Paul M. Caffrey (00:01.102)
So I'm delighted to be joined by Mor Asselin, founder of DemoToClose.com and FDTC University. Mor helps startups go from 100K to 15 million ARR by improving sales processes, playbooks, and importantly, people. So Mor, you've been featured in Techstars, Sales Hacker, Sell Better with John Barrows, 30 Minutes of Presidents Club. I could keep going, I won't. I am just paints a picture that you're quite experienced.
On top of that, three times VP of sales. You've also tripled ARR in 12 months for two startups. And you've been able to reduce sales cycles from 90 days to 30 days for a number of companies in less than 12 months. Safe to say, this is gonna be a great episode for account executives and also for founders. More, welcome to the Work Before the Work podcast.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (00:53.885)
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:55.906)
Thanks so much for being here. So one question that I thought probably makes sense to jump straight into, because it was the thing that stood out most when I was doing the research for this episode, is you're able to help people achieve a 50% close rate from the demo. I know that's something that probably everybody listening would love to reach. Probably difficult to answer, but how do you achieve a 50% close rate from demo?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (01:23.089)
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. But there's a few concepts I can share out loud. But I'll tell you what a bad demo looks like and then what a good demo looks like. So most bad demos are, I mean, I'll ask you, what was the last movie you went to, you watched either in theaters, Amazon Prime, Netflix, whatever, the last new movie you've watched?
Paul M. Caffrey (01:46.37)
The last new movie that I watched. I forget the name of it. Bad sign. Julia Roberts was in it. It was only released this weekend.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (01:54.917)
Oh, yeah. So let me ask you a question. Did you watch the trailer before the movie, or did you just go straight to the movie?
Paul M. Caffrey (02:03.118)
I looked at the picture and thought that looks interesting and I jumped straight in.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (02:10.677)
OK, so you've done it sight unseen. Some a lot of folks like to watch trailers before paying for a movie, especially when going to theaters. And so the reason why I bring that up is the way demos should be, they should be like movie trailers. So you're not really giving them the whole thing. You're giving them enough for them to say, wow, that's interesting. I'm ready to move forward. Whatever move forward actually means, whether it's to book another call, to actually close if you're more SMB. And
Paul M. Caffrey (02:17.74)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (02:39.589)
Bad demos spend more time treating it like a movie, so they actually go through like a product tour. And they get into the weeds, and they show them everything. And so one of the ways you have to improve the demo win rates is to completely change the entire demo talk track and make it really custom versus something that could be copied and pasted for every lead that comes through.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:46.892)
Yeah.
Paul M. Caffrey (03:02.43)
Yeah, that makes sense. And I bet people listening are thinking, I've spent the last six or 12 months mastering my demo track and I can't just repeat that every time. Oh God. So what makes a great shorter demo or a great custom demo or a movie trailer style demo?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (03:10.15)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (03:20.537)
Yeah, the answer would be dependent on what the prospect's main pain points are and or goals. And so the entire demo should really be based off of how to solve their biggest problems in the shortest period of time. So let's say, for example, your software has over 100 features, let's say 50 features, and then you know you have sub features on top of that. And the prospect has only one or two main big pain points.
And if you were to look at all of the features that your software has, really only three of them solve that pain point. The idea is your demo should really be comprised of those three features. And if you cover that on the demo and you still have time to show them anything else that could be helpful but is not necessarily vital to solve that problem, then you can ask permission to say, hey, can I show you some other stuff that I think would be very helpful. But otherwise, your demo is really focused on
solving those core pain points or core goals, which leads you to, well, if I'm only showing less features than the entire demo, I don't really need an hour. Maybe I really between, again, if you're doing discovery and demo combined, maybe you just need 30 to 40 minutes. Maybe if you do a discovery and then a demo as a separate call, maybe the demo could only be 20 minutes. Every demo will be different depending on the problems that the prospect has. That's the idea.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:40.81)
Yeah. Make total sense. And look, we all know it's harder to do a shorter demo, right, because if you can only show them three things, they want to be the right three things. And we've all seen reps and probably done it ourselves where you've delivered a great demo and they're really happy, but then you've kept going and you've kept going and you've showed more and more. You think you're adding value?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (05:00.628)
Pfft Hmph
Paul M. Caffrey (05:06.15)
Really, you're just making the other person think, this is complicated, this is too much, this is actually too big for me, I'm overpaying, I don't need all of that sort of stuff. There's a whole lot of things there that can happen, which will really frustrate you because you think great demo. What's your thoughts on NEs when they get challenged to do a demo on first call? You've all been there, you come on, you need a little bit of chat, it's either qualification or discovery in it. No, I just wanna see a demo.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (05:11.802)
Right.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (05:34.802)
Well, I'm going to ask you, is the sales cycle more S&P where a demo is usually done on the first call, like a disco demo, or are we talking about more like mid-market enterprise potentially?
