Winning the Complex Sale

Speaker 0    00:00:01    Coming to you from Orlando, Florida, Orlando, Florida, and streaming around the world around the world. You're not tuned in to the sales samurai podcast. The only B2B sales podcast, providing unfiltered unapologetic views and tactics directly from the sales trenches. Here's your host, Sam Capra.  
Speaker 1    00:00:30    Welcome to another episode of the sale samurai. Thanks for listening. Before we begin as always do us a favor, take a moment to subscribe and download on today's show. We're going to be discussing winning the complex sale, and I have an amazing guest for you today. Alex buckles is the ceo@forecastable.com right here in Orlando, Florida, and as a sales process, connoisseur sewer, Alex, man, welcome to the show. How are ya?  
Speaker 2    00:00:58    How about yourself,  
Speaker 1    00:00:59    Sam? You know what I am doing? Fantastic. Thank you for asking. Hey, now we got a fantastic show because this is something a lot of members of the audience have kind of pinged me on, uh, most of my network and most people that kind of list that are really kind of more on that inner prize complex sale, where there's just, I'm exaggerating here, 50 million people that have to sign off on it, and it takes seven to 12, 18 24 to millennia to get it signed. And you know, it's like herding cats. So I really am excited to be discussing this and we're going to get pretty micro on this, like the real kind of we're going to boil it down for everyone. So I'm really excited about it. And one thing that I wanted to kind of preface with, because I think this is important. This is why I wanted to have this conversation because, you know, I think over the period of time that I've been selling, I don't know the hard stats. I know all the recent stats are what 6, 7, 8 people are typically involved in an average deal. I have a distinct feeling that's only going to increase as we keep moving forward in today's new buying journey. If you will. Do you agree with that, Alex? Just curious more than anything? Absolutely.  
Speaker 2    00:02:08    Well, a 100%.  
Speaker 1    00:02:10    Well, Hey, before we do get into that, because we're going to spend a ton of time on it. Alex, can you give the audience a little bit of a background, kind of what you've been doing, kind of your background in sales, if you will.  
Speaker 2    00:02:19    Sure. My name's Alex buckles. I'm the CEO of forecastable or we're a software as a service platform focused on delivering scalable sales certainty by simplifying the complex sale. In terms of my background, I'm a career enterprise sales person. I've always worked for a lot of small companies, so I've worn a lot of hats. So marketing website stuff, you know, enterprise sales product, I've done a lot of different things, but primarily been focused on enterprise sales. And so I was at a company, I was in the SAP ecosystem. Then I was in the Adobe ecosystem. And then now I obviously that for forecastable full-time  
Speaker 1    00:02:51    That's fantastic. And so I'm just curious, what got you kind of on that sales side of the career? Like what got you interested in sales, if you will, I've  
Speaker 2    00:02:59    Always been good at it and just, I've just been good at it. I mean, ever since I was a little kid, you know, I mean selling like popcorn to neighbors and like suckering them into, into writing me a check for 15 $20, I've always done it. And then after I got out of the Marine Corps in 2005, I got into, I didn't have a degree, you know, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. So I got into retail sales. I worked at radio shack. Oh man. Yeah. And that's where I learned how to sell cell phones. And I got really good at that and realized I was making a lot of money, you know, for me, you know, I was selling cell phones there and I moved on to sprint. And then after that, I ended up working for my father and my father is a CEO of a software company. He just sold it a couple of years ago after 20 some odd years. So it's also kind of in the family,  
Speaker 1    00:03:37    Fantastic man, man, radio shack. That's a blast from the past man.  
Speaker 2    00:03:40    It is every once in awhile, you pass by, you see like an old radio shack store. It's very nostalgic for me.  
Speaker 1    00:03:45    That's one of those stories that always has broken my heart. For whatever reason. I, you know, blockbuster obviously breaks my heart. You know, that tells you how old I am. The blockbusters, the radio shacks, the circuit cities, the things there were just these mainstays that I think it's actually applicable to even the conversation we're having is the ability to evolve and adapt in this ever-changing world and sales as a part of that. If you don't adapt and learn fast, you're going to get left behind that's for sure.  
Speaker 2    00:04:12    Absolutely. Well, and it's no exception today at the pace that things are moving today, that pace of innovation, the pace of go to market. If you start slowing down in any, any way, shape or form, you will get taken over and left behind.  
Speaker 1    00:04:22    So let me ask you from, just from that sales perspective, how long have you been doing sales for 16 years. All right. So almost two decades. Okay. So talk to, because I'm in the same boat, I'm about 20 years in now. I feel like I'm always learning something new every day. I always ask this question because I always love the answer I get around it. So I'm going to ask you, I like, in that 16 years, like what's changed. Give me two answers. What's changed in sales for the better. And then what's changed in sales probably for the worst. What does the negative impact on sales? However you want to bucket it,  
Speaker 2    00:04:57    Let's start out with a worst because it leads to the better, maybe on the worst side, you know, there is just an, an abundance of technology out there, right? You, you look at like, as an example, I think about like when I was selling marketing automation technology at Marquetto, you look at Scott Brinker's MarTech landscape and you start seeing just the thousands of technologies that are available to a buyer and buyers are overwhelmed, you know, especially with a lot of these VC backed startups. Like they come into the market, they have one small feature that does something really unique and it's really special that go to market with it. They're doing really well. All of a sudden they raised 10 million bucks and they get all this pressure to increase. Not only just market share, but then as they start hitting their market share, it's like, okay, well we need to develop a new feature. So they start building features that overlap other technologies. And it's just so confusing for buyers. So on the worst side, there's just so many technologies overwhelming for buyers, which leads to the positive side. There's a lot more technology out there to help keep a rep focused and organized and systematic about their selling approach. And I think that's, that's a positive side. There's so much available to a sales rep today.  
