If you’re in sales, you know how it goes: you’re supposed to get as many deals as possible, as fast as possible (and as big as possible). It can be a mad rush to meet quotas from month to month and quarter to quarter. Hey, that’s how the money is made, right? But what about […]
If you’re in sales, you know how it goes: you’re supposed to get as many deals as possible, as fast as possible (and as big as possible). It can be a mad rush to meet quotas from month to month and quarter to quarter. Hey, that’s how the money is made, right?
But what about when you have a feeling that you might not be the right fit for a customer? Do you just push through and try to make a deal happen anyway, ignoring the parts that just don’t quite go together?
It’s tempting. But a lot of times, anything less than full transparency will put you into some sticky situations. Like dissatisfied customers or a dip in company reputation.
We get it – transparency is scary. And it’s like The Shining levels of scary when your livelihood is on the line. But…it’s also a great selling technique.
Yep, that’s right. Being transparent in your selling isn’t just about doing the right thing (or not messing up relationships with potential customers). It’s also a sales technique that has some pretty clear benefits.
How being transparent helps the sale
We recently talked with self-proclaimed “transparency nerd” (and founder of Sales Melon) Todd Caponi about viewing sales as a service profession . A big part of that approach involves selling with transparency and leading with flawsomeness (a Tyra Banks term that means embracing your flaws and still being awesome).
The benefits of transparency are apparent: it disarms the buying brain, builds trust, and sets proper expectations for how the sale will go moving forward.
And there’s another benefit: it helps you figure out quickly which prospects are worth pursuing, and which won’t be a good fit.
“Winning fast is the best thing in the world,” said Todd. “The second best thing is losing fast. Because if you’re going to lose, you should lose fast so that you can spend your most precious piece of inventory, your time, into revenue. Then you can go after and cultivate opportunities that you should be winning. It always goes back to: if the truth won’t sell it, don’t sell it anyway.”
Here’s more of what Todd had to say.
Why you should be upfront about capabilities – yes, even in this economy
LUSHA: With this current economic climate, a lot of salespeople want to hold on to an opportunity, even if their product isn’t the best fit, to get whatever revenue is available. Why do you recommend against doing that?
TODD: There’s so many reasons why. If you’re not the best solution for that customer, own it. Because the next question is, if you get them into the solution and it’s not a fit so they’re dissatisfied, what do you do? A lot of people answer “we manage through the dissatisfaction,” but that’s not going to work.
In this world where the blow horn of sharing negative experiences is so loud, while you might win that one opportunity, you’re probably gonna lose four or five that you didn’t even know existed. Because people are sharing with each other. If it’s not a good fit and they’re not having a good experience, they can tell all their friends about it.
And so I’m just a believer that you play the long game. But in a tight economy, you need to win the short game. I believe that winning the long game helps you win the short game, because you’ve set expectations, you’ve built trust because that inevitably happens when you’re transparent. And then you build your business on what you’re the best at. And nine times out of 10, it either results in the customer wanting to move forward anyway, or they refer a friend to you. Winning the long game helps you win the short game a ton too.
The 4 essential steps for a transparent sales process
LUSHA: So, how can sales pros apply this advice? What does it actually look like to be transparent and collaborative with prospects?
1. Make use of review sites to know what’s out there.
TODD: Do a quick Google search to find reviews of your company and read them. Figure out the pros and the cons; that’s what you’re up against. And then take that data and figure out what’s true and what’s not.
Are there things about your solution that aren’t as great? What perception would I get as a buyer, and is it the truth? You can use that to inform your messaging. Right now, you should talk about how other customers are feeling as the first thing. And if there’s falsehoods out there or things that are out of date, it builds trust to actually lead with that.
Here’s an example: One of my clients changed direction a few years ago. They laid off a bunch of their reps and didn’t do it in the best way. As a result, their Glassdoor scores dropped, and it’s still out there. If I’m a buyer, I’m reading Glassdoor scores too, because I’m not just buying your technology, I’m buying the relationship.
So they’re up front about it and say, “When you read review sites, you’ll see that three years ago, we made some mistakes as an organization and as a leadership team. Our Glassdoor score fell to the low twos, but now we’re making investments in our team and our culture and doing things the right way. We’re not proud about what we did, but we’re proud about the new direction and the new culture we’re building. And if that’s gonna be a sticking point for you, let’s part as friends right now. But I just thought that I would tell you what you’re gonna find when you do your homework.”
When they started doing that, their customers thought it was awesome. You could sense the trust and the relationship build.
2. Practice “firmographic sprints.”
I’m a believer in something I call firmographic focus, especially if you’re calling on 30 different industries every single day.
If your reps wake up, and have a thousand accounts they could go after and they’re just calling a software company in the MarTech space and then a healthcare company and they’re all over the place, it’s really difficult to have any kind of level of empathy to truly be a partner to your customers.
