In episode fo Stronger Sales Teams, Ben Wright invites sales training specialist Richard Harris to explore sales strategies, emphasizing the path of the seller in enhancing the buyer’s journey. Richard presents his belief that the buyer’s journey does not exist; rather, it is the buyer’s experience influenced by the seller’s journey. This thought-provoking perspective directs the discussion towards practical sales techniques capable of significantly enhancing team effectiveness.

The pair delves into essential themes including handling discount requests, the significance of grasping the buyer’s economic influence, and the skill of negotiation. Richard imparts valuable strategies for managing discount inquiries, stressing the significance of establishing mutual terms and generating economic value. The discussion also touches upon mental well-being, with Richard underscoring the importance of openness and setting clear objectives in sales leadership. This episode is rich with insights that B2B sales managers can apply to develop, inspire, and retain highly effective sales teams.

About the Guest: 

Richard Harris is a globally recognized sales trainer and the creator of the Neat Selling System. With a distinguished track record of enhancing sales teams across a spectrum from startups to established corporations, Richard has provided consulting services to prominent clients such as Google, Visa, Zoom, Salesforce, SalesLoft, among others. He is also an experienced podcaster and the author of “The Seller’s Journey.” Richard is acclaimed for his adeptness at translating sales training theory into practical application, rendering his methodologies both inventive and user-friendly.

Key Takeaways:

• Sales conversations should focus on value and experience rather than just features and benefits to differentiate from AI-driven interactions.
• Understand customer expectations and always seek mutually beneficial terms when negotiating discounts.
• Shift the ROI conversation to discuss the buyer’s current economic challenges and opportunities, making the discussion more relevant and impactful.
• Incorporate vulnerability and mental health support into your leadership style to create a more resilient and high-performing team.
• Incorporate specific mutual benefits, such as case studies or customer quotes, directly into contracts to streamline negotiations later.

Time Stamp:

0:00 Intro

0:58 Guest Introduction

4:03 The Seller’s Journey

7:15 Positive Outcome for the Buyer

10:45 Over Discounting

19:57 ROI Journey

24:15 Mindset

28:43 Guest’s Socials

30:01 Outro

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Episode Transcript

Transcript

Intro:

Hi, everyone. I’m Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You’re listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teams…teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.

Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you’re an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.

Ben Wright:

Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Hot off the press from California, Othello, Waterman, water baby, water boy, surfer, whatever you want to call it. We have Richard Harris joining us today. So Richard is without doubt a world renowned sales trainer. I’ve had enough time with him today to see that he knows what he’s talking about. He’s got a rich history of really elevating sales teams across the spectrum. Doesn’t matter where that spectrum is or where you start on that spectrum. But he also really prides himself on sharing invaluable insights and tactics as his, or as his cemented authority for a go to in sales training.
But Richard has plenty of principles that he likes to roll out. But you will see right there, printed on his shirt is the neat selling system and release of a book called the Seller’s Journey. So I’m really looking forward to having Richard on board today. But when I started to do a bit of research, what I was really impressed about was his list of clients. So Google, Visa, Zoom, Salesforce, Sales Loft, Terminus, Pandadoc, Pandora, DoorDash, we could keep going, there’s plenty more.
But that’s an impressive list of customers who are worthy of mentioning. And to be honest, that’s worthy of hearing what Richard has to say. But to make that even easier, Richard is an experienced podcaster. So welcome Richard, to today.

Richard Harris:

Thank you very much. And let me also say thank you for mentioning all those clients. I also have a tonne of small startups, so just I want people to understand, like, I certainly have this approach and understanding of the big scale and those types of enterprise sales and stuff. I also do a lot of work with small startups. So as you hear advice today, I want people to kind of know like, I think I know a lot. I don’t know that all. Certainly not the smartest guy in the room, but I’m happy to share what I can.