Speaker 1    00:05:58    Yeah. You know, the, the reason I asked that question and I think fantastic answer is I liked the audience theater that, you know, all the guests almost 100% have kind of said something very, very similar. And I liked that from an audience perspective because that gives them the, Hey, this isn't just an isolated thing. This is a challenge that everyone is facing because most people are saying, Hey, technology is a positive. The technology is kind of the dual edged sword technology allows us to drive efficiency and scale. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. But it also creates a tremendous amount of noise, which is a challenge. And it's overwhelming. There's just so much technology that there's a lot of redundancies and overlap and obviously the noise that is associated with it. So I think those are good. Call lots. Anything you wanted to add to that?  
Speaker 2    00:06:46    I think that's it. Hey, so  
Speaker 1    00:06:47    Let's jump into this because obviously winning the complex sale, this is near and dear to my heart. What we sell at our flex engage is it is a very complicated, long enterprise sales process. So I want to get into the favorite  
Speaker 2    00:07:02    Time, by the way, you know  
Speaker 1    00:07:03    What, it's funny when I was very first starting out in sales, I never forget when I was interviewing for the first time and exact target was acquired by Salesforce. I'll never forget. I was kind of coming from more of a transactional background, more of a, Hey, it wasn't a cheap thing. It didn't take like a day or two. It was about 90 days or less average deal size, maybe 30, 40, 50,000, whatever. It was a smaller number. And I remember being really pushed on, Hey, how do you think you can make that leap to more of an intricate? And I never thought it was any different. I'm like, well, sales a sale. Sure. I think it's funny when you do it, it's different than the transactional side. So I want to start there when we're talking about a complex sale, Alex, in an enterprise sale, Hey, are they kind of the same complex enterprise and we kind of bucket those the same. And how do you differentiate between the complex sale and a transactional sale?  
Speaker 2    00:07:56    I would say complex is typically associated with enterprise, right? I mean, basically the larger the organization, the more stakeholders are the more people that are going to be impacted by any single purchase. Right. And so I imagine as we get into complex, as the organization gets bigger, so it is kind of, it is very similar to enterprise, but it's not, you know, it's not solely enterprise, the difference enterprise versus non enterprise. So I look at like a transactional sale. I think, you know, you're selling widgets. It's like, Hey, I'm calling you up and I'm selling you this coffee mug or whatever. That may be something that is really simple. You typically have one stakeholder, maybe two max that need to make a decision. And so it's basically just objection handling. So if you're able to get the decision maker on the phone and you can, you know, pitch your value proposition and you can handle objections effectively, you can do really well at transactional selling. But as you start getting into larger orgs where there are more people involved, it's all about systematically generating group consensus and figuring out, you know, who is supporting you, who is supporting you, who is, you know, who is against your, your solution and why. And so just a lot more details to it.  
Speaker 1    00:09:01    I, that's a great how you've defined it, how I used to always look at it was, and it wasn't the right way necessarily. I used to always find the transactional. There's a lot more fluid. It was like more, Hey it's month to month, no obligation, really no risk one time buy. Whereas when you get an enterprise and I was really boiling down the ocean, Hey, it's a five-year contract. It it's, you know, it's a multi-million dollar, you know, at least half a million dollar multi-year agreement that you have locked into, right. That in itself threw another rent into the whole enterprise was now you're getting, I never, when I was in transactional, dealt with procurement or legal, cause there was no contract, typically that through another layer of complexity, then now I have to weave red lines and all this kind of fun stuff. So I think it's a good piece of feedback there.  
Speaker 2    00:09:45    If you think about it, even just going back to selling cell phones, that's transactional, right? You have a husband and a wife and a family, a one, maybe two decision-makers and you've got to sell them on plans. Right. I mean, that's it  
Speaker 1    00:09:55    Right? Without a doubt, let's talk through this because we're going to focus the conversation on the complex side, because this is like you said, I don't want to say either, I don't want to say transactional is easy. It's just a different type of sale. So for today's conversation, we'll focus on the complex piece of it. So kind of give me a lay of the land. Like, you know, there's a lot of layers to a complex sale, right. You know, budget, let me rewind for a second. Is there a methodology that you kind of follow when we're talking about complex? You know, there's the bands, there's the medics, like where do you fall from a methodology? Is there a better way of doing it just from a methodology standpoint or do you kind of believe that they're all fundamentally kind of the same and what they're trying to drive towards?  
Speaker 2    00:10:35    So when I think methodology, I think qualification, right. You know, and I separate qualification or methodology out from process, you know, I'm a believer that process can be used across any sales org. And you can define a selling process and B and be just fine, regardless of methodology, you could have one process that serves a lot of different sales orgs, but from a methodology perspective, I think that's unique to the company and that's why it's good and healthy when you see medic or med pick and they adjust the methodology to make it fit whatever their qualification criteria are. And so that's what I think  
Speaker 1    00:11:06    That's fantastic. You know, here's the thing that I've, and this kind of dovetails into the complex sale of things is what I've always found with methodologies at their core is they're very rigid. You know, like I remember band, right? Do you have budget? Do you have authority? Do you have needs? You have time, if not, you're disqualified and you're done, we're not talking to you anymore, but in today's environment, there's a lot of like our solution. It's not budgeted for there's it's net new creation of budget. Like, so to ask, do you have budget would be an arbitrary question that they're forming budget. They would have to form it like that almost leads to disqualification before necessarily they might even be disqualified. So that was always the fundamental issue I had with those methodologies. And maybe it's because we followed them too rigidly. And I think that's what you leading towards, right? Alex?  
Speaker 2    00:11:53    Yes. I mean, and, and like, if you're getting into like a band, right. And he's looking at budget, if there's a defined initiative and they've set aside budget and they're reaching out to you, like those are easy. It's like, oh, you know, you have budget for it. Cause they reached out to you. But in the case, when you're creating the demand, right. And you know, SDRs, you know, God bless them, right. That's a really hard job. They've got to go out there and drum up this interest. And if there's not budget already defined, you've got to figure out how to get the budget created. And that's why it's important to understand the difference between an economic buyer and a decision maker. So an economic buyer, many times people think the economic buyer is the decision maker. And I mean, it could be in certain scenarios, but the definition is the economic buyer is somebody that can move budgets around and say, okay, well, if the decision makers that chief revenue officer, or let's say the VP of sales, he's making the decision, doesn't have budget, but he can go to the chief revenue officer or the COO and get budget allocated to this project.  