So I suggest what I call firmographic sprints, which are a focus on a vertical’s firmographic – meaning the verticals, the industries, company sizes, those types of things. And just learn about them. Learn about what they care about. Learn where they go to get smarter about their business, how they’re measured, maybe even what their inbox looks like, if you can find a couple that are willing to share that with you. And then from that breeds the connections and the understanding of, if you were in their shoes, what would you love about your company? What wouldn’t you?
And you can begin to lead with that kind of stuff too. Because otherwise, if it’s just a scatter approach, it just comes across as so generic. So that’s number two that I think is really important.
3. Embrace the losses
Number three is to embrace and even celebrate the losses. Meaning as an organization, if a rep loses a deal, do you just pat them on the back, and say, “better luck next time?” Or do you celebrate them for the effort and most importantly, the lessons that can be learned from it?
Create a culture where that rep feels comfortable sharing what they screwed up. It’s transparency at the rep level that only comes from the way that leaders cultivate that culture. Like, we literally did a champagne toast for a loss once.
What that does though is you’ve got good ops people and good enablement people in the room that are collecting all of that information about where a deal went wrong and why. And then they’re aligning it to different types of deals and different verticals. Learning from those losses can inform so much and help you see things earlier. The more you share the losses, then the less those mistakes happen and the less those losses happen.
And again, it can inform how you are transparent in the way that you lead during a sale. If you’re going into an opportunity that’s similar to others you’ve lost, you can start the deal by saying “Here’s a couple things that companies like yours got hung up on. If that’s going to be a problem, that’s fine, but let’s talk about it.”
4. Research your company like a customer
When you’re doing your homework you can go to something like ChatGPT and type in three questions to know what you’re up against.
Number one is “why shouldn’t I select [your company] for x service?” Have it give you a short description and bullets.
Number two is “why should I select [your company]?”
And then number three is “ when considering [your company] as a partner, what other companies should I be considering?”
And start there. That’s where the world is going. Every customer can read Google reviews, and they’re figuring out ChatGPT pretty quickly too. And I just think it provides a great opportunity.
I think chat is gonna be an interesting thing for everybody just to be able to do their homework before making a call. On the messaging and positioning side, those three questions are helping me prep for the presentations and keynotes I’m doing. I ask those three questions and I can figure out what I’d be worried about if I was a buyer, what I’d be excited about, and who else I’d be evaluating. And it took me five minutes to do that homework.
Bonus step: what leaders can do to encourage transparency
LUSHA: Salespeople obviously have a ton of pressure to close as many deals as possible. How can they balance that pressure with this more transparent, service approach?
TODD: It starts with leadership. They need to understand that their reps’ most valuable asset that they can turn into revenue is their time. So they should make sure that salespeople are working on the opportunities that they should win, not just the opportunities where there’s something in somebody’s wallet. Like it starts there with leaders, because if sales reps are forced to go, go, go, we become sales-centric instead of buyer-centric and outcomes-focused.
I used to do this as a sales leader; I would impart this metric that at all times we need to have 4X our quota in the pipeline. What does that create? Well, if a rep is asked to have 4X their quota and pipeline, they’re gonna do it by filling it with crap. And they’re going to lose slowly and hold on to deals that aren’t really deals.
And I believe that a couple of things that we need to do is number one, stop that mindset of measuring to the 4x. Because when we do, we’re creating the wrong behaviors.
Understanding the value of time to loss
Number two is a metric that I think is really valuable to look at: time to loss. We look at win rates and cycle lengths, right? How many deals do we win, and how long does it take to win them? But are we looking at how long it takes us to lose on the deals that fall through? Because if it’s taking us 60 days to lose those, we’re doing something wrong. We need to look at those and see what we can learn. And can we lose those in an hour? In a week? Two weeks? And that comes through transparency and true embracing of this idea that your most valuable asset is your time. And again, it all starts with leadership.
It makes sense, but it feels very contrary to the training. Because it’s that sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to let go of something you’ve put so much time into. But would you rather lose now or lose in three months? Would you rather they find out the potential drawbacks of your company from you or from a competitor? Or find out on their own randomly?
The answer is easy: lose fast, and you control the message and build trust in the process of doing it. Transparency sells better than perfection, but it’s also helpful to get your time back if it’s a deal that you shouldn’t be winning.
Key Takeaways
- Transparency helps close deals – and when it doesn’t, it qualifies out prospects faster so you have more time to sell to prospects who fit.
- Salespeople can practice transparency by looking at their company’s reviews, practicing firmographic sprints, embracing losses, and researching like a customer.
- Leaders can help their reps practice transparency in sales by shifting the metrics they focus on.
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