cyber

Account Manager

Elevating Priority

1 year ago, I moved from an enterprise AM at an established company to a small-ish (~2K employees) company as an AE covering healthcare. I have been busting my ass on prospecting, and managed to secure several C-level conversations about my product. For two of my biggest prospects, we had great initial interest, strong fit for their products, and started making moves to get a POC going. In both cases, as soon as we were about to get started with the POC, the prospect starting getting cold feet, saying they didn't have time for the eval, pushing timelines 6-9 months etc. It's clear we aren't a priority - but trying to determine how much of that is a failure of not doing enough discovery vs the product being more of a "nice to have". Thoughts? What do you do to elevate priority / create pain?

🧠 Advice

🔐 Cybersecurity

☁️ Software Tech

12 comments

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Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Are you involving ALL the stakeholders in planning the POC or just in your discussions? That is often the key to success for me.

cyber

Politicker

Account Manager

When I have the ability to do so, yes- often it’s only a single champion that controls the scope of who is involved.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

there is a REALLY strong chance its your discovery.

its easy to fall back on your product being "nice to have" but normally its the discovery.

cyber

Politicker

Account Manager

I normally divide up an hour call to 15 min disco, 45 min demo - starting to think of making it 30/30, or even holding off on demo the first call.. we’ve been trained to “get to the demo asap” but maybe that’s…. Bad.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

I usually have disco as its own call, you don't want to miss out on anything or rush the demo part

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I am no sales coach or influencer BUT

all the companies I have worked for, THINK their demos will sell the product.

THIS.WILL.NOT.WORK.

YOu have to hold ppls hands and connect the dots between the product and their problems.

DO NOT try to do disco AND a demo on the same call.

Try this.

Set up a 30- 45 min discovery call.

then set up an hour demo. If the prospect pushed for a demo, schedule both calls but make them 3 days apart at least.

then really work on what kind of questions you are asking,and help make thier pain SO BIG they are even more excited for a demo

cyber

Politicker

Account Manager

Completely agree with this. Very helpful. Make them want to pursue us, don’t make it one way. I gotta tease ‘em!!!

SADNESSLieutenant

Politicker

Officer of ♥️

You need to ask the right questions about their pains, determine the root issues, then offer to be there for them and those pains with your solution, and give them an easy decision to make to go with you, a no brainer

cyber

Politicker

Account Manager

Easier said than done, but very well put. Thank you.

SADNESSLieutenant

Politicker

Officer of ♥️

absolutely. IE. convince me to delete my social media app. You wont do this by showing my the detriments of the app, you will do it by asking my how I use the app, what I use it for, how long I use it daily, You may find out I use it because I'm to busy to connect with family, that I do it to stay up to date with family and I do it for an hour a day. You may continue to ask when the last time I called my family was and you would find out it was a year ago. then you can really dive in and say well you tell me connecting is important to you and we've seen that instead of users spending that hour a day when they spend it actually calling those people they are interested in they feel much more connected to them. how about we try this, you delete your app right now, and when we get off the phone you call your family or friends, we try this for 3 days everyday, worst case scenario, you download the app again, best case, you are acheiving your connection goals even better than before. trust me, I've done this before. You won't regret it.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

In these cases forced empathy usually is my go to route. Only works if you have a great relationship and you reveal what you have riding on this and find out if you have a “champion” who is willing to help to get the deal over the line.

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