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The 3 Scenarios That Require Deal Coaching To Win
55 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Dan Sanchez speaks with Brian Dietmeyer about the critical importance of deal coaching in enterprise sales. They dissect three vital scenarios where deal coaching plays a significant role in driving up win rates, enhancing deal quality, and navigating strategic shifts within a company. Tune in to discover why deal coaching is a game-changer in the sales world and how it can lead to transformative results for sales teams.
Timestamps:
05:03 Prioritize impactful deals and strategic coaching needs.
07:38 Fast-paced market shifts require real-time conversations.
09:52 Poorly qualified deals result in lost renewals.
13:13 Market changes will worsen already inadequate coaching.
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Transcript
Role Reversal: Dan Hosts, Brian Guests
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to Close Mode, the enterprise sale show. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm here with Brian Deepmeyer. And we're flipping the script again, and I am, the producer gets to be the host and the host, the guest. And I always love unpacking these ideas, Brian, and learning more about sales as a marketer.
Dan's Interest in Deal Coaching
00:00:19
Speaker
It's always fascinating. You blew my mind on the last episode when we talked about what deal coaching was. There's a phrase that I was hearing a lot in the show, and I was like, Brian, what is this? And we're like, oh, we need to record a whole episode about this.
00:00:31
Speaker
So I love that topic. And today I want to expand on the three scenarios where deal coaching is the most vital, like why you even need deals coaching or when you need it, if you need
Brian's Insight on Quality Deal Coaching
00:00:43
Speaker
it. Right. Yeah. But before we dive into the three different scenarios, Brian, tell me a little bit more about why deal coaching is so critical.
00:00:51
Speaker
Well, let's start with the lagging indicators. There's tons of evidence, including our own primary research we just completed, but tons of evidence that quality coaching, not auditing, not skills coaching, but quality deal coaching, consulting to help get a deal closed, it drives up win rate, it drives up deal quality.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's, it's, it results and, and 2024 and 2023 are those, those years that are brutal. So what, what the hell works? And this is part of the research we just did is what the hell is working? Cause a lot of the old solutions are the one thing we know loud and clear from our own practice. And, and from this, this primary research we just did is that one-to-one high quality and context deal coaching makes a huge difference.
00:01:33
Speaker
So it makes, it was the big unlock I had in the last episode when you gave the example of a manufacturer trying to shift their value by going, I guess it's, I can't call up market, but essentially changing their value by expanding their value instead of just manufacturing.
Adapting to Shifting Value Propositions
00:01:49
Speaker
They were offering integrated.
00:01:51
Speaker
circuit design, right? So they're manufacturing electronic components. But that's, that's a whole new value proposition. That's a whole new way of selling. And of course, even even that was the big difference for me, it was like, I was like, Oh my gosh, then that means your sales force who don't need more job coaching, and they don't need more skills coaching, because they can be highly skilled and know how to do proper discovery and stuff still might drop the ball.
00:02:16
Speaker
or probably will if they don't have good deal coaching because it's a whole new way of positioning. It's a whole new product. They could even be knowledgeable about the product and still fail when it comes to selling it because things have changed. The buyer, the way they make decisions about it, how they process it, who you talk to in the organization is going to be different. So that is actually one of the stories you gave in the last episode that illustrates our first scenario and that is a shift in value.
00:02:44
Speaker
But there's more ways there can be a shift in value within a company that would require deal coaching in order to see success. So what are some of those other shifts that you can see in value, Brian? It's funny. The first thing that comes to mind, and I'm going to answer that in a moment, is it doesn't always have to be a shift. There's a lot of value propositions that the powers that be believe in. And by the way, there could be evidence that those are true that are not being executed at the deal level. So let's just start with, let's execute
00:03:13
Speaker
You know that those areas that that were good on and make sure that we're executing them across all of our deals across all of our reps across all of our sales stages.
Strategic Shifts and Sales Strategy Adjustments
00:03:21
Speaker
But other shifts you know there could be strategic shifts there is.
00:03:26
Speaker
You have a new market you're going into, or you're rolling out a new way to price your stuff, or you're looking at a new way to bundle your solutions, right? Any of those kind of strategic shifts will shift. Words coming out of reps, miles at every step of the sales cycle. You acquire somebody, something. You divest something. You roll out a new product. You roll out a new service. You roll out new software.
00:03:49
Speaker
Or, or you're adjusting AI now into your solution. Like any one of those changes, it's, we've got to start executing those. And I know this is my mantra, but it's one rep, one deal, one stage at a time. It's not going to happen by announcing it at SKO. It's going to happen. It's going to happen when we're giving first the coaches and then the reps, the tools and weapons they need to have conversations that reflect execution of that strategy in a way that helps them win deals.
