30 Minutes to President's Club with Maddie Jackson

[Music] good morning everybody and welcome to another episode of 30 minutes to president&#39;s club I&#39;m your host Nick seeli joined by my co-host Jen Allen new and today we have Maddie Jackson who is an AE over at webflow Jen why should people listen so this interview took an unexpected turn we got really deep into how you sell when you&#39;ve got two very different buying roles that are involved in the decision I absolutely love this one learned a ton this will be a great one to listen to and a three a two a one roll the tape all right Maddie welcome to the show we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways so let&#39;s get your three my first one is to make the first line of a cold email all about them them being the prospect whose attention you were trying to get with the email reason being it&#39;s likely that is all that they read before opening or deleting the email on a phone pull it up you just see on line before you actually make the decision to click in people also have a natural tendency to correct incorrect information so don&#39;t stress too much about getting it wrong it does also help you earn trust so putting the time in to understand who you&#39;re reaching out to earns the time that it takes for them to read the email couple of examples I&#39;m in web sales so I work for a company called webflow one thing I would say is Hi Prospect notice that your website is currently failing core web vital that could negatively impact your conversion rates via web signups then I would go into to web flow what we do and who we work with why they should give us some time another example could be high Prospect saw that you recently acquired X company and that your websites are built on two different systems that could be causing inefficiencies managing a content and creating a unified brand across multiple systems beautiful what&#39;s number two number two is very simple it&#39;s ask to meet sooner this is something that I picked up reading the book amp It Up by Frank slute the basis is that when you&#39;re setting up a Next Step always very important of course to set that next step while you have someone on a call it is human tendency to consider that they might be busy and maybe suggest something that&#39;s in a few days or even the next week asking to meet tomorrow or in very rare cases like maybe later that day shortens the deal cycle and it keeps up that valuable momentum an example of this is I&#39;ve actually met with someone in the morning and it was a prospect it was someone who was an individual contributor they told me about the problems that they faced and that their manager would be interested in learning more said great do they have time to talk this afternoon so that I can understand what their faing and then we can set up the demonstration after I&#39;ve spoken to both of you love it route us out Maddie what&#39;s number three number three is the give gets equilibrium and this is the importance of making sure that you are getting something back from the prospect when you&#39;re giving something really important because negotiation starts at the very beginning of the deal cycle so always try to think what am I giving in this step am I giving them collateral am I giving them trial access am I giving them access to a Solutions engineer or a technical resource and then what am I getting back so if you&#39;re thinking about aligning the right Resources with the right resources then you&#39;re going to be moving the deal cycle along in a more fair and Equitable way really important to frame this in a specific way which means that you frame it as why it&#39;s valuable for the Prospect and not just something that you need an example of this is with bringing an SE onto a demonstration saying really important that we have the right technical folks on your side because I know that they&#39;re going to be involved in the deal and we want to make sure that we get them all of the answers that they need and that we&#39;re saving time rather than having to burn through multiple different meetings and bring multiple people on so let me know who is in charge of like the technical criteria on your side happy to reach out to them and make sure that it&#39;s a time that works for all of us well I really like that one because that&#39;s a great way to also start to multi-thread with a whole different function that&#39;s going to be involved in your sales talk to me more about this give get thing because when we were preparing for this you actually had an entire sheet of like all the things that your prospects ask you for things that you might give but then you had also brainstormed an entire list of things that you could ask for your get to me about what the gets you have out there are and how you determine what you&#39;re going to ask a prospect for a couple of ones that I think come up in quite a few sales Cycles would be something like trial access being a give so that is something that we are giving access to the prospect for and in order to line that up with the right get you want to make sure that it&#39;s something that falls within the same stage of the sales cycle so at that point one that I like to use is a mutual engagement plan or a mutual action plan and a way to frame that would be absolutely we can get you trial access sometimes we give trial access and we don&#39;t have a plan of what&#39;s going to happen within that trial at dates that we&#39;re going to map to meeting throughout the trial to make sure that you&#39;re fully supported that our team is fully supporting you let&#39;s map out what&#39;s going to happen throughout the trial and then beyond if all of the criteria is met what it looks like for us to go into that procurement cycle say I&#39;m a brand new seller or I&#39;m someone who&#39;s thinking about going into a highly technical sale can you share a few things that having done that having moved into a job like that what are some things you should just expect to be asked as gives from the customer what are the most common ones that come up specifically with highly technical products I think access to engineering or product resources on your side security is also one that quite often comes up and a trial access like I mentioned I think that&#39;s probably the number one thing that they&#39;re going to want to do to validate your product especially if it&#39;s something that they can&#39;t access online and have a premium version I&#39;m lucky right now at web flow we do have it&#39;s product like growth so there&#39;s a lot of ways for people to play around with the product before but in previous sales Cycles when I was at procore selling it to the construction industry trials were very common one of the biggest gets I presume you are asking for on the pre-show we were talking about how you sell to two really different