Paul M. Caffrey (05:46.062)
For talking more mid-market enterprise where maybe the ticket item could be a 25k, 50k AROR solution, but the marketing collateral makes you think you're going to get a demo straight away?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (06:00.089)
Yeah, it's true. It says schedule a demo and then you get a demo and then to discovery call. I'm a believer in don't hold the demo or the pricing hostage to the prospect, if that's what their expectation is. That being said, I think it's very important for the salesperson to set a goal, less of an agenda. Agenda is important, but a goal is more important, like straight at the gate when the call starts. That way, it almost gives you permission to ask certain questions. And that could be like, Hey, Paul, glad we're able to connect today.
Let's assume we built a rapport. So glad we're able to connect today. The goal of today is to learn a little bit more about your challenges and see if we can help solve it. If we can't, I'll be the first to tell you and recommend you to other solutions. If we can, then great. What we'll do is we'll go through a custom demo that will show you how to solve your biggest problems in the shortest period of time. So I just have a few questions to ask if that's OK. I'm asking permission. They're not going to say, chances are they're not going to say no to it. I'm sure you're going to have some allies that are going to say, just show me the demo.
In that case, you have two choices. You can just show them the demo and then sprinkle in your discovery questions throughout, which is not a bad idea. Or option two is you can challenge them a little bit. You can agree, but challenge them a little bit and say, yeah, sure. Happy to. So I'm curious, if I show you the whole demo, we'll probably need to carve out a full hour for this, given that I'm going to be showing you everything. Would it be better if I just showed you certain features that are appropriate to like what you need that way it's not overkill? So you're giving them the option.
And that's typically not resisting your agreeing, but you're now giving them the option where the way you've structured your question benefits you to ask discovery questions.
Paul M. Caffrey (07:35.51)
Yeah, makes sense. And it's again, getting that dialogue going, which is so, so important. And I guess if we take things a step back, particularly in the world of founders, 2023 was tough, 2024 looks like it could go either way at this point, right? And what advice would you give for founders who are in the position of...
They've had a product they used to do the demo, they had the whole sales process. They've maybe now pivoted to a different part of their product and they want the transition from the founder being the main salesperson to having someone else sell it. What advice would you give a founder who is looking to help the first sales hire or first few sales hires actually demo their software?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (08:26.973)
I'm going to cough first. So that's going to be taken out. You think I'm a smoker, but I'm not. Ahem. That's OK. It's actually a fast day here. I'm Jewish, so there's a fast day today, so we can't even drink water. Yeah. All right. So I heard the question. So this will be my answer. I think founders should document what good looks like. So let's assume it's founder led sales for, let's call it, six to 12 months.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:32.154)
Do you want to go grab a bit of water or something? Because like...
Paul M. Caffrey (08:40.266)
Oh, you're fasting now? Very good.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (08:56.997)
gotten sales under their belt and they close and they have somewhat of a process, they should document it. It could be like a version one of a very skinny playbook and they should record. Documenting means documenting maybe what questions to ask, what features to show, the call recordings that they had, what good sounds like. Not all founders are really super sales oriented. A lot of them are more technical. So they don't really have the sales skills. Again, it's a version one.
of it, but document it. Because what happens a lot of times, if they haven't documented it, the first sales rep joins in, nothing officially documented, but they're now just watching the founder do some demos on the fly, and then maybe they're doing their own demos with the founder shadowing them, but there's no documentation. So I would say document anything that you've done that you've seen has moved the needle for a demo.
Paul M. Caffrey (09:52.226)
Great. Makes sense. And those keeping those documents central, making them easy to access always key. And there's going to be a level of humility because what's probably going to happen is the salesperson who comes in is probably going to start selling it better than you. And that's, that's an interesting thing to think about. Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (10:09.957)
They should, right? That's the whole point of hiring a good sales team. They should be better than you. I mean, founders should know their product best. I mean, in my opinion, a founder should really be the best sales person technically, you know, right? To their product, they should know how to sell it, but you gotta hire a professional. That's why you hire a CRO or VP of sales or CMO, whatever it is. They know, they've done this before. It's not their first rodeo.