Speaker 2    00:12:45    Then that's how you get it. So it's, if they don't have budget grow, you know, it's hard, it's not easy, but go, go find somebody who can create it.  
Speaker 1    00:12:53    So I think that brings us to the point that, you know, I know we want to spend our time on today and I found that this is actually the biggest challenge that I've seen. I've done personally, that the I've always know I've struggled with. When I go back and do a post-mortem on a deal, it always comes back to stakeholders. I didn't identify him. I didn't talk to him. I didn't know they were involved. I didn't know they were involved that much. I, you know, there was just all these kind of hurting cats for lack of better terminology. So when I think of a complex sale, I, the one thing that always bubbles to the top for me is stakeholders. Do we know who they are? Have we identified them? Do we know what their pain points are? All of that. So I know that's what we're going to talk about today, but can you were talking about economic and then decision-makers like, can you kind of boil it up? I mean, can you just kind of roll down who are typically involved in some of these types of deals, we kind of bucket the champion and influence or a technical buyer. Like for those that are just not as familiar or not used to enterprise sales are heading into enterprise sales.  
Speaker 2    00:13:52    Sure. So we just spoke about the economic buyer. Your decision maker is obviously the person that can make the final decision take everybody's input and then, you know, give the stamp of approval and then you get into influencers. So these are people at, at the bottom, at the kind of, I'm kind of jumping around a bit, and these are folks that their actions can influence a decision, right? They've got credibility within the organization or, or they've got social influence, even they could just be friends with somebody and that's a form of influence. So it's important to identify who has influenced. And to what extent that influence is, or to what extent that they have influence next is like a coach, right? So this is somebody that isn't willing to stick their neck out and go get you meetings, or to really champion you. This is somebody who believes they're a supporter, right?  
Speaker 2    00:14:35    So there's somebody that supports your product. They believe in what you do. They think it's a great fit for their organization, but instead of sticking their neck out, they're just going to coach you kind of subtly behind closed door and say, okay, well here's, you should, here's who you should talk to. And oh, by the way, avoid this over there, because that could be a landmine. So be careful about that. So they coach you and give you guidance versus a champion is somebody that is willing to stick their neck out. So they are, it's like a coach on steroids. Basically. They're willing to stick their neck out. They usually have credibility. They usually have some type of authority as a champion, and they're willing to introduce you to others and they're willing to go and fight for you on and on your behalf when you're not in the room.  
Speaker 2    00:15:12    That's fantastic. You did touch on evaluators too. So there's both technical evaluators. So I call them technical evaluators and functional evaluators. So on the functional side, uh, at least when selling software, they're there to go determine, does your platform have the features or functions that the business requires to get their desired outcome? And then let's say, you know, we're a vendor of choice. The business evaluators say, yep, this is the best platform we've got. And then it may move to a technical evaluation where somebody is going to say, okay, well now what's the feasibility of implementing this. Does it work with our tech stack? And those are technical resources. That'll make those decisions.  
Speaker 1    00:15:45    Yeah, that's fantastic. So, Hey, so one of the things that, you know, we hear, and these are some buzzwords I want to clarify this before we can kind of get into the weeds of bit is, you know, we kind of talked about, you know, we all know that now the average deal is 6.8. You know, the deals that we're working sometimes have up to 12, 13, 14 people. Now, they're not all, we're not talking to them, but we have to understand their role and help mitigate and navigate and veer in certain directions. But we hear this term quite a bit and I see it all the time on LinkedIn, single thread. Multithread, you know, so, and I know that's been buzzing around. So when you hear that for the audience, what does that mean when someone's selling deals? Hey, is that single thread? Is it multi-part? What does that mean for the audience?  
Speaker 2    00:16:29    It's about your engagement with the stakeholders. And so if you, when you're single-threaded, that means you're engaged with one person, your deal is hanging on by a single thread. And if that one person goes away, they find a new, awesome job opportunity, or they get fired, or, you know, all of a sudden their priorities shift or they're having personal problems. There's so many different ways. One person can be impacted that can turn around and hurt you. And so I've been single-threaded in deals. There's there's I lost a massive deal in 2017, which actually caused me to start forecastable in 2018 or I was single-threaded. And anyway, so multithreaded just means the opposite of single-threaded. So you've got multiple people engaged, you know, you've got basically more connections into the org.  
Speaker 1    00:17:09    Fantastic. So, you know, I'm sure you've faced it. You know, I know for a fact, IFA, stet, you know, identifying those stakeholders, right? Understanding the organization, the org chart, who rolls up to who, but you get these deals and you always hit no, I'm the only one involved or no, I'd make that decision. Talk to us a little bit about tactically strategically. How do you go about kind of mapping and understanding stakeholders going into the call during the call post call, like, Hey, I know who I need to be talking to. So I'm going to educate the buyer I'm talking to, like, how do you do that, help us understand how to navigate identifying stakeholders. Sure.  
Speaker 2    00:17:49    So one that just in general is kind of walk you through my own process. But one in, in general, you know, every sales rep should understand who is typically involved in their deals. So if you're a new to a company, you should be going to the top reps. I mean, top three reps in the company and saying like, tell me about all the roles and the people that are typically involved and, and understand that really well. And then when you're doing your account research, so you're maybe you're about to do outbounding or, or whatnot, or maybe you've just got an inbound discovery call real quick, you got an inbound lead there. They signed up for discovery call before every discovery call for myself. Personally, I always go to LinkedIn sales navigator and I work and I start basically building a little org chart and I don't try to go out and go crazy for the discovery call, but I'll build a little org chart or what we call a buyer map and I'll work my way from CEO down to whatever stakeholders signed up for that discovery call.  
