How to Run Multi-Stakeholder Discovery That Moves Deals Forward

James Buckley: 00:00

Welcome back, everybody, to the Sell Better Daily Sales Show, where we bring you daily sales advice to help you sell better. You guys know we're here to talk about how to run effective multi-stakeholder discovery deals, right? This…This is the bane of our existence when we finally get all the people in the room that matter, and I have two experts with me in the room today. Mor Assouline, a common face here on Sell Better, founder of Demo to Close. Welcome home to Sell Better, and of course, Richard Smith. He comes in frequently and gives us a lot of great opinions. He is head of growth at MySalesCoach. If you don't know these two organizations, be sure that you connect with these two human beings and learn a lot from them. Welcome back! To sell better, both of you.

Richard Smith: 00:40

Oh, yeah.

Mor Assouline: 00:40

heck.

James Buckley: 00:41

Alright. You guys know the drill. Scan this QR code, check us out, sellbetter.xyz, and learn about why we're doing this. It's for you. Things are changing rapidly, and we are noticing this, so stay tuned with us as we change things to better match what's happening in the marketplace right now. And while you're here, jump over to YouTube and subscribe. You're gonna see a lot of great tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways there on YouTube. You've probably seen this fella on some of my content. This right here is KB, and our friends at 1UP are running an incredibly fun. thing that they're doing, they're giving away Airbnb cash, right? You guys can use this as you travel. If you travel like me, it's always cool when you get to stay in those awesome Airbnbs. Let me know in the chat, have you ever stayed, yes or no, have you ever stayed at an Airbnb that you were like, I'll definitely be back to this one? And if so, tell me where it is in the chat so I can take a look at it. Alright, so 1UP is giving away, if all you gotta do is post about your plushie, so I'm gonna put a link in the chat so you can

James Buckley: 01:38

get your own KB plushie. Take it kayaking with you, that's what I did. Take it hiking in the Smokies with you. It was a blast to do this, and this is just fun, there's nothing attached to this, it's just fun stuff for the sales community. So be a part of the fun, and go check out my posts while you're at it. Obviously, our friends at Aligned are giving great things away to our audience every single day, and now they're giving away free deal rooms. You get four for life, no strings attached. And after you get started, be sure that you dive further into Aligned, because Will Aitken, Leslie Douglas, and Jed Mahrle have created some deal room templates for you that you can use right now. So jump into Aligned and get those deal rooms. Now, I'm going to talk about something that is close to my heart. I want everyone to drop a 1 in the chat if you are pretty sure that you're coming in as spam or unknown caller. Or even, like, possible spam risk in the chat. Put a 1 in the chat.

James Buckley: 02:31

if calling is, like, killing you, because you just have a terrible connect rate, right? Your calls aren't getting through, you're leaving messages, nothing is happening. I'm gonna tell you about First Orion, the branded calls. I've needed this for so long. Imagine you call a stranger, and your logo comes up, your name comes up, your company image comes up, right? Like, you can customize this. It's like being a friendly person that's already in their phone already. You need this in your life. No more telemarketer, potential spam risk. I don't know why everyone that calls is not using this on a regular basis. So, go learn more about it, it's right there. We're dropping that link in the chat. Shout out to our friends at First Orion. Serious tech coming out. Here's what you're gonna get from Moore and Richard today. We're gonna talk about authority, influence, and the different things, what that means, right? And then, of course, individual pain points.

James Buckley: 03:22

How do we get to the meat that everybody cares about? There's not… everybody in the room is not made the same, right? We have to know how to navigate this conversation in the group and separately. And then, of course. How do we map out these stakeholders? How do we know who needs to be in the room? Do we bring it up early? Right? Is this a strategy that anyone else employs? I do it frequently. So let's get into it. You had a lot to say about how things have changed. So more. Talk about why are multi-stakeholder deals becoming the norm now? How come more people are involved in deals than ever before?

Mor Assouline: 03:53

Well, things are getting more expensive, and there's more buyer scrutiny. Budget scrutiny, when it comes to evaluating products, it's not like it used to be back in, what, 5 years ago, 6 years ago? So that's, that's one of the things, and I think also, even more so if you're looking at AI, companies are now, and I'm seeing this firsthand with companies that I work with and I consult with, and we're evaluating solutions, and, like, the CRO says. do we even need to go out and buy a solution? Should we evaluate it ourselves? And there's a bunch of cooks in the kitchen involved in the deal. So, I think with AI, it's getting even more complex, because now you're no longer just Dealing with other stakeholders in the buying committee, but you're also dealing with competing

Mor Assouline: 04:43

solutions, which is, could we do this internally? No. And that… that gets things pretty complicated. And everyone has a different opinion of, should we do this internally, should we not? You have the RevOps team, you have the CRO, you have the COO, you have the end users, who's gonna own it? It drags things out.

