7: Workshop

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Workshop

Thanks guys for coming in today just to introduce Costas, and Miles they have only been selling a few months, but let’s jump straight into it. So, we have a situation you were telling me that happened to you even this morning when, someone we’re trying to set up a call with, someone just said, look, you can deal with me. And they weren’t the decision maker. Yes. So just go through how that went.

So, he liked the idea, but he said to me, you know, Costas I need to run this through my CEO before we know we can make any decisions. And I said, you know, I understand you want to, uh, see your CEO, but why don’t we get you both,  on the call, you know, when he’s free so I can run, I can run this by you guys together and the CEO and you as well can both see if what I’m proposing offers you any value.

Right. And I’m going to guess that he sort of insisted you should see him.

Yeah. He stood his ground. He claims that, you know, he is the only way to the CEO. He said you can’t see him yourself. And you also told me about that the CEOs is traveling at the moment, right?

So let’s just go through quickly what happened. First of all, you treated that objection in a way most new salespeople treat objections. You feel it’s intuitive to win the argument. So you want to win the argument. But why don’t I do this? Why don’t I do that? How about this? How about that? And what ends up happening is, the other person feels they should stand their ground. You stand your ground and it ends up like a battle of wills. Very rarely are you ever going to say, look, why don’t I, speak to the CEO? You step aside and I will tell him because you’re less important than he says, you know what? You’re probably right. Let’s do that. These are going to happen very few times, so we’ve got to play the majority game, not the minority game. The other thing is if you noticed, you said, “but” so the end of your sentence you went, look, I understand that, but why don’t I decide to do this and I will do that and I do this.

So there were lots of “I’s”in there and lots of reasons that will be good for you but not good for him or the company. So the way you have to do it is let’s take a few steps back and we’re going to have to sell that according to what’s good for them. And you have to see things from their point of view and put yourself in their shoes. So, there’s not a lot of empathy going on there or understanding you’ve dealing with egos at this stage. So you’ve got to understand step one really once you’ve worked out, what is my objective? Do you want to pitch them or do you want to pitch the boss or do you want to pitch him? You’ve got to make, start at the end and work backwards. So what’s your objective? Did you ultimately, are you prepared to pitch him or not. Ultimately you want to pitch for decision maker.

 

 

So that’s what you want. So that’s your end game. So that’s where you’re aiming towards. So let’s go backwards. So the first step is he said, I’m going to have to run it past the CEO. Yes. Okay. And you said, yeah, you want to go to past CEO, but now what I want you to do is just say, look, I understand you want to run this past the CEO. So just say that back to me as if you really understand my situation. Look, I understand, so you want to speak to your CEO? Yes. Good. And if I said something like Miles look, um, I’m really not interested. So just repeat that back to me. Okay. So you’re not interested. Good. And if I said, look our us, I’ve got no budget. Repeat that back to me. I understand you have no budget. Excellent. That’s really good.

Cause I didn’t feel you were going to say but or even contradict that statement or continue and be confrontational. The next stage is you want to do some kind of emotional audit on this or at least qualify what happens. So what you don’t know at this stage is the power this person has. So I would say something like, look, I understand the CEO’s empowered you to deal with this, but if you like this, if you really like and it makes strong business sense, can you sign this off or do you need to run it past him for approval? And he still might disagree with it. So I would ask that question because I want to know can he sign it off on his own or does he need to run it past the boss for approval? Do you not risk upsetting them a little bit though?

You may you, but the truth of the matter is you’re only going to upset people who can’t make decisions. And really it’s about ratios. See, you’ve got to understand your time. This is what’s critical. So if you don’t understand your ratios, start to understand your ratios. So if you pitch 10 people and 10 people are influencers and you get one out of 10 deals, but you pitch one in every two or three decision makers, you can afford to blow seven influencers out and speak to three decision makers to get the right price to get the same deal. So at the same time, yes, for every person you upset, it’s at the risk that some will just accept it. But the other thing that you didn’t do Costas, was you didn’t sound very sure that’s what you wanted to do. So, it was almost like, why don’t we, you know, sit down speak to your CEO, that’s not very assertive.

