Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:38:50 · Jen Abel
[00:38:50] S1: Now you have all of the people involved in the demo. You might have somebody that's involved from their AI team that's going to support some rollout. You might have somebody ... You want all of the people involved in this decision at that table for the demo. That's how important it is to not rush it, okay? So now you're running the demo. Before that demo on one of those calls, who are all these people? What do they care about and what should I avoid? The person that you've now built this relationship with can give you all of the intel. At this point, they want this to go forward. Now this is a great star for them of, "I found this amazing tool. It's going to solve our problems and now I get to put my name on it alongside one or two other people," right? So for that demo, just make sure you know exactly who's involved, what these people care about and what does a successful demo look like for them. I just ask them, be like, "Hey, people do demos all the time. What looks good? 30 minutes of a discussion, maybe 10 minutes of showing, 10 minutes of discussion, 40 minutes of in the product? You tell me what the organization likes." And on that demo, there's going to be people that were not a part of any of these calls, okay? Your job is to take a step back and restart with, "Here's who we are. Here's why we are doing what we are doing," and it's fully in their frame. You now have all the context to put this in their frame. So now for these net-new people, they're like, "Holy shit, this was built for us." Sorry for my French. Now they're leaning in, being like, "Okay, all right, this is very aligned with what we need."
00:40:30 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:40:30] S0: Because they have no idea you've talked to all these people. [00:40:32] S1: No idea you've talked to all these people. [00:40:33] S0: Learn what their challenges are and priorities.
00:40:35 · Jen Abel
[00:40:35] S1: They're leaning in, being like, "This feels different." Now this is also the whole part of it's being different. Not only is your product different, not only is your pitch different, the way you're going through the sales process is different. So it's like, "Wow, these guys are good. Okay. All right." So now you could let them talk, let these net-new people talk. Be like, "Hey, I know we haven't had a chance to speak. What do you want to get out of the demo today? I want to make sure I focus for you." Now you're leaning a little bit more into these net-new people so they feel the love, okay? And then when you demo the product, 80% of the value comes from 20% of the product. And you have learned on these previous calls what that 20% is. Do not demo everything unless there is some reason to. Because now all of a sudden, this tight frame, this tight narrative you've just crafted and spent all this time with just gets thrown out the door because it's like, "Oh, well, I wouldn't use that. I wouldn't use that. Well, everything she just shared, that's really only over here," and you could just blow the whole thing up. And the amount of times enterprises are like, "Hey, I don't know if we want to spend this much money for half the tool that we wouldn't use half the tool." Now all of a sudden you've just unraveled all the work you've just done. Enterprise sales is super, super, super tight project management. It's super, super tight narrative and framing. Owning that frame. Owning that frame to exactly who these people are. And that's why this role is so hard because it's a lot of improv and it's a lot of leaning in and it's a lot of reading in between the lines. But it's stuff that is doable. It's just psychology. The good news is is that most senior people, like the people that you're doing your outreach to, it's very hard to get to that title if you're verbose and long-winded and take things off track. So that's the good thing about going after executives is those people are really dialed in. No one takes a meeting off track at an executive level. Now of course, there's some times where there's people that meander. You could say, "I love this conversation. Can we park it because I actually want to spend another call just dedicated to that?" And if that needs to happen, then of course you can run with it.