James Buckley: 04:58

Yeah, I do agree. Richard, thoughts on this? What's changed in the way that deals are being evaluated right now?

Richard Smith: 05:04

Yeah, I think part of it is, like, the economy, right? if you go back, as Mo said, like, 4 or 5 years ago, when we were in, like, the ZERP era, or the zero interest rate policy era, when companies were just much more freely spending money, here we want, like, let's buy this tool, does it… will it matter if it doesn't work or not? Let's just buy it. that's changed a lot, and companies have become a lot more focused on, kind of, profitability, and therefore, their buying behaviors have changed a lot, and they've become more risk-averse. And I think…There's also an element that people…want to, like, share the risk of making decisions on things. I am currently working a deal that's worth £5,000.

Richard Smith: 05:59

Not a lot of money. There is 6 people Involved in that…deals so far. Literally 6 people that I have spoke with for… and if you probably add up the amount of time that it has taken for each of those people to speak with me, it probably far outweighs £5,000 when you look at some of their job titles. Absolutely. So, it just, yeah, this kind of multi-stakeholder buying committee that we used to associate with, like, large enterprise deals, it's just…It's coming down even to, like, small deals, because, you know, buyers are getting more risk-averse, and they're looking to share the risk of the decision-making across more people in the business.

James Buckley: 06:45

No one wants to be that person that decided to buy that $50,000 piece of software, and it didn't go. It didn't launch, it wasn't adopted well, it didn't work, right? I know that feeling quite well. Normally, I launch this a little bit earlier, but I wanted to wait for enough folks to come into the room. What are you? Are you an SDR? Are you an AE? Because you're probably looking at multi-stakeholder conversations a little bit different based on where you sit in the sales cycle, and I want to talk about that a little bit. So, for the SDRs in the room, before we even multi-thread, what's the first thing reps need to figure out about the stakeholders? More.

Mor Assouline: 07:18

Well, who's… before they multi-thread? Are they on a call already?

James Buckley: 07:25

I mean, I think before we get on the call, we should be looking at who's gonna be on this call, right? Obviously, we're looking at their LinkedIn profiles, maybe even looking at their website to be sure that we're informed about what their most latest initiatives are. These are steps I take. So what do you do before you jump into the room with these people?

Mor Assouline: 07:41

So, knowing that…knowing that there are going to be… the patterns, at least in my deals and the deals with my A's that I coach, we're noticing patterns that the deal doesn't hap… the deal isn't close on that one call, so usually the call ends. second call, whatever it is, and then that… whoever you spoke to ends up having a conversation with so-and-so folks. If I know that pattern happens, and I have a call coming up. I'm going to preemptively figure out who could potentially… who are the potential stakeholders that they'll speak to, later on, post-call? What does that mean, tactically? Let's say I have a call with a VP of Sales, and historically, in my deals, I know that whenever I'm chatting with a VP of Sales, usually they eventually loop in CRO, usually they'll eventually loop in maybe their head of sales enablement, if there is one. I'm gonna go to LinkedIn, I'm gonna see, do they have a sales enablement person? Who's their CRO? Is there anyone in my historic deals that were stakeholders that I can look at and say, alright.

Mor Assouline: 08:41

Who exists for this particular prospect, for this deal?

James Buckley: 08:43

Yes. Yeah. That's good feedback there. I want to move towards the, first of all, the people in the room. No surprises here. I think account executives get stuck in these multi-people calls, these multi-stakeholder calls, more than anyone else, but look at the senior leadership and the frontline managers in the room, also coming to the show, and I feel like they end up in these rooms sometimes as support. for your account executives. You know, SDRs might have to prove to the first 3 people, but that mid-level or that enterprise deal, man, there's 10, 15 people sometimes involved in those things. And you need… you need leaders in the room with you. You've got to be able to have a united front. And I think that's a big part of why sales engineers were such a big thing for so long. And that's an interesting part, maybe that's a different show. We could talk about sales engineers and what it's become now. Richard, you had a lot to say about the messaging, and I think this is part of why a lot of the account executives came, because we're in the room, and we have this message.

James Buckley: 09:37

But that message isn't the same for everybody that's at the table. So, what's an example of misaligned messaging that's costing deals?

Richard Smith: 09:47

Yeah, I can speak from some sore experiences here with myself, where I've got this wrong.

James Buckley: 09:55

Yeah.