Paul M. Caffrey (10:32.502)
Yeah, I mean, like founders, the good news for founders is right. You your conviction can mask a lot of a lack of sales skills. And it's also fun and cool to buy from a founder or to be contributing towards that journey, whereas I guess that first salesperson you'll be hit with is the product not finished yet. Who are your references? What other customers are using this? It becomes a very different conversation. So I guess a little bit of patience is also needed because your sales, your first sales
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (10:34.757)
Cough.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (10:44.57)
Cough cough.
Paul M. Caffrey (11:02.474)
there's going to be a higher, higher level, a higher standard, they'll be held to then a founder when it comes to actually completing the sales process or something else to also consider.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (11:11.694)
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned conviction, which is, I think is like the secret sauce to any great salesperson. We talk about like, some people talk about enthusiasm. People think enthusiasm means like, oh, you're enthusiastic, you're loud, you're loquacious. I don't think that's what enthusiasm means. I think enthusiasm means you have conviction behind what you're like, what you're saying and how you're saying it. And I think founders, when they're hiring for their sales reps, they should be looking
sure for like certain like general table stakes sales skills, but conviction, when the person speaks, do they sound interesting when they're talking even about anything? That's why I like asking questions to like applicants about what they do for fun. What they're passionate about. Because if they can explain to me what they're passionate about with conviction. Good. If they explained to me what they're passionate about, but it doesn't seem like they're passionate about it. Then.
what's going to happen when they sell my product that they're not going to be passionate about impossible. Like they're just not going to be passionate about my product more than their kids or more than their side hustle. It just won't happen. So that's something I would look for. And also for the founder, I mean, like if they know that the expectation is we don't have certain features, how long you've been around certain questions that can cause the prospect to shy away from doing business with you, they should have those objection rebuttals or
responses ready for the rep to prep them. I mean, that's what I do. When I joined one of the first startups as an AE, the founder was like, hey, we don't have a lot of things. These are our top competitors. You're gonna get these and these questions. So here's how to prep for them. And then I would recommend them doing mock demos with the reps way in advance. So they don't just jump on the call for the first time.
Paul M. Caffrey (12:57.195)
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely. It's some organisations call it a license to sell. There's lots of names out there. But yeah, having that out there because leads are valuable assets for companies. Right. At the end of the day, we don't want to be using what could turn into a piece of business as practice for somebody or reducing the likelihood of something being lost because of that. What are a couple of good questions that a founder could ask a salesperson to see if they're passionate about their hobbies, I guess, about what they're interested in?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (13:17.498)
Yeah.
Paul M. Caffrey (13:27.696)
questions do you recommend founders to travel into interviews?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (13:31.457)
If they're interviewing a salesperson that has a job already, then what they should be asking is essentially, what are you selling? What problems is it solving? And then what's your typical discovery look like? Like what questions are you asking? And the reason why I say that versus having the rep or the applicant do a mock demo or mock discovery call on your product is they're already selling a product they know how to sell.
Right? Like they already know that. And so you want to see like what good looks like and what's the closest to that then their existing role where they apparently are hitting quota consistently. So asking them what problem does your product solve? Who is it solving for? So who's the buyer persona? Um, what are your discovery questions? Let's sort of role play. You can role play that. I would tell them to role play that a little bit. Um, and it should feel comfortable and natural to the salesperson because they do that on a daily basis. As a side note, I did that.
So I do also consulting for startups. And so one company asked me to, they need help hiring reps. And so I said, okay, fine. So one of the things that I did was I said, I'll do the first initial like interview with the rep. And the reps resume showed that they hit quota in this company and blah, blah. I'm like, okay. And so I asked them the same question, like what problems does this product solve? And let's do a quick role play of like the discovery and all, you know, what questions you ask and all these things. And
the rep just like fumbled completely. And the rep happened to be actually a friend of mine who said, hey, I'd give him a chance to like apply and cause he had a resume and he not only had a resume but it was his experience showed that he was aligned to what we're looking for. And I'm like, listen, love you as a friend but I gotta give you feedback. You probably won't make it to the next round. It just wasn't good. Like I asked you about this question and you fumbled. And then he's like, you know what? I gotta open up with you. I actually don't work at this company anymore.