types of buyer and both has to be involved in your s you&#39;ve got your marketing folks who they&#39;re the ones who want to make the website look pretty and have all of these case studies and all of these awesome tabs and resources Etc and then you&#39;ve got these technical folks who are actually like implementing designing Etc the website and those personalities can be really different one of the things I assume is that you might have marketing leader who&#39;s ra web flow and pour hours into talking with that person but if you don&#39;t also win over the technical people you might be working a deal that they like literally cannot even Implement and wasting your time and so I&#39;m curious about let&#39;s say you&#39;ve got a marketing leader how are you getting access to the technical folks I like to lay it out and just say hey I understand that right now engineering is the one who owns the website and they&#39;re the one they&#39;re the ones building and and doing most of the process in my experience they&#39;re going to want to be involved in the valuation even though it&#39;s a marketing tool and it might be coming out of marketing&#39;s budget really important that those who are involved today and owning that process that they V this out because there will be an implementation and handoff process I want to make this really real we are webflow customers at 30 minutes to president&#39;s Club right now but let&#39;s pretend that I wasn&#39;t let&#39;s pretend that I came to you Maddie and I said Maddie I want to be able to embed every single podcast episode we&#39;ve ever done live on a page and I want to put on uh a special search bar so people can search for any Topic in sales and they&#39;ll be directed to the right episode and I come to you with all these big Visionary things I want to do with my website and I&#39;m the marketing guy and then you say Nick awesome we can do all of this sounds great I found that usually the technical folks are going to need to be involved in some capacity and I say you&#39;re right intro you to my CTO get on a call with that person how are you running that introductory call with this technical person most important thing in that case and I think in just about every sales cycle is how does that process work today hi Mr CTO so nice to meet you these are the things that Nick wants to do with the website to improve I&#39;m assuming user experience make it easier to search and filter and find the right episodes what would that process look like today with your team who currently owns the website and then going from there based on if there&#39;s some specific pain that they&#39;re running into some reasons why you haven&#39;t done that yet spinning that into the value proper web how often do you find that the technical buyer versus the marketing buyer have two totally different opinions around the priority level of this and what do you do when you&#39;ve got like a marketing Champion who&#39;s let&#39;s go and then you&#39;ve got your it buyer who&#39;s let&#39;s pump the brakes yeah that&#39;s where it becomes more of like organizational Discovery I would say rather than technical or product Discovery and helping understand with whoever is willing might be the the engineering team it might be the marketing team more often it&#39;s the marketers what is the value of web flow what&#39;s the impact let&#39;s put a business case together right let&#39;s understand and quantify the human hours saved for your engineering team and the impact of potentially getting these campaigns out sooner so that we can then present it to the folks who are going to ultimately decide will you talk to me about the quantification side of things are you asking the engineering team about how long it might take to update a web page today and then literally good getting into the math of hours save talk to me about the quantifying side of the deal so that&#39;s definitely part of it it&#39;s definitely not all of it but we will ask the marketing team how long does it take if you want to produce this one landing page today and often it&#39;s weeks not minutes or hours which is what it would be in web flow so that&#39;s quite a good tangible way to quantify Time Savings and efficiency but the other thing that&#39;s a little bit more difficult to quantify is what do you have coming up on your road and how important is it for us to nail these launch deadlines and why and often it&#39;s centered around a product release or a new campaign or a big event that they have and trying to quantify what would happen if we didn&#39;t hit that what would happen if the project got delayed if something on product became a priority and the engineers who you might be working with had to go work on the product how much of that is possible for you to find out before you get on the phone with your engineering partner is the marketing person that you&#39;re working with are they seeing that are you looking elsewhere like how do you show up to that call with that information or don&#39;t you usually we&#39;re trying to get as much information from the marketing people and this is also a great way for us to Champion test to understand what they&#39;re willing to arm us with what they&#39;re willing to share within the process again with the give gets going back to that if we are getting information on the current process absolutely I will give them a business case I will go through an Roi study with them to make sure that we&#39;re helping them quantify the impact of web flow so that they can bring that to their superiors okay you just said something that I absolutely love and I don&#39;t hear a lot which is the phrase Champion test so for someone who&#39;s not familiar with that what is Champ Champion testing mean and what are you doing on your side to actually test the validity of a champion champion testing is something that I think is really important and to be honest something that I historically did not do until I got burned on a few deals where I thought that I might have had a champion and then I realized that they were more of an influencer so what I would say a champion has like political and Technical clout they have the ability and knowledge to get a deal done for web flow and they have personal pain and win within the situation to test I think it&#39;s really important to understand what sort of political and Technical Cloud they have in the organization so great way to test is you said that your CMO is going to be the person signing up on this they have the budget can you get us a meeting with them if they can&#39;t then they have failed the test and you know that you might need to find someone else to round out your Champion it could be multiple folks it&#39;s not always just one person but then you know that you might not have the solid champion who has the ability to get the deal done for you so what do you do in this