Ben Wright:

Yeah, thank you. I’m a big believer that there simply is no substitute for experience. You can have all the capacity and capability in the world, but until you have seen enough sunrises, sunsets and everything that happens in between, then for me, it’s very difficult to say you have that level of experience to really drive hard into the sales world. So I’m super excited when we get really genuinely experienced sales leaders and sales trainers on the show. So we might jump straight into it today and hot off the press. Last week, one of my key podcasts, it was a solo session that I ran last week, was all around bringing how we add value and great outcomes to customers forward into our sales process and our sales journey. So if you like that, focused more on a customer’s journey rather than a seller’s journey. And it’s interesting, as we start today, we’re going to talk about the exact opposite, I think, for the next few minutes, or certainly on paper, and that being the seller’s journey. And for me, a statement that I’ve seen around your name that says it’s not about the customer journey, it’s about the seller journey.
So let’s dive straight into that. I’m really keen to hear your thoughts on why you think the seller’s journey is the place we should be focusing.

Richard Harris:

Yeah. So, and again, this is also, it’s meant to be provocative. Right. Because what I do, right. I do not believe that there’s anything such as a buyer’s journey. I believe there’s only a buyer’s experience through a journey. And that journey is often created by sales and marketing. So that’s the essence of where this concept comes from, is that it’s always about the experience for the buyer. Right? It’s not about the journey.
Nobody asks us, how was your journey to, you know, the steakhouse? They asked you, how was the experience? What was it like? Was the food good, was the service good? All that kind of stuff. When, you know, we’ve heard this all along too, is that, you know, nobody ever talks about all the positive experiences they’ve had with salespeople, but they love to talk about the negative ones. Right? And it’s not about… that experience is based on a bad seller’s journey, not a bad buyer’s journey. They were just on a journey. It was ours. So that’s the essence of the thought behind it. And how I came up with it.

Ben Wright:

Right. So I think I’m hearing is that the buyer’s experience, in your opinion, is going to be based heavily around the seller’s journey. So for us as sellers, it’s important to make sure that we have our journey or our process or our map or our, however you want to phrase it, that we have that nailed down with a focus then on the experience it’s going to lead to the customer.
Richard Harris:
Correct! And again, that in my head, it’s in what I believe in practice that still aligns back to knowing your ideal customer profile, the pains that they have, what your value propositions are around your solution. It’s a very competitive experience right now, just about everything you sell is in a competitive space, right? And buyers, humans by nature, are comparison shoppers and they will often commoditise you without you realising it. They’ll look at two things and try to say, oh, you’re just like so and so.
Now, short of it being a Mercedes versus, you know, a Hyundai, right. Those two things can’t be commoditised, so to speak. But that’s because Mercedes provides a different experience. That’s what I want people to understand. I think we’ve all, and you tell me, Ben, we’ve all been in the situation where maybe we were priced a little bit higher than our competitor, but because of the way the experience went, the relationship went, how we conducted ourselves, providing that experience through our seller’s journey, we’ve still won the business.
And so for me, that’s really the essence of it. Allows us to still be customer centric, customer focused, making it about them. We can just better manage ourselves and then help set and create better expectations and experiences for them.

Ben Wright:

It’s very much about how you leave people feeling rather than what you say. Big proponent of that. Whilst it’s important what’s coming out of our mouths or how we’re delivering it, how the other side feels once we finish that is even more important. So if we’re looking at a seller’s journey, and particularly how we’re making sure the buyer’s experience is very much a positive one, what are you working on at the moment to be driving that real positive outcome for the buyer?

Richard Harris:

So in terms of what I do to teach reps, I teach people how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when to do it. And behind that is making sure we don’t jump into feature benefit situations where we just start lecturing at our prospects or customers. I want to teach the team to talk with their prospects and customers, not talk at them. And if you’ve ever been on a bad demo, that’s talking at your customer, that’s not talking with them.
So that’s how I try to encourage this to happen. And wrapped around all that is definitely some psychology of teaching people how humans even make decisions. We’re all comparison shoppers. So how do I make sure this sales team feels more comfortable when they get an objection or they run into what I call the grumpy Gus prospect, who’s like, no, just tell me your pitch. Just get into the demo. Right? How do we teach the psychology behind that? And then on top of that, well, how do I respond? How do I say it? That’s business appropriate and authentic to me. Meaning authentic to how Richard says things versus Ben. Ben needs to say the same thing Richard does, but he needs to sound like Ben, not Richard. He doesn’t need to sound like a bot or a robot. Right. And I want to teach people that skill set, that they can still be massively authentic to who they are as a core human being and bring that level of humanity into the experience.
And I think that’s where the trust gets built. That’s where real conversations happen. And from a sales perspective, and even from the customer perspective, it doesn’t feel like a sales conversation. So that’s is teaching reps how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when, with all that concept behind it for authenticity.