I got to figure out something up to make up because I don't work there anymore. It was a little weird scenario. Long story short, he like opened up and told me the truth. And so that's why I like asking those questions because if they are really there and they really are hitting quota and they really are good, it should come off very natural if they're not, then you'll see they'll stumble. So that's one question. Um, obviously what they do when they're not working, um, at least I like, uh, some founders don't like this, but I love when, uh,
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (15:53.197)
an employee or an applicant has a side hustle. I love it because they get a sense of what business is like. And you need discipline, you need ambition, you need enthusiasm, you need all that, all those things to run a business. And if they don't have a side hustle, I'm like, what do you do when you're not working or what do you do for, you know, on the weekends or after work? And they tell me, oh, I like to watch football the whole day. That's nothing wrong with that. But I, if I had a rep that said, or an applicant said, Oh, I listened to this podcast or I.
joined a marathon or a league, that's interesting to me. Because they call it competitive, they're ambitious. That's one question I ask. So you'll notice, these questions aren't necessarily like, tell me about your experience. It's more about what do you do when you're not working. Um.
And there is one question that I don't necessarily ask it. And I don't necessarily, I wouldn't say, Hey, you should ask this, but I've done it before and it's interesting the, sell me this pen scenario, where I like tell it, tell me this pen. And it's like a big, you know, like, Oh, you should never do that. I'll play the devil's advocate side of that. If you're asking, sell me this pen and you're expecting the sales rep to sell you the pen, then that's the problem of the entire question. But if you're asking the question to see how the rep responds in the sense of
Paul M. Caffrey (16:50.378)
Nah. Yep.
Paul M. Caffrey (16:55.895)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (17:09.401)
Are they asking the right discovery questions? Like, hey, Paul, are you in the market for a pen? Or how often do you, if they're leading, they're answering that question with discovery questions, that's what you should be looking for. So that's why I'm not super anti that question. That's one idea.
Paul M. Caffrey (17:26.718)
Yeah, that reminds me 15, 16 years ago, I moved to London on my first sales job with some micro systems, a company that's long since been acquired.
They brought us in a group interview. So there's maybe 15 other sales reps. They're everyone's super confident. I've left my science background. I'm going, okay, I'm gonna try it at sales. They put a lot of tech on the table. Like, okay, name out of a hat and somebody is gonna have to sell us something. And they're going, I've never sold before. Oh, wow, okay. I come out first and I'm like, great. And I actually, I looked at there was computers, all sorts of tech.
I just picked up the pen and went with that. I remember the logical film. Well, I understand that I can talk about this. The tech asked me two questions on that. No, I'll be gone. But it is amazing that sell me this pen. Do you know what it says? If somebody messes that question up, they haven't done the basics to research because it's nearly that first thing that comes up, that's it's a joke now, nearly in some ways. But if you can't do that piece.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (18:31.321)
It is a joke. I remember I posted it on LinkedIn once and people were ripping me apart. They're like, how can you say that if someone asked me that I'd walk out on the interview? I'm like, all right, then you're not a fit, right? Again, I don't ask it on interviews, but I consistently like when I've done interviews, but I have in the past and with that intention, it wasn't bad. Again, I wasn't looking for them to like convince me. Another question I would ask them is what skills are you are you working on?
Paul M. Caffrey (18:53.055)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (18:58.905)
like what sales skills are you particularly working on? Or like, where do you feel like there's a room for improvement? And they'll tell me whatever answer there is. And then I'll ask them why, why that. Or I'll ask them, like, what skills do you have? How are you working to improve that? And why did you pick that skill? So those three questions as follow ups.
Paul M. Caffrey (19:18.711)
Okay. Yeah. And I think there's a lot there to help, particularly help people get started. Right. And what is important is to have questions prepared in advance and to have some sort of score sheet rather than you talk to a salesperson in an interview, you know, everyone can talk, can all go, probably go really, really well, unless you're a little bit prepared, but maybe let's jump into the issues for a minute. So we've done the, we've done the interview. We've, we've got the role.
