Will Aitken’s Post

DANGEROUS negotiation hack 🤑 You gotta use it the right way otherwise you'll just piss people off When someone says "We want a discount because {competitor} is cheaper" The worst thing you can do in this situation is begin negotiating based on price alone Because even if you can price match then they can go back to your competitor and say "company gave us a better price can you match it?" Then they come back to you and say "{competitor} matched your price again" It's a race to the bottom. So instead I'm going to push back on them to: 1. See if we're the vendor of choice if all things were the same 2. Understand where the difference in value is if that's the case Example... If someone trying to book me for a keynote said: "Jen Allen-Knuth's keynotes are only $10,000, that's {$number} less than yours" I might say: "Jen's a fantastic speaker, she knows how to captivate an audience, knows her stuff, and shares a lot of the same approaches I do, I don't know anyone who's ever regretted booking her for a kick-off. Meanwhile some speakers in this space can charge up to $50k for a similar engagement, so you've also got a good price. What's holding you back from booking Jen in?" At that point they might say: "Well, Jen doesn't know how to cold call..." Now we've driven a wedge outside of pricing between mine and Jen's offering I can even open that up a little more by asking: "Got it... So the cold calling focus is one of the differences, may I ask what % of your outbound pipeline has historically come from cold calls?" From there I can try to understand the value of that wedge and come to an agreement on whether or not the difference in value is worth an extra investment to them #Negotiation

Want urgency in your deals? Use this line of questioning early in the conversation. Inbound: “When were you hoping to have something in place by?” “What’s making that timeline important?” Outbound: “Does this look like a good fit?” “How do you go about looking at things like this?” “What’s happening in your world in the next quarter that this might crossover with if you were to pursue it further?” Then use “typically” language to map out a potential go/no go date Big up Salesloft putting out realistic helpful data at this, worth a look at their insights right here: https://lnkd.in/eHikBCPd #SalesLoft #SellBetter

Sales Rep: “Our coffee is 100% organic, grown in Columbia, small batch, roasted within two months, and ground to the perfect level to give a smooth creamy eloquent taste” Someone who drinks tea: “IDGAF about coffee…” Someone who drinks Folgers: “Cool story bro, but I’m getting by fine thanks” If you want someone to give a crap about your beans you gotta talk about what could be wrong first Here’s an example of how you can cast a broad net when you don’t have context on what the person is doing today: “Folks tell me they have one of two BIG problems each morning: They feel tired and groggy for the first few hours of their work day hurting their productivity OR They drink coffee to help with that first issue but that coffee tastes like a sour ass Don’t suppose you can relate to either of those or are you absolutely DOMINATING your mornings right now?” Then shhhhh 🤫 Works on the phone, works via email, works via LinkedIn ***This is not an original concept, I’ve seen Sandler, Kevin "KD" Dorsey, Benjamin D., and Charles Muhlbauer put their own spin on this as you should too My spin is overemphasizing the “dominating/crushing {process}” to make a bit of a joke

MLG - Meme Led Growth 👀 Step 1 - Make meme about a relatable pain point your product can solve Step 2 - Have it go viral Step 3 - Any engagement is someone qualifying themselves as someone who has felt that pain point, identify good fit prospects in comments/likes based on ICP Step 4 - Use the engagement as the trigger to reach out and share how your offering helps reduce the problem the meme was about (puns optional) Step 5 - Follow up with more puns (ChatGPT can help) P.s. Don't rule out "below the line" prospects. If 5 ICs from Oracle have engaged that could be your trigger to reach out to a leader there and say "A few of your reps found this relatable, open to seeing a way customers are getting more stakeholders involved in their deals?" Aligned stops your deals from freezing, and unlike the infamous door, there's room all the stakeholders

FINALLY a cold call about a product that I can get behind from Kyle Asay!! 👏 Surprised Kyle even needs to take this outbound, this has PLG written all over it. Heads up Jen Allen-Knuth

Tech CEOs: Then vs. Now

Want to book meetings with lookalike accounts? Here's the play: Subject: {Customer} "{Customer}* were having issues with {problem}, {Name}. Causing {impact}. Given it looks like {company} is in a similar space, Would you be curious to see how they've {positive gain} with {solution}?" Example I might send to Mariam T. or Dan Chandre: Subject: Shopify "Shopify's growth reps were having a hard time booking meetings with their existing eCommerce customers, Mariam. Limiting upsells of their other products like funding & POS. Given SquareSpace is in a similar space, would you be curious to see how they're now generating twice as many upsell opportunities with some of my outbound plays?" My follow up will start giving context on how to solve that problem with & without my services (templates, videos, etc.) *Make sure you're legally allowed to name drop your customer, if not, replace {customer} with "Player in your space". #ColdEmail

Dear America, as revenge for your rebellious acts in 1776 I have taken your Rayna van Beuzekom 🦕 hostage and taken her to Canada 🇨🇦 If you’d like Rayna back then swear your loyalty to the crown and rejoin the British Commonwealth 🇬🇧👑

Shoutout Orum for keeping me disguised 🥷🏻 I change my dial from number daily for two reasons: 1. Keep my caller ID healthy, reducing the chances of being flagged as “Spam Risk” 2. Reduce the chances my prospects will get annoyed by me calling too much as I tend to have 5 call steps in my sequences I don’t buy into changing it to my prospect’s area code because I think that’s kinda sneaky (Like when people call me from a Nova Scotia area code even though I know damn well there’s only like 4 salespeople in my entire province) So I have 6 New York numbers (for calling Americans) And 4 Nova Scotia numbers (for calling Canadians) I only leave one voicemail as part of my outreach An automatic voicemail on the first call referencing the subject line of an email I’m about to send them (open rate ⬆️) #ColdCalling