Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes by Keenan

-  Chapter 1: Welcome to the Game

   - When you reach out to get just“15 minutes” of your buyer’s time, it’s not going to happen if your buyer doesn’t have a problem you can solve. That’s why you get no answer to 99% of your cold emails. They don’t highlight a problem that resonates with the buyer. It’s why you’re losing 80% or more of your deals. The buyer has determined the problem isn’t worth solving after all. You get beat up on price because solving the problem isn’t worth what you’re asking. You see, the problem drives the sale. Being a great salesperson means being able to diagnose the customer’s problem and understanding the impact the problem is having on their business.

   - See, at the heart of every sale, there’s a gap. It’s a gap between what buyers have now and what they believe they want in the future, between who they are now and who they want to be tomorrow, or even where they are now and where they want to go. This gap represents the value of the sale to the buyer and the salesperson. Without it, there is no sale.

   - You’re not losing deals today because you don’t work hard, or don’t care, or you’re dumb. No, you’re losing deals because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t understand the rules of the selling game. Many of you are still selling, and if you’re selling while you’re selling, you’re not selling.

 - Chapter 2: The Nine Truthbombs of Selling

   - They are: No problem, no sale In every sale there’s a gap All sales are about change. Customers don’t like change. Sales are emotional. Customers do like change when they feel it’s worth the cost Asking“Why?” gets customers to“Yes”. Sales happen when the future state is a better state. No one gives a shit about you

   - Every sale is initiated with someone being unhappy, frustrated, angry, sad, irritated, or some other emotion about a problem that is negatively affecting them. This frustration with the problem acts as the catalyst for change. The buyer or prospect becomes increasingly unhappy with their situation and looks to make a change. That process of solving the problem and doing things differently is what a sale is rooted in.

   - Understanding the problem is so critical because with the problem comes the impact of the problem and the impact defines the size and scope of the problem. A problem such as“I have a headache” can appear benign on the surface. However, depending on how it affects the person, the impact may be anything but benign, as suggested in the brain cancer example above.

   - Every sales transaction is about identifying a gap—the distance between where customers are now(their current state) and where they want to be(their future state). Take a person with a headache who wants to be a person without a headache. A merely annoying headache that in time will probably go away on its own is going to have a pretty minor impact on your life, so that’s a small gap to fill, and not a very valuable one. But a migraine that could keep you from meeting a critical deadline on a $ 500K project or attending a child’s high school graduation ceremony? That’s a damn big gap, and the person who can quickly fill it has something of tremendous value to offer.

   - The worst thing in the world you can do at the beginning of a sale is to take your buyer’s word for granted or sell to a need. I know it’s what we’ve been taught to do but a need assumes the customers know what they want, and that’s a bad assumption. Sure, they think they know what their problem is, but what if they’re wrong?

   - You see, I thought I needed a charger, but I didn’t. I only needed a charge. What I actually needed was a case that would stop my Palm from prematurely draining the battery. I didn’t know what I needed because I wasn’t focused on the real problem and because I didn’t know what my options or solutions were. I didn’t know what I needed.

   - The more impact, the larger the gap. And the larger the gap, the more valuable the solution, i.e., your product or service.

   - The answer is: Change! Whether they want something better or are getting away from something painful, customers buy because they’ve gotten uncomfortable and have identified something that will ease their discomfort. In other words, they feel a need to change.

   - It supports the idea that humans suffer from longevity bias, the phenomenon in which we ascribe more positive feelings toward things that have been around for a while than toward things that are new. Interestingly, when those in the study were given five choices by which to rank the reason for their opinion, they consistently marked time on the market as the least important reason. And when participants were asked open-ended questions to explain their opinion, none ever actually mentioned time on the market. Yet the data was consistent—every time participants thought the chocolate was an older, more established brand, they gave it higher marks than participants who thought the chocolate had only been on the market for three years. The suggestion of longevity had clearly subconsciously affected their judgment.

   - The phenomenon held true in other tests, too, such as when participants were asked to judge the aesthetic value of a painting or a tree. Consistently, the older the participants thought the object, the higher they rated it. The researchers wrote,“Because longevity promotes favorability, it may confer legitimacy.”

   - The studies suggest that whether we’re talking about aesthetics, food, or tech, people are naturally inclined to subconsciously like and trust what they know and what is established and familiar. This means that even when people say they want change, deep down they often fear it.

   - Every sale is about change. Change is emotional. Therefore, every sale is emotional. And emotions are complicated. That, in a nutshell, explains why selling is so hard and why so many people are bad at it.

   - Will your product live up to their expectations? Will they have regrets later? What if this service causes a whole new set of problems?

   - When you’re asking your prospect to buy your product or service, how much change are you asking them to endure? Is it a lot or a little? Is it easily digestible or kinda hard to stomach? Have you done everything you can to make the change more palatable, less risky, and easier to embrace? If you’re like most salespeople and sales organizations, the answer to that last question is no.

   - The company has been doing OK without this new service. Maybe they don’t need it as much as he thought they did…

   - It’s incredibly difficult to get people to change their opinions through sheer reasoning. It was emotion, not reason or even their own senses, that caused the college students to give high marks to certain off-brand pieces of chocolate. It was their respect for a brand that had supposedly been around longer than they had been alive. To them, that immediately conveyed quality and because they felt it was quality chocolate, they enjoyed it as though it actually were quality chocolate.

   - Customers Do Like Change When they Feel It’s Worth the Cost

   - Your buyer’s or prospect’s subconscious threat-o-meter will be asking questions like these: Is this going to take a lot of research? Am I willing to take the time to learn what I need to know to make this decision? Do I want to make the effort? Will this switch be worth the expense? Will this move make me vulnerable? What will be the consequences if I don’t? Is this change worth the risk?

   - For example, even if a customer knows her team hates the web-based collaboration platform the company has been using for fifteen years and knows the one you are selling is more intuitive, more functional, and more efficient, the thought of all the growing pains her team will suffer as they learn the new system could easily cause her to put off making the change. Will the struggle be worth the benefits, even if efficiency and speed are sacrificed in the short-term? Will she still be able to provide the same caliber of customer service she always has? Will she be able to handle the stress?

   - If you don’t know what will motivate your buyers to change, you’ll rarely get them to accept that the change you offer has enough value.

   - They may be very up front about the problem they want to solve, but it may not occur to them to tell you the real reason they want to solve it. They may not even know it themselves. That reason is their intrinsic motivation, and there are consequences when you don’t fully understand it.

   - This suits one customer, whose intrinsic motivation for not coming into the office so frequently is to save on gas and avoid the road congestion that was making his blood pressure go dangerously high. Unfortunately, you didn’t know that your other customer’s motivation for getting that time at home was that she was about to adopt twins with special needs. The two customers were trying to solve the same problem for very different reasons. You helped one out, and he’s happy. The other one is not, because all you did was help her trade in one problem for another.

   - Learning to find out“why” can save you time and your reputation. If you find out that your product can’t fulfill a customer’s intrinsic motivation, walk away from the sale. Never sell something that can’t deliver.

   - Trumpeting feature benefits that may or may not be of value to your customer will not get you closer to the sale. Mentioning your place on the Fortune 500 will not get you any closer to the sale. In fact, every time you talk about yourself, you risk triggering those change-resistant, emotionally fraught thoughts and feelings in your customers.

   - They want to learn how you can help them grow revenue, decrease production time, improve their communication or speed up their delivery. They want to know how you’re going to make their lives better. They want you to prove that you understand their needs and can provide a customized solution that makes the future state look better than the state they’re in right now.

   - Truth #8: Sales Happen When the Future State is a Better State. What kind of better future states do customers want? An edge over the competition Paths to previously unexplored markets Increased profits More rapid path to market Heightened investor interest Millions of dollars in savings Streamlined manufacturing processes The eye of the new generation Faster communications Happier, more engaged employees Better customer retention Improved personal service More leads Increased response times Revenue These are just a handful of possibilities that might compel your customers to buy a product, retain a service or make an investment. How many does yours offer? This is not a rhetorical question.

