Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:30:05 · Jen Abel
[00:30:05] S1: Yes. Okay. So usually right now, the stages that most people have is intro, demo, proposal, contracting, close won or close loss. There's five stages. They're very basic. People usually go from an intro call straight to a demo, okay? The demo is your carrot in the process. Everyone wants to see this amazing thing you just spoke about, okay? So your job is to make sure that when you do that demo, the formal demo, you have the right people on the call. Because if you don't, one, you lost your leverage to organize that group and rally them, but more importantly, you never want it to feel like one person's baby, right? If you're selling to that director or that VP, you need to make sure that that executive feels like it's part of their baby and they're helping craft it and they have their fingerprints on it. And vice versa, you want the C-suite. They want the actual users to feel like that they were bought in on this too. Okay, so you want to make this to be ... And this is the tricky part. There's going to be someone that's going to champion it and get the deal done, but you got to make it feel like a group effort. Okay, so the person that you had the intro call with, that's who you built the rapport with. That's your champion at this point, whether it's the C-suite executive or one step removed. I say champion. Most champions are one step removed, but let's just say the C-suite executive has delegated this now to the champion to navigate. Okay, for that demo call, now before you do the demo, get on another call with them, "Hey, I had so much fun on our first call. I think that there is a great opportunity to get to support you guys." This call should be 15 minutes by the way, okay? "I'd love to do a demo, but before we do the demo, I want to make sure we have the right people in the room and I'm demoing the right things. Can you help me understand from the conversation we had earlier, and as I'm walking you through, now I'm walking you through the product, what do you think would resonate with the team?" Now you're collecting more intel, okay? Now it starts to feel like, "Oh, great." Now they get to put their fingerprints on this.
00:32:10 · Jen Abel
So it's like, "Okay, when we demo to this group," at this point I want this question to be asked, "can you ask this question in the meeting because I want them to understand the values?" And they'll be like, "I'm actually going to ask this question because it's going to resonate more." So now you're building this demo alongside this internal executive and none of your competitors are doing this. No other startup you're competing with is taking these extra steps. You now have the alpha of the intel they're giving you from these conversations. And now they feel part of this journey, okay? Now they trust you. So it's like, okay, so now you're spending 15 minutes trying to figure out, "Okay ..." or 30, right? Sometimes they won't give you that much more time, but ask for 30, probably do 15 and say, "Here are the five different things we can go into. From our first conversation, it sounds like these two things matter, but let me show you all five." And then they might say, "Okay, I want you to do those two that we spoke about, but I also want you to show this because this is also part of our mandate and this will make it feel holistic." Okay, so now you just mapped out the storyline with an internal partner on their end and now you have the names of the right people. Now you're going ... To close that call, "Great. Is there a time we can look at everyone's calendar and put this on the calendar?" Make the meeting an hour. The demo should be an hour, okay? Now you can ask, "Before this meeting, do we want to do a pre-demo to maybe someone else on your team that would be excited by this before you race to the group demo or should we just do the group demo?" They know their organization better than anyone else and how pressing this need is. Now if they're less mature in knowing if they want something like this, they probably want to bring in someone else before a big group. If they're like, "No, no, no, this is something we want to really move into," they probably are ready to go into a group. So you just need to figure out where they are on that maturity arc of their decision. Okay, so now you have ... Do we want to assume they checked off pre-demo or do we want to do group demo?
