Paul M. Caffrey (00:01.198)
What's the current situation? This is something that we really need to understand when we are meeting prospects and when we are chatting with our existing customers. Particularly if we're looking to get new business, there's three things that are really important. It's understanding the competition. So are we competing against another provider? Are we competing against the status quo or the newcomer to the party? Are we competing against the fear of making the wrong decision?
This is starting to come up again and again. And it's important that you identify as early as possible which one is going to be the one that is going to be your biggest nemesis. Second thing we want to think about is relationships. Is this a new prospect? There's somebody that we've never met. Do we have to put in a bit of extra effort to build a relationship with them? Is there other people in the account that we need to build relationships with as well?
we want to get in and get speaking with. And sometimes it doesn't have to be just us. It can be getting the right people from our organization, aligned with the right people from their organization so that we're in a position to go through an evaluation and have the conversations happen at the right time, but also at the right levels. So that means that we're able to make sure that we're reducing the friction and we're reducing any blockers that could become a problem further down the road. The other thing to consider relationships is does your prospect.
a really strong relationship with their incumbent supplier? Do they have a strong relationship with somebody else you're competing with? Super important to know because sometimes you can have the best solution, you can have the best commercials, but if you don't have the best relationship you can often lose out. And if that is going to be a challenge we need to know that. The final thing then to consider is what's the catalyst? What has actually brought you to this situation? Have you been invited in by the prospect?
Have you actually knocked on the door and managed to get your seat at the table that way? Both are important to know. And the key thing is whether you've managed to get find this opportunity or you've been invited in that has happened because they have a problem that they think you might be able to help them solve. If you can, great. And if you're not able to, well, that's where being trustworthy and turning around and making recommendations for them to do something else will serve you better in the long run. But a key thing to think about is.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:20.878)
What is the catalyst? And what we really are hoping for is that something has happened in the business. There's obviously conversations that have happened before you've come along, just conversations and things that have happened before. Whoever has went on the internet and started looking for solutions. And we want to understand what that is and why we got to a point where the prospect actually decided to take action and actually is speaking with people and considering how they can fix it. And.
The best sort of situation is something which is going to have a negative financial impact by a certain date or time. Then we've got a compelling event that we can work towards. And we might not see that. It might not be so obvious, but sometimes we can, you know, we can dig a little bit deeper. We can go, we're at surface level. We can go a couple of levels below and see what's really going on. So for example, you know, maybe there is money to be saved. It's negligible. There'd be a cost to change. Well, why would you bother doing it? Well, actually it turns out that there's...
another project, which is a North Star for the organization. And they want free up funds to direct them towards that. If that's successful, maybe they can land more customers. What's the value of landing more customers to the organization? How many years do they keep those customers? So although you might not see something directly correlate when you dig deeper, you can find correlation in other places. And then you can use that as a reason to justify whether it makes sense to proceed with you or stick with the status quo. And most importantly,
avoid the fear of making the wrong decision. And what else is going to happen if that drags out over a period of months or quarters, which is what we're seeing a little bit at the moment. So when you're going into any sales situation, consider what is the current situation. Think of the three lenses, the competition, the relationship and the catalyst. And this will put you in a stronger position to be more successful.