   - You can’t sell a future state(where your customer wants to be) unless you have a firm grasp on your customer’s current state(where your customer is now). The current state is the environment in which your customer currently operates, and where their problems reside. You’re going to do a deep dive into your customer’s current state to suss out those problems, but first you’re going to need to create a document to help you in this process. It’s called a Problem Identification Chart, and you will create one even before you start reaching out to prospects. On a sheet of paper, you’ll write down every problem your product or service can solve for your prospects and customers. First, make a column and call it“Problems.” They might be low close rates, missed deadlines, communication gaps, or an inability to move inventory or generate more leads. These should be the real problems your prospects are suffering. Then, you’ll create a column called“Impact.” In this column, you’ll list the impact those problems could have on a customer, should they exist. The impact of low close rates, for example, could be a high cost of sales, where too much money is being spent to bring in the few sales that do go through. Maybe the impact is also slow revenue growth, fewer customers, and increased vulnerability to the competition.

   - Finally, in a third column called“Root Cause,” you’ll list the root causes of the problems you mentioned in the first column. The root causes are why the problems exist in the first place. You’ll learn quickly that while there could be a myriad of ways for problems to impact customers, you will only be able to attribute a finite number of root causes to those problems.

   - Every time you engage with a customer, or send an email, or create something, you have to ask yourself,“What am I giving?” The answer should be“industry information,” or“insight into the market,” or“tips that will make their jobs easier,” or“the solution to a problem they haven’t been able to solve.” It should never be,“More information about myself.” Sales are not about you! So, quit the self-centered“me, me, me” and start focusing on them, them, them.

 - Chapter 3: The Current State--Where the Customers Are

   - Their current state is the world they live in, their perceived reality.

   - the literal and physical facts about your customer their problems the impact of those problems the root causes of the problems what effect those problems are having on your customers’ emotional state

   - you do want to understand the types of projects your customers have, the size of their projects, how many projects they do in a year, in what functional groups the projects occur, how many people are in the project management group, the success of their projects, the length of the projects, what types of projects they manage, the output of the projects, how they manage resources, how they manage inventory, how they address change management, and how they handle approvals.

   - People don’t buy products—they buy solutions to their problems.

   - So, in order for you to sell your product or service, you must identify and prove the existence of a clear problem, or even a set of them. And the problems are there, embedded in every one of your prospects’ current states. They are the outcomes of the current processes, the current organizational structures, the current software applications, the current employees, the current governmental regulations, the current economic climate, the current leadership, the current culture, and so on.

   - But all the shit that high-cost overruns affect is the impact, and that’s what drives the sale. It’s where the intrinsic motivation lives. High-cost overruns suck, but only as badly as the impact to the organization. If running over budget doesn’t impact the rest of the business, then one could argue it’s not a problem. Problems are only problems when the impact is negative and uncomfortable.

   - You’re never selling a product. You’re selling the impact your product will have on your buyer’s current environment. You’re selling change.

   - What’s the only thing that could be more frustrating and painful than frequent heartburn? Going to five doctors who offer five different explanations for your symptoms and prescribe five different medications, none of which work. The doctor who finally gives you an angiogram, confirms that your heartburn is a symptom of arterial blockage, and performs the angioplasty that permanently relieves your discomfort—the one who takes the time to figure out the root cause of the problem and eliminates it—is the one who will earn your loyalty and trust forever.

   - Throughout the process, it’s imperative that you take note of where your customers are coming from and how they’re feeling as they describe their current state. Are they frustrated? Angry? Afraid? Remaining aware of your customer’s emotional state will not only help you avoid the fear triggers we discussed earlier, but will help you deliver your advice and solutions in a way that your customer is able to properly hear and absorb.

 - Chapter 4: The Future State--Where Customers Want to Go

   - When it comes to change, the current state represents the pain, and the future state represents the pleasure.

   - Let’s say you were examining the current state of a hotel manager who is struggling to attract events and conferences(the problem). That’s hurting the business’ ability to meet revenue numbers(impact #1), and now he’s getting pressure from corporate(impact #2). Employees are feeling disgruntled and leaving(impact #3), which is putting the business’ reputation for customer service at risk(impact #4).

   - What would this manager’s desired future state be? You can find out by asking these two questions: 1. What is the buyer looking to accomplish? and 2. What would solving these problems mean to their organization, their employees, and to them?

   - For example, if you ask the right questions, the hotel manager might mention that he needs a more effective way to increase events and conference bookings(the problem solved), to get back to 20% growth(impact of solving the problem), in order to have a predictable, reliable corporate event schedule with 80% conference room utilization(impact). This would then let the company reach their profitability goals of 22%(impact), which currently they are not meeting because of the lack of conferences and events.

   - getting people to imagine their emotions in the future, as well as bringing their dreams and desired outcomes into focus, will anchor them in that future.

   - Once your customers believe that the benefits of the future state will outweigh the cost of getting there, the deal is done.

 - Chapter 5: Relationships Don't Matter (Kinda)

   - Because you know who people do buy from? Those who provide value. I may not like you personally, but if you’re selling something that provides value, I want it.

   - They valued convenience and lower prices over their personal relationship with their local shopkeepers. We do business with people we don’t like all the time.

   - Let’s say you get a text from your former co-worker, Evan. He’s selling an extra ticket to see Drake in concert tomorrow night and thought of you. This chart can predict how you’ll respond(let’s assume you’re good for the money). If you think Evan is a cool dude and you like Drake, you jump on the offer. If you really like Evan but aren’t a big Drake fan, you thank him for thinking of you and suggest another mutual friend. If Evan drove you crazy when you worked together but you’re also crazy about Drake, you probably decide it’s worth suffering through Evan to be at that concert. And if Evan drives you crazy and you don’t give a damn about Drake, you say no, if you even call him back in the first place.

   - What creates the types of relationships that generate value and drive you closer to the sale? Credibility. Every step you make in the gap-selling process is about building credibility and establishing yourself as a trustworthy expert.

 - Chapter 6: The Gap Defined

   - I think it’s become pretty clear by now what the gap is. Quite simply, it is the space between the current state and the future state. The gap is where the value of the sale lives. The less drastic the distance between where you are and where you could go, the smaller the gap—the less value there is in changing, and therefore, the less urgent it is for the customer to buy what you’re selling.

   - There is no way customers can understand the value of your life-saving pill if they don’t realize they are dying. That’s why you have to spend so much time exploring their current state and helping them envision their future state.

   - Instead, you’re going to help your customers make sure they understand the full extent of their problems and let them figure out for themselves what will happen if they don’t do something about it.

   - Good salespeople have to be able to ask questions that subtly test and challenge the customers’ perceived current state to see if the gap is bigger than anyone realized. Your role is to crystallize the stakes for them and help them conclude the salesperson who possesses something that can make that future state come true is selling something of real value.

 - Chapter 7: Get Them to Let You Help

   - Your number one job when selling is to get the customer, buyer, or prospect to let you help them.

   - What about bluebirds or inbound calls? Well, sure, you can sell to them without actively working to get them to trust you first, but that’s because they’ve already figured out they need help. They may be totally wrong about the kind of help they need, but at least they are aware they need you and are seeking you out. You also have to consider that they wouldn’t have reached out to your company in the first place if it hadn’t done something to make them suspect your company might hold the answers they’re looking for.

   - Something in its content or on the website, or something your company said in an interview, an article, a speaking engagement, or even a simple Google search, spoke to them.

   - Do you hear them saying,“Yes”? Yes, I will share my numbers with you! Yes, I want to let you in on my issues! Yes, I’ll tell you what’s worrying me! Yes, I will put myself in your hands! If you’re not hearing a resounding“yes,” or your customer isn’t demonstrating behaviors that lead you to believe they’re heading in that direction, go back to Start(this is a game, after all). You simply haven’t developed the credibility necessary to get your customer into buying mode.

   - Remember, no one gives a shit about you. Concentrate on bringing them value, and even if they don’t like you, they’ll buy from you.

 - Chapter 8: Discovery: Know Your Clients Better Than They Know Themselves

   - B.A.N.T. is an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. It’s a tactical sales technique taught to salespeople to help them qualify an opportunity. The objective of B.A.N.T. is to keep salespeople from spending time on deals that won’t close.

   - Tell me this, Salesperson: Why should anyone have to spend one single minute convincing you that they are worthy of your time? That they are qualified to buy from you? What a joke! It’s completely backward.

   - The most you’ll pay for a pill that will make your headache go away is $ 5… until you find out the headache is caused by a tumor and the pill will make that tumor disappear. You didn’t budget that 5 dollars, but now that you know you’re gonna die without it, you’re spending that 5 dollars in a heartbeat. To hell with the“budget.” People find the budget for big gaps.