Ben Wright:

We were talking about AI at the very start of our catch up, before we got live. And I think where you mentioned features and benefits and that talking to customers around features and benefits, I think that’s where AI is really going to take over. And those salespeople that simply are there to read a script, or rope role play out a very standard pitch, are going to find that it gets a little bit more difficult for them to keep their jobs and to keep their own position as being valuable to customers and to their organisations because they’re just rolling out features and benefits.
But where we’re trying to create that value and that sense of a strong outcome for our customers, that’s that right to ask questions. I think that you talk about there and that very natural conversation that salespeople have. There’s two other things that come up all the time. I think when we’re talking about a journey, let’s call it the seller’s journey or an experience being at the buyer’s end. And the first one there is around, and you mentioned it around being higher priced than your competitors, and that’s over discounting.
What are your thoughts around over discounting?

Richard Harris:

So this is something we’ve all been taught the wrong way, myself included, and I’ve taught other people the wrong way. Right. And so for me, what I always try to do is encourage people to, when someone says, oh, the price is too expensive, I need it to be lower. Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to. I think at that point you’ve earned the right to say, so, okay, Ben, what were you expecting? And if Ben turns around and says, well, I don’t know, but I just need something better, I will then teach the team, and I will say to Ben, I appreciate you asking. In fairness, I’ve given you a price and you want something different. And I understand you’re asking for a discount. I get it. But I’m not going to negotiate against myself, Ben, so you tell me what you’re expecting, and it’s not like that customer is going to hang up on you right now. If it’s a one call close, transactional sale, then maybe they will. I get it. And we could go off on another tangent about that. But I think in the world, you and I swim in the most, with most salespeople, that’s not the case. So that’s the first thing. The other thing I will say if I don’t want to say that. If I say, you know, if Ben says, well, you know, I just need something lower, my first response might be, hey, Ben, I appreciate your asking. You know, our pricing is based on what the market dictates. What were you expecting? Because there’s no response someone can give that’s logical around the market rate, because at that point, they should have done their research and figured out where we are. Now, if I’m still priced higher, Ben could turn around and say, hey, well, your competitor’s doing this. And I could say, okay, great. Why are you still talking to me, though? There’s some reason you decided to choose me other than price. What was it? Now what’s really happening is Ben’s having to resell himself on my value proposition and hear him say out loud all the reasons I’m better than the competitor. So that’s another tactic. The final one is if you have to give a discount after you’ve done at least the, hey, you know, this is what the market dictates. So what would you like to do? If you do that one, the next thing you can still do is say, well, Ben, I think there’s three or four ways we could both leverage commercial terms to our benefit. Here’s something we could do. You know, if you agree to give me a customer quote, I can get you 2% off. If you agree to do a case study, I can give you another 2% off if you agree to a longer term contract, two years versus one year, I can get you another 3 or 4%. If you agree to prepay the whole contract upfront, I’ll give you another 5%. Which ones would you like, Ben? So now all of a sudden I’ve let Ben know there needs to be something mutual in exchange for this value. And I’ve limited myself from going to the well, I can get you 20 or 25% or 30% and just sort of railroading myself and negotiating against myself way too much. That’s a lot to share, a lot for people to sort of think about. And yes, absolutely go back and rewind it or transcribe this thing somewhere and figure that stuff out. But those are the ways I encourage people to say these things.

