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Nobody taught you how to handle it when a prospect hangs up mid-pitch. Or when your biggest deal goes dark on a Thursday. Or when you're one call away from quota and your stomach won't stop turning because you don’t know what to do next.
That's the stuff we’re here to talk about. Josh and Eric, two former athletes turned sellers, break down what it actually takes to compete in sales right now. The plays that work, the ones that don't, and the embarrassing stories in between.
No suit-and-tie energy here. We want to help you get your head in the game and make you the hero of your own sales story.
It’s time to get game-day ready. You in?
Alex Kabat (00:00):
So you could have the best intentions, but if you're presenting a slide, you're taking notes over here, and you have something going on on your keyboard and I'm talking to you guys and looking in every different direction, it's so distracting as a prospect who's taking their time to learn something. So I think the easiest thing to fix and the worst thing that gives me the sales ick is just when people are truly not giving their prospects attention.
Josh Rasmussen (00:32):
Brought to you by Hero, this is Game Shape where we teach you everything they forgot to before your first day in sales. I'm Josh. And I'm Eric. And today we got a very special guest, Alex Kabat, commercial AE from Brex. Alex, tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's start with career path. Where'd you start? What are you doing now? And maybe a fun fact for the fans out there.
Alex Kabat (00:52):
Yeah, I'll start with the fun fact. This is actually a special episode for me. Josh was my mentor in my first ever sales internship and my manager at Highspot years ago. So it's kind of cool to come full circle. I went to University of Washington. We had a really cool opportunity to do an internship with the sales program, which brought me to Highspot, a tech company out of Seattle doing sales enablement and content. Did an internship there, loved it, went there as an SDR, loved it, spent a year as an AE, and then transitioned to Brex where I have been for the last year-ish. I've been loving it.
Josh Rasmussen (01:28):
Amazing. I think the whole premise of this podcast is to help early career sales reps. And to your point, this is a full circle moment for me as well, having been a mentor manager and whatever else might fit into that category of helping Alex in his early career. But you've had months where you've hit 150% plus of quota, and that's what we're going to get into today. We're going to talk about discovery calls and some of the skills that align with that. So Eric, let's get into the playbook a little bit, talk about discovery. What do we got for Alex?
Eric Salvo (01:58):
There's a whole lot we can talk about today. I mean, the discovery call in itself is such an important topic. There's so much that needs to happen in that first 30 to 45 minutes. I think one of the big things, Alex, we'd love to learn from your side, what discovery actually is and what constitutes a good discovery call. If you had three things, if you were to walk out of every discovery call with, what would that look like for you?
Alex Kabat (02:19):
So discovery to me is just what's going on and why does it matter? So I think if I were to come out of a call with three things, it's like what's going on? Why does it matter? And do they care about fixing it? Because at the end of the day, you can't sell someone something they don't need or they don't want. The sale nowadays takes so much involvement from the seller, but also from the buyer. And so you have to make sure every conversation has value that they can actually lean on because they're doing a hundred million other things. They don't care. Buying your software, engaging with you is one thing on a to-do list of a bunch of stuff. So I think the biggest thing is making it relevant. Discovery in itself to me is just asking questions. So asking why it matters, asking how come, trying to keep it as open-ended as possible.
(03:06):
I sometimes get my wrist slapped a little bit. I'm not a huge fan of slides, and so I really try and keep it as chatty as I can. But I think from the high level, that's how I really think about it is what is going on in the customer's world? Why do they care? And do we have something that could help? If so, great. And if not, let's save them some time, let's save us some time and we'll get on with it.
Josh Rasmussen (03:29):
Marketing's going to be pissed. I
Alex Kabat (03:30):
Know. I use the slides mostly. Most of the time I try to use some of them. Well,
Eric Salvo (03:35):
I don't get my hands slapped as much because we're in a much smaller organization, but I agree, Alex, I don't use the slides. I may use one. Outside of that, I want it to be human conversation. I have very little interest in spending time and going through slides because to me, I feel like that kills you as a rep, that kills the conversation. And one of the things I'm always trying to get done in that first call is, is there a certain amount of rapport? Part of Josh, you and I have talked about this before. I buy from people I like. Does that person actually like me? Can we build an actual relationship? And Alex, you probably felt this too from your days at Highspot, but selling sales leaders now, one of the things I feel most often is I feel like I'm constantly being graded or judged by either enablement or sales leaders.