   - In addition, assuming that a person who isn’t the final decision maker can’t also be an influencer is foolish as well. Today, authority is a committee of influencers, champions, mobilizers, and more. Don’t hang your qualification process on one individual.

   - Just because customers don’t think they need anything doesn’t mean they actually don’t. All you require at this point is a chance to prove that the problem exists; you can demonstrate the need later. It’s your job to demonstrate a need, and then help the buyer determine how big or small it is. The best salespeople don’t rely on demand reaction, that is, selling something the customer already knows about, or selling to organizations that already recognize they have a problem. Instead, they leverage demand creation, seeking out the latent opportunities where customers don’t even know they need help until someone comes along and points out how their company is at risk.

   - Demand creation is what happens when you call a ticketing company to ask if they’ve ever considered consolidating their ticketing and CRM systems into one. And they say,“Nope.” And you say,“Why not?” And they say,“We don’t need to. We send out emails to our customers and they’re aware of all our shows, and our online ticketing system works great.” And you say,“That’s great! Hey, let me ask you though… when someone buys a ticket, how do you get their name registered in the CRM?” And they say,“We type it in.” And you say,“How many new people come to shows every year?” And they say,“About 25% of our customers are repeat customers.” And you say,“How many tickets do you sell per year?” And they say,“About 100,000.” And you ask,“So you’re manually entering 25,000 people into your CRM system every year?” And they say,“Yeah.” And you ask,“And you pay someone to do that?” And they say,“Yeah.” And you ask,“Well, how does this data entry clerk know she’s entering the name of a first-time ticket buyer?” And they say,“Well, she checks the box on the form.” And you ask,“Has she ever forgotten to check the box?” And they say,“Yes, all the time.” And you say,“And how do you market to these first-time buyers so they’ll come back for another show?” And they say,“Our marketing person sends out an email thanking them for attending and announcing upcoming events. We also send mailings.” And you say,“What if I told you I could create a system that automatically registered your customers into your CRM every time they bought a ticket, automatically noted that they were first-time buyers, and automatically sent those first-time buyers a thank-you email that offered them a discount on future events to encourage them to come back? Would that change your business at all?” And they say,“Holy crap. You can do that?” And you say,“Maybe we should talk a little more.” Gap sellers never take their prospects’ word for granted when it comes to their needs. Ever.

   - Timing will take care of itself. Timing is fluid and can change at a moment’s notice for a number of sales-driven reasons, including how well you sell and position your solution, in-house dynamics, and external factors such as the economy or a move by the competition. But again, just because a prospect doesn’t think now is a good time to buy doesn’t mean they’re right. If you can help them see that every day they don’t fix a problem it is simply compounding it in the form of lost money, lost time, lost efficiency, lost reputation, or lost something-else-important, they will decide now is the right time to make the bleeding stop.

   - The sale is won or lost during the discovery. If you don’t get enough information, miss a few key points, misdiagnose the problem, incorrectly assess the problem, miss the customer’s desired future state, miscalculate the gap—any of these and more can doom the sale. The sale is won at the beginning, not the end.

   - I’ll say it again: You don’t close prospects. This old idea that good closers are good salespeople is garbage, at least in the traditional sense. Closing skills like the assumptive close, the option close, the urgency close—all these close techniques are a waste of time. They only serve to put you first and aren’t focused on the customer or prospect. To make things worse, they don’t work.

   - During the discovery calls that led to closed deals, salespeople spent more than half of their time listening while their customers talked. The opposite was true of discovery calls that led to missed deals. In those calls, buyers talked only 28% during the length of the call; the salespeople talked almost 80% of the time! Other data showed that“early in the sales cycle there is a linear relationship between the number of questions you ask and the likelihood of closing a deal.”

   - Remember, the key when discovering your prospects’ current state is to keep your line of questioning problem-centric(not product-centric) and to get your buyers to talk as much as possible. Invite your customers to engage with you and talk about their world, not yours. Show them you give a shit. You need them to open the door so you can do your initial exploratory work. They have to be willing to be vulnerable. Get them to open up so they can help you help them.

   - As introduced in Chapter 3, your first step to discovering your customers current state will be to draft a Problem Identification Chart that lists all the potential problems you can solve, the various impacts these problems could have on your customers business, and their root causes. You have to complete this crucial preliminary work before you even think about approaching a prospect. You wouldn’t set out on a journey into the unknown without a map, or at least a well-charged phone loaded with a good GPS app.

   - Now you’re ready to start your discovery. Throughout it, you’re going to be asking several types of questions: Probing: These are open-ended questions that press for specific details Process: These are open-ended questions that ask“How?” Provoking: These are open-ended questions that gently push customers to consider their current state from a new perspective Validating: Not open-ended questions! Instead, these simply allow you to repeat information you gather back to your customer to make sure you’ve correctly understood everything they’ve told you.

   - How many events do you put on? How many theaters do you cover? How many seats does each venue have? How many in total? What’s the average number of tickets you process in a year? How many membership packages do you handle? What’s the average nonprofit donation? How many people do you have working in marketing and the box office? Can you tell the difference between first-time ticket buyers and loyal patrons? Are ticket sales growing or decreasing? Do you sell out all of your shows? What’s your show attendance rate? What’s the average patron look like? What’s their demographic?

   - “Tell me a little bit about the events you put on.”“Help me understand... ”“Could you please describe... ?”“Could you walk me through... ?

   - “Could you walk me through how you market to first-time ticket buyers?” Or,“Could you help me understand your ticket buyer demographic and how you capture it?” By asking questions in this manner, you’re inviting much deeper and complex discussions that won’t feel like interrogations.

   - Beyond probing questions, you want to ask process questions which try to get information on how your customers do what they do. For example, if you were to engage with a non-profit performing arts theater that puts on plays and dance recitals, you might say(using command statement starter words, of course):“Can you tell me about your ticket-selling process? Can you share your process for marketing to current patrons? Can you explain your process to identify your biggest donors and your smallest donors? Could you help me understand your reporting process?”

   - The process layer explains the tactical details, like this:“We manually take the names from an Excel spreadsheet and Martin loads them into an online email application. From there we check the box“first-time ticket buyer” and then send them an email. We then print the names out and Jennifer hand-labels a brochure to each new ticket buyer. Next we...”

   - “We can’t. At least not consistently.” There you have it. Problem #1. Now keep asking questions, because it only gets better from here.“So how do you create consistency within the sales team? How do you get a bird’s-eye view of how the team is performing?”“We can’t do that, either.” Problem #2.“Are you concerned about being able to hit that $ 110M goal you have when you don’t have a system that allows you to create an environment that ensures all your teams are executing at the same level?”“Yep.” That’s a big one: Problem #3. Keep going.“You said you have varying levels of experience across your sales team. How does that affect your ability to make quota?”“Sometimes we don’t.” Problem #4.“How does it affect your ability to be predictable?”“We’re terribly unpredictable.” Problem #5.“If you’re unpredictable, how do you plan?”“It’s really hard.” Problem #6. Ooh, look at all these problems this head of sales is facing! A salesperson who could fix these problems should be chomping at the bit right now.

   - “How many athletes choose not to attend your school because the football team is so bad?” That’s not something the coach might have ever thought about, so he checks school enrollment and discovers that it’s down. And in the comments section of the forms where people can cite their reasons for choosing to attend or not attend the school, he sees Problem #7: A number of students indicated that their decision was influenced by the sorry state of the athletics department. See how discovery can uncover so many problems, problems even the coach or the buyer didn’t see?

   - Buyer: We’re not growing fast enough. You: Can you define that for me? What does“fast enough” mean to you? Buyer: We’re only growing by 22%. We need to be hitting 25%. Ah-ha! Now you’ve quantified the problem.“Enough” is not enough. In this case“enough” is 3% more. You have to get people to be specific, because open-ended answers don’t tell you enough about the problem to help you devise a solution. Every question you ask will give you more data that offers another chance to extrapolate the potential negative consequences that will impact your customers’ environment if things don’t change. Every answer will deepen your understanding of the current state.

   - What happens when you…? Has there ever been a time when…? If you did X, what do you think would happen?

   - These questions are designed to challenge your customers to evaluate not just what is happening, but why it’s happening. In this way, you’re provoking buyers into thinking through a situation that may not be an issue yet, but could become part of their future state.