Richard Smith: 09:56

And if I think about my sales coach, we predominantly sell To, to, to revenue leaders. That is who is on 90% of the calls that I'm… that I'm on with, right? They're VPs of sales, CROs, sometimes CEOs. And there was one deal…about a year ago, that I was, that I was running. And I had spoken with… the VP of Sales, the CEO, and 2 sales managers. I had their buy-in, and…It was all about elevating performance of their salespeople, it was all about…

Richard Smith: 10:40

improving, quote, retainment. It was all about improving pipelines. Now, one of the… on one of the calls I had, they invited, let's just call her Laura, but Laura was their HR or people manager to the call. And on that call, I…Didn't really do a good job of…actually asking what she cared about. I just assumed, hey, I've got the, like, the VP of Sales and the CEO on board with this, like, this is gonna get done, I'm with power, I'm speaking their language. And… The deal kind of lost momentum. And I was like, something's up here. And…I got on the call with my champion, the VP of Sales, and he mentioned, I had a conversation with Laura, and she feels like…She feels like you haven't really understood what she's trying to get out of this engagement with you guys.

Richard Smith: 11:40

She doesn't care about, like, revenue and quote retainment, like. she cares about different stuff. She cares about this from a staff retention point of view. How can coaching help make their people feel more fulfilled? How can it develop their careers? And she is a bit confused about why that hasn't been talked about. And it kind of hit me in the face, right? I just assumed I was speaking the language of senior buyers, and actually the thing that was stopping this deal from progressing was that Laura. was a valuable stakeholder here. Here's the thing, it actually came from her budget to fund something like MySalesCoach, and luckily, I managed to rescue the deal. I got on a call with Laura, I kind of almost said, hey, I've got this wrong, I haven't… I feel like you care about different things. And the deal came in, but I was… I was fortunate, I was fortunate, I accept that.

Richard Smith: 12:38

But what's the lesson to learn there, is that If someone has been brought on a call, there's often a very good reason they're brought onto a call. And even if they may not have the most senior job title in that room. you better spend the time understanding what they care about, because why otherwise would they have been asked to jump on that call? Time is a valuable commodity, well, the most valuable commodity for everybody, and there is a reason that they're on the call, and you need to make sure that you're speaking to everybody in that conversation, what do they care about? What are they working on? How does this tie in with their objectives? Otherwise, it can…bite you in the ass, as my American colleagues would say.

James Buckley: 13:21

I love it, no, you're absolutely right. Moore, you say different stakeholders are evaluating very differently, and that's exactly… it ties in very well to what he's saying. Just because they're not active in the conversation doesn't mean they're not pulling some strings behind the scenes, giving feedback to your decision makers after the fact. Is that what you're referring to there?

Mor Assouline: 13:38

Me? Or Richard? Yeah, more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly it. One thing that I… I used to do the same thing. I remember I got on a… it was a smaller deal, but I got on a call with the CEO, he was bought in, ready to go, and he's like, I just want you to talk to my partner. Spoke to the partner, and I went into the call assuming the deal was done, and so… I didn't prepare. I just repeated the same spiel that the CEO did, that I spoke to the CEO, And… it was like a… that deal was a closed-lost deal. And then afterwards, I messaged the CEO on Slack, he's like, dude, what happened? And I told him what happened. I'm like, I just assumed, I just did not prepare. And so, as Richard was saying this, and something that I do now moving forward, and that I've done in the past, or that I'm doing now, is if I see that there are additional people on the calendar that I'm not aware of, depending, obviously, if this is a first call or a second call.

Mor Assouline: 14:30

I want to reach out to the main point of contact and say, hey, I noticed that you've added so-and-so on the calendar. If I found their LinkedIn, then great, I can make assumptions. If I haven't found their LinkedIn or anything about them, like, I don't see anything about them, can you let me know about who they are, what do they care about? I want to better prepare for the call. So I think…planting your seeds before the call actually starts, like, all that due diligence process, that… there's a quote I really like, I think Abraham Lincoln said it, and I'm butchering it, probably, which is, if I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend my first 7 hours sharpening the axe. And so, like, that is the due diligence, the preparation. So when you do get to the call, you're not flying blind. Side point. Second point is, yeah, everyone cares about something else. a CRO or a CFO cares about the bottom line, the end user cares about, well, let's just say if we're talking about, right now we're…

Mor Assouline: 15:29

one of my clients, we're rolling out a solution for them, and so we're testing it out with a few AEs. Well, the AEs care about, like, does this disrupt my day-to-day? The sales leader wants to make sure that we're getting an ROI, the CRO makes sure that this lifts up the entire revenue org, CFO wants to check out on pricing, and, like, everyone has a different priority. And so when you get on a call with somebody, you gotta figure out, like, what's everyone's party. And if you do… if you try to do it on the fly, I think you're screwed. If you do it in advance, you, like, map it out in advance, and then you share that point of view with them, I think you're in a better place to, to succeed.

James Buckley: 16:04

Oh, there's… go ahead, Richard.

Richard Smith: 16:06

I was gonna add on to what Mo said there, my experience, and I speak from experience, is that Salespeople are too passive when it comes to multithreading. Because they start a multi-thread after the first call, okay, like, who shall I start to engage with now? they're kind of relying on the prospect to kind of offer up names of who else is involved in the deal. And, actually, multi-threading starts before the first meeting. Like, before your first call, you should be like, okay, I might be meeting James today, but when I look historically at my last deals, like, I know that this type of job role can often have influence on this person. And…Why that really helps is, like. you start to actually bring those names up in your meeting with James. He, like.