scenario so I&#39;ve had 14 meetings with Jen and I&#39;ve given her 12 demos I&#39;ve sent over 18 case studies and then it turns out Jen&#39;s CMO I don&#39;t think n let&#39;s hold off on that for now other than sitting there and seing what are you going to do are you going to just like cold call the CMO are you going to try to find someone else maybe at the director level who might be a champion are you going to try to have Jen introduce you to folks that like eventually you meet enough people and there&#39;s a big enough consensus that you get up to the CMO when you find out you have an influencer not a champion how do you get to that power yeah I think the first and most important thing is to ask that second and third question to understand just yeah how deep of a hole you&#39;ve dug which is the first one that I like to ask is great is the CMO even aware that you&#39;re speaking to webflow are they aware that this evaluation is going on because if not then you know that you have a lot more work to do and this might have just been a side project of interest if yes then it&#39;s okay who do they trust who are they leaning on to make this decision and how can I talk to them that&#39;s actually very smart because there&#39;s a big difference between a end user who&#39;s decided to go off on their own side project of investigating stuff versus a mandate from the CMO telling an end user to go investigate all of these things and what you&#39;re doing is before you jump to how do I solve this how do I get in front of the CMO you&#39;re figuring out what context that person even has in the first place correct yes so to go a little bit deeper there what I would say is if the CMO doesn&#39;t have context and they might not be aware the end buyer or the organizational the end decision maker it&#39;s great you have someone who&#39;s interested and I would work with your SDR bdr or yourself and go back to the drawing board and in that case I would go back to prospecting I would use it as a warm lead I too used to treat anybody that was interested in our product as a champion and it&#39;s a much higher bar as you described I love the way you described that and I think one of the mistakes I made was I put too much power perhaps in the hands of someone who is interested but not credible or motivated to socialize it question number one is has that ever happened to you and two what do you do differently now to avoid getting into those circumstances where you don&#39;t have to end up making that awkward decision of do I call their boss and risk getting in trouble like how do you avoid that when you&#39;re engaging with people who are interested but maybe not champion level to answer question number one of course Jen it has happened please say yes yes it has and it has happened to me in the worst of ways where at the very end of a deal cycle I was told I am the signer send it to me no one else has to look at this you send the doc you sign you commit the deal it&#39;s the end of the quarter and then you find out that they did not have signing power and that there&#39;s someone else who needs to be pulled in and then the deal pushes and I think what I learned especially from that is again on the testing front ask what else have you purchased what does the software purchasing process look like at your company and R is the last time that you signed off on a contract had I asked those questions I would have understood that they actually did have a chief product officer who needed to review even though this person might have had the power once they got the green light from them I have a question for both of you because this is a scenario that&#39;s tripped me up a lot and frankly still trips me up in in my sale right now which is I&#39;ll meet somebody right now I sell to marketers and you&#39;re right A lot of the times it is the CMO who&#39;s the person that&#39;s signing off on things but I&#39;ll have a director of demand gen that comes inbound and they decide to meet with me and I feel like if I get to a place where I&#39;m stuck with that person and know I need to get higher I feel like I&#39;m going around my contact and I feel like I&#39;m going to risk burning them to go up higher and then half the time if I do go up higher they send me back down to this person who&#39;s then just pissed off at me and I feel like I might be able to avoid that if I acted differently or if I gave less credit or power to this director than I&#39;m meeting with and I&#39;m wondering if either of you have any advice for how I might handle that one thing I think the advice portion is be really skeptical even though you get happy ears this happens to me all the time this is why I love deal reviews working with my team and making sure that I got other people&#39;s eyes on it so they can pick apart this director or Champion or buyer who I might think that I&#39;m working with and then an example of what I would do in that case and what I have done that I found to be effective when you&#39;re worried that you&#39;re going to be burned if you go around someone who you&#39;ve built this relationship with is leverage your internal resources here at webflow we have such a wonderful Executive Suite with a lot of talent and a rich history of building great companies so I could ask Linda or Chief Operating Officer or Allen or CTO who was previously at Shopify and a lot of people have incredible respect for to reach out to the person who might actually have the buying power and just drop an executive note hi my name is Alan heard that you&#39;re working with Maddie really excited to be partnering with you for XYZ reasons let me know if you ever need anything and that&#39;s a way to test if they&#39;re aware of the project without burning yourself in the in the process mie I want to ask you about the end of the deal cycle we were doing some pre-show chat about negotiating and I know you have very focused way that you tackle your negotiations so let&#39;s say I&#39;m your buyer I a zoom with you I&#39;ve got a big smile on my face and I say Maddie great news you&#39;re our vendor of choice we&#39;re ready to move forward what happens next I actually have a framework that I was taught by a sales leader who I deeply respect Maggie hot and it&#39;s the four W&#39;s of negotiation so at that point I would start thinking about the four W&#39;s and those are what why who and when what being okay we&#39;re entering into Contracting what are they hoping to see what can they budge on potentially give you the best shot at offering a discount maybe it&#39;s multi-year maybe it&#39;s buying ahead of growth maybe it&#39;s logo rights or case study why that&#39;s important for them because often people will ask for a discount and it&#39;s great why is that important to you helping me help me understand whether it&#39;s cash flow or total ownership would you like would you