Targeted Deal Coaching: Who Needs It?
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, and let's say that only a fraction of the sales force is actually tasked with selling the new thing, the new value. Do all those people need deal coaching and the rest kind of keeps, continues to do the same thing they were doing? Is that how you would define who needs deals coaching and who doesn't? Yeah, that is, because you would think someone who's in the AI deal coaching business would say, everybody, every deal needs deal coaching. And I'm going to say, no, there's people who do,
00:04:49
Speaker
Very transactional deals, you know, the, the, the sales cycle is hours or weeks long, right? The, the average deal is 10 grand. There's, it's not a very complex solution. It's not a very complex buying environment. And that, that is about churn and burn, right? And so they, I would never suggest back in the old days when we're doing human deal coaching, that someone hire us to coach people doing transactional deals. But now let's jump up to the next level as, as the deal cycles get a little longer.
00:05:15
Speaker
The competitive analysis gets, gets a little more complex. The dollar value gets a little bit bigger. That's where we need coaching, but we don't need coaching. If you've got sort of 5,000 deals in your pipe, there's, there's a certain number of those deals that are going to be the most impactful ones. And we want to go after those first. Right. And we want to get to them as early as we can, by the way. So as early as we can and the ones that are most impactful. And the same thing happens with which reps need deal coaching.
00:05:42
Speaker
Your rock stars probably don't need it by the way. They could probably do that coaching your laggards. It's probably not going to help them. So one of our podcast guests recently talked about it's the middle. It's the middle of your pipe and it's the middle of your team and it, but it's, it's not, it's not all the deals. Let's start with, let's go to Susie. Let's look at Susie's pipe and let's look at, you know, the, the deals that are going to make a difference that we can get to. We're still early enough and are going to make a difference yet in 2024. Let's get after those deals. And that might be.
00:06:11
Speaker
We know the average percent of pipe being coached is 5%. That might get you to 25 or 30% of your pipe. And that could be enough. And then next year, you know what? Next year, maybe we'll get to more, but yeah, hopefully that helps or answers your question.
Impact of External Factors on Sales Strategy
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah. So the first scenario is a shift in value and something internally, the company's changing and it's, it's a proactive thing, but there's something else that can happen. There's another shift that can take place that would necessitate deal coaching and that's a shift in market. Yeah. There's a lot of other ways that can happen. So can you expand on all the different types of shift that can happen externally? Yeah. That would bring a need for deal coaching. Yeah. It's, and man, that's so funny. COVID is such low hanging fruit, right? For all of us who talk about stuff, especially selling.
00:06:55
Speaker
And, and yeah, but, but COVID was one and what it did is it shifted customer needs, right? So there was this broader market shift that it was impacting supply chain. And now guess what? Everything blew up. Who we're talking to, what we're talking to them about, what, what leverage points we're trying to hit in their organization to help them. That was a moving target, right? So that's a shift. There are sometimes, you know, I worked with someone in the supply chain business and there's geopolitical stuff that's happening.
00:07:24
Speaker
That's now changing. Guess what? Their customers are now dealing with this, you know, this country just melted down. You know, there was an uprising and it's like, we're either manufacturing there or we're selling there. You know, what happens there are political shifts, legislative shifts. Say, okay, guess what? We can't do that anymore. Or we have to account for this now. So there's all those kinds of broader market space shifts that say.
00:07:45
Speaker
We need to have conversations at every stage of the sales cycle that's reflective of this new shift. And again, we have to do it fast. Everything now is fast. The old tools, the old weapons, the marketing, you know, builds a deck and pushes it out to everybody and it, you know, no, we've got to find, you know, that's why we talk about, uh, kind of on demand revenue enablement that as the shift occurs and any of the stuff you and I are talking about,
00:08:13
Speaker
We need to get that in the hands of people and enable them real time to execute against that shift.
00:08:20
Speaker
And the last scenario of the three is not actually a shift, but it's actually just a reality.
Tackling Low Win Rates and Stuck Deals
00:08:28
Speaker
And that's when your win rates suck. And you kind of alluded to it earlier when you were talking about like, hey, it doesn't always have to be a shift. Sometimes just your current value propositions aren't cutting it. And that's kind of like in this third scenario, when your current win rates, there hasn't been a major shift in market or a shift of value that you're going with internally.