Richard Smith: 17:00

from experience, in, like, 80% of the other opportunities that I'm involved in, normally, like, this person, this person typically care. I say that's, like, James… I say that's, like, Moore and Scott. And you're kind of like… because sometimes prospects don't know who they should involve, and you're kind of helping them do that, and also showing them that you're doing the great thing called preparation, and due diligence, and all the stuff that builds trust with buyers, too, so…

James Buckley: 17:26

You gotta come at them with names. I like to come at them with names. I do that often, and then sometimes I'll even, if I get the call booked with multiple stakeholders, and it's call two, and we have more people, I'll say, alright, this is a good tactic, right? Remove your recorder on the one-on-one call, and let them see you do it, and then be like, okay. of all these people, you have 6 people on this call, who's my naysayer? Who's the person? Who's the person that's gonna be like, I don't want to do it, right? And you'd be amazed at how often people are like, alright, it's Bill, right? And you're like, okay, tell me about Bill. That's really good prep, I do that pretty frequently.

Richard Smith: 18:00

I love that.

James Buckley: 18:01

Thanks, it works often. Okay, so let me know in the chat, yes or no, are you working with a champion? And while you guys are saying yes or no in the chat, I'm gonna launch this, because I'm curious from the audience, what's the hardest part about multi-threading a deal? And I think we all kind of deal with things a little bit different, depending on our sector and our persona. There's a lot to be said for how that looks. So, what's the hardest part for you? And if you said yes in the chat, you're dealing with champions and influencers. detractors and all this. This is very complicated, so let's talk a little bit about this. How do you tell the difference between a champion and an influencer? Richard, you had some things to say about this, and then more, you talked about some follow-through stuff I want to cover.

Richard Smith: 18:40

Yeah, I mean, we could spend a whole session talking about, like.

James Buckley: 18:44

Yeah, this is like a segment of a show on.

Richard Smith: 18:46

Yeah, so, what does a champion look like? You could spend, like, an hour, like, looking at the traits of a champion, but… but I do think that sometimes people get called champions when they're more influencers, and even potentially vice versa, but more often than not, I see that people…describe someone as a champion when they're actually an influencer. A champion is someone who really creates momentum, and ultimately, they're like, they want your product in as much as you want your product in that business. And they're often prepared to really put their neck on the line. The influencer can be positive, and it can be negative. We hear the word influence, and we always assume it's, like, always positive, like, yeah, they're a positive influence, but actually, if you look at the word influence, influence can also be negative, too. So, yeah, that's…

Richard Smith: 19:38

Influencers are people who aren't necessarily, like, gonna put their neck on the line for this, but they can be an accelerator in… for the champion, or they can be hitting the brake button. and putting in, kind of, obstructions or reasons why, you know, things that can just cause hurdles, if you like. But they… they can often be…Have as powerful a voice as the champion. If that makes sense.

Mor Assouline: 20:07

They're cheerleaders.

James Buckley: 20:09

Yeah, cheerleaders. That's a good way to say it. I think we all need cheerleaders in our lives, but I don't think cheerleaders help us to get over the finish line as much as the influencers, the coaches, the people that are doing the work with us, right? Moore, you said that follow-through on action items and deadlines are a defining factor here, and I think you do… you're big on the mutual action plans, and I…I just wanna… I just wanna tackle that for a moment, because that's a technique that's tried and true. I think a lot of folks, let us know in the chat, are you using a mutual action plan with your deals? You know, I think mutual action plans are something that's been around for a long time, but they've changed quite a bit. Moore, talk about this a bit.

Mor Assouline: 20:49

Yeah, so… champions are, it's not a person, it's a behavior. So, that behavior is usually someone that, like Richard said, sticks their neck on the line, they go to bat for you, it's almost like…you and them are actual… are partners within the same company, pitching the same thing. They just work at whatever company, and you work at a different company. And so, if… one of the ways you can test a champion is there are certain action items that needs to happen for the deal to move forward. Some of those action items are questions that you need answers to. For example, I think, Rich, James, you had said something that's like, you know, take off the recorder and ask, like, who, you know, who's not into this, whatever it is. A good champion will share that information. So if you ask the hard questions about consensus around priority or other stakeholders.