(04:16):
So if I don't earn their respect through that first 30 minutes, then I probably am not getting a follow-up as well.
Alex Kabat (04:21):
100%. It's funny, I've sold originally to sales leaders and enablement who would then bring the case to budget holders like CRO. But now that I sell to the finance team, it's such a different motion where it totally doesn't feel like they're critiquing your discovery. It totally doesn't feel like they're thinking that hard about your prospecting. But I can think back to the pros and cons of sometimes you're losing a meeting before it even happens where you have some sales leaders like, "Really, you didn't even look at my LinkedIn where I live?" You're asking me that as your first question, and so I could totally relate to that being a little bit of extra thought.
Eric Salvo (04:57):
Can we dive into that for two seconds? Because I am so curious. As I've only sold to sales leaders, I am beyond curious what happens in other realms of tech and you're in that right now. So I know the grading part's one of them, but do you have another piece or two that you think is different selling to finance teams?
Alex Kabat (05:13):
The biggest change from selling to enablement, marketing and sales at Highspot now working directly with the finance team is one, the sales process is honestly a little bit more direct. Most of the time on your first or second call, you are talking to the decision maker and the person with the buying power. So I think that makes the sale a little bit more direct. And I think inherently it makes the tone of the call a little bit more direct where you want to create a relationship, but they also, in my experience, are typically more numbers focused. They're really interested on the exact value you can bring. So I think I found myself chatting up a little bit more at the beginning of my Highspot discovery calls than I am now. I think I still try with the same excitement, but I think sometimes they just want to get straight down to the business.
Josh Rasmussen (05:58):
Yeah, that happens. And I think obviously it varies on the persona and your ICP and stuff like that. I want to circle back to both you guys said nothing against marketing, don't like using slides. But I think also for early career reps and something we even did at Highspot, even when our BDRs and SERs are running meetings is using slides to help direct the conversation. New reps have a hard time with discovery. It's a very weird and unnatural skill unless you're someone like Alex who just will blow you up with a million questions if you give them the opportunity. The difference between good reps and great reps is the ability to ask good questions, not just the right question. So how do you think, Alex, how did you, in making that transition from BDR into AE, start to learn not asking only the question that sales manager says you need to go check these boxes like you talked about, what do you care about?
(06:52):
Is it important? Is it worth solving? Versus asking the questions that are actually moving the conversation forward.
Alex Kabat (06:58):
I think you need to know what moves a conversation forward before you can even think about asking the question. So my first thing when I started at Brex when I got promoted at Highspot was just watch some calls of people doing well because no matter you can be the greatest question asker of all time, but if you don't understand the sales process, if you don't understand why people buy the software, it doesn't really matter. And so I think that's always where I go is how many Gong calls can I watch? And now I feel like most orgs have some sort of call recording, and so it's pretty easy to get access to what good reps are doing. I think your point about slides is really a good one where it can totally be helpful to set a direction. I think a lot of people will do the same three slides for every prospect.
(07:47):
And I think having the slides as a tool to help direct the conversation, whether it be, hey, these are the typical pains we solve for, hey, these are the typical challenges we see, can really be a great prompter to assist with that.
Eric Salvo (08:01):
I feel pretty similarly out there. I feel like one of the things that really changed my abilities is using the LLMs as well. We obviously have our own tool here internally that we leverage, but just like you mentioned, Alex, watching great reps, what they do, that's the fastest way to get better at your job. One of the things I leverage a lot as an SDR. And then also what else is out there for content that's watching podcasts, reading books. It might be making sure that on your IG Reels, that's all you're going to be watching now is sales content, which is probably not how a lot of people want to spend their day, but it's one way to help really find little tidbits of how you actually move conversations forward. And one thing I've actually seen here too, that's on my side at least. Josh, I know you're taking first calls, you've been taking first calls for a little bit.
(08:43):
What's your two cents there?
Josh Rasmussen (08:45):
I can't vouch despite his bookshelf being empty. Alex does read books. So far -
Alex Kabat (08:49):
I'm moving. I'm moving.
Josh Rasmussen (08:51):
He's moving. So far today, he's the only rep that's gifted me a sales book that I still have not read, so maybe I'm behind on it. But at least for discovery and I think early career sales reps, I think it is a skill, first of all. Very rare people can just jump into the role and understand how to ask questions correctly. So if it is Gong or whatever call recording software you're using, you have to be willing to learn and understand what questions are people asking. Not only what are they asking, but why are they asking it? I think that's a helpful reasoning too is great, Alex asked this question, but what was he really trying to get out of it? If you're not meeting also, I think we've talked about this in a previous call, Eric, where if you're not taking the time to go meet with top performers and ask them questions, you're probably going to fall behind as well.