   - And rather than risk having them feel like you’re shoving their nose in their ignorance, you’ve done it in a way that allows them to feel like they discovered the root cause on their own, which means they’ll be more inclined to fix it.

   - Again, you’re going to use command statement starter words:“Tell me how this issue is affecting you.”“Can you describe the impact it’s having on your department?”“What are the consequences every time this problem occurs?”

   - You should follow up:“Can you share with me what’s been the impact of not being able to regularly communicate with patrons?” Your buyer replies,“Sure. Our revenue is down by a lot.” Hold it! That is a classic open-ended answer, and as we’ve already discussed, there are no open-ended answers allowed in gap selling. So what do you do? You ask a clarifying question.“Hm. What is ‘a lot’ to you?”“Well, two years ago we were at $ 4M. This year we’re barely going to clear $ 3.5M.” There you have it. The problem is lack of communication with patrons, and the impact of that problem is a half-million dollars in lost revenue. That’s a problem someone is going to want to fix.

   - An antiquated management system that poorly tracks inventory in different locations(technical problem) causes the company millions of dollars per year in wasted inventory and $ 3 million a year in lost revenue from not having the right products in stock. Those are business problems.

   - No two prospects will ever have the same business problem. It’s impossible. Your prospects can have the same technical problem( s), but never, ever, the same business problems.

   - Yet, by asking the right probing and process questions in the right order, you could also discover that serious business problems resulting from the lack of communication are currently affecting not only the police force, but also the city at large—problems such as increased gang violence and a decreased conviction rate. The technical problem of not being able to communicate across various chains of command is inconvenient and frustrating; the severity of the business problem—increased gang violence and decreased conviction rates—is massive, and that is what will drive the sale.

   - And for many, it wouldn’t be the disease that represented the worst problem, but the outcome of never seeing their spouse again, or never meeting their grandchildren. Your discovery process needs to open the door to that kind of OMG realization for your customers.

   - These are great for helping customers expand their purview. You could ask:“Why do you think this problem is happening?”“How do you think your current processes are affecting this?”“How has the implementation of this product affected your business?” You always want to provoke your customers to think hard and differently about what’s gone wrong. Back to our floundering theater company.

   - That should prompt provoking questions, which might go like this:“What if you could see which customers were first-timers and which ones were repeat attendees? What would happen to your business if you could get your first-time customers to return two or three times per year?” The technical problem: Unsophisticated reporting system Business problem: Can’t market to people to increase repeat visits Existential problem: The company isn’t growing and could fold Root cause: Disparate systems that require manual input and don’t automatically communicate back with customers once they make a purchase

   - validating question might be something like,“What I hear you saying is that you could raise a lot more revenue if you had a pool of more people to sell tickets to.”(Other validating questions could be,“Am I understanding you correctly?” or“Did I get this right?”) Asking a question in this way reassures your buyers that you understand their problems and their pain, and it gives them a chance to make corrections if you’re at all off.

   - Timing matters. Just because you can ask a question, it doesn’t mean you should. Remember, the point of the discovery exercise isn’t to ask questions but to get information. Therefore, if you ask a question and your buyer is unwilling to answer it or provides you with a shallow, weak answer, you lose. You wasted a question. To sell better, you have to plot out your questions.

   - You’ll know it’s qualified because if you’ve done the discovery correctly, you’ll easily be able to answer“yes” to these four simple questions: Does the prospect have a problem you can fix? Does the prospect agree they have a problem? Does the prospect want to fix the problem? Will the prospect go on a journey with you to fix the problem?

   - If your customer is a theater company, you could ask:“How would you like this system to work?”“How much time do you wish it would take?”“How many more tickets would you like to sell?”“How many more leads would you like to generate?”“How much less time would you like your employees to spend on this particular issue?”“How much more revenue would this represent?”

   - Then you’re going to want to find out how that future state would impact their business, pressing to make sure they can articulate the details.“Better efficiency,” is not a specific impact;“reducing turnaround by 20% and increasing production by 50%” is.

   - This means that your customer’s future state isn’t just a place where the headache is gone, but a place where he lives to see his kids grow up, and to have grandkids, and retire by the beach, and everything else that goes with enjoying the rest of a long, successful, fulfilling life. Try to solve the wrong problem, and you could wind up leaving the customer to believe his problem isn’t that big of a deal.

   - It’s all about envisioning outcomes.

   - the philosopher David Hume said,“Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” xiii Unless your customers feel strongly about the value of the change you’re proposing, they will not move closer to the sale.

   - But once you know the future state, you’re no longer selling a mere product or service; you’re selling a desired outcome.

   - Getting a complete view of the current and future state isn’t a static exercise; it can happen over time through various interactions. The key is to get as much as you can during discovery and in the early stages of the sales process, and then be on the lookout for more information as the sale progresses. Keep track of the information after each meeting. Use your CRM—it’s going to be your best friend. No matter how good you think your memory is, if you’re doing a proper gap-selling discovery, you’ll never be able to recall all the data you collect. Document it in your CRM.

   - Never assume you know what your buyers are experiencing and what they want to achieve.

   - No one company has the same problem or impact.“Not growing fast enough” means something different for everyone. The truth is, most people only conduct a discovery at very high levels, so by the time they’re done, they don’t really know their customer.

   - The thing to keep in mind as you’re learning to do a good discovery, however, is that your goal is not to ask specific questions. It’s to get specific information.

   - You sure as hell don’t want to sound like you’re going through a checklist as you speak to your customer. This is a conversation. Let me say that again: you’re having a conversation, not an interrogation, and like all conversations, it’s going to move forward and back and around, and many times your questions and answers will overlap. That’s

   - The gap-selling relationship is collaborative. The beauty of this is that there is never any reason for you to pressure a customer to buy anything, because by the time you’re done with discovery, they’ll be so aware of their problems, they’ll be begging for your help.

 - Chapter 9: Is the Gap Worth It?

   - Future State–Current State = The Gap

   - You see? You’re not selling a sales package consulting service; you’re selling $ 10M in additional revenue! You’re not selling a shorter sales cycle; you’re selling whatever a 5% increase in closing rates means to your customer.

   - Well, would you pay $ 100K for an extra $ 10M?(The gap: $ 9.9M)

   - Would you pay $ 100K for an extra $ 1M?(The gap: $ 900K) That’s not so clear-cut. The gap is not as big. Additional costs, the time to implement and process changes, one’s comfort with the status quo, uncertainty that the new product can deliver, politics, or any number of issues can make a $ 900K gap not seem big enough to be worth changing what they’re doing.

 - Chapter 10: Know Your Customers' Why

   - The sale was no longer based on whether the service or product provided was superior to any other; it was based on the salesperson’s ability to enable Manny’s desired outcome.

   - No one would ever pay a thousand bucks for a tow… until they wind up in a situation where they will.

   - Your discovery is all about quantifying your prospects’ current and future states.

   - Keenan, on the other hand, put himself in the seat next to me and made me feel like I had a co-pilot who was going to make sure we landed the plane safely. He expanded my awareness of my own sales organization. He created an amazing level of credibility. I didn’t feel like I was engaged in a sales call at all. It felt like we had already hired him and were collaboratively solving my problems. The experience was night and day from the conversations I had with the other consultants.

   - show him exactly where things were going wrong and where he was headed if he didn’t make some changes.(Look, there’s that change word again.) Once you know your customers desired future state and intrinsic motivations, all that’s left is to make sure they not only believe that that future state can happen, but that you can make it happen better than anyone else.

   - “Tell me a bit about what is driving this change.”

   - All of these improvements will enable us to beat the competition. Our stock price will go up. The board will be happy. Every step of the discovery process is equally important in leading you right up to this moment: When you can get to the heart of why your customer wants to buy, you get to the heart of the sale.

   - People are compelled to change by evaluating their current state against a potential or desired future state.

 - Chapter 11: How to Do a Kickass Demo

   - 1. No discovery, no demo

   - And no, splitting the demo into two sections, thirty minutes for discovery and thirty minutes for the demo, is not doing a separate discovery. The two serve completely different purposes and need to be treated that way.

   - You can’t conduct a proper demo if you haven’t asked all those open-ended probing, process, and provoking questions which will get you to the bottom of your customer’s current and future states.