00:34:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:34:19] S0: How often does that pre-demo happen? [00:34:21] S1: I try and push for it because again it's just more intel. [00:34:24] S0: Yeah. So let's say, let's assume there's a pre-demo. [00:34:26] S1: Okay, so now you have a new colleague on the phone and you could say, "Hey, for five minutes, I'm just going to catch you up on the things that I just learned from so-and-so. What can you add to that? What do you think?" Do you see how you're just collecting more and more intel along the way? So now you're building the business case for them. Now they feel like they're buying, not being sold to. So now you have two or three people at this point already excited for the big group demo. The worst thing you can do in the sales process when you move into demo is just go into one straight demo with no prep, or worse, a enterprise organization might reach out to you because they're going through a due diligence process to say, "Hey, we'd love to see what you guys have built. Will you present this to four or five people?" Don't do it. You're either a checkbox and you want to remove yourself from being a checkbox, or two, you're about to demo your product with no competitive intel. You just lost the deal at that point. [00:35:32] S0: Oh, man. [00:35:32] S1: The enterprise deals are won on, "This feels so close to who we are. It feels like it was built specifically for me." That's the whole game.
00:35:32 · Jen Abel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:35:32] S1: The enterprise deals are won on, "This feels so close to who we are. It feels like it was built specifically for me." That's the whole game. [00:35:41] S0: Amazing. I love just how much alpha, not only you're sharing with us. It feels like the theme of this is alpha, just like the alpha we're getting from this conversation. It also feels like a lot of this process is you getting alpha from the team. I don't know if alpha's the right word, but let's just say- [00:35:57] S1: No, no, it is. It's information edge. Yeah, it's the information edge that whoever I'm up against is not getting. And you have to assume, in the enterprise, you're always up against something. You're up against not doing anything at all or you're up against a competitor who does some or an incumbent, most likely the incumbent. But it's so crazy to me how many people just spew out a pitch with no ... But you also have to make an informal and fun. People also buy from people they like, right? [00:36:29] S0: I love how so far at least it feels very doable, not that difficult. Feels like I could do this. [00:36:35] S1: You absolutely could. [00:36:37] S0: And it doesn't feel like it takes that much time to do any of these steps so far. It's like a call, learn some stuff, think about it. Is there any time buckets that aren't obvious of where you spend a bunch of time on your own thinking about something?
00:36:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:36:37] S0: And it doesn't feel like it takes that much time to do any of these steps so far. It's like a call, learn some stuff, think about it. Is there any time buckets that aren't obvious of where you spend a bunch of time on your own thinking about something? [00:36:51] S1: Yeah. So I spend so much time thinking about read in between the lines of what they were saying. And that's when I will follow up. Those pre-run calls before a big demo, I'm clarifying all those questions like, "Hey, I know you said this. Did I interpret that correctly? Is that the priority?" And then again, they'll go deeper. The more you infer the questions you ask, it's almost like you just have to keep prompting. It's like prompting humans at this point, right? Go deeper and deeper and deeper and the answers you're going to get are just going to get so much more refined. The whole game is to slow down to go fast. All of this should be within a 90-day sales cycle based off of their maturity. [00:37:41] S0: So some people listening to this may sound like a lot of work. I imagine that this is what separates companies and products that win deals versus not. You could have a better product, you could have a better price, a lot of things, but just not executing in this way through the sales process is probably shooting yourself in the foot. [00:38:00] S1: Or you're stuck at you just sold the enterprise on a $15,000 solution, which goes ... How do you expand that? The whole game is expansion. If you're not going from 100k or 250k to 350 or 500 the following year, it's not an enterprise motion.
00:38:00 · Jen Abel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:38:00] S1: Or you're stuck at you just sold the enterprise on a $15,000 solution, which goes ... How do you expand that? The whole game is expansion. If you're not going from 100k or 250k to 350 or 500 the following year, it's not an enterprise motion. [00:38:17] S0: Okay. So just to quickly summarize we're at, step one, landing the meeting, then running the intro call. Then there's this follow-up intro call, which you pointed out as often ignored and a big opportunity to improve the demo. I love the way you described the demo. It's this carrot that you're holding that you can use a little bit to extract more. And then there's step four, is prepping the pitch and framing the demo. Is there more to share there? [00:38:43] S1: No, I think we're at the point where it's like, okay, now you're running a big demo, right? [00:38:47] S0: Okay, cool. Yeah, step five.