(09:40):
But it really just comes down to understanding what you want to ask and what you're trying to understand and then asking the questions even if it's unnatural feeling, because again, it can be awkward and weird if you're not naturally curious. I think that's my two cents, but yeah, Alex, what you got?
Alex Kabat (09:56):
I was going to piggyback off that. I feel like you have, at any time you get promoted or you're newer in career, you have such a nice three or four month window to just learn with very little judgment. And so I think something I've found a lot of success in every time I've started a new role is being able to ask those top performance questions like, "Hey, can you tell me about a deal you closed? Why did they buy?" And I've been very fortunate, but a lot of the sellers that I've talked to are very open about what's working and why they're having success. And so I think the most important thing that I want to emphasize that you're saying, Josh, is it's so crucial to understand why the customer would move forward with this. And a lot of these companies have a case study or have other sellers who have closed a deal.
(10:40):
And so there is often times where you can just hear from another seller, this is why the customer wants it and this is the kinds of things I'm thinking about. And then the questions come more naturally because if you know they're moving because of X, you can see, okay, I can ask some questions to understand what that looks like for them today.
Eric Salvo (10:56):
One of the things I'm really curious about, Alex, is you've worked at two pretty large orgs, Highspot and Brex now. We talked about what good discovery looks like, but I want to talk about what bad disco looks like too. So I know obviously you're having chats with top performers. Do you ever venture into watching what a bad performer call looks like just to be like, "That is exactly what I don't want to do," or what's the difference between that and those two from what you've seen?
Alex Kabat (11:18):
I've been very fortunate that I've gotten to work with a lot of new reps as well. And so I think everyone has calls that are not their best work and I'm fully in that boat. I think the big red flags that I see are when people are super distracted looking on the call. So you could have the best intentions, but if you have a slide, you're presenting a slide, you're taking notes over here, and you have something going on on your keyboard and I'm talking to you guys and looking in every different direction, it's so distracting as a prospect who's taking their time to learn something. So I think the easiest thing to fix and the worst thing that gives me the sales ick is just when people are truly not giving their prospects attention. Other than that, I think it's just really reading every word on a slide or probably reading every word on a slide or just asking questions just to ask questions.
(12:12):
I think that can really derail the flow. So kind of three separate things there, but those are kind of my first thoughts.
Josh Rasmussen (12:19):
Would you say anything differently, Eric?
Eric Salvo (12:21):
I agree on all those, honestly. I think one of the things a lot of new reps do, and even myself when I first got promoted was just speaking too fast. And then the second one of that is more so just not being able to earn the respect of asking a question. Asking a question that might be a difficult one that you're scared to ask and then not being able to be comfortable and sitting in silence. That's something I've definitely learned a lot in the past, call it six to seven months now. Ask the hard question and really just sit there, let it sink in and wait till it force that person to actually answer. That's one thing I feel like a lot of new, inexperienced or even bad reps will say because a rep that isn't as strong will just jump in and immediate start speaking again when it's like, no, no, no, hold on, that's actually a great question.
(13:00):
Let's hold on and make that person answer. So that's probably the only other thing I'd add in there, but couldn't agree more on a lot of that points.
Josh Rasmussen (13:06):
Yeah. And I guess you kind of touched on this a little bit, but I think one thing that happens to new reps is, and it probably happens to SDRs and BDRs as well, is you get an answer that's like, "This is fantastic. I'm super excited about it." And then you skip a bunch of steps and make the assumption that buyer is ready to buy. And so can you talk a little bit about how do you slow down when it feels like a conversation has progressed really well or gone the way that you would expected it to? And make sure to circle back to make sure you're checking all of the boxes and asking some of those questions that maybe you didn't ask because prospect was like, "Hey, I'm super pumped and excited about this. We don't even need to. We're going to buy." How do you make sure to take the steps to slow down and follow process as you should?