At some point you’ve got to almost be very assertive. So let’s reverse it a little bit. So you would say something that I need to speak to my CEO. I need to speak to my CEO. Yeah, look, I understand you have to speak to your CEO. Let me ask you Costas. It’s if you like this and it’s really great, um, then what happens is you take it to the CEO. Yeah. I’ll then take it to the CEO, run it by him. And is it possible that the CEO will always rubber stamp what you’ve done or is it a bit 50/50 he could still say no. No, of course not. Because at the end of the day he has authority. So he would look at it and make his own judgment based on what I’ve told him and what the proposal says. Right. Then what I need to happen is I need you both in that room because what happens is if I mentioned it to you and we spent an hour going through it and you really like it and he says, no, that’s obviously going to waste your time.

And he might have serious, legitimate business concerns where he might ask questions that you don’t have. And of course, one of the things is that I can give you enough information. So you’d be in a position to buy, but it’d be very difficult for you to then sell this on. So what’s best is we both get in a room. Now, when is your CEO back that we can both do that early May. Early May. So that would be a great time. So should we do this on the phone with your CEO or would it be best if I come in? Um, do it on the phone is fine. Brilliant. Let’s set that up. Thank you very much for helping me.

 

Costas. That’d be brilliant. And that’s what I would go for. See, it was much more sure of my objective. So therefore I found there were less objections.

Now obviously in the real world, he still might say, no, no, no, no, no. You’ve still got to pitch to me. Now my pitch becomes different. My pitch would simply become a pitch to get the meeting with the CEO. So, let’s say for example, what we do is we do videos and we raise companies’ profiles. Then I just give them the raw basics. Yeah. So, this is basically the deal Costas we produce videos that raise people’s profiles in order to, you’re seen as experts. We’ve done videos for these people, these people. And these people and our name, your competition, so look speech your CEO and let’s see if it’s worth having a meeting, discuss how we can help you achieve that goal. Is that fair? That’s brilliant. If he then says, how much is it? You say, look, there’s such a range, but I can assure you of one thing, you’re going to be able to afford this, but not everyone has done it because they didn’t see the value.

So let’s see if you can see the value first and then we can find out if it’s right for you. Is that fair? That’s fair. Great. It’s good you’ve mentioned that as well because I actually had a message from LinkedIn today and some guy asking me before we left here a simply same price question. Well, this is a good example as well. Often people will say, how much is it? And we went through this in some of my earlier presentations, but when price, one of the things that I will always say is how much is it? Well, that’s a good question. How much is it? Let’s role play that. One of the things that you might say is that’s interesting you ask how much is it? Are you asking because you want to understand the value or are you asking because you want to see if you can afford it? So that’s changed the line of their questioning to all, I’m just going to put the phone down to get rid of you to a different question, which is, yeah, why am I asking that question? So, Miles, if we go through that question. Yeah. And I said, yeah, well how much is it?

Well, I’d say something like, um, well do you, are you asking, because you know the price of, sorry, are you asking me? Because you want to know how much of your budget that will be all because you’re trying to figure out how much value it will bring you?

Okay, good question. One thing you missed out is I want you to try to repeat back. Oh yeah. Look, how much is it that gives you time? When you repeat stuff back, you’ll say, look, may I ask, are you, and you can even get more distance to give yourself more time. So you could say, look, how much is it? Hmm, let me ask your question. Miles. Okay. So are you asking that because you are concerned about whether you can afford it or are you asking because you want to understand the value now give me an answer to what you might say to that.

Well, as the customer,

Yeah.

Um, I might say something along the lines of, well, I want to know how much it’ll cost because I ultimately have to answer to my seniors and if I start spending money left, right and center, I’ll get it in the neck.

 

 

 

Right. So is this more about affordability or more about value or more about affordability? I’d say, well, look, the one thing I can absolutely assure you is we do such a range that I’ve never, ever had a customer say to me, they can’t afford it. Okay. I have, however, I have customers that haven’t done it. They say they didn’t see the value. Yeah. So let’s see if there’s the value first and then we can talk about what’s the best price to put on this that you can afford. Does that sound reasonable? Great. So when should we set up the meeting? So, it’s got to be more like that?

Yeah

In terms of the way it’s done.