Speaker 2    00:18:38    And so I try to say, okay, well, it's, you know, it's a VP of sales. I don't see a chief revenue officer. So maybe he's reporting to the COO. So I'll put CEO, COO VP of sales, and then maybe I'll try to find a couple of peers. And so doing that exercise upfront, pre discovery call, uh, kind of forces you to think wider in the org. Chances are, as you're reading, people's profiles, you, you start learning more about that company. You start learning more about the individuals there, and it gives you just with that background. You, you end up asking just naturally more intelligent questions in the discovery call because you're more informed. So that's a little bit of pre-work you can do now, you know, during, you know, once you get engaged, right. And let's say that that that person ends up becoming a champion or a coach, uh, in either scenario to find other stakeholders, you, you have to take that advocate, that champion or coach and make the direct ask, you know, Hey, what I normally do is one, have I asked the question, have you ever made a purchase of this size before?  
Speaker 2    00:19:30    What was that like? And if they say no, you know, right away instantly that, okay, I'm going to have to either guide this person through the purchasing process, because maybe they're, they got promoted their new enroller to new company, or I'm going to have to expand my relationships in the org to get to somebody that understands their purchasing process. So I always start out with that question, but if they say yes, then that's great because then you can start asking them questions around that. Okay. Well, what was that like and who is involved for that decision? You know, what was the procurement process like once you made a decision and you know, it was a new vendor, did it take them a week to onboard? Did it take them 45 days to onboard that new vendor and just learn, you know, learn about things like that.  
Speaker 2    00:20:10    Now getting specifically into, into more, into more stakeholders, one make the direct ask and then two, again, as I said before, just, you know, because you know what roles you sell to, it's also up to you to, to nudge them and challenge them on things. It's okay. So if I have, if I know that it is involved in 90% of the deals, and this person says they've made a purchase like this of this size before, and they're telling me that it is not involved, they may challenge that I'll make a statement like, Hey, actually like 95% of these deals, it is involved. And when they don't get involved, I've seen this fall apart, like at the 11th hour. And it's really bad for both of us. So you put a little bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt in heads about that. And then ask to see if they're willing to, to, to ask around internally to define that stakeholder that's  
Speaker 1    00:20:54    Let me ask you, as you brought up a good point here, and I've seen two schools of thoughts. I like the question, Hey, have you ever bought something of this magnitude or at this level or whatever the cost might be? Is that a slippery slope for getting into a pricing discussion way too early? Because you're bringing up, I don't know what the cost of the solution. So I don't know if I can do this or not do this. Does that open Pandora's box? I've heard people say, Hey, you start going down that path. You're going to start getting pushed towards the pricing conversation might commoditize it. What's your thoughts? I just want to kind of stop there and maybe peel back the onion a little bit.  
Speaker 2    00:21:28    I would say I would still have the conversation or I would probably preface it with, Hey, Sam, it's way too early to have a pricing conversation. There's just so many variables involved in it, but let's say, you know, rough order magnitude we're anywhere from on the bottom, you know, $20,000, 10 on the top end for a company of your size, maybe a hundred thousand dollars, depending on what you guys get. Have you guys ever made a purchase of that size before?  
Speaker 1    00:21:50    Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that piece of it. So that helps and understanding. So kind of going into the call, you're doing a little research, like you said, I'm not doing a ton because so many discovery calls, but from the top down to the person that actually booked the discovery call, what is the ORC kind of look like? So you have a lay of the land of who this person might report to, who else might be involved, who else you actually might need to get to. And then also it helps you craft the type of conversation you want to have based on where they're at within the organization. Is that fair to say? And then from there, you're actually, you're being prescriptive. You're saying, listen, here's what I know I've done this a number of times, here's the people that need to be involved either through a direct task or by leveraging you as the expert in doing this. Here's who we need to speak to. If we don't in the 11th hour, this can fall flat on his  
Speaker 2    00:22:41    Face. Absolutely. Yep.  
Speaker 1    00:22:43    There was another thing that we were talking about offline. We were talking about partner ecosystem and things of that nature to help maybe from a tactical standpoint and for the audience, kind of give us an understanding, how do you leverage partners to help you map out that  
Speaker 2    00:22:57    Wonderful. If you've got the right partners, right? If you have a bunch of partners that are looking for handouts and are willing to like actually go fight with you on the front lines and you're, you've got the wrong partners, but in general, when you've got a good partner, you know, they have hopefully sold into some of these organizations before. And so as you look at common connections and things like that, as you're doing your account research or stakeholder research, if you've got a partner in there, I think a partner is a perfect person to go to and say, Hey guys, you have this customer. They say yes. And you say, what was that like? And so here's the stakeholders I'm dealing with. Maybe show them that buyer map and say, here's what I'm dealing with. Did you deal with any of these same people? Or I would ask, you know, what, what was your deal size? And if I find that their deal size is similar to ours, I would, I'll ask some questions around decision process and paper process and just learn as much as I can and just more informed.  
Speaker 1    00:23:42    That's awesome. Yeah. So what you're saying is, Hey, if you have right partners to glean that information from your partner soon, did you guys sell to who was a champion for you guys? How did you get your foot in the door? What was the buying process to buy your solution? How long did it take was procurement involved, was legal involved that helps you start to understand that process you're heading into the deal versus trying to catch up the 11th hour.  
Speaker 2    00:24:05    Correct. And I would say the last thing is also asking a question around, you know, who else within the organization might be impacted by this purchase? You know, it may not be apparent, right? And no matter what answer they give you like you as a sales rep need to really think about it. You should know their org by now, if you've done your homework, you've already learned from partners, you've already talked to your coach and champion and you should see what does my solution do. And are there other people that I think it will impact that they haven't called out? And just having that little exercise with yourself can help you surface hidden stakeholders.  
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Speaker 1    00:25:15    That's something that I think personally, and then just what I've seen, we don't do a good enough job specifically around is us understanding. Even if it's very minimally who we impact and getting them involved in some way, we take it at face value. They are the decision maker. They're the VP. I don't necessarily need to talk to the manager of email, even though the manager of email is actually the person that's probably going to be using it much, the VP will ever be using.  
Speaker 2    00:25:42    Yes, because you can't take everything at face value from prospects, one prospects, lie, customers lie. Some salespeople, you know, it just, people lie. And to some people, you know, are misinformed. And so you have to gauge, you just have to use your gut and say, does this person, did they have confidence when they said yes or they may, you know, they said this and that. And you've just got to question everything and don't trust your coach and your champion and do and do right by them. But you know, trust, but verify.  