We're getting started. Maybe we've just finished our onboarding and that could vary depending on size of company. What do you recommend in any of those in the first say, three to six months to establish themselves? Is there anything that they should focus on? Any tactics they should try to deploy?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (20:05.137)
to get ramped up as quickly as possible. Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. And these are probably unconventional practices, but I've done them in every role when I was a VP of sales. If I were in AE and I was running a company full time, I'd probably spend, I'd want to spend a couple of weeks, not at full time, but a couple of weeks, answering support tickets. So shadowing someone from support, answering support tickets, I can learn.
a little bit about the product. That's really how you learn the product, right, on the support side. I'd probably want to spend a little bit of time on onboarding, just so I could figure out like what happens like on the onboarding side. It's also learning the product a little bit. I would study the buyer personas and the industry itself, less so of the product, although the product is important, but I'd study the buyer persona. Cause I want to understand the psychology of the buyer more so than the product itself. I'll get to the product, but I...
Once I understand the problem, like, oh, wow, that's a real big problem. How do we solve it? Oh, this is how we solve it. That's going to be a eureka moment for me. Um, so I would do that. I'd obviously listen to a bunch of call recordings. Um, I would want to get on, um, calls as quickly as possible, not necessarily to do the entire call, but maybe to just do the introduction of a call. Like, let's just say you're the prospect and there's another account executive that's like full time and I'm the new hired person. I'd say something like, Hey Paul, my name is more. I just joined XYZ company.
Paul M. Caffrey (21:01.742)
Of course.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (21:31.473)
I'll just want to introduce myself. John will be doing the demo, but I'm going to be here for any support, blah, blah. That's it. I just want to get my feet wet as quickly as possible. I do that. I do a bunch of mock demos on my own, just record myself doing demos and going through the actual demo, like through the mechanics of it. So turning on my Zoom, going through the demo, recording it. If I screw up, I screw up recording it, playing it back. And over time,
In a very short period of time, if you start doing the mechanics of the demo or the calls, the discovery, you get warmed up really, really fast versus someone that takes three weeks, waits three to four weeks until they do their first dry run. I'd rather not. I'd rather just do it as quickly as possible. Yeah, those would be some low-hanging fruit things that I would do.
Paul M. Caffrey (22:20.842)
really, really like that more. And for me, you've got to be constantly improving as a sales professional. You're obviously taking that to another level when you're starting in a new role. I'm guessing you treat that like prospecting as in this is, you schedule this in for an amount of time a week or by the day, starting off to make sure that you do it, or is there some other way that you try to check it off?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (22:49.405)
for on-boarding for prospecting.
Paul M. Caffrey (22:51.774)
Well, no, for prospecting, I'm guessing, is it given that that's scheduled in before onboarding and for learning? Do you recommend reps keep that in their calendar or, you know, what way?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (23:00.313)
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of hiring managers should have, I'm going to go with a very strong assumption here, that a lot of hiring managers have an onboarding schedule for the rep. So if they don't, then that's a question a rep should really ask before the interview, or during the interview. Let's just say I joined, what's onboarding? Is there a schedule? What does that include? Otherwise, yeah, I would.
joining a startup and they don't have anything and you're figuring it out on the fly, which is essentially what I went through when I was an employee at these startups, joined as the first sales hire or the first employee. And I create my own little onboarding plan, even though the CEO was involved, but it wasn't babysitting me. I figured it out on my own. Yeah, I definitely bake it into the calendar and stick to it as much as possible.
Paul M. Caffrey (23:51.166)
Okay, great. Great. And 2022, 2023, we saw a switch. There was always an expectation for account executives to do pipe gen. And that's something which is gradually increased. I think 2023 became the year when it's expected 100% across the board that you will do that before. It was maybe reserved for people to become top performers. What do you think Outbound looks like in 2024?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (24:21.881)
And yeah, in terms of will they need to, will AE still need to prospect? Yes. In terms of how are they going to prospect? I think that's going to dramatically change. Um, I feel like.
I don't know the exact term for this, but it's like retro. Some things that are out of style are coming back into style, like sunglasses, certain shirts, clothing, whatever it is. I think the same thing is happening in sales, where if you look back in all the way from the 20s to the early millennium, how are people prospecting that are Rolodex? They go to networking events, business cards, right? It was really old school. And then...