   - Remember, a discovery should answer the following questions: 1. Does the prospect have a problem you can fix? 2. Does the prospect agree they have a problem? 3. Does the prospect want to fix the problem? 4. Will the prospect go on a journey with you to fix the problem?

   - It’s your chance to help the buyer see how your product or service will fit into their department or organization and make their future state better than their current one.

   - That means there will never be a reason to say the word“if,” as in,“If you have this problem, then... ” Or,“If you ever struggle with…” There is no“if” during a demo because you’re supposed to already know! If at this point you’re guessing at what might be troubling your customer and trying to demo features you think they might like or you think might be valuable to them, you have done a lousy discovery.

   - No! You’re not focusing on what the customer really cares about if you are presenting for every contingency their business could face.

   - It’s like handing a teenager two pair of cargo shorts, a bathing suit, and a wool sweater when she comes into your store looking for something to wear to prom. I mean, sure, one day it is possible she will need these items—summer and winter do come along, after all—but your customer is not in bathing-suit mode right now and quite frankly, it would be distracting and annoying to be asked to think about bathing suits when all you care about is finding the perfect dress before 5 p.m. Saturday night.

   - Demo Challenge: Try to conduct your entire 45-60 minute presentation without saying the word“if.” If you succeed, you’ll have conducted a good demo.

   - The point of your demo is not to reveal all of your product’s features and functions. It’s to reveal how well your product provides the solution to your buyer’s specific problems.

   - It is always better to spend a lot of time highlighting one feature’s business value than it is to spend a little time introducing a whole bunch of features that may or may not be relevant to solving your buyer’s problems. Think quality, not quantity.

   - So, when doing your demo, your goal should be to get your prospects to see your solution as the first and best solution to their problem so that it becomes the baseline against which they judge any other solution. You want your solution to become their anchor. You will do this by focusing their attention on the future state. Here’s how: Throughout your presentation, after every feature demo ask your prospect affirming questions, like this:“Can you see how this feature will improve your churn rate?”“Do you see how this will shorten data input?”“Can you see how this will increase your conversions?”

   - Asking validating questions will help you catch your mistakes and give you a chance to gauge how well you’re connecting with your customer. If you ask a customer if they can see how your solution will positively impact their business and they say“No,” you know you’ve got a problem. Stop the demo right away and start digging for more information so you can get yourself back on track.

   - Check the list of problems you’ve identified as ones that your solution can resolve, and organize them in order of the impact they are having on your customers organization from greatest to least. Big problems create big motivations to change. Little problems don’t. Don’t waste your time on little problems.

 - Chapter 12: Move Your Deals Through the Pipeline

   - Predictability is one of a B2B seller’s biggest concerns. It’s the thing that keeps you sane when you’ve got thirty opportunities in your pipeline and your manager is demanding to know when each one is going to close. If you’ve established a predictable system, there’s no need to sweat it because you know exactly when each of those opportunities will close. If you have no idea or you’re only guessing, you’re setting yourself up for chaos and trouble.

   - So the next thing you’re going to find out is their decision criteria. The decision criteria are the information and details the customer is going to use to decide which solution they are going to choose.

   - For example, if a customer’s decision criteria included how well the software integrated with SAP but you didn’t uncover any need for SAP integration in your discovery, you missed something and you’ll want to get on it immediately. Asking your buyer to outline their decision criteria is key and

   - Learning the decision criteria normally isn’t very difficult. Simply ask,“How are you going to decide what’s the best solution for you? What will be the most important factors in helping you make your decision?”

   - “I’m confused. You said growing revenue by increasing first-time ticket buyers was your most important priority, but some of the criteria you’ve said you’re going to use to decide whether to make this purchase won’t have any effect on increasing first-time ticket buyers. Did I misunderstand what you’re trying to accomplish? Can you explain why these criteria are so important to you?”

   - Your goal here should not be to steer them to where you think you have the best chance of closing the deal, but to make sure they have thought through why they want what they say they want. Make them own their decisions.

   - “I’m confused. You said...” Those four words, in that order, are four of my favorites. They are powerful. I love using them to challenge buyers and prospects, which is exactly what you need to do when you spot inconsistencies between what buyers say they want in their future state, and the methods, approaches, and decision criteria they’re using to get there. Your ability to identify, call out, or resolve these inconsistencies is a measure of the added value you bring as a salesperson. You need to get good at it.

   - “Can you tell me a little about your company’s buying process?”

   - This question is literally about knowing all the steps your customers will have to follow before they can decide to buy. For example, their standard procedure might be to request an RFP from all their candidates, choose the three best, ask those potential providers to come in to the office and present in front of a committee, pick the winner from among those three, negotiate a contract, and then present the contract to the company CEO for signature.

   - Knowing your customer’s buying process is like getting a topographic map of the land. You already knew what direction you wanted to go, but now you can see where you might run into a steep valley, a hill, or a river. It allows you to be prepared for anything.

   - Yet nothing, and I mean nothing, can mess up sales more predictability than not understanding the buying process and who’s involved. According to the folks at Gartner, who in addition to The Challenger Sale wrote the killer book The Challenger Customer, there are now 5.4 buyers in every sale.xiv

   - What makes a sale move forward? The word“Yes.” Remember how we discussed that you have to earn an invitation to help the customer? Every single yes you hear from the customer is a renewed agreement to work with you. If you’re not hearing yes,” you’re not approaching the close. Make no mistake, every yes you hear is a small sale. In fact, a sale is made up of hundreds of little sales conducted throughout the selling cycle.

   -

   - If you’re a car salesman, it’s all well and good if customers call to talk about cars they’ve seen online, but until they agree to come in for a test drive, you’re spinning your wheels in place, not moving the sale forward. In this case, your focus wouldn’t be on selling the car but on selling the test drive, because you can’t close without it.

   - If your customer resists, it’s time to go back to your discovery and figure out what part of their current state, future state, or intrinsic motivation you still haven’t learned.

   - They pitch their story, show their wares, and then when they get to the end of the sale, they try to get their customer to make a decision. But by remaining fixated on a single big sale, they don’t close all the small sales that need to happen to make the big sale fall into place. Good closers lose a lot of little deals within the sales process.

   - Keeping the pipeline moving is crucial, but let me make this very clear: A good salesperson is a consultant, a collaborator, a partner—not a servant. You know what that means? The customer is not always right. In fact, customers can often be their own worst enemies.

   - ROSE(return on sales effort)

   - If you find yourself afraid of losing the deal, it’s probably a sign you’ve lost control. If you’re feeling fearful, if means you’re not gap selling. If you’re afraid, it means you don’t understand where the customer is. It means you don’t have the information you need to influence your buyers. It means you’re at the mercy of your customers, and that’s the beginning of the end. Why? Because when you’re at the mercy of your buyers, they are no longer letting you help them.

   - In the beginning, when you’re first trying to get a prospect’s attention, it’s totally asymmetrical. You have no power and you deserve no respect. It is up to you to earn it. After all, unless the buyer called or emailed you first, you’re the one interrupting their day with a request for attention, so you’d better be prepared to show that you’re worth it.

   - You explain that your company doesn’t do trials, and this is an unreasonable demand anyway. You start asking questions: What is she hoping to accomplish with the trial? How will a trial get her to her desired outcome? She’s not interested in explaining herself and digs in her heels. This is how they do things at their company. No trial, no sale. But you are not the customer’s b* tch. You now have two options: 1. You can say no. Sure, that might scuttle the sale right away, but at least you wouldn’t be on tenterhooks for three months scrambling to make sure that if she bails you can fill the hole in your sales projections. Or, 2. you can set terms. You could agree to a 90-day trial, if: • The customer pays an installation fee • The customer provides clear and measurable success criteria so you know what kind of metrics you’re trying to meet • The customer commits to purchasing the software if you meet that success criteria In this way, you recalibrate the relationship to make sure that both parties are sharing equally in risk and responsibility. You’re acknowledging an unreasonable demand, then turning it into a reasonable one.

   - Just as higher prices often reflect quality and value, so does standing strong behind your product and principles. It can reaffirm your perceived value and make clients want to work with you more. Now, sometimes the customer will refuse, in which case you should tell them to pound sand. But be strong enough to explain yourself:“I get why you want this trial, but just because you want it doesn’t mean I have to give it. We need to be working together on this and if you can’t meet me halfway, we’re not right for each other.”