Speaker 1    00:26:07    Yep. That's a perfect one. Hey, so, you know, we talked about this and we're going to get into authority. Cause I know it's a big piece of this as well, but you know, you asked that question, you'd be prescriptive. You asked the question directly, Hey, who do I need to speak to? Who who's else going to be involved? And then you educate, Hey, here's, who's typically that we see, let's say all of those paths just lead to, you know, they don't want to do it. They're like, no, I'm the person. No, it's too early to bring them in. I will. When it's time, I'm not saying they're blocking you, but they're essentially saying, Hey, you're staying with me. You're going to be holding my hand. And that's the only hand you're holding for right now, is that a red flag that, Hey, this might not be good. Like, how do you take that? What are the action items coming out of that?  
Speaker 2    00:26:49    It is nine times out of 10, a really, really big red flag and nine times out of 10. And the, and the, and the one time out of 10 is not a red flag, is it depends on their influence and authority and their, their role within the organization. If all of a sudden I've got, I've got a chief revenue officer that I'm speaking with and he says, I'm the be all end, all, you know, in a larger organization. And I know that for a fact, and you know, and selling is a two-way street there's give and take. And you find that, that your prospect is investing in this conversation with you and that they're emotionally invested. They're giving you your time. They're answering your questions. Like if that's the case, then it's okay. But most of the time it's not okay. Actually, maybe one more exception, RFP driven stuff.  
Speaker 2    00:27:27    When you've got, uh, you know, they're running a very tight RFP process. You're not supposed to speak with a business. You've got to follow the process. Like that's when you can be single-threaded and it's okay in that scenario. But for most other scenarios, you've got somebody that either doesn't really have the authority or they have a big ego and they're, they're, you know, they just have a big ego and they, and they want to be in control of things. If you feel that that's the case, you've got to break, rip that bandaid off and get around that person quickly. So one you could, so you could do it early on and just, you know, and just cheat, you know, early on and be like, and I'll email somebody else, you know, within the organization. But early, if you wait, let's say three weeks and now you're really pigeonholed.  
Speaker 2    00:28:04    And you've only been working with that one person. And then you cheat, it's very personal. They'll get really mad. And you know, you may be okay with it. You may not be, I'm not sure, but if you do it really early, you can play, you know, I didn't know, sorry. I was just, I was just doing what I normally do. These other roles are typically involved and so on and so forth. Additionally, there's another way you can get around it. So the risk in cheating early is that you may damage a little bit of your relationship with that stakeholder. So if that's really important, it could really hurt your deal. Then you can leverage your leadership to go around that person. So you could have your VP reach out to one of their VPs and say something like, Hey, I noticed that our two teams are engaged and that we're focused on this topic.  
Speaker 2    00:28:41    I just want to let you know that I'm here in the background and anything that you need in terms of support, I'll be there for you. But here's my information. Is there anything I can be doing for you right now to help support this or to help support this initiative? It's an offer of help. You're not asking any salesy questions, you're establishing a relationship it's non-threatening and hopefully that other VP, you know, writes back and acknowledges, and now you've got that extra hook. If your stakeholder gets pissed at you and be like, Hey man, I, I dude, my VP, I can't control them. I'm sorry. Like I, you know, they just do that sometimes. I apologize. Yeah. Yeah.  
Speaker 1    00:29:11    It's kind of plausible deniability. Yeah. Makes sense. That's good feedback there. So let's talk about authority. We've identified and we understand who's involved or who we think is involved or know will be involved. Who's going to be touching the solution, all these little micro factors, but then we were talking about authenticity offline. Can you kind of give me some, some thoughts, like from an authority standpoint, what's the context behind that  
Speaker 2    00:29:35    Alex, the context behind authority? Yeah. Like  
Speaker 1    00:29:38    When you say, Hey, listen, we also get to identify what authority each of these stakeholders have.  
Speaker 2    00:29:43    So authority to me has everything to do with approving authority, his approval authority, you know, they've got a $50,000 authority or a hundred thousand dollars authority. Most executives have a limit of some sort. And sometimes you can even surface that limit from lower level stakeholders and say, Hey, w w you know, I've had some people just flat out said, uh, my VP can only sign for $50,000. So you're going to get a $49,500 order for him. So anyway, so, so authority has everything to do with approvals. Gotcha.  
Speaker 1    00:30:11    Fair enough. And so I know one of the things that we were discussing as well is something, I think this is something you guys follow, and maybe even you guys have crafted, I know through LinkedIn and how we've kind of engaged. You guys leverage the stakeholder and please correct me if I'm wrong, stakeholder, concentration curve to kind of map them, walk us through what that is and how you guys leverage that  
Speaker 2    00:30:34    The stakeholder concentration curve is just a bell curve, right? So it's a standard bell curve. And the left side of the bell curve, you've got combative stakeholders and vocal opponents. These are stakeholders within the organization that, um, they like another solution or they hate you or whatever it is, they're really vocal. They tell other people, I think I'd walk around the office with a t-shirt that says this guy's product sucks. Don't buy from him. They probably would. Well that's where, like the far end left hand side of the bell curve now on the, on the far right-hand side of that bell curve, you've got, you know, your supporters and those are advocates. And then, you know, those stakeholders that are accepting, those are on the far, right? So on the advocating side, these are people that, that will they'll advocate for you internally. So when you're not in the room, they're advocating on your behalf, they're fighting for you.  
Speaker 2    00:31:18    They're sticking their necks out. They're putting things on the line for you. And then everything between combative and vocal and advocating all this middle area is the concentration area. And those you've got, you know, people that are indifferent, so I'm going to left to, right? So you have, you know, indifferent, you know, they just don't really care one way or the other, or they PR they just don't care. They show up. If they're asked an opinion, if they're asked for an opinion, they might even just take the opinion of the closest person near them. Like, oh, well, the rest of the group thinks this. So I'll probably go with that too. So that's important to keep in mind, if you have somebody that's in different, they'll probably go with a group. You have somebody that, that is, you know, above and different or to the right of indifferent is receptive.  