Alex Kabat (13:52):
My first AE manager, she would always remind me that the quicker a deal comes in, often the quicker it is it will leave. And so she just would say that as a reminder that sometimes you get a discovery call and the prospect will check every single box and you're like, "Oh my gosh, skip a demo. Let's get pricing in front of them." And you just are so excited about it. And it's always such a good reminder where sometimes you won't even ever know why, and then they just will not show up or they'll ghost. I think for me, it's always important to remember you don't have a deal until they have actual pain and they have a reason why. And so regardless of every customer's going to have a different timeline. Some deals will take six months, a year, some deals will take two weeks.
(14:37):
There will always be that flexibility. I don't think I've ever closed a deal where there hasn't been a really strong case for why they actually need this and why it is impacting them and their team. So I think that's the hardest thing is a lot of times people are like, "Oh my gosh, I want this." And it's so easy to say, "Well, great, you can have it." And I think it's important in that moment to be like, "Oh, why do you want this? What is the reason for this?" And really taking a second to pause in that moment is just a skill you learn over time. So I don't have a magic bullet for it, but it's just a reminder that sometimes I've had discovery calls where you think that you're about to close the biggest deal that spawned out of nowhere and then they completely disappear.
(15:19):
And so it's like if they don't have a rock solid why, it becomes very challenging and you don't have a lot to leverage later on. If they ghost you, you can't be like, "Hey, remember you wanted this because?" You're just like, "Where did you go with all this money you wanted to spend?" So those are my first thoughts.
Eric Salvo (15:36):
Yeah, costing me commission, right? And the happy years is part of that, where a new rep, you can't be getting too high or too low. That's part of it. And the other part is what you mentioned there without saying it is testing your buyer, really pushing it back on them why, and asking that a million times ever. So yeah, completely agree there. Josh, I think we want to spend probably a couple more minutes here, but the biggest thing I probably want to go through is what does a discovery call look like from your eyes, Alex, from zero to 30 minutes if you did timestamps? And I don't want to go minute 25 or this, minute 26 for this, but if you had to break it out from a five to 10 minute increases, what would that look like for you?
Alex Kabat (16:14):
I think it would be two to three minutes of chat, getting acclimated.
Eric Salvo (16:18):
Rapport, yep.
Alex Kabat (16:19):
Yeah, rapport building. I think it would be maybe a minute of me giving some context like, "Hey, this is why I wanted to reach out. This is a little bit about Brex, but not more than 40 seconds." And then I try and pass it to the customer as early as possible. "Hey, curious to understand at Brex now, we're a lot about cards and expense management, so I always look to understand what their setup looks like today, and then I start asking questions about it. So I would say two, three minutes at the beginning for rapport, maybe then 15 minutes of just understanding what their actual current state is like and digging into what's working and what's not. And then I'd probably say five to 10 minutes about their future state. What do you want it to look like? What are you looking for? And then probably five minutes of questions, I'll just call them evaluation checklist questions, trying to understand do they have a timeline in place?
(17:15):
Are they trying to understand are they the buyer? Are their team needing to be involved? I think my best discovery calls leave the customer very excited for the demo, but they don't talk a lot about product. So that's been the same for Highspot as it is for Brex, where I really think in my 30 minutes, I think the calls that I'm the most excited about don't talk heavily about our product at all, but I have a really clear articulation of what they're doing today, why they don't like it, and where they'd like to be. And then I can sprinkle in those evaluation salesy administrative questions throughout. But the real meat of it to me is just understanding what are you doing and why does it not sustainable? And if it is sustainable, then it's like, great, we don't need to do anything. And then I try and save five minutes at the end to talk about next steps, talk about the demo.
(18:07):
I would say that's kind of general. Is that kind of in line with you, Eric?
Eric Salvo (18:10):
I'd say it's pretty close. I'd say the only thing that's maybe a little different for us right now is what we're selling is just a new kind of product in the market where folks have never really experienced something like this before. So where I'm pitching a sales leaders and talking about live call assistance, I often end up showing a demo for four to five minutes. They see it and they're like, "That's sick, let's go chat some more." And then we go and that's more so the launchpad to us moving forward. But I agree, I'm spending at least 20 minutes more so just having a conversation. Is it actually worth me to even show you this? And if we feel like there's enough pain there, I'll get to it, I'll show it and we're able to move forward. But yeah, I completely agree on a lot of what you said there.
(18:50):
It should be a pretty natural going conversation before moving things forward and really understand is there a why? And if there isn't a why, then that's fine. We can go separate ways. There's no real problem there. And we've had a number of those conversations too where folks are like, no, my reps are pretty good. I don't see this as an actual need on calls, which I don't know if it really is true considering the average quota attainment out there, but yeah, touche.