   - For example, you know those times when you contact customers and they ask you to send them your pricing before you’ve had a chance to learn anything about them, or for them to learn much about you? They’ve never spoken to you, they’ve never met you, they don’t want to set up a meeting or a follow-up call to explain why they think they might need your product or service, they just want to see what it costs. You can and should say no. Gap selling is about building relationships and solving problems.

   - You literally can’t do your job properly if you agree to let them determine your value to them based on nothing more than prices. You’re not McDonald’s serving exactly the same thing to every customer who comes through your doors.

   - The next time this happens, explain that you can’t send over pricing until you understand the customer’s organization, what problems he is trying to solve, and what he hopes to accomplish.

   - It all depends on how what you’re charging weighs against the customer’s desired outcome.

 - Chapter 13: Troubleshooting

   - “I’m confused. You said you were tired of getting beat out for bigger, more complex projects, and you agreed that my product would improve your value proposition tenfold and get you to your financial goals. So I’m surprised I haven’t heard from you. Has something changed? Were you able to solve your problem? Have you decided not to pursue bigger projects?”

   - Basically, in the nicest way possible you’re holding them accountable for their own words and proving that you understand their problem, what it will take to fix it, and the consequences of not fixing it.

   - “Tom, I’m more than happy to push that meeting off another week, but I’m a little confused. You said that every month that goes by without a new system in place you’re losing money, and yet you were hoping to increase your profits next year by 4%. It’s going to get awfully hard for you to reach that goal if we keep going at this rate, isn’t it? Is that OK?” Your prospect is either going to defend the delay or thank you for lighting a fire under his butt.

   - However, if you know your prospect’s current state and future state, you don’t have to get him to clarify the objection. Instead, you ask him to clarify his desired outcome.“Wait, I’m confused. I understand your interest in supporting local businesses, but you told me that the most important thing to you when hiring a cleaning company was that it was wholly committed to using environmentally friendly products whenever possible. Our green cleaning products aren’t add-ons; our whole business is built around them with the exception of a few carefully chosen disinfectants and sanitizers. Is there a local company that can make the same promise? Can you help me understand?”

   - The thing is, if you’re gap selling it’s much harder for an objection to crop up and take you by surprise. In general, when you’ve done a good job of assessing the customer’s current state, establishing their future state, and identifying the gap, you should be able to anticipate any major issues before the customer even thinks of them.

   - Every time you hear an objection, you’ll want to hold it up against your customer’s future state. Are they aligned? Would resolving this concern or so-called problem get them any closer to their desired outcome?

   - Because you know their current state and desired future state, you reply:“I’m confused. You told me that you’re trying to increase new ticket sales by 50,000 per year by focusing on first-time ticket buyers. And you said that you need this software to launch a major capital campaign. You currently have 1,500 subscribers. That makes up only 5% of your total ticket sales. Why would you sacrifice everything you’re trying to achieve for the sake of 1,500 people who are still going to get to pick their own seats, just not repeatedly?”

   - When you express confusion, customers are naturally going to want to help you understand their thinking, which means they’re going to wind up giving you all the information you need to figure out what to do next.

   - Never defend your product or service. Use gap selling and what you learn in the process to make the buyer defend their objection. Make them tell you why the lack of a particular feature is an issue. Make them tell you why their objection matters in the pursuit of their desired outcome or future state.

   - The only reason you need to worry about losing a deal is if you haven’t done a proper discovery. If you’ve asked all the right questions and are thoroughly informed about your customer’s current state, intrinsic motivation, and desired outcome, you’ll probably know long before your customer whether your product or service is a perfect fit. If it weren’t, you would have walked a long time ago.

   - When price objections arise, here’s what you gotta do: Change the focus of the conversation. Normally, the only price anyone talks about is the price of your product or service. But let’s go over this one more time: Your customers aren’t really buying products and services like software, consulting services, training, or widgets; they’re buying change.

   - Don’t let anyone determine the price of what your selling based on the product, service, or widget. That’s not what they are buying! They’re buying the outcome of your product, service, or widget. Therefore, remind them of the desired outcome and the value it has for their organization—the gap—and then make them defend it against what you’re charging for the tool that can make it happen.

   - If a buyer who wants to reach $ 50M by 2020 tells you your product isn’t worth the $ 80K you’re asking, you could say,“I’m confused. This product will increase lead conversion rates by 30%, reduce lead generation costs by 50%, and decrease the average sale by thirty days, all of which would lead your company to reach its $ 50M goal by 2020 [the desired future state]. Why do you find this to be too expensive?”

   - “We like you and what you’re doing, but $ 40K is just too expensive,” how would you respond? Like this:“I’m confused. If I understood you correctly, you need this service to be able to compete for high-end projects and increase revenue by 20%, or about $ 50,000 per month. How is $ 40,000 too much to pay for a service that will allow you to earn $ 50,000 more every month, indefinitely?”

   - If a guy stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire tells you, a tow truck driver, that your thousand-dollar fee is too high, you can say,“I’m confused. Didn’t you say you have half an hour to make it to the White House for a once-in-a-lifetime dinner?”

   - Don’t say a word; just listen. Let the buyer try to explain why getting to $ 50M in two years isn’t worth $ 80K up front, or why increasing revenue by $ 50K a month isn’t worth a one-time fee of $ 40K. Make them justify why your price is too high. Here’s a hint—it will never be“just because.” Listen very carefully to their answer and then, and only then, respond. 2.“We don’t have the budget” and 3.“We can’t afford it”

   - “I understand, but I’m confused: If you don’t move forward till next year’s budget, you’ll lose $ 50K a month for the next six months. That’s $ 300K. Are you prepared to lose that kind of money, plus forgo competing for high-end projects for six more months? How much longer can you afford to let the competition win market share? How will that financial loss affect your ability to make your stated goals?”

 - Chapter 15: Smart Prospecting Prep

   - What does a healthy pipeline look like? It’s the ratio between your quota, your closing percentage, and the size of your pipeline. Therefore, if you have a $ 1 million quota and you have a 30% closing percentage, then a healthy pipeline is roughly three million qualified opportunities.

   - Anything you achieve in sales can be traced back to the health and size of your pipeline. You could have a great run of selling, but if you turn around and find nothing waiting for your attention because you’ve neglected your pipeline, you’re left with no choice but to frantically chase prospects to try and fill it back up. A sickly pipeline will cause you violent ups and downs and probably leave you face-planted in a heap of misery.

   - You’re not looking for people to talk to; you’re looking for people with problems you can solve.

   - You can use the PIC to build an ICP—Ideal Customer Profile.

   - Ask yourself what types of companies would most likely struggle with each set of problems. List their industry, size, the departments that would be affected, and the responsibilities of that department. Then think about who within these departments would suffer the greatest impact from those problems. That’s your ideal customer. Now rank your customers in order from those likely experiencing the highest number of problems causing the greatest amount of pain to those struggling with the lowest number of problems and suffering the least amount of pain. Separate that list into A, B, C, and D.

   - Your A list is composed of the customers who are battling the highest number of problems on your list and suffering the most, too.

   - Lots o’ problems = lots o’ impact.

   - Your B list may not be experiencing as many of those problems, but they are still having a significant impact on their businesses. Fewer problems = lots o’ impact.

   - The C list comprises buyers who are struggling with a number of the problems you’ve identified, yet not suffering all that much. Lots o’ problems = little impact.

   - D? Few problems = little impact. You don’t need to pay attention to any customers that land on your D list.

   - As you start engaging, your goal will be to compel these buyers to grant you enough time to identify these problems and not only get them to admit that the problem does exist, but that it is having a negative impact. To get that time, you’re going to have to understand your buyers’ mindsets—thus, the PIC.