Speaker 2    00:31:53    So somebody that is really, they're not biased. They're really open to understanding all the solutions they're trying to objectively evaluate the receptive to what it is that you're sharing. And those are definitely able to be converted beyond receptive. You have accepting. And so these folks are, they're not advocating for you, right? This is a above. This is advocating. They're not advocating for you, but they've accepted your solution as being the right solution for their company through objective evaluation. And so with this stakeholder concentration curve. So the goal is to one, take your advocates on the right-hand side and leverage those advocates to convert the people that are able to be converted in the middle of the concentration curve. And then for the combative or vocal opponents in the far left hand side, you have to do everything you can to either get them out voted, or you just gotta eliminate them from deal. Somehow you got to keep them quiet or get them out, voted, or discredit them in some fashion and say, Hey, their opinion is irrelevant because of a, B and C. And you've got to tactfully say that somehow.  
Speaker 1    00:32:48    So make sure I understand that. So if I'm, and if this is not the right terminology, far left is essentially kind of the opponent or the naysayers, the ones that hell or high water, you ain't getting your stuff in here, right? So that's left as you continue to move, right. Kind of that middle area is kind of a neutral, right? I could potentially be swayed either which way I can go negative, or I can say, Hey, I'm with the crowd that doesn't want to buy it. And there's a keep going, right. I'm more and more leaning towards what I would say is support or what you would say, a supporter for the solution. The whole goal helped me. And just to make sure I'm on the same page, here is a, you want to make sure you're identifying every stakeholder as we've already talked to at the top of the podcast. And you also want to make sure you're bucketing them into where they fall on this bell curve. Is that fair to say, or am I off base?  
Speaker 2    00:33:36    That is absolutely accurate. So you're right. So the left-hand side, these are opponents. Middle is neutral, right? Is supporter supporter. You know, you just want to keep their support. You use them to convert the ones that are in neutral and opponents. You want to get them out voted. You want to neutralize them, them somehow in the deal. And it is like you said, it is absolutely important to get them categorized properly at all times. Because if you have somebody that you think is a supporter and they're not, and you've banked on that, and that can really, really hurt your deal.  
Speaker 1    00:34:02    I'm a very visual guy. I mean, if you tell me some like, like red light, yellow light, green light, is it kind of, well, what's the easiest way when you're using this type of technique to kind of keep things moving in the right direction.  
Speaker 2    00:34:15    One, it starts with asking the right questions, right? You can't, you know, it's, you have to engage each individual stakeholder in the complex sale in general, everybody's important. And everybody has their own self-centered, you know, selfish reasons why they want to purchase one solution over another. It's either going to help them professionally or personally or whatever it is. And getting to the bottom of that is like absolutely essential. And so for me, my go-to for earning the most number of as many supporters as possible is to get to that level of detail, understand each individual stakeholders motivations and make sure that you're, you give them the proper time and attention they deserve. That's how I identify those folks.  
Speaker 1    00:34:51    Where do you bucket someone that you've identified as a stakeholder, but you have not been able to engage them yet. Then, you know, they are not receptive or not calling you back, you know, they're there, but how does that work within that bell curve if you will?  
Speaker 2    00:35:03    That depends. So if I've identified the stakeholder and let's say, I know for a fact, the stakeholders involved, but I haven't spoken with them, then they're just like nothing. They just, they don't have any designations whatsoever. We have a field called contact status and I'll say, okay, not contacted. So if I haven't contacted them or engage them in any way, shape or form, I can't bucket them yet. Unless I hear through other stakeholders or my champion that this person is for, or against me, I can't make any of those designations.  
Speaker 1    00:35:27    You take that at face value. If they say, Hey, therefore you've never spoke to them, but maybe your champion says, no, Sam, no Alex through for you. Do you take that at face value? Or how do you approach that Alex? You  
Speaker 2    00:35:38    Can. It depends. I think if you've got a strong champion or maybe it's a champion that you've closed deals with in the past at this company, you know, you have great faith in them, then I would take it to the bank and you'll, you'll be okay. Now you could also, you know, it could be argued too, that if they're for you and your champion knows there for you, why can't that champion, get them on a call with you so you can meet them and do something. So like, you know, I'd take it to the bank, but I'd still push for, for some type of relationship because I'd rather have it than not. Right.  
Speaker 1    00:36:04    Gotcha. Makes sense. And I know when we were talking about it and know I was going with the whole red light, yellow light green light, the whole goal in my mind. And I think this is what we were discussing is the whole goal is the supporters are green. The neutral is kind of yellow. They're on the fence. Then the opponents are obviously red. And so me being visual and not that smart, the goal is how do I get more of those yellows to greens? Because is it fair to say if they're red, don't spit, like, is it a good use of your time? Or is it just kinda like, Hey, they are what they are just, we gotta outweigh them. Or do you spend time there? Like, where's that fine line, Alex, and trying to convert some of those.  
Speaker 2    00:36:44    I think it has everything to do with influence and authority. And so if I've got somebody that is a combative opponent or a vocal opponent that has high authority and influence, like I need to invest that time. Like, it's just, there's no, no, there's no way around that person. So you can't just neutralize them. So, so that, that's what I normally do there. And then, you know, another component that is convertible that falls within the concentration curve is what we call into the act of skeptic. So this person is poking holes in your stuff, but you know, they're probably doing it for the right reasons. They're, they're literally, they're just being objective, but they're skeptical. And they're not exactly bought in as easily as the others. They're still convertible, you know? So you it's okay to focus on them,  
Speaker 1    00:37:22    Uh, tells you, I don't know if this kind of is the same or not the same anymore, but I used to always have a mentor many moons ago. They used to say, Hey, you much rather know who the naysayers are. The not know who they are because a, either you, if you don't know who they are, then they're bad enough that you behind the scenes, you have no ability to neutralize it or work around it or influence it. But he used to always say, if you're able to at least bring them closer to all right, I can be swayed. We're okay. If they're that vocal of a naysayer, then chances are, there'll be that vocal of an advocate or at least vocal and saying, Hey, I'll support it. I won't stand in the way at least. And that's a win to some degree. I don't know if that's still applicable in today's day and age, but I remember that was always kind of a thought process.  