Ben Wright:

There’s two things that stand out there for me. The first one is we’re compartmentalising or we’re taking the stigma away from what’s often a difficult conversation. And that’s around price. And what we’re doing is rather than offering the discount upfront, we’re asking our customer to be clear on what their expectations are. Yep. Once we’re clear on understanding what their expectations are, then we have a baseline to work off.
So I think that a very important part around pricing is to understand what the expectation is on the other side rather than to have it open and unknown, because then we can get to work. The second piece that’s all about that is asking for something in return for your discount. So it’s not a case of, hey, I can offer you this. Great. It’s if I, will you, if I offer you 2%, will you pay early? Will you plan a longer contract? Right. So most of those things, I think are critically important in that final stage of closing our deals.
So really good, really valuable in there, particularly the piece around, I think around getting the expectations out of as quickly as you can when that price discussion comes up.

Richard Harris:

So by default. So there are two things. One is when you negotiate price, remember you’re negotiating a contract with terms that’s going to go through legal as well as the price. And if you don’t combine them together, you’re going to get unbundled, meaning you’re going to come up with some price, but then all of a sudden the legal team is going to pull out a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t like. And so again, and part of this is a, it’s very easy for Richard to do it because I run my own company. It’s also easy because I do it all the time. Part of it is to say, hey, I can agree to this whatever price you agree to, but I got to base it on what we get back from your legal team on the red lines. Because if all of a sudden they start requiring me to do indemnification or add something that’s going to cost me more time and resources, it’s fair for me to understand that. So that’s one thing, just be mindful of that.
The other thing I do, and it’s in every contract. And you’d be surprised. I’ve had the biggest companies in the world just gloss over this in my contract and never say anything. And it literally says in there that they will give me a customer quote, they will agree to a case study, they will let me use their logo without giving any discount. So its by default in every one of my contracts because I want them to redline it out. Because if they redline it out and then we start talking about pricing, its, wait a minute, you just tried to redline that out and you want a discount? I need that back in because of the discount. So making that default in your contract is really important in my opinion. And look, sure there are many times where I’ve pulled stuff out or look, if Salesforce came back to me and told me it was 24% that I needed to give them, of course I’m going to figure something out. I’m not stupid. Like, I’m not an idiot, but I need to at least put myself and I want everybody else to put their best foot forward. I want them to be able to go to bed at night saying, hey, I did this. I gave it a shot. And I want my leadership, I want the people I train… I want you to be able to go to your leader and say, hey, remember that tactic we talked about about how to prevent over discounting? I just want you to know I did it. And this is the feedback I got. And by the way, it’s Zoom or it’s Visa. And so I tried it. It didn’t work. We got to go to the discount.
Like, I at least want people to be able to know that they’ve done all they can to be better. The last thing I’ll say, and then I’ll shut up one more time, I promise, is the reason this is hard is because we don’t get this far into the conversation on a regular basis. Right. How many times do you give a demo where you know your demo, you know your pitch, you know how you’re going to do it. It comes off, you know, very naturally and authentically versus how many times do you negotiate pricing.
So part of this is giving you these very specific words I’m suggesting as a script for you to practise and memorise before you get into that conversation because it’s uncomfortable. Believe me, it’s not comfortable. Look, we are all taught not to talk about sex, religion, politics and money, right? Everybody’s taught that. So here we are having to talk about it, but nobody’s trained us on how to say it in a better way. Maintain our authenticity, make it sound like we’re having just a conversation and not trying to be a jerk or try to make it a combative conversation with our prospect. It’s just a conversation about money.

Ben Wright:

There’s so many things in there unpacked, but I think a couple of key things I want to take out of that is legal teams are often like the second layer of procurement. So beware when negotiating contracts. I love the piece around making sure that some of your key requirements that you have from a customer side, that is case studies, that is use of logos, that is getting quotes from them. We put them in the contracts upfront. I really like that. In fact, the end of today, I’m going to go and add that to my contract.

Richard Harris:

That’s the one thing everybody does. Everybody’s like, oh, my God, we at least need to add that. That’s easy. By the way, the other piece of that, too is that a, you’re not necessarily going to make them all go do it if they don’t want to, but it’s a whole lot easier if it’s in the contract to say, hey, by the way, we’ve already gotten your approval from your legal team or your marketing team to do this. So can you give me a quote versus if you don’t have it in the contract? And then they, well, I got to go check with somebody and see how, you know, it’s like, it eliminates that whole other later conversation, too. So it applies to a couple of things.