   - $ 18B company with 30 + million customers. Do I bet on you? Do I take a chance? I am responsible for $ 100M Opex budget and $ 100M Capex budget. Why should I invest in your company and your product when I have many competing ways to spend company resources? I get dozens of cold call solicitations every week. I consistently work 50–60 hours per week and my schedule is booked solid two weeks in advance. Why should I return your call, meeting invite, email? What makes you better, faster, cheaper, safer, smarter than what I have today? I have 300 + staff. Do they have the wherewithal to learn, understand, implement the product and derive the value of what you are selling? I have a dozen vendors I spend $ 3M or more a year with. Do you know who they are and why I buy from them? I have many challenges, problems, issues. Do you know what they are? I have a strategy and a 3-year plan. Do you know what it is? Do you fit it? I have partners, vendors, and suppliers. Which one are you aspiring to be? A partner shares risk. My upside is your upside. My downside is your downside. Are you willing to share in that? A vendor consistently sells me a product or service I need at a fair price and good value and is easy to do business with. Are you“one and done” or are you willing to be there for the long term? A supplier gives me a commodity when I have many choices. Why should I buy from you on a regular basis? Price? Service? Flexibility? Do you have an“easy” button? My company has a strategy, a place in the market, is looking to differentiate, and is striving to improve our position by increasing our lead or catching the competitor in front of us. Do you know my business, my competitors, my company’s strategy? I buy from those I have a relationship with, those who have proven themselves over time. I can count on them. I can vouch for them. Can I count on you?

 - Chapter 16: How to Capture Attention

   - You have to give something irresistible to a prospect to compel them to respond to your email, social outreach, or cold call. Speaking of which, let me take a second to make one thing perfectly clear: Don’t let anyone tell you that cold calling is dead, or that social selling doesn’t work, or that email is useless. These distribution methods are only as useless or as valuable as the messages attached to them.

   - If you’re selling to millennials or in the tech space, email and social media may be your best bet. If you’re selling to traditional, old-school manufacturing, the phone and letters by snail mail may work best.

   - The best messages are those that compel recipients to action. What’s the point of writing a message if no one is going to read it, or worse, if they read it and then don’t take the action you’d like? I’ll tell you: There is no point. Prospecting doesn’t work unless people read our messages and take action.

   - To prevent this from happening, our minds have become quite brilliant at ignoring useless information while allowing us to be aware of the information that’s critical to completing tasks or to our safety.

   - Their brains are registering these messages as not important, no value, don’t need any, nothing here, more of the same, moving on. Their brains are basically giving you the hand so you can’t bother them and they can be productive.

   - 1. Surprise Find ways to create the unexpected. Sending your first piece of correspondence to a prospect inside a box of fresh croissants might just get you that breakfast meeting after all.

   - 2. Create mystery Make them say,“huh?” Create pain in the form of anticipation, which only further engagement can soothe.“Did you know that your competitor shortened their manufacturing cycle by three days using our product?”

   - 3. Create a knowledge gap“Were you aware that only 54% of salespeople make quota because of poor selling environments, not because of poor sales training?” Prove that you know something the buyer doesn’t about their industry, their business, their competitor, or the products they use.

   - This fantastic knowledge gap created intrigue:“Are you aware that many reliability managers are actually creating the very failures they are tasked with preventing?” That gets attention.

   - For example:“Are you aware that 80% of companies that use the same systems that you do rank dead last in their industries?” Other ways to educate buyers might be to offer: Insight on how the competition is solving a problem with which they are struggling A new federal mandate or regulation on the horizon A discussion about new best practices for achieving XYZ The ability to attack a new market, reach new customers, stop losing money, increase market share, etc. New market data or insights that affect their business An exploration of unseen or unrecognized opportunities

   - Another trick to getting a yes? Don’t ask for a chance to talk. Ask for a chance to give value. And to do that, you need the right ask with the right offer.

   - They want to learn something, experience something, and engage in a conversation that may lead them to improving their world, their business, their job, their life, their whatever. Therefore, when you ask for 15 minutes of a prospect’s time, the prospect is asking herself,“Is it worth it? Do I really want to spend 15 minutes listening to or engaging with this person?” If the prospect doesn’t quickly believe giving you 15 minutes is worth it, she’s out. The answer is NO!

   - “Yes. I think 15 minutes of my time(your ask) is worth a discussion about solving my inventory velocity challenges, or my sales lead conversion rates, or how I could increase ticket sales without increasing my marketing spend. Yes, 15 minutes of my time is worth that.”

   - Offer–Ask = Value

   - For instance, if you’re asking for 15 minutes to discuss how your prospects’ current recycling program could be costing them 50% more in energy costs, that’s a net positive for the buyer. But if you’re asking for 30 minutes to discuss their business and see if there are some areas where you can help them, that’s a net negative.

   - No problem, no need to change. No need to change, no need to talk to a salesperson—period. Remember, the sale is all about change.

   - It challenges the buyer with a knowledge gap, triggering the“oh shit” circuit and demanding the buyer open and read on.

   -

 - Chapter 17: Set the Right Cadence

   - Email, phone, video, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even FedEx—you’ve got access to the most powerful, wide-reaching communications stack in the history of sales. Leverage it! My research has revealed that 72% of salespeople who used social media to sell outperformed their peers and exceeded quota 23% more often than those who didn’t.

   - Remember: Every sale is made up of hundreds of smaller sales Every small sale must entail another yes to move nearer to a successful close Prospecting is your shot to get to the first yes Every prospecting email, call, voice mail, video, and social media post must include: intrigue, a clear and reasonable ask, an offer, and a net benefit to the customer Bug Them Without Bugging Them

   - The key to a killer cadence is perfecting the timing. You want to stay in front of your client just enough to stay top of mind, without annoying them or acting like a stalker. My recommendation is to use the following schedule in business days, via a variety of communication channels.

   - I never, ever, ever say no for a buyer. I make the buyer say no.

 - Part 4: Building a Gap-Selling Team

   - Great leaders get more out of people than they can get out of themselves. To be a great gap sales leader, you can’t just throw a training methodology at your team and expect them to figure everything out on their own. It is the responsibility of sales managers to provide them with cover and support, to offer guidance, and to check the quality of their data so you can give them the best chance of delivering on their sales goals.

   - The best sales managers aren’t just managers. They’re coaches.

 - Chapter 18: Manage the Pipeline

   - Did we get access to any concrete information about when the deal is going to close, or what the customer is thinking, or why the seller should be so confident that the sale is going to go through? What the heck does“good” mean, anyway? In reality, Bob has admitted that he is in a holding pattern and that the entire fate of the deal now rests in the buyers’ hands. Nowhere does he indicate that he has any influence in the process or that he has an ability to make sure that his buyers fulfill the few vague promises they’ve made, or that he has a strategy in mind that will get the buyers to the next“yes” that gets him nearer to the close.

   - It verifies that the numbers placed in the CRM are real, it measures and evaluates how much salespeople know about their customers and their opportunities, and it confirms that a team’s salespeople have enough influence on the deal to ensure that it will close when they say it will.

   - If your salespeople cannot gain influence over their deals, they’re not selling; they’re pitching. They haven’t earned the credibility that would strengthen their influence. The two go hand in hand. You gain credibility when you gather all the information about a customer’s current state, future state, gap, intrinsic motivation, and decision-making criteria. The more credibility you have, the more influence you have over your deals.

   - Conversely, sometimes you also need to make sure that members of your team aren’t purposely under-promising to make themselves look good when they over-deliver. You want the pipeline to reflect what is actually happening in your organization and to prove that your salespeople really know what they think they know.

   - Do my salespeople understand the customers’ current state? Do they know enough about the literal, physical business? Can they list the customers’ critical problems? Have they accurately assessed their impact on the customers’ organization? Are they cognizant of the buyers’ emotional state? Have they pinpointed the root cause of those problems? 2. Do my salespeople understand the customers’ future state? Can they articulate the desired outcome? Can they analyze the literal, physical impact of that outcome on the customers’ organization? 3. Can they identify the gap? Can they explain how they calculated it? 4. Can they name the customer’s intrinsic motivations for buying? 5. Can they list the buyers’ decision-making criteria? 6. Can they provide evidence that all of this information is accurate? 7. Do they know what will happen next and when?

   - “The customer wants to grow faster” is not a fact. How much does the customer want to grow his company? By what date? How much is he growing now? You can trust details, not generalities. If a salesperson can’t give you those details, the remedy is simple: Make them go back to the customer and have that conversation again. It’s up to you to make salespeople define and defend the data.

   - Once your team gets that their ass will be on the line if they can’t deliver the information you’re looking for, you can bet they will have the information at the next pipeline meeting.

   - People talk a lot more when they don’t have good data. The more long-winded they are, the more they talk in circles, the more you’ll know something is wrong. In general, people who don’t know what they’re talking about are the ones who talk the most. You’ll want to listen for brevity and specificity. Salespeople are notoriously great storytellers, but in this instance, make your salespeople cut to the chase. Forget the story. Get the facts.