prefer to have net 15 payments one time with a discount or could we keep the ARR but potentially divide it up into multiple payments why is that important to them the who this is the really important one especially talking about how I was burned that one time who is going to look at this order form who is going to sign it who is going to do legal review and then at the end making sure when which is the simplest you know when can this happen when will each step of that process that we just laid out happen a great way to ask this without undermining their Authority is simple talk track saying in this recent economy we&#39;ve all been seeing all kinds of new buying committees popping up I often hear that the CFO is the new CEO Prospect can I ask who might need to be involved in approving this before it is signed for example does your CFO and maybe have the cfo&#39;s name handy need to look at this probably Maddie because our CFO Jen&#39;s been looking at everything but why don&#39;t you just send it over to me and then I&#39;ll I&#39;ll take care of things with Jen don&#39;t you worry about it how would you respond to that this is one where I&#39;d lean on my leadership and make them the scapegoat in this case I&#39;d say totally wish I could Nick but if your CFO is going to be the signer in order to actually get any sort of discounts or concessions or incentives that we&#39;ve discussed approved we&#39;re going to need to check off the box that we&#39;ve spoken to them directly in order to get you the best possible proposal can you please sponsor a meeting between myself and your CFO oh that&#39;s really good you basically are citing leadership organizational policy in order to have any sort of gives again going back to your give get philosophy as a way to get in front of that CFO exactly can I ask you how you run that meeting with the CFO because are you giving them a demo are you giving a whole like Roi calculation are you basically there to just talk about contractual terms do you present does your Champion present what the heck goes into that CFO hopefully at this point you have a strong enough Champion that they can tell you exactly how to run that CFO meeting hopefully the CFO does not need to see a demo and that I&#39;ve uncovered that earlier on in the deal cycle so that we&#39;ve already gone through that step and they were someone who is part of that evaluation and really they&#39;re just there to understand what the proposal is and get the best terms but I would say to answer your question with a no answer lean on your Champion to understand exactly how to run that is it going to land best if us if we come in and present this or should we work with you to prep them for the meeting and then hold one final contract meeting we&#39;re running out of time and we got to move to our final question and the final question is this we&#39;ve talked about a lot of really great things sales people should be doing now I got to ask you about a shouldn&#39;t and so my last question for you is what is one bad habit that you see a lot of salespeople exhibiting that you think they need to break because it hurts them more than it helps one bad habit that I see reps making and I&#39;ve definitely made it myself is trying to make themselves look good and this ties into both internal and external throughout the sales cycle so with prospects they I find they have a very heightened sense for BS they&#39;re always aware when you&#39;re trying to sell to them versus trying to solve their problem so if you don&#39;t know the answer don&#39;t make up an answer just say completely understand that&#39;s the question this is why get some clarifying context I&#39;ll come back to you and I&#39;ll bring the right people to the next call internally I think it&#39;s really important one of my favorite phrases that we say a lot around web flow is we should always win together we should always lose together if something is going sideways on your deal and you just keep forecasting it and committing it and thinking it&#39;s something you can tackle alone don&#39;t do that don&#39;t try to make yourself the hero bring everybody in so that if it does go sideways you can correct it as a team rather than failing than trying to preserve ego I love it Maddie thank you for joining us everybody stick around for a 60-second recap coming up soon thank you for having me your top four actionable takeaways from this episode with Maddie Jackson number one if you feel like you have leverage in a deal but you have not gotten in front of the CFO and feel like you need to present to them literally use that as a non-negotiable in order for you to even negotiate or have any sort of commercial concessions get yourself in front the CFO and then use that as the reason that you might even negotiate with them in the first place number two Maddy talked a lot about gives and gets and while you can steal hers it&#39;s probably good for you to sit down for 12 and a half minutes and think about what are all of the potential GS that I could ask for from my buyer as a way to advance my ideal that way when you&#39;re in the heat of battle on a call you&#39;re not sitting there scrambling thinking what could I ask for here number three just because someone is a fan of our solution or our company does not mean that they will be an effective Champion so do what Maddie suggested and ask questions to Champion test one of the questions she suggested was is the CMO aware you&#39;re having these conversations that will help us avoid putting too much control in the hands of the wrong person and number four or when we are trying to get access to the CFO don&#39;t use basic questions like can I book a meeting with your CFO use labeling statements like the one Maddie gave I often hear the CFO is the new CMO is that the same for you now Nick how can our listeners help us out today folks sometimes Armand and I sit down and we write down things that we&#39;ve learned on 30 minutes to president&#39;s club and then pretty frequently we email those learnings out to folks who have decided that they&#39;re not horribly utterly opposed to getting emails from 30 minutes to president&#39;s club and so if you&#39;d like to get our written learnings from 30 MPC there&#39;s a link in today&#39;s show to sign up for the 30 MPC newsletter promise it&#39;s moderately valuable and you may learn something here or there thanks for listening we&#39;ll see you next week on the show

