Rocket GTM 🚀 - Hypothetical Stories in Sales

Firstly, welcome to the new readers this week 👋

Secondly, two announcements:

1) Podcast: I launched a podcast called The Search For Growth with my friend Chris. We believe in being a life long learner and the importance of a growth mindset. Each week we explore frameworks, principles, and strategies to help excel in life and entrepreneurship. On this week's episode we discuss the seven key takeaways from Morgan Housel's book "The Psychology of Money". If you don't listen to hour long podcasts and would prefer an email with 3-5 video clips of the key points click 👉 here.

2) Spam: Since I took a 7 month hiatus, the god's of email are punishing me with a lower deliverability, meaning you might not be receiving this each week 😔. To ensure you don't miss any future newsletters can everybody please reply to this email with "Hey Alfie" and add my email as a contact (see GIF below)

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The Search For Growth - Episode #3 — open.spotify.com

Chris and Alfie breakdown the seven key takeaways from "The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel 

With that being said, let's get into today's newsletter

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Hypothetical stories

Last week I posted this on LinkedIn 👇 explaining how I managed to 2x my reply rates on cold emails. I did this by using hypothetical scenarios to inspire action.

This post blew up, and to my surprise I was tagged in another post the very next day.

An Account Executive by the name of Colby Morris had seen my Call-To-Action and used it. The CEO who received it, David Campbell shared the outreach saying it was "the best cold email I've ever gotten". Of course, the entire email was well written (kudos to Colby), but the hypothetical story as a CTA worked.

The question of today's newsletter is; where else can we use hypothetical stories in the sales process?

One use-case is "securing a meeting with the KDM" or in non-abbreviated terms "the key decision maker".

Below is the LinkedIn post, followed by the CEO's reply and a screenshot of the email he received from Colby.

The next day the CEO of Tropic, David Campbell shared this.

And here's a better screenshot of the cold email he received from Colby Morris at Clari using the CTA I described the day before.

Now let's talk about using this technique elsewhere in the sales process.

Securing a meeting with the KDM

Often in sales we start speaking with a "champion". Someone who is keen to get your product implemented, they're probably the core economic user of the product, but don't have the authority to buy.

Deals without key decision maker in them are far more likely to be #closed_lost 😔

Securing a meeting with the key decision maker is a lot easier said than done. Why? Because champions keep their bosses out of the sales process thinking that it's in their best interests to do so.

Sometimes they're right.

The default buying process is to collect as much information from a salesperson as you can, and then relay that to their boss.

Only for you never to hear from them again.

Sound familiar?

The best salespeople help champions decide for themselves that it's in their best interest to loop the KDM into the deal.

The best salespeople help champions decide for themselves that it's in their best interest to loop the KDM into the deal.

Note: "decide for themselves".

You can't just tell your champion that something is in their bests interests because they'll think you're trying to serve your own agenda, which is often true.

The way to get around this is by using hypothetical stories that help demonstrate your point without having to make the point.

The way to get around this is by using hypothetical stories that help demonstrate your point without having to make the point.

Hypothetical stories lay out a future possibility that the prospect will decide is either desirable or undesirable, depending on what they want they'll feel compelled to act.

In our case, the undesirable future you want to demonstrate is that not having the KDM onboard is a bad idea. It can cause misalignment later down the line, leading to back & forth email conversations that lead nowhere. Even if they end up buying the product, you can't be sure they'll stay a customer because your KDM's desired outcomes are unknown.

But of course, you can't just tell the champion your point. You must use a hypothetical story to demonstrate your point and let them come to their own conclusion.

For example:

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Salesperson: "So, let's say you love the demo next week and want to move forward, what will need to happen in between now and becoming a customer of ours?"

Prospect: "I'll need to run it by my boss to make sure he's onboard and then we'd get a trial set up".

Salesperson:"Awesome. What will you respond to your boss if they says the price is too expensive?"

Prospect: "Uhm, I'm not sure to be honest."

Salesperson:" Okay, let's say they're okay with the price but they have a different objective than yourself? For example, we discussed a lot of the value in using the platform to your day to day, but we haven't outlined how it can be impactful to the C# suite or the board."

Prospect: "Mm, good point. I guess you can answer those questions now?"

Salesperson: "I can certainly do my best, but it's difficult without already knowing how their objections or desired outcomes might differ from yours......Often we see this in the buying process where the core user of the platform sees the value but the person who has to sign off isn't. In the past we've had several back and forth's while not focusing on the right value proposition. Ultimately, we end up bringing the CEO in the loop anyway but wasting 2 months in the process.

Would it be a terrible idea to include your CEO on the demo next week, align on their desired outcomes and answer any objections they may have?"

Prospect: "Sounds like a great plan. I'll shoot them an invite now."

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We've used a hypothetical story to outline all the possible ways this deal could go wrong if the CEO doesn't join the call. If the champion is truly a champion they'll want the deal to go through and now realizing it's best to bring them into the loop, they'll willingly send an invite.

The moral of the story is use hypothetical stories to inspire action, don't make statements.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. Don't forget to checkout the podcast and lemme know what you think!

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