Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:44:20 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:44:20] S0: Awesome. So there's two people that might be leading this. Might be the founder if you're still doing founder-led sales, could be the AE, maybe a VP of sales. [00:44:28] S1: VP of sales. Yup. [00:44:30] S0: Okay. Say you're not the founder and you're the VP of sales or an AE leading this. As a founder, what are some signs that your salesperson is not doing a great job up to this point? What are just smells of like, "Hmm, I should [inaudible 00:44:47] this person"? [00:44:48] S1: I would say, what is the timeline from intro called to demo? How many conversations have happened between those two buckets of when people advance stages in the sales pipeline? Can the salesperson articulate exactly what they are going to be demoing, why they're going to be demoing it and how they're going to open it? The demo looks different every single time. Every single time. I don't think I've ever run a demo and it looks the same. This is when everyone comes back to, "Okay, what's the scaled playbook? What's the scaled approach with this?" When you're selling $100,000 minimum, again, it's the same effort as selling a million dollars, so it could be selling a million-dollar deal, it's hard. You're cracking some of the largest logos that every single startup goes after. You've got to be different. You've got to take a different approach. It is not cram the pitch down their throat and hope that they want to buy something. [00:45:53] S0: Feels like a job AI will not replace anytime soon from what we're hearing here.
00:45:53 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:45:53] S0: Feels like a job AI will not replace anytime soon from what we're hearing here. [00:45:55] S1: No. Yeah, I'm not worried about AI replace ... Because there's so much about it that's just human, right? Like, "Do you vibe with this person?" I've definitely taken intro calls with a person probably did not appreciate with how I ran it and that's okay. It happens. [00:46:14] S0: It's such a point I've never heard before, this idea of when you're demoing, demo as narrow a slice of the product as you can that addresses their priorities and needs. Because to your point, they may feel like, "Why do we need all this stuff? We just want this one problem," and that's shooting yourself in the foot. [00:46:31] S1: Or let them guide you like, "Can it also do this?" and you'd be like, "Oh, it's so funny you say that, we just released this." And now all of a sudden, it feels like it's again built for them. They want to feel like it was built for them and that it's different. [00:46:44] S0: And then get alpha. [00:46:45] S1: And get alpha. [00:46:47] S0: Okay. So step six, you call the post-demo discussion. Also, something you say everyone ignores. Talk about that.
00:46:47 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jen Abel
[00:46:47] S0: Okay. So step six, you call the post-demo discussion. Also, something you say everyone ignores. Talk about that. [00:46:54] S1: Okay. So as soon as the demo closes, you are texting the woman or the gentleman or whomever that has helped guide you to this point, "How do you think that went? Can I call you in five minutes? I want a fresh debrief." They will give you and be like raw reaction, "I know you haven't spoken to anyone. What do you think? How do you think that went? Do you think we need to go deeper with anyone?" Before anyone solidifies everything that's said like, "Do you think we lost somebody? Where do you think we did well? Is there someone we need to spend more time with?" There's always someone in the organization that's going to kill a deal. There's always somebody. You need to protect that as much as possible and make sure everyone is aligned and excited by what this is and again the more intel you collect on these people. Because again, if for some reason someone goes quiet for two weeks or three weeks, you can now prompt with, "Hey, I know you guys are still in the process of thinking through if this makes sense. Do you think it's worthy if I found 15 or 20 minutes with said individual to just hear their thoughts and maybe we can approach this a little bit more closely with how they would want to see it?" [00:48:16] S0: So you're just always looking for ways this might explode and not work. And this person that you're working with, would you call them ... What was the term you used for them? [00:48:16] S1: A champion.