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

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:00]:
In this episode, you're gonna learn why one size doesn't fit all, the importance of understanding how educated your buyer is, and why you should never feature dump. Dave, we're back for another episode of the how to sell podcast. It's good to see our cadence is kicking back in play. We've got a lot of great content that we're gonna be sharing over the next couple of months, and we've got a good topic this week, Dave. It's a topic about it's a different perspective. So, you know, we talk a lot about how to sell, but I've been on the receiving end. I've actually been buying in the last. We're going through a buying process.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:40]:
And I'm gonna share a recent experience that I had with a pretty senior seller. And I think there were so many great learnings from the process, and that's why I wanted to dive into this this topic this week.

David Fastuca [00:00:52]:
Pardon the interruption, but I just want to let you know about a special course that Luigi and I have put together that we've given away for free. It's a sales OS 5 part email course. To get access, just visit grow forum dot I o forward slash newsletter and sign up today. Yeah. This is gonna be a good one. When you mentioned the the idea for for this week's episode, I was like, it it's so key. We've been talking we've been scanning around this topic quite a lot, but not addressing it. So I reckon there's gonna be a lot of resonance here for the people listening.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:24]:
Yeah. Awesome. And so let me give you the I'll give you the, the scenario. Right? So looking for a kind of CRM slash marketing automation platform, and it's been interesting talking to a business, went into a conversation, again, with a very senior leader, and what I found really alarming in the process was they didn't really do any discovery or try to explore how educated I was on the topic. Right? And so the conversation went straight to, let me show you our platform. This is everything our platform does. And I kind of was sitting there going, I don't really wanna know about the things that your platform does. Like, I've got a gap.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:13]:
There's a gap. And at no point was there any questions to say, hey, how do you currently facilitate x process, and what's the gap? Like, what what part of the process would you love to see different? Or Well, how's the call

David Fastuca [00:02:28]:
start off, Louie? Like, like, this this feels a bit abnormal. Right? To did it just how did the call, you know, begin? Like, we talk about this is like a demo call. Right? Yeah. They're probably, you know, either face to face or, you know, most likely over Zoom. How did it go? Let let's run through the demo process.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:46]:
There's multiple conversations leading up, and then it was, let me jump into showing you the platform. Right? So we had a lot of conversations. And to to be honest, I've kind of already done my research, and I knew I knew enough about the platform to know its pros and cons. Yeah? And, essentially, there were some key things that I was looking to assess. And what I was looking for was some gaps in what we needed to see if that's what the gaps. Yeah? So I went in there with a certain, agenda, or I needed there was a certain objective that I wanted to achieve. But the seller, all they did was gay give me a one just a common wanted to show me all aspects of the platform. Right? And I didn't wanna see all aspects of the platform.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:31]:
So what happened in that conversation, there was a little bit of kind of relationship tension building up. Yeah? I'm like, well, no, no, no. I I go get and I actually said to him, look, I I get these features. Right? And I said, we've got a specific cadence that we wanna run that looks like x, and I know that we can facilitate. But what we don't have and so, again, we could have alleviated that part of the process if there was just some basic questions asked at the start of it at the start of the demo. Yeah? So I think the big takeaway for me was the seller didn't do any research on some of my past on my past. Right?

David Fastuca [00:04:15]:
On you specifically? On

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:16]:
you specifically. Didn't also in the conversation, didn't ask me about some of my past projects either. And, you know, something Jen Allen are great. You know, we love Jen Allen. I think probably one of the one in my opinion, one of the best podcasts I've ever had is with Jen Allen. And she's spoken about this. She's made this mistake in her career where she approached a call, didn't do any research on the buyer, and was positioning stuff. The buyer said, actually, I'm an expert at this particular topic.

David Fastuca [00:04:48]:
So she

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:49]:
didn't she didn't determine how skilled they were at a topic, and it, you know, it was a big learning for her. And I think in this conversation, I'm not saying I'm an expert, but there are certain things that I'm really good at. And the bot the seller didn't try to determine that. And there were some absolute gaps that I needed. There were some education gaps. So first key takeaway, Dave, was didn't do any research on me, didn't try to understand what the gap was, and just went straight into feature dumping. Just went to so let me show you everything. Right? And there was a bit of tension that had come up that again, and we kind of danced around it for a bit.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:29]:
And there was also no agenda. There was no kind of structured way to start the demo. Like, this is what we're gonna go through. Is there anything you wanted me to cover?