Mor Assouline: 21:42

if it's a true champion, they should share, because they have a stake in getting this deal done. That's one. Number two, another way to test them out is, like. through mutual action plans and business cases. I'll give you a perfect example, VP of… I had a deal, VP of Sales, booked… called me, we spoke, the stakeholder that was involved was the CRO, And I said, hey, in order for this to move forward, and… because he was all bought in on the problem and the priority, the VP of Sales had consensus on the priority and the problem. And I said, alright, well, here's what we're gonna do, and I laid out the next action items. One of those things was, we will co-author a business case together, and we will build out a mutual action plan together, which has our action items, who's gonna be responsible for it, and then a deadline. If you don't get buy-in and alignment on that, you don't really have a champion.

James Buckley: 22:33

Those are strong checkboxes, and I think they point to a group effort to get the job done, to get the deal done. There's a level of buy-in that you have there. It's kind of like… I used to tell consultants all the time, like, do you charge for your discovery calls? Do you charge for the time to, like. get on and qualify a deal, and they're like, no. I said, well, if they're not willing to pay to have the time with you there, are they gonna pay the $10,000 fee that you have to take the contract? Like…That's a… that's a marker, right? And I'm not saying everyone should go out and do that. I'm saying for the right business and the right persona, that could work. So, check out some of these results right here. This is interesting, right? I thought we would have a couple that stood out, but if you look at this, this is, like, totally even. Pretty much. I mean…

Richard Smith: 23:17

Yeah.

Mor Assouline: 23:18

I actually expected to see an answer that's not on there, what did you expect? I expected some… a bunch of people to say, they don't want to overstep when they're multi-threading to other stakeholders. That's a common one.

James Buckley: 23:31

You know, I didn't even think to put that one on there, but maybe somebody would have put that in the chat. Richard, any surprises about this question of what's the hardest part?

Richard Smith: 23:40

Not really, because I think they're all, like, I think when we look at those reasons.

James Buckley: 23:47

Yeah.

Richard Smith: 23:48

We've probably all experienced those in varying deals, and some, like… Y-you know, the top one…I may be… Slightly more surprised that was the lowest one, in the sense of, like…like, define real decision maker, right? Like, and we talk about decision makers all the time, and it's like, I…I have a deal right now where the guy I'm speaking with is like, I make the decisions on this, it's my decision. And I'm like, okay. let's say you've made the decision, what happens next? Well, I then have to go with the CEO, and then… then the CEO will need to, like, run this by the board. I'm like, okay, who's on the board? And then I'm like. I'm like, okay, so… is… are you the decision maker? Because that sounds like… that sounds like…

James Buckley: 24:39

It's like a support.

Mor Assouline: 24:40

He's more like a gatekeeper more than anything else. He's deciding on whether this goes to the CEO, not deciding on.

Richard Smith: 24:45

Yeah.

Mor Assouline: 24:46

Heather, we're gonna sign off on this.

Richard Smith: 24:47

But people will tell… describe themselves as a decision maker to you. They will use those words, yet… and these are, by the way, these are people who also… like, they're salespeople, right? They have their own sales teams that deal with this. People… the biggest challenge, I think, for salespeople is that… is…really understanding when a prospect says they're the decision maker, what does that actually really mean? Is that making a decision on a vendor of choice? Or is that… I have the authority to sign a contract, I'm gonna pay for out my… there's so many variables that I think it's often a big mystery with that.

Mor Assouline: 25:24

Yeah, people, people should… that's a really good point, I was just thinking about that, and I wrote it down as a note. The decision maker…like, I remember when I was leading a sales team, I had to… the process was, we were evaluating, at the time, LEGO and Gong, and a few others, and I knew that part of the process was the CEO's gonna have final word or saying, but it's gonna be based off of…my feedback, and my feedback is based off of my AE's feedback, I was a decision maker for a certain stage. Yeah, I mean, it's a good point. The other thing is, I'm noticing one of the…answers in the chat was deals, I think it was 27% deals, stalling. in the finish line, whatever it is, there's a framework that I created that works really well. It's called VAC, Visibility, Awareness, and Consensus. Visibility, do I, the seller, have visibility into who the stakeholders are and when they get involved?

Mor Assouline: 26:23

A, awareness, whatever, whoever those stakeholders are, are they aware of A the problem, B, the initiative, and C, the conversation that's happening? And then, C, consensus is, do we have consensus, do all stakeholders have consensus on the problem? Do they have consensus on solving the problem? Do they have consensus on solving the problem today versus tomorrow? And is this a priority across all stakeholders? Many times you'll have two stakeholders that are like, yeah, we want to get this done, and then it's, like, one high-level executive that's like, this is definitely an important problem, we definitely want to solve it. It's definitely a today problem, but we have to fix this churn issue, or this other issue, and that's a priority.

James Buckley: 27:02

There's always a list, and on that list, there is you. where it sits on that list moves, and often I find that salespeople's initiatives move down much easier than other initiatives move up, right? And that's definitely a paradox, right? We deal with that as salespeople all the time, and that's why deals that we hear all this great momentum end up stalling. Let's… let's talk about group calls, because this is that moment. Mike had a good thing, you know, how do we… in the moment, how do we decide these things? Richard. You had so much to say about big stakeholder calls and how they lie to us as salespeople. Large calls do so many things with our brains as salespeople, and I don't think we stop and pay attention to that often enough. So break this down for everybody.