Speaker 2    00:38:08    It is applicable when I think about social influence, especially there are those people that are just gossipy, you know, tell everything to everybody. And like, they want to be involved. They may not even have authority, but they want to be in every meeting and they, and they want to talk about stuff. Those are people. If you, if you can convert them into supporters, they will advocate for you left and right, and talk positively about you. But if you don't do anything with them, you don't give them the attention that they desire. They will just bad mouth you. And for no reason, just because you didn't give them the proper attention. Right.  
Speaker 1    00:38:38    As we're talking about this and thinking out loud, you know, I think this, the, one of the main reasons you, I think we all understand the power of stakeholders. We know we have to have the right stakeholders, but where I think we fall really sure what I loved about the conversation thus far. And I really love about the stakeholder concentration curve. It's a real objective way to say, Hey, do you really know where you're at in this deal? From a stakeholder standpoint, don't put the gross color grass and say, Hey, it's going great. And meanwhile, behind the scenes, it's only one person you're dealing with. They're just a champion. They have no budget authority. And you've been sitting on this deal for 74 days thinking it's going in the right direction. Like when you put it in this and you start looking at it like, oh, I have one person. Yeah, he's a, he's a green, but there's all these other people. If I really look at them strategically FSR or a neutral, but those are at least six people that I know for a factor negative. And if you just look at that way, you're like, there's no way in hell this deal is going to go through. Like, it's just,  
Speaker 2    00:39:35    Yeah, that, that deal the way you just described it as dead in the water. Unless that person who happens to be the decision maker and economic buyer, like,  
Speaker 1    00:39:43    That's it, but looking at a Fort, like, you know, if you talk to a rep and just kind of looking at it is I did the same thing. Hey, that's a good deal. Hey, we're looking at this to close this quarter. Yeah. Is still on track. Where are we doing with, Hey, we were just waiting for this, this and this. And then meanwhile, behind the scenes, all those things, don't line up. It's the kiss of death from a deal standpoint.  
Speaker 2    00:40:03    It is. And as a frontline sales manager, I think it's important. Like once you get in the habit of bucketing people, it changes your, your sales career. Like it just, it just does. You look at deals differently and it's objective. And there's just no subjectivity whatsoever in that. But as a frontline sales manager, she'd always challenged those designations. So when I get into my one-on-ones and I'm looking at a buyer map and a rep says, you know, this person's a supporter. I don't, I always challenge it. And I say, well, why is that person a supporter? So if that person was in a room right now and the decision-maker was asking them, would you bet your job on this vendor? Would they say yes and get them thinking like that? And you get the reps to question themselves. I don't do it just to be a jerk. I do it just to get them to think about, are they really a supporter or do they have those rose colored glasses on? And they just have happier.  
Speaker 1    00:40:46    It's a good call out for the simple fact that I think we're optimistic as a sales person in thinking that, but sometimes you gotta put, you gotta flip it on its head and say, Hey are being overly optimistic here and being realistic around this. And the other thing I always liked I've done in the past, I tried to continue to do is if you give me the answer that they are a supporter, but yet that deal has been setting in a very stagnant stalled out for the last 30, 40 days in the same stage. That's where I think as a sales profession, we've got to be better at self critiquing ourselves. It can't all be the leader. Just say, no, that's wrong. That's wrong. Hey, what are you doing here? You are the sales professionals, guests say, Hey, this guy's really a supporter. I haven't moved this deal in 60 days. Like there's something not right here. And I think that helps it in just self identification for the sales rep, right.  
Speaker 2    00:41:34    Alex. And it absolutely does help  
Speaker 1    00:41:37    Without a doubt. So talk to me a little bit about like, as you're approaching this from a deal standpoint, what are the fundamental things that you would recommend the audience and when they're approaching a deal, maybe it's, Hey, I've never done this before Alex. I liked it, but where do I start? Like, what would you recommend? And really getting better from a stakeholder standpoint,  
Speaker 2    00:41:55    Even if it's just as simple as logging, you know, logging there, say we call it sales preference, right? Supporter, opponent neutral. Even if we just log it to a spreadsheet. It's okay. And I mean, heck I have a template. I could give you Sam, that you can give your audience. If you want a free spreadsheet, they can just use and start doing this stuff manually. I think that's the right place to start. Like I said before, once you just take your top three deals and focus on just those and focus on objectively categorizing each stakeholder, using the spreadsheet, and it will change the way you sell  
Speaker 1    00:42:23    Without a doubt. Hey, last question for you, because this was something that came up in a conversation, you know, it's different when you're late stage deals versus early stage, right? There's only so many stakeholders you're going to have involved early on right now. You know who you need to be getting in front of like, where's that counterbalance where, Hey, are we as far along as we should be at this stage? Like if I'm in stage one, maybe I don't know everybody, obviously I don't have everyone mapped out green, yellow, red, because I haven't talked to them yet. It's too early. I'm trying like at what stage do you really kind of get into the weeds? Like, Hey, you're telling me this is stage four. By this time we should have all, like, what's kind of the magic sauce. If you wear a lax where you really start saying, Hey, if you've got this at of stage four, which is, let's say the last stage or one of the last stages, all that should be done. Is there a kind of a criteria you use from a leadership standpoint to kind of gauge that if you will,  
Speaker 2    00:43:15    To kind of gauge where the reps at right there's sales preference, right. And generating a group consensus. And there's the relationship side of things. When I think late-stage deal, you also have to think about paper process. And so I'm sure you've heard of like a closed plan or mutual action plan, mutual success plan. We call them evaluation plans. But you know, you look at, you know, the most important thing as a sales rep, you know, that you can do to close your deal on time is understanding and documenting everything that needs to happen in the deal from today's date to the date that you're forecasting to close the deal, which is your contract execution date. And you should log the milestones, like demo information, security, review, red lining, whatever that that may be. And he should log who's responsible for it on both your side as the vendor.  