00:08:49
Speaker
You're you're just not happy with your current win rates. Yeah, tell me about all the different ways that can play out in a company Yeah, I and I would even expand on that So these are sort of like, you know, if you're a doctor and you're trying to diagnose a problem It's like, you know, what what are the symptoms? And so the symptoms that holy smokes we need not better deal inspection but better true deal coaching Yeah, our win rate sucks
00:09:13
Speaker
Or, um, I just heard this from a CRO the other day. His number one target was deals are getting stuck at stage two for like 69 days. You know, so deals are getting stuck in different stages. Um, deal quality. Yeah. We're selling a bunch of deals, but it's crap. Like we're selling the old thing. We're not selling the new thing. We're not selling sticky deals or, or our renewals are terrible. And this is interesting to me because I'm realizing more lately, uh, as we're.
00:09:41
Speaker
more people are focusing because more people are focusing on in their funnel in 2024 versus the top, you know, in this market, this, we got to close and keep more of what's in the funnel. And we're finding out that some of these, some of this churn that's happening in renewals is, is one, it goes all the way back to the deal, wasn't properly qualified. And, and I think, Dan, I was telling you the other day about at this conference, strategic account management association, I was at this week, a gentleman come up to me after, and he was like, we just,
00:10:10
Speaker
lost a renewal and we lost a renewal. I told, I could have told you when we qualified it, I knew they weren't buying our thing in the right way until it wasn't going to deliver for them. And, and so it goes all the way back to like, what's an ideal opportunity look like? We didn't qualify this thing. We never should have gone after it. Yeah, we got a short term cashflow, but we just smoked our brand equity. Right. And we spent time on this dude when we should have been spending time on somebody else. There's also in some of the renewal coaching we've been doing lately, it's also solutioning.
00:10:40
Speaker
We oversold them. We worked with one organization and a billion dollars of renewals. And the most common pushback from the, from the customer was, why am I going to renew with you, Dan? I'm not using half the crap you sold me a year ago. And that, that was poor solutioning. And so we're seeing that a lot. It's so yeah, your, your one way talks deals are getting stuck. You do quality sucks. Your, your average sales price is terrible. Your, your renewals are bad. A lot of those go back to.
00:11:08
Speaker
what's happening during the sales process, starting with, are we even qualifying the opportunities properly? Are we doing the right kind of discovery? Are we solutioning? And then after, I love the fact that sales enablement switched to revenue enablement, especially in this market again, because we got to stick with them. We got to start the moment they sign, we need to get the CX going. We need to start living, breathing with them. So that thing doesn't happen 12 months from now when they say, I'm not using half the crap you sold me a year ago. Right. So we need to, we need to
00:11:37
Speaker
shift from sales enablement to revenue enablement and making that move.
Sales Team Challenges
00:11:42
Speaker
So we have these three scenarios, a shift in value, a shift in market, and your win rates currently suck. Or some other indicator. Yeah.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because I'm like, I wish it would be life would be so easy if it were just one of these things. Yeah. But chances are, if you have a large enough Salesforce, you're running into a combination of these three. Yep. All at the same time, which is no wonder why so many teams don't hit their revenue marks, their, their goals and fall short.
00:12:13
Speaker
Because you most companies are hitting a combination of these three things all the time because the market can always is shifting in small ways of Sometimes in bigger fast ways companies are always changing and evolving so chances are the sales force is dealing with some kind of combination of these three well and Dan yeah, and I agree and I would even jump it up sort of a higher level that First of all like we talked about a few moments ago
00:12:40
Speaker
qualify what, what deals in your company should be coached because they shouldn't all be coached,
Identifying Key Deals for Coaching
00:12:44
Speaker
right? And even qualify the people beyond that. One of the easiest stats is all right. Of, of that target that you think is ideal, what percent are you getting to today? What percent of the pipe is being coached? And again, the national average is 5%. And so, and what's your desired, right? So if, if you look and go, okay, here's the target, these are worthy of coaching. We're only getting into 5% of them.
00:13:08
Speaker
We probably want to be at 40, 50, 60%. That's, you know, that, that I think is the biggest indicator. And yeah, and that's all happening with all that other stuff you and I just talked about, but I think that the most, yeah, the most like blinding indicators are those if, if we're only getting a fraction of the percent of pipe coach that should be coached with all that stuff happening in the market, it's going to make it even worse.
00:13:31
Speaker
A lot of shifts going on. So the more we can better identify what's going on, of course, it's easier to diagnose and actually then deal with. Pun not intended. Yes.
Dan's Reflection on Coaching Potential
00:13:44
Speaker
So Brian, thanks for joining me and explaining this to me because now I'm much clearer about why deal coaching is so important and where to find and diagnose it. And maybe you're ready now to be a deal coach. There you go. I'm ready. Give me the bench. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it.