Richard Smith: 27:49

Yeah, I laughed when I saw this image, because it just… it just takes me back to so many sales situations where you're on a Zoom call, there's, like, 5 or 6 people on there. And, it's hard, right? Like, let's just call it as it is. As a salesperson in this situation, it's really hard because you may have 30 minutes, 45 minutes, the time is ticking, and you're trying to get from A to B, whilst also thinking I want to make sure I engage with everybody at the same time, trying to make a decision on, well, who should I be spending more time with than others, and… And also, how do I move the needle? Like, how do I… how do I not get one of these people to start talking away, and they end up going off on one, and before we know it, 15 minutes is gone, and like… it's hard, right? This is why sales today is so…difficult and more complex than it's ever been before. But…

Richard Smith: 28:44

I think in these scenarios, the… the challenge is… the challenge is always, like, you typically move to the person that you've identified as the most senior person on the call. normally that person is the most vocal person in the room as well. But what you need to ensure, and this is where your multi-threading happens before you get in the room, not after, is that you're…you're speaking to those people, to people who may not be the most senior, but you want them to feel like they're being heard. I am a big fan, this isn't always possible, I am a big fan. that…I think a lot of salespeople get excited when the prospect, the champion, says, hey, I'm gonna set up a call, and I've got, like, 5 people on that call, and as a salesperson, we're like, great! Five people, like, this is gonna really help the deal.

Richard Smith: 29:38

what I've learned is that some… you can help yourself by slowing down your chart and saying. I love the idea of that. From experience I've learned, there's lots of pitfalls with that. People come onto that call, they don't have context, they don't feel like they get heard. Can I advocate that before we get to putting 5 people on a call, I speak with each one of those individually? I know that's a big ask of their time, but that way I can understand what they care about, I can understand that when it comes to doing a group demo, that their voice is going to be heard, that I'm going to be speaking to the whole room. And every time that I've ever done that, it has been the right decision. you've built trust and rapport with the people individually before you get on a call with them, you know what they care about, you can create a nice slide to frame up your demo, saying what Mary cares about, what Sarah cares about, what John cares about. You literally have a column for each person.

Richard Smith: 30:38

And you basically don't waste loads of time with people down rabbit holes on your next call, you're just speaking to what they care about. So if… I know it's not always possible, prospects won't always let you do that, but please, if you have the opportunity, is ask to speak one-on-one with prospects before they jump on the group call.

James Buckley: 31:00

I have a question about that, but more, do you have any thoughts on that?

Mor Assouline: 31:04

Shit, no, that's good.

James Buckley: 31:06

I think it's great. Here's my question, then. If you have nothing to say on it, here's my question. Out of 10 times that you ask people to do that with multiple stakeholders, how many times does it happen for you? One, two.

Richard Smith: 31:15

More times than not, I'd say, like, 70% of the time, because…

James Buckley: 31:20

Great.

Richard Smith: 31:20

When you give reason and rationale to the prospect, to say, like. This is in the best interest of that person, and here's the risk that If we just jump on a group call that there's some people who might feel not heard, and they might feel that call was a waste of time, suddenly your champion, like, in their head, they feel like. I don't want to put my colleagues in that position. So, more times than not, it does work, but I think too many salespeople get excited at, hey, I've got 5 people that are on a call next week, and that feels good, right? When it's actually…Slow the deal down to speed it up. It's as true now as it ever was in my world.

James Buckley: 32:01

That's interesting there, I like that. I wanna…

Mor Assouline: 32:03

I do want to add real quick, you talked about slowing down the deal. So I play in the S&B mid-market play, like, space, and so, if, let's just say you take, I don't know, a deal that, on average, takes about 30 days, and historically, on average, you're probably running, I don't know, 3 to 4 calls in total in between those 30 days, and that's when it closed one. Adding extra steps, or adding extra steps to do further due diligence or further discovery. doesn't actually slow the deal down. What you're… you're still… imagine you're still sticking to the 30 days. Imagine, instead of 4 calls, you're adding 1 or 2 more calls within that same window. The deal slows down, kind of, but not really from a sales cycle.

Richard Smith: 32:47

That's a really good point. Yeah. Because it's easier to get the schedule of, like, one person than five, because when they're like, hey, the next time I can get 5 people on the call is in, like, three weeks' time. Alright, but I can get each one of those on a call within that next three-week period.