2006 and on came and no Rodex. It's like, we're going to email blast everybody. It's more spammy. I think we're, we're seeing that like retro happening again, where things are going to slow down from a prospecting. You, if you really want to stand out and get an appointment or gain interest, it's going to be through your network, through your Rodex, through relationships. Um, it's going to require a little bit more leverage from the branding side of the business. So for example, a sales rep should be posting content.
creating content, marketing should create more content that creates more demand and more awareness. That way, when you prospect, someone's already heard of you. It's a lot like if our, the salespeople at Salesforce, I've spoken to some of them, they said, everybody knows Salesforce. So when I reach out to somebody, they're like, yeah, I know you are. It's a lot easier for sale than being at a true startup. So I think that's going to change where reps are going, should create their own little
personal brand so they can generate demand or awareness. That way, when they do cold email the prospect, the prospect can say, oh, yeah, I'm familiar with who you are and what you do. I think that's going to change, which means scalability in terms of sending volume is going. It may still happen. I don't think it's going to be effective. That's how I prospect. I send one-to-one messaging all the time. I don't send hundreds of emails.
Paul M. Caffrey (26:18.654)
Yeah. Oh, what?
Paul M. Caffrey (26:27.835)
Yeah, I'm in agreement. I see that being the way more personalized messages leaning on your network a little bit more, shorter cadences I guess as well.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (26:38.397)
shorter cadences, more nurtured cadences, less pitchy, more multi-threading before you even reach out to somebody. So maybe reaching out to an employee of a company and getting some information from them, maybe reaching out to a mutual connection and seeing if they can make an introduction. All these things take time, right? Because then if you're not reaching directly to the prospect, you're reaching out to call it the sphere of influence. So a mutual connection, maybe a former boss, whatever it is, or an employee of the company.
Paul M. Caffrey (26:50.122)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (27:07.781)
You're waiting for them to respond. And so that takes time. And so instead of actually reaching out to the prospect in one week, it's going to take you maybe three to four weeks, depending on the response rate of the mutual connections with the employee, whatever it is. I think that's okay. I just think companies are set up. A lot of startups are set up for failure because the board is saying we need X more pipeline by this no matter what. And then the CEO say, all right, VP of sales, go get us more pipeline. VP of sales goes to the sales rep. We need more pipeline. And.
Everyone's after chasing a goal that is unrealistic. And then it folds, you know, it sort of implodes and then they fire the VC, they fire the VP and then they find another one and then they fire the reps and it's just a vicious cycle.
Paul M. Caffrey (27:51.498)
Yeah, I think it's something which I've heard Jeff Bezos of all people talking about it recently is you put the metric in with best intention because that's how you actually track it. But then something has changed, but nobody realizes there's been a change. So that nuance means you're now tracking the metric a little bit wrong. Let's face it. It's very rare for AEs to miss pipe generation targets. You know, it's we'll say no more. But if we think about where we're at, we're coming, you know, the start of the year, a lot of account executives are
have their ambitious plan, how they're going to exceed quota, have a quota attainment plan that they're probably working on at the moment. What tips or tactics would you give A's who are building their quota attainment plan for 2024?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (28:35.361)
RA is building another code out team? I thought it was the managers that are building it out. Are you talking about the actual approach that they're gonna take to build it out?
Paul M. Caffrey (28:40.792)
Well...
Paul M. Caffrey (28:44.318)
Talking about, I'll rephrase that. So let's say you're an account executive and you've been, you've been given your territory, whether it was some customers, whether it was prospects, you know, whatever the specific role is. And then it's on you to deliver that number out of that territory. Um, how should they organize it? How should they plan to work through it? How should they organize themselves for the year?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (29:05.377)
Yeah, so like a very tactical approach would be, let's assume that this is not your first roadie, meaning you've been in the company for some time. I would look at all of my deals one, I would look at data and make my next move. That's the most accurate approach you can take. So open up your pipeline, look at all of your clothes one for the year, then run a bunch of filters on that report saying, all right, what industry was, which industry was the,
which deals that are closed one came from what industry? So you'll see out of all of these deals, this one came from MarTech. I'm just giving you an example. All right, so now we see that the most common industry or the most, the highest recurring industry and all my closed deal ones is industry A. All right, great. Who were the buyers in that industry? Like who did I communicate with through that entire like cycle? Oh, the CMO, the VP, blah, blah. Log that down.