Ben Wright:

Excellent. Okay. I really like that. And I think the last piece we were talking about there is that to give ourselves a bit of slack when we’re talking about pricing because it’s not something that we do all day, every day. So to lean into that challenge, bulls run into a storm and understand that because we don’t do it every day, that sometimes we might need a little bit of extra training on it. So I love it. Okay. So second place around that we’ve spoken about, when it comes around having a great experience at the buyer’s end, we’ve spoken about that over discounting. The other area I want to unpack is the ROI journey. And I think so many proposals come back to return on investment.
Tell me your thoughts on this one, Richard.

Richard Harris:

So this is how I say it. And yes, I say it to CFO’s and they say it to procurement. I will, you know, if Ben comes to me and says, Richard, what’s your ROi? I will look Ben square in the eye, even in the Zoom, I will look at the camera hard core, and I’ll go, hey, Ben, let me ask you a question. I’m going to answer that, but let me ask you a question. When was the last time a salesperson gave you an ROI number and you ever believed it?
And Ben’s going to do exactly what he’s doing, which is grinning. He doesn’t know how to answer that question because he knows it’s not true and that nobody ever believes it. So that’s the first thing, because all ROI is a scare tactic to tell you you need to negotiate better, that they’re going to ask for a discount. That’s your biggest indication they’re going to ask for a discount, is when they ask the ROI question. Now, what do you do when they bring that up? Is to say, hey, totally understand. What’s really important for me, Ben, is that when we spoke before, you explained that the economic impact of you not solving this problem as it is right now is costing you x, y or z, both in not just the hard costs of time saving or efficiency or effectiveness, but what do you get to do with that time you get back? If I save Ben 3 hours a week, which is 12 hours a month, give or take, Ben, what are you going to do to grow the business with those extra 12 hours? Great. What’s the value of each new customer you get? What’s the lifetime value of those customers? Now all of a sudden, I have this economic impact, something that’s real and tangible they can touch and feel and see not coming into their bank account because there’s revenue’s not there, versus this ROI thing, which is just some number that’s in the future, which is really just called the religion of insecurity because they’re insecure about spending the money.
So to do this, you also have to have done good discovery. So you have to kind of have gone all the way back and ask some of those questions that need to happen early in the sales conversation, through demos, through compliance issues, whatever it is that you’re going through. So it’s all about economic impact because what they’re current, they’re talking to you, because there’s a certain economic impact of if they don’t solve this problem, it’s costing them more money.
Well, if we can dollarise that and put numbers on that, well, then the ROI number is a whole lot easier. It’s a whole lot easier to say, Ben, I appreciate the ROI conversation. Let me ask you a question. You told me that this is what it’s costing you. This is your economic impact right now, that if you don’t solve this problem. So isn’t that really your ROI calculation? Because those are your numbers. Because I will ask, and I teach the reps, we want them to give us their own numbers, not make up our widget numbers. So that’s how I teach people to have that conversation. Yes, I can be a little snarkier about it, and I can say things like, you know, return on insecurity and, you know, do you ever believe your salesperson? But that’s really where it comes from. That’s how you have to shift that conversation.

Ben Wright:

So I think that relates very heavily back to the seller’s journey versus the buyer’s experience. And what we’re trying to do is place a return on investment discussion. We’re trying to shift that from being a seller’s focus to one that’s in the customer’s language so specifically about their economic problem, their economic opportunity, whatever it is, and getting them to word it out. And we’re essentially guides in the ROI discussion, if you like.
I really like that as an approach. That’s fantastic. So, Richard, we’ve covered off pretty heavily today, I think, around how we’re making sure a buyer has a great experience. And in particular, we’ve spoken about over discounting or discounting in general, and ROI. I think they’re two really challenging pieces of information that this podcast prides itself on providing. And for those listening, I have no doubt that one or both of those topics over discounting and the ROI conversation, you have written some notes down and you’ve got some things to tweak with your teams.
But before we go today, Richard, I will often in a solo podcast, in fact, every solo podcast, I will talk about health and fitness and mindset, because I think it’s so important as a sales leader to be showing up in a way that you want your teams to follow. So we spoke a little bit about that before we got started today. Can we very quickly touch on your beliefs around mindset and the importance that it plays?