David Fastuca [00:05:37]:
I wonder if that's their normal process or through you mentioned earlier that you had a bit of back and forth. Was that back and forth via email or phone call? Because sometimes when you feel like you've built up a bit of a rapport with someone, you feel like you can skip your usual process because you might feel that, you know, this is an easy deal. So I could just go in and, you know, change my script because I'm gonna close this to a 100%.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:03]:
Potentially, there was a bit of complacency there. But, again, this is where the process is so important. And, again, for any any anything that you're selling, whether you're selling a b to b a b to b SaaS product, whether you're selling a car, whether you're selling, a franchise. Right? You've gotta determine very early on in the conversation where they are in the journey. Are they at that real are they at at the start of the process exploring, or have they done their research? Have they done it before? Right? Have they purchased something like this before? Have they implemented something like this before? What was their learning? Right? If you don't find that out, if you don't find how educated they are on something, then you're not filling any education gaps, so you're not creating any value in the process, Dave. Because the reality is, like, to be honest, I can see why that data from Gartner that says over 80% of buyers wanna buy product without engaging with a salesperson. Yeah? I can see that. Because, again, there was no value that was created for me in that process.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:09]:
That actually, that call was completely irrelevant, if I think about it.

David Fastuca [00:07:12]:
How how long was the call going for?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:13]:
It'd be 45 minutes.

David Fastuca [00:07:14]:
Yeah. It's a waste of time.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:16]:
I didn't learn anything. Yeah? So, again, what I wanted to know is, I wanted to say, like, there was a couple of specific gaps that I wanted to determine, and I didn't I didn't I didn't figure that out. Right? In fact in in fact, if if I was a brutal buyer, right, I wouldn't buy from them.

David Fastuca [00:07:37]:
That's interesting. Right? And, look, we've we won't name the name of the product, but you, you know, told me a lot about the product, how well it suits, the business that you're looking, you know, for it at. So it's really interesting, you know, from that sentiment. Like, if I take a step back and back in my previous life when I was doing demos for my previous company, Locumu, you feel very comfortable just going through the features and it's easy dumping because it's it's easy. Yeah. I can take you through this user flow. I can tell you how to update your profile. Back, locomotor business travel products, yeah, allows people to book and manage all their all their travel in one place.

David Fastuca [00:08:15]:
Right? So you could talk about it for hours, And I lived and breathed it. But what I use when I changed my process because we only had, like, 45 minutes per call, My thing was, Louis, you know, glad you, you know, you've made the time to to join me on this call. What are the top three things, that you're looking for, to solve? Right? Because I wanna I wanna make sure we go deep and show you everything you need there. Then if we got some time, I can show you some extra stuff, but I wanna make this really relative to you and your use case and what you need. And then we just spend the time on those 2 free things. And I'd leave 90% of the stuff out because they've used booking tools and things like that in the past. They know the ins and outs. They just go, how can you help these free issues? Why I'm moving away from product x to product y? Right? Because you're moving away from something whether it be something manual

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:08]:
Correct.

David Fastuca [00:09:09]:
Or an a competitive product. So they know the ins and outs or have a good familiarity with them. So they wanna move over to something that's filling the that's missing. Right?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:18]:
You know what's interesting, Dave? Like, you're absolutely spot on. Yeah. Like, this it's to determine what my objective is. Like, again, some of those if if if you run the risk, and this is if you're listening to this and you and you are and you do this. Right? If you're feature dumps, so you go into a call and say, let me show you everything we have to offer. You're actually running the risk of them not seeing anything that they need because you haven't asked what specific outcomes you're looking to achieve. Now let me show you how we can help you achieve that. Yeah? And if I go back to this experience, Dave, leading up to the call, I'd mystery shopped, like, I don't know, probably 7 or 8 companies that used their platform.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:58]:
Yeah? So and I wanted to see, you know, some of the automation that was coming out. How was the automation sending things? So I got to see that. So I already knew sort of some of the power, how the emails were being sent. Okay? So I looked into that. I downloaded the app on a couple of a couple of people using the platform. So I already had an understanding of how the app works. So again, I wasn't somebody that went into the conversation with a lack of awareness. I was actually at the other stage on bottom of the funnel, and he was treating me like top of the funnel.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:35]:
Yeah? Yeah. Real lack of alignment there. So from a sales perspective, if I look at that and and again, will we buy that platform? Probably, but not because they've done a good job selling, because we've done an assessment already, and we've gone we know it's gonna fill a gap, and there's a couple of things that we need to validate. Right? And I'll even take it back a step. My initial outreach to them was, I can't find the price to your platform, which I hate, by the way. Like, don't make me put in a demo request because I wanna get a price. Like, show me what you're charging for your platform on your website. Yeah? And that was that's another frustration in the process.

David Fastuca [00:11:19]:
So just on that, Ryan, like, I I've been victim of that, where you start to you start to fill the gap of the pricing in your own mind. So if you look in let's just use, you know, CRMs, for example. You know the average price for your CRM. Right? You know, you got your HubSpot pricing, you got your Membrane, all those other ones out there, Salesforce. So you know roughly what it is. When someone's hiding the price, I don't know if it's just me. I'm I'm sure, you know, you have the same sort of sentiment. You're thinking, if they're hiding the price, shit, this must be expensive.

