AEs win complex deals with my strategies I Coaching & Free Resources ➡️ krystenconner.com🦄 ex Outreach, Salesforce, Tableau 👉🏼👉🏿👉🏽 Click bell to be notified when I post 🔔
After 11 years in sales, I've got good news for anyone who gets "Happy Ears" a lot. (btw, I spent the early years of my sales career battling that same thing) Luckily, a mentor shared their secret with me. Here it is: 3 questions + 1 rule for all Opportunities The Three Questions --> Why Anything --> Why Now --> Why Us The One Rule --> NONE of the answers can mention any of your product's features as the reason You can ONLY mention a product feature IF you know the outcome it creates or prevents. For a past deal at UserGems 💎 - this sounded like: --> WHY ANYTHING: Pipeline creation is strategic initiative #1 for Exec Buyer (RVP Sales) in 2024. They have an aggressive goal: 17% YoY increase --> WHY NOW: UserGems can be implemented in under 60 days (feature), which means there's still time to impact H2 pipe, and even H2 revenue (impact). --> WHY US: RVP knows that her biggest competitor started with UserGems last year & they are losing more deals than ever to this competitor. And the RVP's team has seen only 6% increase in ARR and 19% renewal churn. This is the data she's presenting to CFO as proof that 1) the strategy works & 2) there's a high risk of doing nothing. If we can't answer the 3 Why's - with metrics We need to quickly dive deeper with Discovery - or move on If we show our pipeline some tough love now, we can prevent a lot of pain from Happy Ears in the future.
Need to balance optimism with a HEALTHY dose of skepticism.
This post is 💯 truth. Also, it never hurts to straight up ask the customer these questions. Getting them to articulate it is powerful.
I had a bad case of “happy ears” for a long time. Resist the urge to pitch!
Like it - nice frame work I like the wiifm matrix too. Can you identify what’s in it for each of the buyers/personas involved across time, money and status (both internal and external).
I should add "👂Mickey Mouse👂" to my LI headline, so love this post, in particular the caveat that you can't use product features as the reason. In my experience unfortunately, even some past leaders have accepted that as OK. Thanks for sharing 👩🏻🏫 Krysten!
"Why Anything" is so important - it opens up a whole world of alternatives that are not even necessarily competitive software
Juice. Gold. Money. Bars. Treasure. Thanks 👩🏻🏫 Krysten Conner
Ooo, I like the one rule. Great addition to an already great 3 questions (3 Whys).
solid 👊
Co-Founder @ Fluint | Writing about selling *with* your buyers, not to them.
5dLoving this piece to the rule: "You can ONLY mention a product feature IF you know the outcome it creates or prevents."