[Music] good morning everybody and welcome to another episode of 30 minutes to president&amp;#39;s club I&amp;#39;m your host Nick seeli joined by my co-host Jen Allen new and today we have Maddie Jackson who is an AE over at webflow Jen why should people listen so this interview took an unexpected turn we got really deep into how you sell when you&amp;#39;ve got two very different buying roles that are involved in the decision I absolutely love this one learned a ton this will be a great one to listen to and a three a two a one roll the tape all right Maddie welcome to the show we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways so let&amp;#39;s get your three my first one is to make the first line of a cold email all about them them being the prospect whose attention you were trying to get with the email reason being it&amp;#39;s likely that is all that they read before opening or deleting the email on a phone pull it up you just see on line before you actually make the decision to click in people also have a natural tendency to correct incorrect information so don&amp;#39;t stress too much about getting it wrong it does also help you earn trust so putting the time in to understand who you&amp;#39;re reaching out to earns the time that it takes for them to read the email couple of examples I&amp;#39;m in web sales so I work for a company called webflow one thing I would say is Hi Prospect notice that your website is currently failing core web vital that could negatively impact your conversion rates via web signups then I would go into to web flow what we do and who we work with why they should give us some time another example could be high Prospect saw that you recently acquired X company and that your websites are built on two different systems that could be causing inefficiencies managing a content and creating a unified brand across multiple systems beautiful what&amp;#39;s number two number two is very simple it&amp;#39;s ask to meet sooner this is something that I picked up reading the book amp It Up by Frank slute the basis is that when you&amp;#39;re setting up a Next Step always very important of course to set that next step while you have someone on a call it is human tendency to consider that they might be busy and maybe suggest something that&amp;#39;s in a few days or even the next week asking to meet tomorrow or in very rare cases like maybe later that day shortens the deal cycle and it keeps up that valuable momentum an example of this is I&amp;#39;ve actually met with someone in the morning and it was a prospect it was someone who was an individual contributor they told me about the problems that they faced and that their manager would be interested in learning more said great do they have time to talk this afternoon so that I can understand what their faing and then we can set up the demonstration after I&amp;#39;ve spoken to both of you love it route us out Maddie what&amp;#39;s number three number three is the give gets equilibrium and this is the importance of making sure that you are getting something back from the prospect when you&amp;#39;re giving something really important because negotiation starts at the very beginning of the deal cycle so always try to think what am I giving in this step am I giving them collateral am I giving them trial access am I giving them access to a Solutions engineer or a technical resource and then what am I getting back so if you&amp;#39;re thinking about aligning the right Resources with the right resources then you&amp;#39;re going to be moving the deal cycle along in a more fair and Equitable way really important to frame this in a specific way which means that you frame it as why it&amp;#39;s valuable for the Prospect and not just something that you need an example of this is with bringing an SE onto a demonstration saying really important that we have the right technical folks on your side because I know that they&amp;#39;re going to be involved in the deal and we want to make sure that we get them all of the answers that they need and that we&amp;#39;re saving time rather than having to burn through multiple different meetings and bring multiple people on so let me know who is in charge of like the technical criteria on your side happy to reach out to them and make sure that it&amp;#39;s a time that works for all of us well I really like that one because that&amp;#39;s a great way to also start to multi-thread with a whole different function that&amp;#39;s going to be involved in your sales talk to me more about this give get thing because when we were preparing for this you actually had an entire sheet of like all the things that your prospects ask you for things that you might give but then you had also brainstormed an entire list of things that you could ask for your get to me about what the gets you have out there are and how you determine what you&amp;#39;re going to ask a prospect for a couple of ones that I think come up in quite a few sales Cycles would be something like trial access being a give so that is something that we are giving access to the prospect for and in order to line that up with the right get you want to make sure that it&amp;#39;s something that falls within the same stage of the sales cycle so at that point one that I like to use is a mutual engagement plan or a mutual action plan and a way to frame that would be absolutely we can get you trial access sometimes we give trial access and we don&amp;#39;t have a plan of what&amp;#39;s going to happen within that trial at dates that we&amp;#39;re going to map to meeting throughout the trial to make sure that you&amp;#39;re fully supported that our team is fully supporting you let&amp;#39;s map out what&amp;#39;s going to happen throughout the trial and then beyond if all of the criteria is met what it looks like for us to go into that procurement cycle say I&amp;#39;m a brand new seller or I&amp;#39;m someone who&amp;#39;s thinking about going into a highly technical sale can you share a few things that having done that having moved into a job like that what are some things you should just expect to be asked as gives from the customer what are the most common ones that come up specifically with highly technical products I think access to engineering or product resources on your side security is also one that quite often comes up and a trial access like I mentioned I think that&amp;#39;s probably the number one thing that they&amp;#39;re going to want to do to validate your product especially if it&amp;#39;s something that they can&amp;#39;t access online and have a premium version I&amp;#39;m lucky right now at web flow we do have it&amp;#39;s product like growth so there&amp;#39;s a lot of ways for people to play around with the product before but in previous sales Cycles when I was at procore selling it to the construction industry trials were very common one of the biggest gets I presume you are asking for on the pre-show we were talking about how you sell to two really different types of buyer and both has to be involved in your s you&amp;#39;ve got your marketing folks who they&amp;#39;re the ones who want to make the website look pretty and have all of these case studies and all of these awesome tabs and resources Etc and then you&amp;#39;ve got these technical folks who are actually like implementing