   - And don’t accept what people think, such as when they tell you,“I think their intrinsic motivation is to be able to expand to Europe at the end of the year.” They think? Well, is it or isn’t it? Did your salesperson even ask? If so, the answer should be written up in the CRM and they should be able to repeat it back verbatim.

   - Once your team understands what is expected of them and realizes that vague answers and flimsy CRM updates aren’t going to fly, they’ll be prepared, and you’ll find that you can bang these meetings out quickly and efficiently. You’ll have the added benefit of feeling confident that there are no hidden surprises waiting to bite you in the butt at the end of the quarter.

   - The numbers you want to pay attention to are your salespeople’s: Average close rates Average deal size Average length of sales cycle Average number of new deals to the pipeline If you have a salesperson whose commit is $ 60K for the quarter and in February you see about $ 130K worth of business in her pipeline, and you know that her close rate is around 50% and you know that her average sales cycle is about two months, you have good reason to trust that your salesperson will meet her numbers.

   - It’s a commitment from the prospect or buyer to do something that will move your salesperson closer to the sale. It could be an introduction to the CEO. It could be an email with a confidential attachment. It could be an agreement to send specs. It could be a written agreement on price. It could be a willingness to conduct an on-site meeting. It could be scheduling a time to go through a demo or offer a tour of the plant.

   - Because no one agrees to anything unless they see value in doing so. Remember, the next yes is a little sale that requires value, a reason to say yes. Every next yes requires that prospects give something up—usually time or effort—so if salespeople want to close, they have to be able to show their buyers that the cost of every next yes will be worth their while.

   - If your salesperson is selling software, and the buyer is on board but can’t get her IT department to agree to open up the API, he’s stuck. So what do you do? To help, you might ask your salesperson to explain to you the IT department’s current state and why the API is an issue. If the salesperson has asked the right questions, he should know what concerns he needs to alleviate to get IT to give him access. For example, if IT is concerned about breach of data, that should tell your salesperson that he needs to explain the security precautions your company has taken, show that there is little to no security risk, and provide evidence that the bigger risk is to his peer in finance who’s not buying your software and is paying hefty governmental fines for failing to report requirements on equipment they have on public lands.

   - Help your salespeople figure out what questions they need to ask—if they haven’t asked already—so that they’re always aware of what the next yes is, how it moves the deal forward, and what they are going to need to do to secure it.

   - As a side note, take a second and apply the gap-selling principles. Can you see what happened? The gap flipped. That’s right, before HR become involved, the gap was tremendous! More ski school revenue, a greater ski school experience, more return skiers taking lessons. Great big gap! However, once you added a potential future state risk of law suites, fines and more for not complying with FSLA, the gap disappeared. Arguably, it was a negative gap, therefore there was no compelling reason to change. If you’ve been reading closely, I bet you picked that up, didn’t you?

   - If your salesperson doesn’t have a next yes in the works or a plan for how to get one, they’re effectively stalled. Do you want to make quota? Make sure your salesperson is always on to the next yes.

   - You know you have a healthy pipeline if your salespeople can provide: Accurate close dates(within 30 days) Accurate quarterly commits within 15% on either side Clear next steps(the next yes) Clear deal strategies Adequate pipeline coverage(the pipeline will allow them to meet their commit and quota) Evidence for all of the above

   - Everyone in your organization should think of pipeline management as a trust-building exercise. For an outstanding sales leader, the goal in holding your salespeople accountable for the information that sells to the gap shouldn’t be about ensuring your success, but about ensuring theirs.

 - Chapter 19: Build a Commit Culture

   - In a commit culture, salespeople are nurtured and coached, but they’re also expected to take ownership of their numbers—to commit to them.

   - A salesperson who commits to $ 500,000 knows she cannot come in at $ 400K, but she’d also better not come in at $ 580K. That way, when sales leaders tell management they’re doing $ 50M, management knows they’re doing $ 50M give or take a little bit, and they plan accordingly. Everyone is happy, and maybe more importantly, everyone stays calm and focused. Existing within a commit culture frees everyone’s brain to stop searching for CYA(that’s Cover Your… um… Behind) options and instead focus on getting things done.

   - It values accuracy and predictability over pie-in-the-sky projections and self-aggrandizement. It’s an environment where one’s word means everything and salespeople are rewarded for honesty, even when the truth isn’t exactly what their managers would like to hear, because with honesty comes predictability.

   - A commit culture can only exist when you truly understand all the elements of gap selling: the current state, the future state, the gap, the intrinsic motivations, the desired outcomes, and the buyer’s decision criteria.

   - Data is critical to accurately committing to a number within 15%, and the less data you have, the more difficult it is to commit.

   - Surprise is the enemy of a sales leader. And yet sales managers leading traditional sales teams are constantly taken by surprise; their salespeople often make predictions based on their gut. Inevitably, they low-ball their sales projections and then make it by a mile, or they set their bar too high and miss it by a mile. Rarely, however, do they actually come in right on the nose or somewhere very close. You know why? Because their gut isn’t working with data. Our gut is great for sensing opportunities, feeling out other people’s moods, and fine-tuning our questioning techniques. It sucks as a predictive tool, though.

   - Therefore, when you start asking the individuals on your team,“What’s your commit?” you’re not asking your team to tell you what numbers they think they’re going to make. You’re asking them to tell you what the data in front of them tells them they are going to make, give or take 15%.

   - Now, here’s where developing a commit culture gets difficult. You have to let your salespeople commit to whatever number they believe is accurate. You cannot, I repeat, cannot tell them to change it or go find more opportunities. Commit is an accuracy game, not a goal game.

   - A quarterly commit is about providing accurate insight into what the salesperson can do that quarter with a small(+/-15%) variance. I know this is hard for many sales managers. What if someone with a $ 10K a month quota only commits $ 20K for the quarter? Your instinct might be not to accept it and tell them to go find more“stuff” and come back with a better number. But a low commit to quota isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, finding out ahead of time that your salesperson will miss quota is a gift. Seriously!

   - You’d plunge into reaction mode and start figuratively flogging your team to do whatever it took to make up those numbers, from offering steep discounts to free upgrades, waiving install fees, shorter contracts, and any other“giveaway” to get the deals through the door. But in a commit culture you’ll know the first day of the quarter where you sit in relationship to quota because the team’s commit will tell you. If the team’s total quota is $ 1.1M and they are committing only $ 900K, you’ve just been given a gift. You know 90 days in advance that you’re going to have a poor quarter, and you have 90 days you wouldn’t have had to fix it. If there’s going to be a $ 200K hole in your quota attainment, a commit culture makes sure you know about it well ahead of time.

   - You now have 90 days to find that needed $ 200K. What new prospecting methodologies could you try? What support could you seek out from your marketing department? Not only would you have enough time to figure out how to solve the problem, you would also know you need to spend extra time helping the culpable salesperson( s) improve their gap-selling skills.

   - If someone has $ 200K in the pipeline and commits $ 200K and you know they have a 40% close rate, your inner alarm should go off. A 40% close rate should mean your guy is committing $ 80K, not $ 200K. What’s going on? And then you can ask,“Can you tell me why you’re over-committing?” More often than not, you’ll help your salesperson see there is crucial information missing. But, if after pointing out the fact that their close rate doesn’t support the commit and that one of the deals is in the early stages, and that salesperson still wants to stick to their commit, you have to let them. Let your salespeople stick to their commit number no matter what.

   - You know what happens when you force someone who has committed $ 80K to go hunting for more prospects so they can meet $ 200K instead? They will bring you $ 80K.

 - Chapter 20: Hire the Right People

   - Like geologists and archeologists, gap sellers gain great satisfaction in digging deep, piecing together shreds of information, and understanding everything at its deepest level.

   - outwit the competition,

 - Chapter 21: It's Not About You

   - They need your guidance, your feedback, your direction and your inspiration. If you start thinking of yourself more as a coach than a manager, you’ll put yourself in the right mindset to build and grow a winning gap-selling team. Coaches teach, train, and motivate, and they can even be hard-asses, but you know what else they do? On game day, they get out of the way. Trust has to go both ways.

 - Conclusion

   - Undeterred, I asked him a few more questions and it didn’t take long for him to realize that the cost of waiting until next year was far greater than if he found the budget to hire me now.