a problem, that everybody agrees that that's the problem they're trying to resolve, and this is the pathway that we need to put together or we need to go on to achieve a particular outcome.

David Fastuca [00:03:35]:
Just a quick interruption to let you know about a free resource that Luigi and I want to hand over to you. This resource has helped lift close won rates to over 73% on average. Plus, you'll get a b to b sales newsletter that drops weekly, where you can learn what it takes to build a repeatable sales process and creating a pipeline full of qualified deals. To get this resource, just go to Growth Forum dot i0 forward slash newsletter or click the link in this episode and sign up today.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:07]:
So this is a fantastic episode for any salesperson working across any vertical, and even from a b to c perspective. There are so many things that Jen's gonna talk about today that you can apply in any industry across any particular sales process. Welcome to the show, Jen.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:04:26]:
Thanks so much for having me.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:27]:
Yeah. I'm really excited, and I'll tell you why I'm excited because, a, I am a fan of your podcast. And for all of our listeners, we will put a link to where you can listen to Jen's fantastic podcast, but I'm also a big fan of the content that you're sharing on LinkedIn. And I'm using some of the tactics and some of the strategies that you're talking about in my sales process. So I'm really excited today to really dive in around how sellers can become value creators in the sales process. So welcome to the Sales Like You podcast.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:04:59]:
Thank you so much. And as someone who follows your content, I'm really excited to be here and nerd out about sales with you.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:05]:
Yeah. Awesome. Now I wanna get into this topic because, again, I think in 2022, you know, the the our profession has come so far, but I think there's still so many gaps that sellers are creating for themselves, you know, when they're not really creating value in a process and they're kinda pushing their their features and they're kinda pushing their products to clients. But before we get into that, I would love to know a bit more about you and how you started in the world of selling.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:05:36]:
Yeah. So, like, probably 99% of your guests never thought I would be good at sales, never wanted to do sales. I kinda fell into it. Back in o four, I had a roommate working for a company called corporate executive board, which has since been acquired by Gartner. And she said, hey, really smart company, really fun happy hours. You should just come here while you're trying to figure out what you wanna do with your life and just work with me. And I said, that sounds awesome. So I initially interviewed to go into their meetings department because I was doing events management and stuff like that in my previous gig.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:06:05]:
And they slotted me into account management and I was fortunate enough to work for an account manager who just absolutely blew me away. I thought when we were when I was in that organization, I was working with CMOs to sell them like an annual renewable subscription service. And so she would call these CMOs of these really big companies. And I remember I would just always be in awe of how effortlessly she would kind of challenge their thinking and you know, ask really smart questions. And that's probably what drew me and made me wanna stick with sales because it felt like such a far reach for me. And so I started in account management, then switched over to new logo acquisition, and then switched into the challenger segment before we got sold off. Because at that time, I said, okay. Now I feel like I've kind of played with account management.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:06:49]:
I've played with new new logo acquisition. Now I wanna try bigger, more, like, you know, enterprise deals and and play around there. So that's how I got to where I am today. And then in January, I switched into a new role, the chief evangelist for Challenger, where I'm out there trying to educate the market on some of the problems that we solve.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:06]:
Yeah. What an awesome journey. And it's funny, like, you're right. Like, I don't I don't think I've yet to interview a guest that said I was, you know, 6 and so young. Just thought I wanna be in sales. Right?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:07:20]:
Yeah. I think

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:21]:
we've all fell into it. I'm just like, you know, I fell into it because I couldn't really do anything at school. I'm not very smart. So I was like, hey, I just want to talk because I think, you know, your your career span and you've got to work with, you know, when we talk about CEB, we talk about Gartner. We really are talking about organisations at the forefront, really, you know, they're working with enterprise grade organisations, and they're seeing trends before they occur. I'd love to know Forum your perspective, having worked, you know, with net new logos, worked with sort of smaller organisations into enterprise, Why is value creation such an important element when it comes to selling to any organization, both, you know, medium to to large?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:08:08]:
Yeah. So I'll speak to both what the facts would show as well as just my own anecdotes and observations. So, candidly, I think for anyone that knows Challenger, it was born out of research that we did with customers to understand there's a say do gap with customers. So if you ask customers what make you loyal, there it is. When you ask them that question, they'll tell you a very different thing than their behavior would suggest. And what their behavior would suggest when we analyze it is that out of all the things that you think might matter to make a customer pick you and grow with you and buy new products and advocate for you and all these things that we want, you can kind of boil them into 4 categories. Right? So it's like how good they perceive your product and and service, like how they look at your company and brand, how fair they think your price is, and then the experience they have in buying from you. And so the research backed reason that creating value is so important is because 53% of what drives that customer's loyalty to you has to do with the type of sales experience you deliver.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:09:03]:
And I love the way that you call it value creation in the sales experience, because customers aren't just looking for the person who's the best at describing their products and services. They're actually looking for the seller who's coming in and asking really smart questions, helping them think differently or introducing information that conflicts with their current belief system in such a way that they recognize, shoot, the way I'm approaching this is actually costing me or introducing risk or something. And I look at that seller as someone who came in and exposed me to that blind spot. Like, that's what customers want when you look at it from a data perspective. From just an anecdotal perspective is someone who's been selling for about 17 years. Like, if I am a walking talking brochure, meaning I'm just talking about the the value that my products and services would create. If you're a customer, right, there's an inherent step that that that customer has to take. They have to buy my stuff.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:09:59]:
So what value am I adding in the sales experience? Almost none. Right. So I think anecdotally, I don't feel like if I'm just walking, talking the product specs and features and benefits and all that stuff, like, candidly, that's all stuff someone can find on our website.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:13]:
We've seen some of the the data from Gartner, which is showing more and more the buyers don't value that, and they're actually okay to go in a in a in a in a virtual world to find that information themselves than get it from a person. Right? So I think that's a scary it's a scary reality for many sales professionals who are still thinking, you know, the order taker mentality of pushing features on an organization. But I think one of the challenges, and and obviously the book, for some reason, the book does the book has created a lot of debate in in the community, in the sales community. Some people really love it, or on the opposite, some people really hate it and just hate it. I'm in the Fastuca camp because I really liked it. Like, I really liked the way it allowed me to think a little bit about using Insight to create that value. Right? So talk to me about how you because you've been you've got you're you're you're a quota carrier still. You've carried a quota for a number of years.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:11:17]:
How have you been able to use the Challenger mentality and create that buying experience that allows buyers to move away from the move away from the obvious need to the unrecognized need?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:11:32]:
Mhmm. So I love this question because prior to me reading or being trained on challenger, I actually really identified with the seller profile that is the relationship builder. Forum for those that haven't read the book, it's like you when you're backed into a tough customer situation, you either show up like a relationship builder, a hard worker, a problem solver, a lone wolf, or a challenger. And so I was not born a challenger. In fact, like, in my personal life, I run from conflict. I hate to tell people bad news. Like, I couldn't be more anti challenger just naturally. And so when I learned about challenger, it actually happened at the right time because relationship building was working really, really well for me.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:12:11]:
And then 2,008, 2009 happened, the economy fell apart, and all of a sudden these friends that I made at customers were nowhere to be found because they were laying off people or getting fired or, you know, losing budget. And so all of a sudden, it was kind of slapped me in the face that this isn't working anymore, and I need to pivot. But I didn't know what to pivot to because what I would find is I'd ask a high performer, how are you being successful? And they would just, like, say these really unhelpful things because it's hard for them to understand what they do that makes them great. And so part of the, like, the criticism of Challenger that I hear a lot is people will read it and they say, well, I've already sold this way. There's nothing new about this. But that's kind of the point. Right? Like, we did not invent Challenger. We just use research to understand what we're high performers doing in practice.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:12:58]:
And so a lot of times when I get into that dialogue with people, it's like, Growth, you were one of those high performers that figured it out, but it doesn't negate its value for everybody else who does it. So for me, it was really about understanding when I'm spending time with a customer, if I am just reacting to what they say they need because I perceive that that means I'm being helpful, I'm falling so short on value creation. All I'm doing is, to your point, kind of order taking. Right? And I'm being, you know, accessible, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not enough to drive a competitive wedge between me and the other person that they're evaluating. So for me, it's given me structure to say when I prepare for a customer meeting, when I deliver a customer meeting, when I'm doing a group meeting, I have to intentionally identify a belief or assumption that is causing them to believe they have a set of needs that doesn't align with what I sell. And until I disrupt that respectfully, but also with evidence, with insight, with information, I am only going to be at the mercy of hoping that they've defined a set of needs that we can win on. Right? And so I think knowing what to be mindful of, knowing that I'm gonna have to show evidence of this is a flawed belief or assumption because of this, and then building the pain and making them uncomfortable with if you don't do anything about it, this is gonna fester and get worst. That none of that came naturally to me.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:14:19]:
So that's where I really drew from challenge. I still continue to draw from it every day when I prepare for meetings. I have to wire my brain to think differently.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:27]:
I love I love some of the things that you've you've just talked about then, but I I actually wanna talk about some of that because I think this is where, in my opinion, right, I think this is where people get it wrong, is they're thinking the Challenger Sale is about telling a prospect or a client what they're doing wrong versus what you've just said is help them become aware of things they should be considering that'll allow them to achieve a different result. Right? And I think this is where the misconception, in my opinion, lie, because no one likes to be told, if you're a buyer, hey, you've just made the wrong decision, especially, you know, especially if they've been working on a particular project or on a transformation journey, and then someone says, hey, you've just been doing it all wrong, because you're kind of insulting their ego as well. Right? And it can it can lead to a really disastrous outcome where they just go, you know, I don't wanna have a relationship with you. Yeah. I I've actually made that mistake before where I've I've told a prospect something, and I've probably communicated in a way that was, you've made this mistake. And therefore, the relationship barrier just came up. There was a lot of relationship tension, and I wasn't able to progress the opportunity. So I would love to understand from your perspective, right, you talk about, you know, leveraging insight and helping them sort of challenge their belief system in a in a positive way.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:53]:
How do we do that? So for a sales professional listening to this going, you know what? I don't read the book, but I love what you're saying. I think I'm the relationship builder. I don't really fit that profile yet. What are some of the things that I can do to maneuver the sales process, to bring that insight and and get them to start to to see things a little bit differently.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:16:11]:
So first of all, I love the story you just told because I committed that offense, like, a 100 times before I got it right. I thought, okay. Schedule the meeting. Show them how smart I am, and then they're gonna wanna take more calls Forum. And I wrote a post about this the other day. It was actually the complete opposite. Right? What it ended up happening is I was talking at customers. They were completely tuning out.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:16:34]:
And here I am thinking, I've just taught them all these. I'm gonna win this. And it was just it was completely wrong. It was in my own interpretation of what challenger was. So I love the story because I've lived that, and I've got it wrong so much. So what I what I believe helped me get it right or write more often is Challenger isn't telling some someone something. Right? Like, to your point, when I say you're wrong, I'm right, I'm now creating an offense defense relationship with my customer that is entirely unproductive to a to a partnership. Because now we're on 2 different sides of the table.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:17:08]:
The way that I observed great challengers in action, like, one of the things they did is instead of telling someone this is right and this is wrong, they first do really good discovery. This is another misconception about challenger that, like, challengers don't do discovery. I thought that too. You can't get anywhere if you don't understand who you're talking to and what they're trying to achieve. But it's the way that challengers do discovery. They're not doing discovery to understand what the customer's needs are so that they can respond with a solution to those needs. They're doing discovery to look at 2 things. One is, what is it that that customer is trying to achieve? So, like, for me, I need to know, is it about market share? Is it about, you know, put new product Growth, whatever the case is? I need to know what the end goal is.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:17:52]:
Yep.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:17:52]:
But I'm doing discovery on the needs to try to ascertain what is it that they believe gets them from a to b? Because somewhere in that belief system, there's probably a piece of information or an assumption that they've made that may be David. And they may just not have the most current information on it. And so I'm not teaching, here's how you get from a to b. What I'm teaching is actually around the belief or assumption that underlies how they believe they get from a to b. And that's where you can introduce new information, new insight, new data to say completely empathize and understand that's why the plan is what the plan is. However, what many people don't realize is this thing down here has changed. And then your goal is to set off a domino effect. Right? Because if the belief or assumption underlining the strategy has changed, they themselves start to question the whole strategy.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:18:45]:
So that's that to me is the key.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:18:47]:
It's the thing. What you're you're talking about is about leading them to that realization, not you telling them. Yes. And when they lead when they arrive at that point of, you've then created value because you're helping them become aware of something they might not have been aware of before they engage with you. And so that's quite a powerful it's a powerful place to help them arrive to. Right? We'd also love to know because I think, again, I I I'm seeing some really, in in my opinion, I sales this, alarming sort of posts by some experts out there that discoveries you know, there is no discovery stage of the sales process. It's not a stage of the sales process, And I I think, you know what, that's just a bit argumentative because, obviously, you know, I think even though discovery is happening throughout, there is a moment of time where you've gotta be doing some form of discovery. But, again, if I look at the insights, if I look at the the whole premise of the challenge of sale, that discovery, where when should it start? Should it start before I engage with you? Should it start when I engage with you? Like, share with share with us what you do to to build that discovery element.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:20:00]:
Yeah. And I will say I think there's differences depending on, like, your type of sale or what you're selling. So I sell on a very complex sales, right? I could you could argue if you're selling a transactional product, like, I I don't know how much it makes sense to go as deep on discovery as I'm gonna talk about. But I think for anybody where you prioritize them as a target, someone that represents, you know, a really good potential fit for your company, I think we owe it to customers, to your point, to start discovery before the first call. And what I mean by that is when I first started selling in o four, like, we didn't have the resources we did today. We would have to start discovery on the phone. But now if I open up an annual report, there's always gonna be a CEO letter to shareholders that states what is the company trying to do and how their strategy what their strategy is to get there. And so the the other mistake I made a lot is I would take that as this is just bible.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:20:51]:
Right? When in reality, you find that sometimes there's a statement up here, and there's a a different belief down here. And so the way that I would make that mistake is I would call them and I'd say, I understand you're trying to do this, and this is how you believe you need to get there. And then I would jump right into my insight. What I've since learned is you need to really pause and allow for someone to disagree and open that up by saying, here's what I understand so far in my own research, but I absolutely guarantee there are things that I've missed. What's important that I've missed? And opening that up to say, I don't assume I know everything. I think sometimes as sellers, we wanna prove we did our prep or prove we're, like, that lazy. But I think you need to open up the conversation to allow them to correct you on those items before you move forward into discovery.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:35]:
Yeah. I love you know what? I've actually I'm I'm really thinking about this is good. This is actually really good because you

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:21:42]:
I hope so.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:45]:
No. I'm just I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to now I'm thinking about application, right, which is fantastic because you're creating value for me. It's about going, well, I do my research, so I have a point of view, but I'm not just saying this is my only component. Sales, hey, this is the point of view that I've got, but also help me understand what other elements of the point of view that I might have missed. Yes. So I think this is really awesome. And you talk about that research phase of looking at CEO reports. Obviously, for listed organisations, there's so much information in the public domain.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:22:17]:
What do you do when it's a private organisation? What are some of the things that you look for from a private business?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:22:22]:
Yeah. So I think one of the saving graces of selling today is that even if it's a private company and they don't have an annual report or CEO letter to letter to shareholders, there's a much higher likelihood, at least with the the obviously, I'm selling to sales, that they have a voice somewhere. If it's LinkedIn, if it's they're doing podcasts like this, if they're doing, you know, meetings with potential investors or whatever the case may be, I just think it's it's very rare. It's not it's not never, but it's very rare to say I can't find something that shows that executive or that company's perspective on what they believe they need to do. Candidly, podcast interviews are a great source because we tend to get more human in how they're talking about it as opposed to the rigid statements you find like, on an annual report.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:05]:
This is this is a really great insight. And alright. So I I wanna kind of break this down now because we're talking about, okay, a bit of top of funnel, a bit about sort of we've we're we're leveraging a point of view. We're getting a conversation. We may be having that discovery meeting. From it from your perspective and the way that you've used some of this insight and and that challenger kind of mentality, does it just stop at that discovery stage, or are you continuing to leverage that insight and helping them as you get closer to that point of decision?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:23:41]:
I feel like you listen to all of my bad sales calls and are bringing up all the mistakes I used to make, and it's making me very uncomfortable. No. That was the mistake I I used to think you use Insight to win over that stakeholder, and then from there on out, there's no place for insight.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:57]:
Yeah.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:23:57]:
What I've realized is insight plays a role early, mid, and late. So early, we've already talked about. Right? Mid, it's about now maybe I have an activated stakeholder, but now I need to help that stakeholder socialize that insight to everybody else who has an opinion on the problem, the solution, the vendor we pick. Right? So that insight becomes essential because that is our grounding element. I have to get everybody to agree with this belief or assumption or this insight. And if I don't, like, candidly, I won't even get to proposal or solution phase because I know it's just gonna break down anyway. So middle, that's where insight plays a role. And then end is the one that I'm newer to, like, being consistent about, which is when you get to the end and you've agreed on a proposal, we've all been in those deals where they just start to, like, extend and extend and it's taking time.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:24:47]:
And so the really interesting, tactic I learned from Challenger was this notion of cost of delay. So in the beginning, right, we're talking about cost of the problem. But now as we're getting sitting and waiting where we can really have an impact is to go back to that initial insight and say, remember who we talked about, you're losing, you know, $1,000 a day for this. It's been 20 days since we initiated MSA review. So now you've achieved this cost, like, how do we create urgency internally? And so you're revisiting the insight, but putting an amount to the cost of the delay.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:25:18]:
That that that there that's that's the clip. You know? That that is that is an incredible clip of I'm actually gonna take down cost of delay. I think this is a mate Because you're right. Because I think and then what we find is because that when that momentum starts to slow down, is a lot of salespeople then start to do the old, hey, I'm following up on. Right? Yeah. I'm just touching base, bubbling this to the top of your inbox. And for me, I hate that because it's like Yeah. What value are you actually creating? What you're doing with this is you're actually saying, hey, when we spoke about this, this is a priority.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:25:51]:
This is what it's costing. And it's again bringing that to the top to say, is this still a priority? And if so, we've gotta take action because every day we don't, it's having a further negative impact on the business. Yes. I love, I love, totally love what you're saying here. You know, I I was listening to one of your podcasts, and I actually wanna get a bit of feedback on coaching on this. Right? Because when we think about the buying process, especially in enterprise, maybe not in the, you know, single stakeholder decision deals. Right? But definitely in enterprise, and and I think Gartner released some some data that says 9 to 13 stakeholders are involved in in a decision making process, and we're seeing that, buying by committee. But often, you know, there's gotta be a commitment to collaborate, commitment to gain consensus internally, commitment to change before they commit to budget.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:26:43]:
Right? We know that. We know there are certain stages of commitment an organisation needs to take. For me, I find that that commitment for alignment, you know, getting alignment within an organisation can sometimes be difficult, especially when people have conflicting priorities. And often, when we're selling something to an organization, we are selling an unrecognised need, which therefore, it's not budgeted. Right? So they're gonna go have to create the budget. And in some cases, that budget that we're trying to create, another stakeholder sees that as an opportunity to go, well, this is my opportunity to get some budget for something that I want. Right? Yeah. So now we've got a very unique boardroom conversation happening.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:27:33]:
Your podcast discussed that question, that alignment question. You know, is everyone on this call or is everybody within this room aligned with the strategy that we're working on? Talk to us about why that question and understanding alignment is really important when trying to progress a deal to that point of decision with multiple

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:27:54]:
Forum if you have one stakeholder and they see value in what you do,

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:28:10]:
you have

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:28:10]:
like an 80 some percent chance that they buy. That's logical. That's not earth shattering, right? But you get down to 6 stakeholders, which is far less than what we've seen. We've tracked it to be 11.2 in our most recent study, I think was 2019. When you look at 6, it's down in the 30% range, right? And it makes sense. And we had a we did a webinar last week, and we had one of our attendees raise this. So I wanna give them credit. I did not come up with this.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:28:33]:
They said a great way to think about this is pretend you're gonna order pizza with 10 people and everybody has to agree on the toppings. What do you end up with? You end up with cheese. Because, like, cheese is the only thing that doesn't alienate somebody or they're not allergic to or whatever the case may be. It's the same thing with b to b buying. Like, we end up making decisions based on the lowest common denominator which means we often just settle on what we're currently doing and we abort it.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:28:58]:
Yep.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:28:59]:
And so the reason it's important is because when you just get 10 humans together on any topic to try to make a decision, it's hard, let alone when it's a massive capital investment. And so what's really key here is is But what I what I missed is oftentimes people don't voice up until you're off the line, that this isn't really even the problem I wanna solve to your point. And this came up on a call I did about 2 weeks ago, and we had this debate around, like, I I explicitly asked, like, what is the problem we've all agreed that we're solving? And it was, like, l and d, sales leaders, business leaders, private equity owner. And that question alone was 20 minutes of dialogue. Because half the people wanted to solve for retention, half the people wanted to solve for new logo acquisition. And it's like, it's all sales, but it's different flavors. And so I knew as much as they had set the agenda, we wanna see your solution because we're looking in another vendor. We wanna compare the 2.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:30:01]:
I had to have, like, what I view as the discipline of taking control to say, I'm gonna take control of this agenda. You don't even know what you wanna buy. I can't propose a solution for that. So getting agreement on the problem to me is the thing that I always used to screw up and have since really tried to put discipline around.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:30:17]:
You you we are nerding out here, right, because of the what can I go? I need to go, you know? I just want now and and and add some of these strategies and tactics that you're talking about. But and when you talk about that alignment piece, how do you then circulate it? So because often, you might have a great meeting, you might have multiple stakeholders, and as you said, you know, that's a lot, 11.2, etcetera. How do you then circulate post meeting the way to confirm I've got my own, but I'd love to hear how you how you have done it to sort of say this is what we discussed and and this is what we've agreed upon.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:30:52]:
Yeah. So 2 things that I always try, I don't always achieve, but I always intentionally try is on that group meeting, I'm trying to manage my time, so I get them to either agree that we disagree and we're not ready to look at a solution and we need to go back and learn and hopefully learn with me. Or 2, if we can get to an agreement, we also try to get to an agreement of what happens if we do nothing. So your audit your customer is gonna wanna know how do we fix the problem. We finally have agreement. What do we do? That's a place where I think we have to resist the urge to jump to solution and say before we get there, let's talk about what happens if we do nothing

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:31:24]:
differently, because doing nothing is a complete possibility. Right? I know it.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:31:24]:
You know it. You're because doing nothing is a complete possibility. Right? I know it. You know it. Your boss knows it. Let's address it. And then say mindset agreement on what does it cost us to do nothing. Then that's what I'm socializing.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:31:38]:
Right? Then I've said, now I'm sending out an email to everybody in the audience to say, here is what we agreed the problem we're looking to solve is. Here is what we agreed is the cost if we do nothing. Now in our next conversation, we're gonna look at what is the, you know, 3 or 4 steps steps we're gonna take in working with you to solve that problem and reduce that cost of nothing. If anyone disagrees, re email me independently. Right? Like, don't feel like you gotta have this back channel conversation. And so what I'm trying to walk into that next meeting with is, here's the problem and my all my slides start with 1 page summary. Here's the problem we agreed on. Here's what we agreed it has gonna happen if you do nothing about it.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:32:13]:
Now let's look at a solution. And the reason I do that is so by the time we get to that pretty cost page, it's not the cost versus nothing. It's the cost versus the cost to it of doing nothing. And then they have a comparison point.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:32:25]:
Yeah. I think I love that. And I I think from what I'm taking away from this ride, it's transparent. You're guiding them through the process as well because that's the other thing that I find that often when we're helping our buyers arrive at a point of decision, they're not buying what we sell all the time, so they don't always know how to buy certain things, right, how to get that alignment, how to do that cost assessment so that they can see the business case and the return on that investment that they're gonna make versus a cost. Right? Because there's always that equation that's gonna be had that somebody's gonna be asking the question, can we achieve what we need to achieve without making this investment? Right? And that's you know, commercially, most businesses should be having that conversation. So I love the way that you're talking about gaining alignment, trying to understand, are there any things that would, you know, concern not have alignment so that you can address that before going to solution? And I think the other thing that I've heard as well is you're being really disciplined to hold back that final proposal to make sure that when you do put that proposal in place, you've got consensus, you've got alignment, and you've got a clear understanding of the problem that the business is looking to sales. So, therefore, your solution does allow them to see how they can solve that problem. So I absolutely love the sales process that you've shared with us.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:33:50]:
I think I've had, I don't know, over you know, we're we're we're we're we're surpassing 170 episodes. I think you're actually gonna be my mindset guest that would probably come on for a second episode. Because, like, there's so much content here, I think, for sellers right now. Like, this is good content. This is

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:34:08]:
Thank you.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:34:09]:
Actionable content that hopefully my listeners are looking at this going, you know, what I'm noting at as well. I can see application to this. So I just wanna say thanks for the content that you shared with us today. But before we let you go, where's the best place? And I will put in the show notes where they can find your podcast because it's a great podcast. I'll listen to it every month when it comes out. Where can they find you, and where's the best place for them to engage with you?

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:34:30]:
Yeah. So I'm big on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time there. So Jen Allen, LinkedIn. You can find me pretty easily. I'm with Challenger. And then to your point, candidly, the whole idea of the winning the Challenger Sales podcast is not to go over the stuff that was in the book. Everybody can pick up the book and read it.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:34:45]:
We don't have to teach people, like, it's not it's not bedtime story time. What it is very much about is I think we heard a lot of people saying I read the book, but I still get how to do it. And so we have conversations like this where we break down things like discovery, negotiation, running group meetings and just say what is it, what is it not. And candidly a lot of the conversation is me just sharing my experience, the stuff I got wrong, and what challenger taught me to do differently. So definitely encourage you to check it out. You'll hear lots of perspective there, but would love to connect as well.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:35:11]:
Awesome. Well, Jen, I just wanna say thank you for the contribution you make to our community because, again, I've I've personally taken some of the tactics that you've talked about, implemented in my role, and I'm seeing a benefit to that. So I just wanna say thanks for coming on the podcast.

Jen Allen-Knuth [00:35:27]:
Thank you so much, and thanks for asking some really great questions and nerding out with me. It's the most fun part of the job.