James Buckley: 33:02

Yeah, I also think access is such a massive point, right? Like…that one person you're talking to is gonna invite all those other people to the call, but do they have access to their calendar? Probably not, right? Especially if they're true decision makers that are signers. Maybe there's a distinction to be made between a decision maker and a signer, right? I mean, that's a little bit of a distinction, perhaps, that's surfacing, and I think that would be interesting. I would have to move forward, because one of the things I want to talk about here is, these are some very stoic expressions in this group call. more. Should we be paying attention to physical cues? Am I okay in 2026 to stop a call and be like, hey, stakeholder 1, When I dropped that price, I noticed that you sat back and put your hand over your mouth. What's going through your head right now? Is this logical in the modern age, or does that slow things down too much and cause some level of doubt? I feel like sometimes we're on the fence about this.

Mor Assouline: 33:57

No, I don't think so. I don't think human… I don't care if we're at 2026 or 2030, human behavior and human psychology is gonna be the same. Like, the way we operate as humans is gonna be the same. And so, I think… yeah. And so, if you're seeing somebody's…face or eyes look surprised when you share something, and you move on, and you don't stop and address it, that's stupid. If you're concerned, like, no, we only have 30 minutes to do the demo, or 45 minutes to do the call, well, then you're being very transactional, like. you should work the deal… the deal should be worked properly, so if it means you do a second call, or a third call, or a fourth call, so be it. Like, don't rush the deal just because you want to stay in the confines of the 45 minutes, or whatever it is. So, if you see the facial gesture… the gestures, the facial reactions. address it, pay attention to the tonality of your prospect's responses. I'll give you a perfect example. You ask for their, you're on a sales call, you're presenting something, and you ask for feedback, and then their response is, yeah…

Mor Assouline: 34:56

That, yeah, is, like, kinda, not really, I'm not bought into it. And on, like, the call transcript, your gong or whatever it is, will transcribe, yeah, but they won't transcribe the tonality. And so, sellers, you gotta… we have to… we have to pay attention to the prospects' tone of voice, also, and reactions.

James Buckley: 35:16

Yo, that is such a good point, that the transcript is just gonna pick up the word, not the tone. I love that. We talk a lot about these group calls. One of the conversations that I get into all the time is, I will isolate the person who's going to be held accountable for the decision at the end of the day, from the higher-ups. So I'll often say, okay, if this just… if this is an investment you're gonna make. and somebody's gonna be, you know, put to the boards for a return on investment, who's that person out of the six of you? Right? That person is usually very quick to say, that's me. Right? And you're like, okay, this person is the person that is going to be the priority, because I have to protect their job by making a good decision to work with us. That's… that is, like, logic in my mind that we should get to very quickly. Gentlemen, thoughts on this? I feel like this is a good way to surface your true people right out of the gate.

Richard Smith: 36:07

Yeah, I mean, like, this is, this comes back to the whole, like, what I said at the start around shelving, like, putting lots of people to shoulder the risk. And it speaks to my deal, my £5,000 deal. Where it's not really about the money for this company. like… 5,000 pounds, like…it's not a lot of money for this company. It's about the fear of it going wrong, of it not working out. And that is…the single biggest reason why deals stall, not because people prefer the status quo, as in, like, actually, I prefer, like, the way that we do it now. They may hate the way they do it now. The thing that stops them from moving forward is the fear of making the wrong decision, and that human feeling of, like, it was me who…

Richard Smith: 37:04

recommended this, and it didn't work out for whatever reason, and so, suddenly, how do you balance that? Well, if I can get John Mary more…James Alter say, yeah, I think we should do this too, then suddenly that risk, which was 100% on someone's shoulders, is now split in five. So now 20% of the risk is on 5 people's… 5 people's shoulders. And so… and therefore there's less danger of, if it goes wrong, saying, oh, but it was all James, it was all your decision. It's like, no, no, it was actually five of us decision to do this. So, I think the way that you battle that is, again, making sure that you have consensus. It was a great word that Moore used before across the buying group. But also making sure that prospects… you raised that in the discovery process of, like, what are your concerns about this not going well?

Richard Smith: 38:00

And, like, it's amazing that when you surface that and talk about it, people feel more comfortable, they feel like you're not blind to this. And And that question of, like, what concerns, if any, do you have about doing this now? It's amazing what will often come out of that question. People will say, well, actually, there is one thing that has been mentioned that people are a bit uncertain about. So, yeah, it's about…people… Spreading the risk about, but you can understand what those concerns are before someone, pushes the button.

James Buckley: 38:36

Yeah, final checks go a long way. I often talk about that, you know, hey, are we good? Are we moving forward? Everybody's on the same page? You know, sign off on it, let's make this magic happen. You know, these types of language goes very well for getting that over the finish line. I launched this question here, what stakeholder causes the most friction for you? And before the end of the show, we're gonna go, kind of give some tips on those particular personas, so go ahead and take part in that particular poll. Moore, any thoughts on what Richard just said about.

Mor Assouline: 39:04

Yeah.

James Buckley: 39:04

Buyers often already understand the value, and there's this fear of implementation and failure.