How did I originally reach out to them? Oh, I reached out to them through this channel and what was my tech. So just reverse engineer what already worked for you to close pipeline for that year and just repeat that. Now you can ask yourself like what's potentially going to change in 2024. If nothing, then just repeat what you did. If something's going to change, maybe you wanna spend more time asking for mutual connections to make an introduction versus going straight to the prospect. Then add that as an initial step into your cadence or your...
prospecting, but I mean, the best way is not to just not to recreate the wheel. Look what what's worked. That's what I did when I went full time on my own as a solopreneur two years ago. Um, I remember I had, I had like maybe one or one or two months to close three deals. Otherwise I'd have to either dip into my savings or get a job. I didn't want to do neither of them. And so I said, all right, well, I attempted to blast out emails. I did that. Didn't work.
I said, all right, that's not working. So I have now two more months, one more month. I looked at my experience. I said, well, I worked in legal tech. I worked in martech and I worked in cybersecurity. Between the legal tech and martech, I probably have a lot more experience. And specifically, I was a VP of sales at these early stage companies that either had one sales rep or didn't have a sales rep and it was founder led, one of those. So I said, all right, I got to find.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (31:32.269)
legal tech companies, startups, and martech startups that have a CEO, maybe one or two sales reps, but no VP of sales or sales manager. There's a big gap there. It's probably founder-led focused. And I found a handful, not even a lot, but it was really, really aligned to my ICP. I cold email, maybe five, two or three became clients of mine within one month. Right. So
You're not doing it that way means you're not going to have a huge pipeline, but your pipeline is going to be super, super accurate. Um, and so that's what I did. I just looked at what worked for me and repeated it.
Paul M. Caffrey (32:12.17)
Yeah. And it's big pipeline is one thing, but it's, you'll notice better sales professionals and better sales teams. You know, they'll need a lot less pipeline coverage because they'll have the high percentages of say 50% from your demo to close and so on and so forth. So yeah, I like that. Get focused and look at what's worked. But also, I guess what you're also saying is if it's not broken, maybe don't feel you need to change things. We don't always need to change.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (32:39.045)
Yeah, why not just stick with the same playbook in 2024, right? In fact, yeah.
Paul M. Caffrey (32:45.808)
Cool. I'm mindful that we're coming on time. I'd love to keep going, but I'm gonna shoot three or four rapid fire questions past you. Let's see how we get on. So what is your number one prospecting tip more?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (33:00.785)
build familiarity before you cold prospect or build familiarity in order to cold prospect. So what that means is it's a lot easier right now, if I cold email you, you're more likely to open it and reply than had I cold emailed you before you asked me to come on your podcast. Why? Because there's a level of familiarity. And so what can, technically, how does that work with account executives? Maybe start a podcast. It doesn't have to be a fancy podcast on a particular topic within your industry and then invite.
your buyer persona to those podcasts, build a relationship at first, or now you have familiarity, or you engage with their content for a few weeks before you send out a cold email, you're more likely to get a response versus just going straight for the jugular.
Paul M. Caffrey (33:43.542)
Cool, really like that. What's your number one sales tip?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (33:48.917)
Unselling. It's the concept of having the prospect in mind and not your product in mind. So I call it like, help me, don't sell me. And that idea is, instead of assuming that you're the right fit for the prospect, assume that you're not the right fit. And if you go in with that mindset, when you do your discovery calls, you may say something like, hey Paul, I'm not sure we're the best fit. I'm not sure I need to better find out. And when you do that, you don't come off as a sales rep, you're coming off as a consultant.
You're more of an advisory. Another example of that would be if you're doing discovery and the prospect is describing a particular problem that they're having. And it doesn't seem that bad. It seems like it's somewhat manageable. They've done it through Excel spreadsheets or whatever it is, and they're maintaining it on selling means. Hey, Paul, it seems like you're managing this pretty well. Why even then consider it something like this? Why not just stay with what you're currently using? Most sales are up doing like,
going to ask that question because they're scared that it's going to plant the seed in the prospect's mind. It's like, oh, maybe I should. That seed is, if it's there, it's already planted because when the deal progresses and it gets into a later stage where you're now showing price and contract, blah, the prospect is going to say, you know what? Why am I about to invest 20K, 30K when I have it here? It's working fine. That's what's going to happen later on. So I don't plant the seed. If anything, it's causing the prospect to think, well, I'm going to plant the seed.
It's not going to work for us because of this reason. And what that does, it gets the prospect to convince you of why they have urgency, why they have problems versus you doing all of that legwork.
Paul M. Caffrey (35:26.082)
Great, really, really like that. Two more questions to shoot past you. What's your number one tip for getting promoted?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (35:39.065)
will depend on which role obviously but uh...