designing Etc the website and those personalities can be really different one of the things I assume is that you might have marketing leader who&amp;#39;s ra web flow and pour hours into talking with that person but if you don&amp;#39;t also win over the technical people you might be working a deal that they like literally cannot even Implement and wasting your time and so I&amp;#39;m curious about let&amp;#39;s say you&amp;#39;ve got a marketing leader how are you getting access to the technical folks I like to lay it out and just say hey I understand that right now engineering is the one who owns the website and they&amp;#39;re the one they&amp;#39;re the ones building and and doing most of the process in my experience they&amp;#39;re going to want to be involved in the valuation even though it&amp;#39;s a marketing tool and it might be coming out of marketing&amp;#39;s budget really important that those who are involved today and owning that process that they V this out because there will be an implementation and handoff process I want to make this really real we are webflow customers at 30 minutes to president&amp;#39;s Club right now but let&amp;#39;s pretend that I wasn&amp;#39;t let&amp;#39;s pretend that I came to you Maddie and I said Maddie I want to be able to embed every single podcast episode we&amp;#39;ve ever done live on a page and I want to put on uh a special search bar so people can search for any Topic in sales and they&amp;#39;ll be directed to the right episode and I come to you with all these big Visionary things I want to do with my website and I&amp;#39;m the marketing guy and then you say Nick awesome we can do all of this sounds great I found that usually the technical folks are going to need to be involved in some capacity and I say you&amp;#39;re right intro you to my CTO get on a call with that person how are you running that introductory call with this technical person most important thing in that case and I think in just about every sales cycle is how does that process work today hi Mr CTO so nice to meet you these are the things that Nick wants to do with the website to improve I&amp;#39;m assuming user experience make it easier to search and filter and find the right episodes what would that process look like today with your team who currently owns the website and then going from there based on if there&amp;#39;s some specific pain that they&amp;#39;re running into some reasons why you haven&amp;#39;t done that yet spinning that into the value proper web how often do you find that the technical buyer versus the marketing buyer have two totally different opinions around the priority level of this and what do you do when you&amp;#39;ve got like a marketing Champion who&amp;#39;s let&amp;#39;s go and then you&amp;#39;ve got your it buyer who&amp;#39;s let&amp;#39;s pump the brakes yeah that&amp;#39;s where it becomes more of like organizational Discovery I would say rather than technical or product Discovery and helping understand with whoever is willing might be the the engineering team it might be the marketing team more often it&amp;#39;s the marketers what is the value of web flow what&amp;#39;s the impact let&amp;#39;s put a business case together right let&amp;#39;s understand and quantify the human hours saved for your engineering team and the impact of potentially getting these campaigns out sooner so that we can then present it to the folks who are going to ultimately decide will you talk to me about the quantification side of things are you asking the engineering team about how long it might take to update a web page today and then literally good getting into the math of hours save talk to me about the quantifying side of the deal so that&amp;#39;s definitely part of it it&amp;#39;s definitely not all of it but we will ask the marketing team how long does it take if you want to produce this one landing page today and often it&amp;#39;s weeks not minutes or hours which is what it would be in web flow so that&amp;#39;s quite a good tangible way to quantify Time Savings and efficiency but the other thing that&amp;#39;s a little bit more difficult to quantify is what do you have coming up on your road and how important is it for us to nail these launch deadlines and why and often it&amp;#39;s centered around a product release or a new campaign or a big event that they have and trying to quantify what would happen if we didn&amp;#39;t hit that what would happen if the project got delayed if something on product became a priority and the engineers who you might be working with had to go work on the product how much of that is possible for you to find out before you get on the phone with your engineering partner is the marketing person that you&amp;#39;re working with are they seeing that are you looking elsewhere like how do you show up to that call with that information or don&amp;#39;t you usually we&amp;#39;re trying to get as much information from the marketing people and this is also a great way for us to Champion test to understand what they&amp;#39;re willing to arm us with what they&amp;#39;re willing to share within the process again with the give gets going back to that if we are getting information on the current process absolutely I will give them a business case I will go through an Roi study with them to make sure that we&amp;#39;re helping them quantify the impact of web flow so that they can bring that to their superiors okay you just said something that I absolutely love and I don&amp;#39;t hear a lot which is the phrase Champion test so for someone who&amp;#39;s not familiar with that what is Champ Champion testing mean and what are you doing on your side to actually test the validity of a champion champion testing is something that I think is really important and to be honest something that I historically did not do until I got burned on a few deals where I thought that I might have had a champion and then I realized that they were more of an influencer so what I would say a champion has like political and Technical clout they have the ability and knowledge to get a deal done for web flow and they have personal pain and win within the situation to test I think it&amp;#39;s really important to understand what sort of political and Technical Cloud they have in the organization so great way to test is you said that your CMO is going to be the person signing up on this they have the budget can you get us a meeting with them if they can&amp;#39;t then they have failed the test and you know that you might need to find someone else to round out your Champion it could be multiple folks it&amp;#39;s not always just one person but then you know that you might not have the solid champion who has the ability to get the deal done for you so what do you do in this scenario so I&amp;#39;ve had 14 meetings with Jen and I&amp;#39;ve given her 12 demos I&amp;#39;ve sent