Move the Pipe!

Part 2 of 3: Move the Pipe.

This is part two in our three-part series with insights and learnings on managing the sales cycle from start to finish. This week we focus on capturing and keeping momentum, progressing interested prospects into solid deals and pipeline management.

Part 1, Filling the Pipe (prospecting, opening, creating a deal and filling your pipeline)

Part 2, Moving the Pipe (discovery, demos and keeping momentum)

Part 3, Closing the Pipe (overcoming hurdles, negotiation and closing)

In this week’s Part 2: Move the Pipe! we discuss:

• The 11 Best Discovery Tips You’ll Ever Need
• How to Run a Kick @%& Demo!
• Key Practices to Drive More Deals
• 5 Best Practices to Manage Your Rep’s Pipeline
• Valuable snippets from gurus and experts on following up, managing multiple decision makers, listening, risk mitigation and traits of top progressing deals.

Give it a read and let me know what you think.

And lastly — as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- consider sharing it with someone who might as well 👊.

STRETCH SHARES

The 11 Best Discovery Tips You’ll Ever Need

In my opinion, capturing and keeping momentum to move deals through the pipeline almost always falls back to great discovery. In fact, I wrote about that in a previous post.

So naturally as I thought about moving the pipe — I wanted to share one of my favorite resources on discovery. Gong presents 11 tips to help make your discovery the best it can be, and subsequently — move more deals effectively through the pipe.

1. Discovery is a process, not an event. If a rep is to “Always be Closing” — a rep should “Always be Discovering”.
2. Match your questions to the buyer’s journey. Latent paint vs. Active pain.
3. Re-validate everything you uncover. “What’s changed since the last time we talked?”
4. Phrase your questions to get long answers. OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS + “Can you help me understand…”
5. Say the three “magic” words MIRRORING. “1–3 magic words?”
6. Use “commercial-grade” listening. LABELING. “It sounds like…”
7. Ask questions based on what your buyer said. Peel the onion. Go deep.
8. Ask questions only an expert could ask. Make your buyer think rather than just recite information.
9. Ask the “sweet spot” number of questions. Spoiler: Its 11–14.
10. Maintain a healthy talk-to-listen ratio. Hint: 46% Talk and 54% Listen.
11. Turn on your webcam. Closed deals involve using webcams 41% more often than lost deals

Bonus Discovery Call Cheat Sheet here.

Full Post HERE

Own Momentum at Every Stage: 5 Key Practices to Drive More Deals

Digging deep into the Skaled consulting knowledge well features a time-tested piece any sales leader can use to refresh the basics with their team. Principal — Deb Berman discusses her 5 best practice tips and tricks to generating momentum throughout your sales pipeline to drive high quality deals.

1. There’s No Such Thing As a “Check-In Call”. Haha. Love this one. 74% of buyers will choose to work with the rep who first added value and insight into their conversations.
2. Pricing Should Always Have an Expiration Date. May be controversial — but I tend to agree here. At the very least — create a sense of urgency here. And keep in mind — this doesn’t always have to include discounts! Takeaway is that there needs to be a reason to return the contract that the customer cares about.
3. Create Compelling Events. To create these events, reps need to engage with leads in the early stages of the buying process to discover the problem they’re facing so they can create an efficient and well-documented timeline to solving it. (See Discovery Tips above!)
4. Always Have an Agenda. This is such a basic, yet important piece of the puzzle. Developing an agenda that give your reps a clear reason to get on the phone with a prospect is critical. When reps communicate the need for a phone call it creates intrigue and purpose, which keeps prospects engaged.
5. More Activities = More Closed Won Deals. I’m a big believer in a John Wooden quote that says Never confuse activity for impact. However, I also agree with Deb as she points out the data shows that more activities equals more closed won deals. Plus, engaging with multiple members of a Decision Making team keeps your lead moving through your sales pipeline towards the end-goal: closing the deal.

Read post HERE

How to Run a Kick @%& Demo

I first discovered Dave Kennet, founder of Replayz from a Sales Hacker tweet. Dave has a really cool feature with evangelist Scott Barker, called “Demolitions” — where they critique recorded demos from SaaS strangers and de-construct them with feedback and recommendations. If you haven’t seen these yet (or used them in trainings) — check them out HERE. Pretty cool stuff.

Dave was on a recent B2B Sales Podcast giving us some advice of what he sees are areas of improvement for running better demos. After watching over 1,000 hours of demos — Dave coaches a few universal techniques and tips for reps such as:

1. MORE DISCOVERY (see discovery section above) and TAILOR the demo to what you discussed in the specific user, role, and what you discussed in discovery.
2. Show more VALUE and IMPACT. Skip the feature and function. Leverage your Top 3 differentiators.
3. Build your story around the customer use case. Talk through case studies in the demo! “Customers tell us this is where we excel…” Explain What, So What, then a Customer Story to bring it home.
4. Don’t go more than a couple minutes without checking in. Make these meaningful! Love to understand your thoughts so far. Explore and ask where this stands… Use this time for more discovery and questions for ammunition.

Listen to Podcast HERE.

5 Best Practices for Managing Your Pipeline

A perfectly simple refresher for sales leaders in SaaS on why sales pipeline management is at the core of everything we do in sales.

Your sales reps are staring at their funnels all day, everyday. Mastering the sales pipeline is an extremely effective way to increase revenue because it allows sales reps to remain organized and focused on selling. This is undeniably a critical part of the sales process.

As a sales leader, to ensure the pipe is moving — focus on a few key things from Sales Hacker:

1. Live and Breathe Sales Metrics

2. Execute Regular Pipeline Reviews

3. Focus On Small Improvements at Each Stage of The Sales Funnel

4. Keep That Sales Pipeline Squeaky Clean

5. Create a Formalized Pipeline Management Operations Manual

Full post HERE.

STRETCH VP POST 👇

Coaching Basic Blocking and Tackling as a Sales Leader in SaaS

Revisiting this Stretch VP post on basic, expected activity as a SaaS sales rep, why its important and how we can coach this a bit better.

We’re talking logging calls, setting next steps, updating deal amounts and appropriate forecast categories. Things I consider to be basic blocking and tackling of a tech seller to ensure each deal moves along the appropriate stage in the sales process.

This is a crucial part of keeping each deal engaged, on track and eventually seeing through close.

Full Post HERE

STRETCH SNIPPETS

• 👂 Jake Dunlap tell us to listen more if we want to move deals through the funnel. Understand where the customer pain point really is.
• 🎢 Hey Salespeople: 91% of sellers have seen the decision-maker change during the selection process. (Jeremey Donovan)
• 🚧 Justin McDonald takes us through risk mitigation in the sales process. PODCAST LINK HERE.
• 📊 Rob Jeppsen tweeted: “Show your team what success looks like. If someone is an all-star closer, make sure their routine is known and emulated.”
• 💡Belal Batrawy shares 7 unexpected ways to delight prospects as a seller.
• 🔑 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of reps give up after 1 call according to a study by The Brevet Group.
• 🚦Yesware reminds us to focus on top progressing deals and move past the deals that are stalling.
• 🎱 Some opportunities are worthy of more energy and effort than others. Rain Sales Training discusses which ones to pursue.

Thanks for reading!

My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).

— Grant 👋

About stretch vp: confessions, learnings and insights from sales leaders in SaaS

Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.

Are you a VP, Director, thought leader or content producer in the SaaS space? We’d love to have you contribute. Contact Me HERE.

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Originally published at https://stretchvp.substack.com.