Josh Rasmussen (19:15):
Yeah, I think both you guys touched on it though of the goal, regardless of what the goal is, but ideally the prospect is leaving that first call excited for the next one. For us, it's like they look at the product and think this is cool. Alex, it's like you're asking the right questions to make them feel enabled to solve their problems. I think that's the biggest struggle a lot of early reps have is they do follow the sales manager and enablement gave me this process in this playbook. I asked these specific questions and everything is very almost like cookie cutter. It doesn't flow with what the buyer's actually talking about. So I'm curious, obviously at Highspot it's very different. You're selling to multiple different personas, and then now at Brex, you're selling more into finance teams. How do you adapt to different conversations? If people try to steer a conversation a different way, how do you go about regaining control of the conversation and steering it away to make sure that person is driving in the right direction and you are helping them get to, you have X problem and here's how we're going about solving it?
Alex Kabat (20:15):
Our Brex sales process is a little bit faster than it was at Highspot. So at Highspot, I think deals could go in even more different directions, but I think it really starts with having a good champion that you can have a relationship with and share your honest thoughts with. It's a good reminder. I've sold Brex a bunch of times and most people buying Brex have only bought it maybe once. And so same with Highspot. I had sold Highspot a lot and it's not likely you're evaluating enablement solutions a ton of times in your career. And so it really is important remembering that you are, as the seller, the expert on the product, but also on your process. And so I think as I've gotten a little bit more comfortable in my roles, it's a lot easier to be able to say, "Hey, this is actually what we see.
(21:05):
This is why we do it in this way." And when you have prospects who are going a little bit more rogue, it's okay to push back on them a little bit and say, "Hey, I'm happy to do that. Can you tell me a little bit more why? Oh, actually this is what we'd recommend for solving that." And so I think being able to have a relationship with your prospect where you can say no and you can say, "Hey, before we do a demo, I need to ask you some questions." And this is something we talked about at Highspot a lot, but you'd get on a call and they'd be like, "What do you do?" And it's like, "Well, hold on, before we even. You don't even know my name yet." So being able to have some confidence in being able to say, "This is what we do.
(21:42):
I'd love to understand what you guys are doing so I can see if it's even relevant and have a little bit of back and forth.
Eric Salvo (21:47):
I think one of the things I'm most curious on, Alex, is you've been at two good companies now. Is there a certain methodology you've run at both or a methodology you lean towards? And how stringent are you on that in your current day-to-day process?
Alex Kabat (22:01):
We used Why Change at Highspot. I've used MEDDIC at both, and I think methodologies are really great frameworks. If you're able to fill out all of the boxes, you have the information that you need. I think the problem with a methodology is it just lacks a little bit of nuance that comes in a sales process. So I think I use MEDDIC as very much a guide where it's like, okay, if I'm about to do a demo and I don't understand any of the metrics they care about, I don't know who the champion is, I don't know any of the pain, these are some huge red flags that need to be identified. So I think that is very good, but I think it's pretty hard to win a deal if you just have the boxes checked on a MEDDIC thing. I think why change? I've read a little bit about Challenger as well.
(22:50):
Those are really great methodologies when it comes to just thinking about how you structure your sales process, but they all kind of say a very similar thing, which is you have to understand what the customer wants and why they want it. Challenger pushes back a little bit more. Why Change talks a little bit more about urgency, but I think at the core, they're both just trying to help give frameworks so that you can dig deep into pain and drive some sort of action on the customer end.
Eric Salvo (23:20):
It's a backbone more than anything else. It's not there to be like, I'm not sitting there staring at my MEDDIC checklist and looking over to see am I doing this right? Am I not doing this right? Like you said, it's got to be more nuanced any particular conversation or with a prospect, whoever it might be. So completely agree on that front there. But yeah, we run MEDDIC here, but I'm not sitting here the whole time. I've had deals before where I can check every box and I'm like, we still don't have a deal. It still doesn't matter. Even if I know all the information, if there is no real why at the end of it, yeah, you're not going to get a real deal out of it. So agreed on that side there too. Josh, any two cents on that too?