Mor Assouline: 39:10

Yeah, actually, was just, slacking this to somebody today. There are two ways that you can, like, increase the probability of closing a deal. Number one is prospects have a certain list of problems, and you solve it, you show your product, and how your product solves it. Great, that's one way. And I think a lot of sellers only focus in that direction, and they miss another part, which is the blind spot, which is, FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. So, for example, if you, if you have a prospect that's coming from doing things manually, spreadsheets, paper, and pen, and they've been doing it for 20 years, their FUD that they're carrying, is, well, can I migrate all the 20 years' worth of data that I've been having via spreadsheets? How long will it take me? Who's gonna do it for me? And they have all these questions. I know this because a perfect example, yesterday, I actually made a phone call for a seller to… they had a sign-up call with a prospect, and it was supposed to be a sign-up call. Call the prospect, and

Mor Assouline: 40:05

you know, told… she ended up telling me that she actually saw reviews that she has to upload all the documents herself. And she's like, yeah, I'm not gonna show up to that follow-up call. I'm like, oh, no, no, it's on the case. So, her concern is, I don't have the time to upload the documents, I don't have the bandwidth, I don't know how to, and so we want to address the FUD. If you…what I'd recommend for everyone to do, and I do this, I have this in my playbook, is a FUD matrix. So you have, buying scenarios, so you have, Your buying scenarios are use cases, so you have a use case, a common use case is prospect coming from a competitor. That's a common use case. Another use case is prospect coming from no solution. Another one is they're using paper and pen or manual. For each use case, you should make a FUD matrix for each one. So, the FUD for someone coming from a competitor is more about feature parity. how, competitive is the pricing, et cetera, et cetera. You should do one for every buying scenario. The other thing that Richard said that, like, I was thinking about was,

Mor Assouline: 41:02

People are more likely to be open and honest with you if they…if they don't feel like they're being watched. So if you're on a call with a group. and you're asking all these tough questions, some people might be quiet, because if they speak, they're gonna get burnt. But if you can speak to them one-on-one, they're more open to sharing that information with you. And I think Richard mentioned something earlier, if you can, schedule those one-on-ones with them, one-on-one discovery calls or follow-up calls with the prospects.

James Buckley: 41:30

Yeah, the one-on-one time, I think, is so valuable, and it's something that I'm definitely going to focus more on. Just learning that it works so often for you, Richard, is definitely impactful for me, myself, and I. Check out some of these results, though. It looks like, oddly, I thought executive leadership would be the dominant win here, but procurement and finance seems to be the stakeholder type that causes the most friction for sellers. As a last 3 minutes, Richard, any thoughts on procurement and finance? And then everybody look out for me, I'll give you some more tips tomorrow on Coffee with James on these other personas.

Richard Smith: 42:05

Yeah, I think, that's often because…I think that's what people think is the most…the biggest friction, because that's what they often hear. Oh, this is, you know, because they get on a call with someone from procurement who's given them a hard time. So it's more…It's more visible and more obvious that that's friction, but what they don't see are the…Discerning voices behind the scenes. That they never actually speak with, or never actually hear, which cause friction to get to the point of, like, finance and procurement. So, I just be… have people aware of that, like, the biggest friction may not be the people at the end of the deal who are giving you a hard time on contract terms, or whatever it may be. It's actually…Normally, when deals get to that stage, they'll…they're well along the way. It's normally the stuff that happens before then, and the people involved in the deal before then that can…

Richard Smith: 43:02

That can be the quiet, friction, creators.

James Buckley: 43:06

Yeah. Moore, 30 seconds, final thought for everybody. If you have them coming away thinking about something they can do in these calls to be better prepared, something like that, what do you got for everybody?

Mor Assouline: 43:15

Yeah, final thoughts is something that I said earlier on. Everyone should, follow the VAC framework, so get visibility into who's involved, when to get involved. get awareness on, are those stakeholders aware of the problem, and the initiative, and the conversation, and then consensus, find out if they agree that this is a problem, this is a problem worth solving, this is a problem worth solving now, and is this a priority among all other priorities? And one question you can just ask people is, like, hey, I'm sure this is not the only thing that you have on your plate, or I'm sure this is not the only thing that CRO, or VP of Sales, or whatever stakeholder has on their plate. What else is going on that this might delay this initiative?

James Buckley: 43:52

I love it. I appreciate you guys for coming in, spending your time with our audience. Best audience in the world. Thank you, everybody, who spent their afternoon with me, Moore, and Richard. Shout out to our partners for making this possible. We couldn't do it without you. Remember to follow us, sellbetter.xyz, and connect with me personally at SayWhatSales. I never met a stranger, just a friend I haven't met yet. We'll see you guys tomorrow for another stellar episode of Sell Better. Have a great day, everybody.

Mor Assouline: 44:15

Peace.