over 18 case studies and then it turns out Jen&amp;#39;s CMO I don&amp;#39;t think n let&amp;#39;s hold off on that for now other than sitting there and seing what are you going to do are you going to just like cold call the CMO are you going to try to find someone else maybe at the director level who might be a champion are you going to try to have Jen introduce you to folks that like eventually you meet enough people and there&amp;#39;s a big enough consensus that you get up to the CMO when you find out you have an influencer not a champion how do you get to that power yeah I think the first and most important thing is to ask that second and third question to understand just yeah how deep of a hole you&amp;#39;ve dug which is the first one that I like to ask is great is the CMO even aware that you&amp;#39;re speaking to webflow are they aware that this evaluation is going on because if not then you know that you have a lot more work to do and this might have just been a side project of interest if yes then it&amp;#39;s okay who do they trust who are they leaning on to make this decision and how can I talk to them that&amp;#39;s actually very smart because there&amp;#39;s a big difference between a end user who&amp;#39;s decided to go off on their own side project of investigating stuff versus a mandate from the CMO telling an end user to go investigate all of these things and what you&amp;#39;re doing is before you jump to how do I solve this how do I get in front of the CMO you&amp;#39;re figuring out what context that person even has in the first place correct yes so to go a little bit deeper there what I would say is if the CMO doesn&amp;#39;t have context and they might not be aware the end buyer or the organizational the end decision maker it&amp;#39;s great you have someone who&amp;#39;s interested and I would work with your SDR bdr or yourself and go back to the drawing board and in that case I would go back to prospecting I would use it as a warm lead I too used to treat anybody that was interested in our product as a champion and it&amp;#39;s a much higher bar as you described I love the way you described that and I think one of the mistakes I made was I put too much power perhaps in the hands of someone who is interested but not credible or motivated to socialize it question number one is has that ever happened to you and two what do you do differently now to avoid getting into those circumstances where you don&amp;#39;t have to end up making that awkward decision of do I call their boss and risk getting in trouble like how do you avoid that when you&amp;#39;re engaging with people who are interested but maybe not champion level to answer question number one of course Jen it has happened please say yes yes it has and it has happened to me in the worst of ways where at the very end of a deal cycle I was told I am the signer send it to me no one else has to look at this you send the doc you sign you commit the deal it&amp;#39;s the end of the quarter and then you find out that they did not have signing power and that there&amp;#39;s someone else who needs to be pulled in and then the deal pushes and I think what I learned especially from that is again on the testing front ask what else have you purchased what does the software purchasing process look like at your company and R is the last time that you signed off on a contract had I asked those questions I would have understood that they actually did have a chief product officer who needed to review even though this person might have had the power once they got the green light from them I have a question for both of you because this is a scenario that&amp;#39;s tripped me up a lot and frankly still trips me up in in my sale right now which is I&amp;#39;ll meet somebody right now I sell to marketers and you&amp;#39;re right A lot of the times it is the CMO who&amp;#39;s the person that&amp;#39;s signing off on things but I&amp;#39;ll have a director of demand gen that comes inbound and they decide to meet with me and I feel like if I get to a place where I&amp;#39;m stuck with that person and know I need to get higher I feel like I&amp;#39;m going around my contact and I feel like I&amp;#39;m going to risk burning them to go up higher and then half the time if I do go up higher they send me back down to this person who&amp;#39;s then just pissed off at me and I feel like I might be able to avoid that if I acted differently or if I gave less credit or power to this director than I&amp;#39;m meeting with and I&amp;#39;m wondering if either of you have any advice for how I might handle that one thing I think the advice portion is be really skeptical even though you get happy ears this happens to me all the time this is why I love deal reviews working with my team and making sure that I got other people&amp;#39;s eyes on it so they can pick apart this director or Champion or buyer who I might think that I&amp;#39;m working with and then an example of what I would do in that case and what I have done that I found to be effective when you&amp;#39;re worried that you&amp;#39;re going to be burned if you go around someone who you&amp;#39;ve built this relationship with is leverage your internal resources here at webflow we have such a wonderful Executive Suite with a lot of talent and a rich history of building great companies so I could ask Linda or Chief Operating Officer or Allen or CTO who was previously at Shopify and a lot of people have incredible respect for to reach out to the person who might actually have the buying power and just drop an executive note hi my name is Alan heard that you&amp;#39;re working with Maddie really excited to be partnering with you for XYZ reasons let me know if you ever need anything and that&amp;#39;s a way to test if they&amp;#39;re aware of the project without burning yourself in the in the process mie I want to ask you about the end of the deal cycle we were doing some pre-show chat about negotiating and I know you have very focused way that you tackle your negotiations so let&amp;#39;s say I&amp;#39;m your buyer I a zoom with you I&amp;#39;ve got a big smile on my face and I say Maddie great news you&amp;#39;re our vendor of choice we&amp;#39;re ready to move forward what happens next I actually have a framework that I was taught by a sales leader who I deeply respect Maggie hot and it&amp;#39;s the four W&amp;#39;s of negotiation so at that point I would start thinking about the four W&amp;#39;s and those are what why who and when what being okay we&amp;#39;re entering into Contracting what are they hoping to see what can they budge on potentially give you the best shot at offering a discount maybe it&amp;#39;s multi-year maybe it&amp;#39;s buying ahead of growth maybe it&amp;#39;s logo rights or case study why that&amp;#39;s important for them because often people will ask for a discount and it&amp;#39;s great why is that