Josh Rasmussen (23:57):
I don't think so. I think the biggest piece is to what Alex mentioned, it's a framework. It shouldn't be a requirement of what you're trying to accomplish throughout a sales cycle. Again, it's there to be a guide, and I think it's great for, again, early career reps, but if you are a sales leader who's pressing on your enterprise rep for not following a sales methodology, that's a little bit weird. Ideally, they've learned those skills and what they need to accomplish throughout a deal. I think for new reps, understand MEDDIC and Spin and BANT and all those other things that are out there to help you move deals along. But again, it's there as a framework, not a requirement. So as you get more tenured and experienced, yes, helpful to have that stuff. And if your sales leader's evaluating your forecast and your pipeline and you can coherently answer those things, I think that's important.
(24:45):
But again, there's tens, if not hundreds of sales methodologies probably. So is there a right or wrong one? Who knows? But again, it is important to follow a framework and have something that's guiding you throughout the process is, I think, really critical.
Alex Kabat (25:00):
And just a piece that I would share is figure out how much your manager cares about it too, because my manager right now, he's awesome, and he also reports to his team based on our MEDDIC criteria. And so I know it's important for his forecasting for me to have MEDDIC filled out well. And so I think him and I both know it's a helpful framework, but I also know it's important for the way that his team rolls up. And so that's a conversation that we've had and we've agreed on, which was different than the importance of MEDDIC at my previous role. So I think for those of you who are out there and newer in your role, it's kind of awkward, but just talk to your. They care about you succeeding. So talk to them about how much they care about MEDDIC, how they want you to use it, because I know some sales teams will want you to use it more and use some of the more direct language, and that's okay too.
(25:53):
I think it's good to try and be aligned with your manager. That's been a big help for me in my time so far.
Josh Rasmussen (26:00):
Internal discovery is just as important as external with customers. So whether it's. Great point on asking your manager, but I think you should be having discovery with anybody and everybody that you can't. We talked about top performers, if it's bottom performers, it's hopefully your BDR that you're aligned to and making sure you're asking them the right questions. But I think you can save your a lot of time in every aspect of a sales career if you can get. Your sole responsibility is to ask the right questions at the right time. All right, moving on to our listener's favorite segment of the week, close stall, kill. We're going to use Alex today. Alex, we got three different situations for you. I want to hear which one you're closing on, what you're stalling, and what you're killing. Ready to go?
Alex Kabat (26:43):
I'm ready.
Josh Rasmussen (26:44):
All right. So the first thing we have, sending a detailed agenda to the prospect before the discovery call so they know exactly what to expect. Asking what would make this a successful call for you in the first two minutes? And then lastly, taking notes visibly out loud, narrating what you are writing down so the prospect knows that you hear them. Close stall kill, what do we got?
Alex Kabat (27:07):
I do want to say I think you can pull all of these off in a successful way. I don't think any of these are going to just destroy you. This might be a hot take. I'm going to kill what would make this a successful call for you in the first two minutes. I think for my typical style, it's a little bit on the nose, and I think in the first two minutes, it's typically sometimes before the prospect's even really adjusted to understand what's going on. And so maybe I'm a little bit more of a slow burn, but I think a lot of the times within the first two minutes, they don't even really know what we do or what kind of pain we would be addressing for them. So I'm going to kill that. The close, I think, is a detailed agenda. I think on every call, you just need to be able to add context for them.
(27:55):
A lot of times these prospects are coming out of back to back to backs. They have no idea what a Brex intro is, and so it's really helpful to just give them a little bit of context on what to expect and prime them going in. And then stall. Now, this is a hot take. I could get that, is taking notes visibly out loud, narrating what you're writing down so the prospect knows you heard them. But I'm kind of taking this as a strong engagement with the customer and sort of repeating back some of the things they're saying. I'm big on, if you guys have read Chris Voss's book, a little bit of mirroring. For a while, I was taking notes on my iPad with the little pen, so I would very often say, "Oh, it takes a long time to reconcile your receipts." And it's like I'm writing it down, I'm questioning them, and I'm asking it back as it's almost a faux question.
(28:42):
I'm not taking it as literally reading my notes out loud as I'm saying them. So I don't know if that is an okay way to interpret it, but I would say I'm big on letting them know that I'm hearing them and making sure that I have a really clear note so that I can say as we get to an end of a chunk of discovery, "Hey, you mentioned two minutes ago you're having a ton of pain with this. What have you guys done to solve it? Or why is it impacting the business?" And so it helps me structure my discovery calls, but for those of you at home, don't just read your notes as to write.
