#1 Sales Skill to Build in Recession

Most CRO forums are talking about decreasing win rates by half this year. We can either increase the level of activity and leads, or we can focus on better sales discovery. If we get better at identifying the core strategic needs of the business and tie them to our value proposition, it would increase the win rate. You cannot sell in any other way in today’s environment, says Carl Carell, the Co-founder & CRO at GetAccept, in one of our interviews.

Discovery has nothing to do with you and your product. You are just trying to understand what problems the customer has without focusing on the specific issues you are solving for.

We need to change the conversation from selling to helping buyers to buy, explains Sheevaun Thatcher, CPC, the VP of Strategic Enablement at Salesforce.

James Ireson, the CRO of Funnel, adds: “If you understand you sell change for the buyer, it changes the questions you ask them.”

“Discovery and diagnosing are the game today. It’s about navigating the conversation to get true data about the customer’s reality and building a strong business case.” Improving these skills would increase the bookings of most people by 25%, believes Josh Kondik, MBA, the VP of sales at Home Care Pulse.

Salespeople need to master listening and uncovering pains and then tie their value props to the customer needs instead of coming up with their checklists of self-serving questions.

They need to learn how to ask a question and be silent. Silence is not awkward if you are the one expecting the silence.

Discovery is ongoing. It never ends.

The goal is to get prospects to put their guards down, believes Adam Jay, the CEO of Revenue Reimagined.

For Dave Woolwine, the VP of Sales at HackerOne, the number 1 skill worth investing in 2023 and beyond is curiosity.

“The impact would be immediate. It increases deal size, cuts the sales cycle, etc. But we have not found anybody who would specialize in that for salespeople.”

Michael Burton, the SVP of Sales & Co-founder of Bombora, has been saying this for years. Being curious in discovery is about giving yourself permission to wonder if you can help the customer. If there is a business case here or not. “It needs to be communicated by the leadership first, so for us at Bombora, the most important outcome of discovery is what use case there is for the customer over sales qualification questions. That’s our KPI. Finding a strong use case in discovery is more important than whether we are selling to power, etc.”

However, “active listening is the most missing skill in sales. In my team, we practice team selling, so we take turns in speaking in front of the customer so that the other colleague in that meeting can only focus on listening to the customer. That way, we do not miss important details and turning points in the conversation”, shares Wes Carrell, the VP of Sales at Flex.

His best practice also shares Patrick Dyar, the RVP of Sales at Merit Medical Systems: Our reps keep learning how to formulate questions so that the prospects reflect on their issues and problems. These questions must not be offensive but provocative.

I believe the most effective sales mindset today is to heal like a psychologist and sell like a doctor, as Mark Bloom, the VP of Channel Sales at Sangoma puts it.

“You’ve got to care about customers and their problems more than about yourself.”

You have to stop selling to sell more. Just solve problems without showing your shiny objects.

Alex Bruce, CRO at Rural Sourcing, said it best: “Great sellers are leaders. They lead our internal teams to true opportunities.

If you focus less on your commission and rather helping people, you will make more money. It requires an abundance mentality.”

All in all, better discovery skills would prevent us from chasing wrong deals, improve forecast accuracy, and we would not need so many hires.

Shameless plug:

Hackerly focuses on sales discovery skills like curiosity, uncovering needs with deep questions, or active listening.

We co-create your own sales discovery playbook – by mixing only the practices (from 50+ methodologies) right for your unique sales process and context – so you boost win rates, decrease churn, and cut the sales cycle.

NO off-the-shelf Trademarked Solutions™ (none are perfect, despite their PR).

• Stop “convincing,” feature-pitching, or creating urgency and sell more like a doctor.
• Diagnose/solve problems via curious questions, listening, and building UVPs
• Upskill sellers to coach buyers to buy and uncover their true reality.