important to you helping me help me understand whether it&amp;#39;s cash flow or total ownership would you like would you prefer to have net 15 payments one time with a discount or could we keep the ARR but potentially divide it up into multiple payments why is that important to them the who this is the really important one especially talking about how I was burned that one time who is going to look at this order form who is going to sign it who is going to do legal review and then at the end making sure when which is the simplest you know when can this happen when will each step of that process that we just laid out happen a great way to ask this without undermining their Authority is simple talk track saying in this recent economy we&amp;#39;ve all been seeing all kinds of new buying committees popping up I often hear that the CFO is the new CEO Prospect can I ask who might need to be involved in approving this before it is signed for example does your CFO and maybe have the cfo&amp;#39;s name handy need to look at this probably Maddie because our CFO Jen&amp;#39;s been looking at everything but why don&amp;#39;t you just send it over to me and then I&amp;#39;ll I&amp;#39;ll take care of things with Jen don&amp;#39;t you worry about it how would you respond to that this is one where I&amp;#39;d lean on my leadership and make them the scapegoat in this case I&amp;#39;d say totally wish I could Nick but if your CFO is going to be the signer in order to actually get any sort of discounts or concessions or incentives that we&amp;#39;ve discussed approved we&amp;#39;re going to need to check off the box that we&amp;#39;ve spoken to them directly in order to get you the best possible proposal can you please sponsor a meeting between myself and your CFO oh that&amp;#39;s really good you basically are citing leadership organizational policy in order to have any sort of gives again going back to your give get philosophy as a way to get in front of that CFO exactly can I ask you how you run that meeting with the CFO because are you giving them a demo are you giving a whole like Roi calculation are you basically there to just talk about contractual terms do you present does your Champion present what the heck goes into that CFO hopefully at this point you have a strong enough Champion that they can tell you exactly how to run that CFO meeting hopefully the CFO does not need to see a demo and that I&amp;#39;ve uncovered that earlier on in the deal cycle so that we&amp;#39;ve already gone through that step and they were someone who is part of that evaluation and really they&amp;#39;re just there to understand what the proposal is and get the best terms but I would say to answer your question with a no answer lean on your Champion to understand exactly how to run that is it going to land best if us if we come in and present this or should we work with you to prep them for the meeting and then hold one final contract meeting we&amp;#39;re running out of time and we got to move to our final question and the final question is this we&amp;#39;ve talked about a lot of really great things sales people should be doing now I got to ask you about a shouldn&amp;#39;t and so my last question for you is what is one bad habit that you see a lot of salespeople exhibiting that you think they need to break because it hurts them more than it helps one bad habit that I see reps making and I&amp;#39;ve definitely made it myself is trying to make themselves look good and this ties into both internal and external throughout the sales cycle so with prospects they I find they have a very heightened sense for BS they&amp;#39;re always aware when you&amp;#39;re trying to sell to them versus trying to solve their problem so if you don&amp;#39;t know the answer don&amp;#39;t make up an answer just say completely understand that&amp;#39;s the question this is why get some clarifying context I&amp;#39;ll come back to you and I&amp;#39;ll bring the right people to the next call internally I think it&amp;#39;s really important one of my favorite phrases that we say a lot around web flow is we should always win together we should always lose together if something is going sideways on your deal and you just keep forecasting it and committing it and thinking it&amp;#39;s something you can tackle alone don&amp;#39;t do that don&amp;#39;t try to make yourself the hero bring everybody in so that if it does go sideways you can correct it as a team rather than failing than trying to preserve ego I love it Maddie thank you for joining us everybody stick around for a 60-second recap coming up soon thank you for having me your top four actionable takeaways from this episode with Maddie Jackson number one if you feel like you have leverage in a deal but you have not gotten in front of the CFO and feel like you need to present to them literally use that as a non-negotiable in order for you to even negotiate or have any sort of commercial concessions get yourself in front the CFO and then use that as the reason that you might even negotiate with them in the first place number two Maddy talked a lot about gives and gets and while you can steal hers it&amp;#39;s probably good for you to sit down for 12 and a half minutes and think about what are all of the potential GS that I could ask for from my buyer as a way to advance my ideal that way when you&amp;#39;re in the heat of battle on a call you&amp;#39;re not sitting there scrambling thinking what could I ask for here number three just because someone is a fan of our solution or our company does not mean that they will be an effective Champion so do what Maddie suggested and ask questions to Champion test one of the questions she suggested was is the CMO aware you&amp;#39;re having these conversations that will help us avoid putting too much control in the hands of the wrong person and number four or when we are trying to get access to the CFO don&amp;#39;t use basic questions like can I book a meeting with your CFO use labeling statements like the one Maddie gave I often hear the CFO is the new CMO is that the same for you now Nick how can our listeners help us out today folks sometimes Armand and I sit down and we write down things that we&amp;#39;ve learned on 30 minutes to president&amp;#39;s club and then pretty frequently we email those learnings out to folks who have decided that they&amp;#39;re not horribly utterly opposed to getting emails from 30 minutes to president&amp;#39;s club and so if you&amp;#39;d like to get our written learnings from 30 MPC there&amp;#39;s a link in today&amp;#39;s show to sign up for the 30 MPC newsletter promise it&amp;#39;s moderately valuable and you may learn something here or there thanks for listening we&amp;#39;ll see you next week on the show

Transcript for:30 Minutes to President's Club with Maddie Jackson

Transcript for:
30 Minutes to President's Club with Maddie Jackson