Eric Salvo (29:15):
I though that was when you started there, when you started with asking what makes a successful call for you the first two minutes as your kill, I was like, "Oh boy, here we go." I had a feeling that's where you were going to go in terms of the taking notes out loud and the mirroring concept. I'd say repeating the question back to the prospect is a way of hearing them so I can fully hear what you're saying there. At first, I read this, Josh, and I was like, "This may have worked 30 years ago, but Alex, I think in the 2026 version of asking the question, mirror, make sure you actually heard what they said," and basically asking it over again. Yeah, I see exactly why you went in that direction, but I probably have to agree when you spin it like that, I hear you.
(29:51):
And personally, I agree. I hate what would make this a successful call for you in the first two minutes. Maybe if it's an inbound demo request, sure. But even then, I don't think I've ever asked that question before and it always feels like I'm just going to get some ChatGPT-esque answer and it's not going to be very good. So yeah, agreed. Josh, what's your take?
Josh Rasmussen (30:11):
Yeah, I was a little concerned also because I think when we asked Alex about what makes a bad discovery call, he was saying being distracted and looking all over the place. And then with your explanation, it made sense. I was thinking you were going to stall on the what makes this successful, but I think to Eric's point, when do you ask that? I also think it's possibly a rude question to ask.
Eric Salvo (30:30):
Yeah, agreed.
Josh Rasmussen (30:32):
If it's not an inbound call, it's something that you set outbound yourself or your BDR did it. To ask that is like, what would make this successful to you seems weird and disrespectful, especially if somebody just booked a meeting. So I think that probably is the correct answer and ideally you are guiding them to what success looks like for you and not the inverse in their world.
Alex Kabat (30:55):
And I think it's also just kind of awkward. I try and treat my discovery calls as conversationally as possible. And so I just think having it be what would make this a successful call for you is just not in the language that would come naturally to me. I think it's really fair game to ask what they're looking for. I think I would probably ask it like I was talking to one of you guys. So yes, thank you for bearing with me as I went on a bit of a roundabout way to get there, but those are my -
Josh Rasmussen (31:26):
You got there. I think you nailed it on the head. Yeah, first closed all kill with the guest. That was quite fun, but we get to move on to our second segment flag on the play. Eric.
Eric Salvo (31:35):
Yeah, second favorite segment of the week. Everyone loves it. Flag on the play. Alex, for context, we've been doing this for eight episodes now, somewhere in that range, and I think we've only had one first down. Essentially, I'm going to mention a real sales piece of content. We're going to do a snap judgment first down if you think it's a good content, something you'd recommend to other people, and then a flag will play if you think it's something we wouldn't want to repeat. So a sales trainer posted a discovery is simple, just ask BANT, budget, authority, need, timeline. If they check all four boxes, move to demo. If they don't, move on. Snap judgment, what are you saying?
Alex Kabat (32:11):
It's a pretty immediate flag. It's like the legal formation offside for technical. For me, the worst discovery questions, not the worst, sometimes you have to ask them, but the discovery questions that kind of put you in a box are ones that have yes or no answers. And the BANT questions are kind of all one word answers or yes or no answers. And so I do think you need those to have a successful deal with structure, but I think those need to be sprinkled in with what the actual pain is and the understanding of what they're trying to do and what their business needs. And I think it's a lot more nuanced than you could get with just BANT. And so I would throw a flag pretty quick.
Eric Salvo (32:50):
Yeah, agreed. I think it's something we didn't talk about today, but we probably could have is avoiding yes or no questions as often as possible on a discovery call, which like you said, BANT definitely reflects someone that would do something like that.
Alex Kabat (33:02):
In the spirit of that, my tip of the day is you can sometimes a really great strategy for that is if you have a prompting you want to do, it's really easy to say, "Hey, in a lot of my other conversations, I see customers dealing with this. How does this compare to your experience? Or is this in the world that you're experiencing?" And it's kind of yes or no-y, but it oftentimes lets them tell a story and feel validated that there's other customers dealing with it. And I think that's such a better way to position some of those questions like, "Hey, a lot of the customers I'm talking to right now are trying to get something in place super fast. Are you guys working against a strict timeline like that or is that not the case?" And it gives them a really great frame where you're getting a timeline question, but it's not like when do you want to have this done by?
(33:46):
And it's super awkward and abrasive.