Speaker 2    00:43:56    And then their site is the prospect. And you should openly share that with the prospect and say, Hey, based on everything I've learned today, this is what I think that timeline looks like. And here's the activities I think we have to do, because I know here at the bottom that you're trying to go live with something that's functioning by this date. So we've got to get this thing kicked up, whether you choose us or not, you have to get somebody kicked off and selected by this day. Does that sound accurate and say, yes. Now, is there anything else you think I'm missing in the middle here? I say yes or no. Hopefully they're asking questions about it. They're not just yessing you to death, right? Cause that's a red flag as well, but collaborating with them on that timeline. So if I know, and so getting back to your question, you said you're in that late stage stage four.  
Speaker 2    00:44:32    How do you gauge it? So first thing I'll do is I'll look at the map and say, okay, where are we relationship wise? And then I'll look at the timeline and say like, is the prospect bought in? Who specifically is collaborating with you on this timeline? And are we on track? And so if I feel like we're on track, the timeline hasn't been getting delayed and it's a very collaborative process and we've got a high number of supporters over here. And I know that the represent everything in their power to convert those that are neutral, or maybe the act of skeptics, then I say, we're in great shape.  
Speaker 1    00:44:58    Gotcha. It's funny you bring that up. So mutual action plan, close plan. I think that's a huge thing that we've all got to get better at it. I mean, like I'll hear, and sometimes I've even verbalized that say, Hey, is it too early to bring that in? Not, you know, do I have earned the right for that? But at the end of the day, we're the educated, like we know our solution, we've sold our solution. We know the typical steps. It's not presumptive to share with someone on educating how to buy our product. That's the right thing to do as a sales rep, as a professional sales representative,  
Speaker 2    00:45:32    It is the right thing to do. And that, that is, you know, helping cause sometimes getting back to that initial question, I asked, that's another reason why I asked the question, have you made a purchase of this size before? Because if they don't, if they haven't and they don't know anybody like around them, that has, then you're going to have to go figure out this purchasing process alongside them and build it with them to make sure you've got it right.  
Speaker 1    00:45:52    Makes sense. Hey, last question for you because this always comes up and we talked about a mutual action plan or a closed plan. There's typically what we, I don't know if everyone says it's this, I call it a compelling event. I think that's what most people call it. Hey, the reason why they got to get to this. What if there's not a compelling event? Like what if there's just not the, Hey, I have to have this in by this date. What if it's one of those types of situations where we've said earlier in our conversation, it's not a budgeted item. It's not, this is something you've created. You've created the demand, but it's not necessarily a need to have a rip and replace type of thing that has to be done. How do you build your mutual plan around one of those type of little more fluid, compelling events? If there's,  
Speaker 2    00:46:31    It's not a compelling event, I always try to create one, right? There's not a compelling event. There's really two buckets. I go to one being value and the other being personal. So on the value side, I have to think about, okay, there's no compelling event right now. There's no need to rip and replace. But if I know, because I've done my account research and I've spent a lot of time with stakeholders and I know the challenges they're having, and if I know a specific feature of our technology will help them deliver an outcome. They cannot achieve with our current technology today. Then I'll harp on that, you know, and I'll say, Hey, look, we can do this. If you wait, if you start right now, come October, you're going to see this return or this, this and that. And here's why. And so you hope that that gets into the right hands where you systematically get it into the right hands and maybe that'll drive a sense of urgency on the personal side.  
Speaker 2    00:47:16    Sometimes, you know, I'll look at it like when we were selling Marquetto I did this a lot because Marquetto is a really advanced marketing automation solution, I guess, you know, there's good marketing automation solutions out there Marquetto is advanced and it can do a lot. And once marketing professionals got their teeth into market or graduated from, you know, a HubSpot or other, other, like a known SMB, you know, marketing automation companies, and they graduate into a Marquetto, it's like they can do anything they want with their careers when you master that, you've just, you can get hired anywhere. And so I would talk to some stakeholders on a selling and be like, Hey, like your income can double literally I would focus on their personal growth or personal career growth. And that can also create a sense of urgency for selfish reasons.  
Speaker 1    00:47:55    Fantastic, man. Sincerely appreciate you taking the time today, Alex. I think we've covered about 1,000,001 things to really a couple of things I took. And I just want to recap here, obviously, stakeholder identification, what's their authority. Where do they fall on the concentration curve? Are they a supporter? Are they neutral or the opponent? How do you get more of those from the neutral side to the green side or to the supporter side? And then how do you start to negate or work around, or basically hush the negative opponents, if you will. And then the thing that we did spend a ton of time on, but you know, is the mutual action plan. Those two things are how you become better at managing these deals to get to the goal line. Is that fair to say, did I miss anything and kind of recapping that  
Speaker 2    00:48:45    No, that is absolutely accurate. It all comes down to the group consensus, which is relationships, right? And paying attention to each individual stakeholder and on the mutual action plan side that has everything do is project management. So it's relationships making sure you're not losing anybody, you know, who's who in the zoo. And then you have to make sure you project manage it so you can systematically close that deal on time. And when you get really good at closing that deal on time, like in project managing it, you will find that you'll close more deals in any given fiscal period, because you can just almost like command when they close, if you do it right. That's okay.  
Speaker 1    00:49:14    Fantastic. How people connect with you, Alex, how they learn more about forecastable like walk our audience through how they learn a little bit more about you  
Speaker 2    00:49:21    Follow me on LinkedIn. I post content daily. And then if you want to learn more about forecastable feel free to message me or just go to forecastable.com and check it out.  
Speaker 1    00:49:28    Include links to the show notes to Alex, his LinkedIn profile, as well as forecastable Alex. Sincerely appreciate you taking the time.  
Speaker 2    00:49:35    You're very welcome. Take care, Sam.  
Speaker 0    00:49:38    Thank you for listening to the sales samurai podcast with your house, Sam Capra. Be sure you subscribe to our podcast and visit sales samurai.io and join the conversation. Access show notes and discover bonus content.