Paul M. Caffrey (35:41.026)
So let's say you are an account executive looking to get your next account executive role, be it an SMB to mid market or something similar.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (35:52.845)
Yeah, I'd probably shadow and get befriend more of the mid-market reps and try to source more mid-market deals on your own, potentially. I mean, the thing is, as a sales manager, you want to see that your SMB rep or whatever rep is capable of handling a bigger deal. And so maybe have that conversation, like, what would it take for me to, you know, the easiest thing is go to your sales manager.
and ask them, what would it take for me to go from SMB to mid-market? What is the criteria? And then if they give you this criteria, then go after that criteria. I mean, that's easy. Instead of trying to guess it, just ask them.
Paul M. Caffrey (36:33.206)
Yeah, makes sense. Have a validate by somebody else before you go and, I don't know, spend X on that executive education when you actually needed something more practical, which, yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (36:41.881)
Or potentially find another company that you can jump to that they're hiring for mid-market role and roll your dice on that.
Paul M. Caffrey (36:48.938)
Yeah, absolutely. And final question. What sales book do you recommend people check out?
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (36:58.686)
It would depend on the stage that they're in. So if they're entry level or late stage or like season or enterprise.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (37:09.537)
I haven't read a sales book in a long time. I genuinely, yeah, I mean, I like psychology books for, for to learn, like you're going to learn sales by doing sales. I think you're better off, sales is really about psychology. And so if you get almost any copywriting book, there's, there's plenty, but get a copywriting book. Like you'll learn about psychology and you can apply that on your sales. I mean, that's how I learned sales. It's not like I bought sales, I bought sales books, but
I more so paid attention to the psychology of human interaction and just apply that to sales. Right? Like how to win friends and influence people, like the Dale Carnegie book, or like one of the concepts there is like, you give a compliment that gets the person flattered. Nope, no, that's a sales tactic. Um, right. Um, I would do that. I'd probably say also like the Chris Voss book never split the difference. It's not a sales book. It's a negotiation type of book. That's also good. Um, but again, it would depend on your, like if your entry level, then I think there was like a. Jeffrey.
Gitmo or whatever his name is, he has like the red book of sales. It's like really entry level. I'd probably recommend that if you're an enterprise rep. Um, my buddy, Nate Nasseralla has a book.
Sell with, it's called sell with. It's like for really enterprise, multi-threading complex deals, tactical as hell, the book.
Paul M. Caffrey (38:27.506)
Yeah, Nate's content is great. And that book is very enjoyable as well. I mean, a lot of good ones there. And interestingly, the first time Chris Boss has been mentioned. So that as well is excellent book full of tactics to help at the later stage of your sales cycles.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (38:32.416)
Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (38:37.551)
Oh really? Yeah.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (38:43.617)
Yeah, eventually I'll write my own book. But yeah, just, and also like there are salespeople that are fantastic when they meet up, you know, when their friends introduce them to somebody or they're in the social event, nothing work related. Or they're in the elevator and they can strike up a conversation or whatever it is. That's a sales skill. The problem is that people, salespeople, they put on their sales hat on, you know, their 905, 96, whatever it is, and then they change character. It really shouldn't change.
The way you communicate outside of the arena should be the same you communicate inside, right? So if you do get into an elevator and you're able to strike up a conversation, why should that change when you get on a call and try to build a rapport? There's a bunch of crossover in your personal life in sales. So it's something to think about.
Paul M. Caffrey (39:29.87)
I really, really like that. And I'll be looking out for your book when it comes along more. For people who want to who've enjoyed the show and want to find out a bit more about what you do and how you might be able to help them work and they reach you.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (39:43.365)
Yeah, so if you're a startup or founder or CEO, I would go to demo2close.com. If you're an account executive and you want to improve your discovery, I give you a link you're gonna share with them, fdtcuniversity.com. If you go there, there's on the bottom, there's 24 really tactical discovery questions. One of my top ones that I use on calls. Over 5,000 sales reps have downloaded already. So that's free. I would check that out.
Paul M. Caffrey (40:12.59)
Great. So that link is in the show notes. So just take your phone out of your pocket, click it, and you'll be able to get that very, very quickly. More, thanks so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Mor Assouline | demotoclose.com (40:23.281)
Thanks Paul, appreciate it.