Josh Rasmussen (33:48):
It's a good though. One, you've talked about framing the question, is it a really easy way to get around some of those yes or no questions, but how do you avoid asking those questions in a discovery call? To your point, there are some questions that do make sense to ask the yes or no, but how do you get it to where it doesn't feel uncomfortable asking some of those questions where the answer might be just yes or no?
Alex Kabat (34:11):
Yeah, great question. So I think if we use the BANT framework as an example, asking about budget, I think it can sometimes feel awkward. And so I think a lot of times I try and understand if they already have something in place that they're using today. If they're using a competitor, it's a really soft ask to be like, "Oh, so it's safe to assume that there's kind of already space in the budget for something that would fill this need." If they're not using a competitor, I think it's fair to say, "Hey, you're not using a competitor. Is there something in the budget that's been freed up for this or would we need to work together to build a business case?" And so it can be very collaborative, I think, in that. I think authority can be an awkward one where you're like, "Hey, are you the important person or do I need to be speaking to someone else?" And I think it's really easy to get around that, just asking for who else needs to be involved like, "Hey, we've talked about this for Brex, we also help accounting teams.
(35:03):
We also help the other segments of a finance team. Are there any of those people you want involved or is it just you on this?" And a lot of times that opens the door very softly for them to be like, "Oh, I'll actually need my director or the CFO to come in over this." And then once you have that door open, it's super chill to bring it up later and be like, "Hey, you mentioned getting the CFO involved. Do you want to bring him onto this demo or should we loop him in for the proposal call or whatever?" So I think just adding a little bit of context, even as simple as that, can make it feel a little bit softer than just like, "Hey, are you important enough to buy this or do I need to talk to someone else?"
Josh Rasmussen (35:39):
That's a crazy question.
Alex Kabat (35:40):
But that's how it can feel sometimes trying to understand how do we even get authority? I
Eric Salvo (35:45):
Don't want to detour too much here, but I agree. That something I do a lot of making sure they're. I come in with a preconceived notion of who are all the players in the space when I show up and rock with that research. A, they're super impressed, B, they get it, and C, they know that you're actually understanding the actual outline of your org so that when you get to that next call, you get to that demo call, you're not just having a demo call with the same person, which is probably a failure in sales. It's like you're involving who else needs to be involved if you aren't already speaking with the EB or champion in some cases. So yeah, couldn't agree more on that side. All
Josh Rasmussen (36:17):
Right, that's the episode. Replay time. Alex, leave the listeners with one key takeaway or one tip that they can take into their next discovery call.
Alex Kabat (36:26):
I would say my one tip is to just think about how close you can get your question to being why. So if they're telling you something's not working, can you ask why? Can you ask how simple can you make these questions to leave the prospect or the customer in a space where they can actually have some room to talk about what's going on? A lot of times you'll go into a call, your hypothesis is that they'll have pain on X, they actually have pain on Y, and the only way you're going to get there is from them opening up to share. So I think really being able to be very comfortable asking why and then just sitting and listening to it, I think can feel like the most intimidating thing at first. But I think for any rep who has grown in their career, it's a really important skill to be able to develop.
(37:14):
So be awkward a little bit at first, push through it, and then it feels super, super natural and super chill. So that's what I would say. Ask why, because you can't close a deal without it.
Josh Rasmussen (37:25):
Ask why. Critical question. Alex, thanks for joining us. Thanks for being here. If the people happen to watch this episode and they want to find more from you, where can they find you? Where can they contact you? You don't have to share all your address or anything like that, but you on LinkedIn?
Alex Kabat (37:39):
Yeah, LinkedIn, Alex Kabat. I'm always happy to connect and chit-chat, so that's where you'd find me. Or New York. I'll be roaming the streets there as soon as next week. So if you're there, let me know.
Eric Salvo (37:52):
Awesome. Alex, thanks so much for joining us, being our first guest. We're really excited to get this episode out and let people hear all the good words spewed today. Next week we're going to be live at HubSpot Unbound. Josh and the crew are coming to Boston, so we'll be doing some man on the street interviews, talking all things in B2B sales in 2026. And yeah, I can't wait for that, man. I can't wait. It's going to be a good
Josh Rasmussen (38:13):
Time. It should be fun, but that's a wrap for this week. You just got a little bit better at your job. Congratulations.
Eric Salvo (38:19):
Follow the show, share it with someone on your team who needs it and come back in two weeks because we're not done with you just yet.
Josh Rasmussen (38:25):
This is Game Shape brought to you by Hero. Now go close something.