David Fastuca [00:11:52]:
So then, if the website is pretty similar and the feature benefit's pretty similar to the others and they're hiding the price, I'm not gonna invest the time to find out. I wanna know from the outset, what that pricing what what's my guardrail so I know if it's in budget or not. Then I can dive deeper into the gaps.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:09]:
And that's why this is for me, the learning from this is awesome. Right? And if if you again, if you're listening to this and you you are a victim of this and you go into a conversation and you start a demo, just just be mindful that potentially the person you're dealing with could potentially be more educated on the topic than you. Right? They might have implemented this multiple times. Yeah? And they'll have a certain way of thinking and approach to certain situations based on their past experience. Again, because I've implemented and worked on, you know, CRM marketing automation projects, Dave, for the last 10 years with so many different orgs, of course I'm going to approach things in a certain way because I've seen what's worked and what hasn't. Yeah. So my I've got some biases based on past experiences. And because they didn't, in the sales process, try to determine how educated I was, where I'm at in the process, the conversations that we have had so far have been non there's no value that they've added to the process.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:14]:
Okay? And I tell you one thing, if I could buy their platform without talking to them, I would have just bought it. That's the reality.

David Fastuca [00:13:22]:
Mhmm.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:23]:
I actually don't need them. They're not doing anything to help me in that process. And that is a scary, scary concept because we see the data. People actually say that, and I brought that up earlier. Gartner report, over 80% of buyers want a salesperson free interaction, and they're also the data shows that over 80% of, like, if you look at how much time a buyer spends with a seller, over 80%, it's doing their own research. It's building their own business case. Yeah? And it's because of interactions like this. Right? If you wanna show me the platform and give me a feature dump of your demo, just send me a prerecorded video, man.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:03]:
I'll watch it in my time so I can pause it.

David Fastuca [00:14:05]:
I'll say it's a good point you bring up there. Make it easy for people to buy from you.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:09]:
Absolutely. Right? Very simple. And and sorry to go down this path, Dave, but I'm I'm and, actually, at another CRM provider, right, is I said, send me some case studies.

David Fastuca [00:14:17]:
CRM passion podcast, this one is.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:19]:
But I said, send me some case studies on people that can you have solved this specific problem, this use case. A week later, I messaged them. A week. A week. Hey. How are we going with those use cases? I followed up, man. Right?

David Fastuca [00:14:33]:
Oh, that's bad.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:34]:
They sent them to me. I jumped on. I I I literally went on their site. I didn't talk. I I didn't look at their case study. I went to the website. So they sent me some really nice sort of info. It does this.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:47]:
It does x.

David Fastuca [00:14:48]:
Were these PDFs? Was it a link to something, or was it?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:51]:
A link to a case study.

David Fastuca [00:14:52]:
Okay.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:53]:
But I didn't I didn't essentially trust it enough, so I went to the website of that particular provider

David Fastuca [00:14:59]:
of that that Why didn't you trust them? Is this because they took them a week? Took them a week. Where there's the mistrust?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:05]:
They weren't very clear on answering my questions.

David Fastuca [00:15:08]:
Mhmm.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:09]:
So I had to kinda go back a few times asking some specific questions, and I kept getting sort of I actually got different responses from a couple of the technical the technical, sales specialist and the, account, account executive. So I went to the site in which they said solve the problem, and I went through. I went and tried to buy on their site, and what was interesting was it actually wasn't doing what they said it was doing. Yeah? Correct. Really? So I went back to them with screenshots, and they said, hey. Is this how you envisage us? Like, going being with us if we go to your platform? They're like, yes. And my response was, well, this isn't really solving our problem that we've presented to you, is it? They said, no. It's not.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:55]:
So my trust level now, gone.

David Fastuca [00:15:57]:
I don't wanna work

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:57]:
with them.

David Fastuca [00:15:58]:
Yeah. So you've just done all the work for them.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:59]:
And to be honest, I don't wanna I don't need the platform now. It, a, doesn't do doesn't do what they say it's doing, and, b, they've lied to me. So the level of distrust with that organization, it's it's completely gone. They've eroded any opportunity to work with me moving forward. Right? So that's just there are a couple of examples there on, again, a, not understanding where your buyer is at in the buying journey. Absolutely key. B, defining how educated they are on the topic so that you can say, okay. What's the level of education, and how do I now need to tailor our our point of view? How do I now need to tailor the information so we are filling the education gap? And then the last part, don't feature dump.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:16:46]:
Really try to understand what is it that they're trying to solve, and how can we provide some value, and also examples, and talk through how other people have solved that particular problem. Yeah? That's the key.