Richard Harris:

Yeah, I’m going to promote a free resource to everybody for the last three years with a partner of mine at the Sales Health Alliance, we put together the state of mental health and sales report for the last three years. So you can google state of mental health and sales. It’s a very important topic to me, particularly with my own journey of anxiety and depression and things where I consider myself lucky in the sense that I never wanted to hurt myself, I never wanted to hurt anybody else. I just felt sad for a long time. So it’s personal to me. And then when you put on top of that the pressure and stress of sales and performance and hitting numbers and that your very livelihood and your job security relies on it, that’s a lot of pressure.
What I’ll share with people is that the top things we asked and we asked people, hey, we did a survey and we said, hey, when you were at peak performance, what was your sales leadership team doing? Not what do you wish your teams, your leaders did. And the things that they told us, which then tells us that this is what people want, is they were saying things like my leaders were led with vulnerability or I had very clear understanding of my goals, I had a level of autonomy within my role. So these are all the things I think we know, but at least we have a little bit of data behind it and I want to come to the vulnerability thing. The vulnerability thing doesn’t mean Richard coming in and talking about his mental health or Ben sharing the stories, which I’m sure Ben has shared his own experiences around vulnerability just means sitting there and going oh wow, that’s a really tough situation to be in. What can I do to help? Not, hey, that’s a really tough situation. Here’s how I handled it, because that’s not helping. Being vulnerable is opening yourself up or you can open yourself up as a leader and say, hey everybody, I just want to tell you guys about this experience and what I learned about negotiation. Or hey, here’s an experience I had about how I got stronger at cold calling and say, hey team, this was my experience. Here’s how I convinced myself to get better at it. By the way, I don’t expect you to follow my footsteps. I just want you to know I’ve had my experience with it and if it’s helpful to you. I hope so. And if not, I’d love to hear your feedback, too. That’s vulnerability. Being able as a leader to say, and I teach this to managers, is, you know, in your one on ones with your direct reports, is to be able to say, hey, Ben, what’s one thing I could do better for you as your leader? Just the fact that I’m being vulnerable to ask Ben, what’s some feedback I could do better? And I’m just asking for one thing. It means that I care and it shows that there’s intention from me as an individual. So those are something. Again, I sort of went on a rant and I apologise. But vulnerability matters. Having purpose, having direction, career pathing, all those things matter to you as a salesperson and or to your sales team. If you’re a sales leader. And if you’re a sales leader, I’m willing to bet they matter to you as an individual, too.

Ben Wright:

Yeah, you’ve hit a key pillar for me there. The nail on the head there, and it’s a pillar of being a sales leader is showing you care. So thank you very much for today. Richard. Where can people find Richard Harris?

Richard Harris:

So there are two things. So I’m going to do, you know, because I don’t mind a shameless plug for my book. The Seller’s Journey is on Amazon and all the other places audiobook is coming out. But if you really want to get a hold of me, and yes, I’m on WhatsApp +1-415-5969 149 that is my real cell phone number that I’m holding up here. And I know it’s real because it’s the number my kids ignore when I call them. They’re teenagers. So if anybody has advice for me, please help me see me being vulnerable.
But you can also find me on LinkedIn. Richard Harris. I’m the one with a goofy little trademark emoji. But yeah, like, I literally will take phone calls and text messages. Text me, let me know that, you know, you heard me with Ben on the Stronger Sales Teams podcast. But text me ahead of time if you want to call or just ask me a question, I’ll support you.

Ben Wright:

Yeah. Awesome. Well, and everyone remember Richard being California based, 6 hours ahead, but a day behind in terms of time. So when it’s 06:00 here, it’s midnight, Richard’s time. So we are. Thank you, Richard. Really good to have you on today. I really enjoyed it. For everyone listening, please keep living in a world of possibility and you’ll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.

Unnecessary Discounting Be Gone, A Proven Method to Removing it From our Team, with Richard Harris