EP117: Opportunities for Negotiation in an RFP Response—with Don Carmichael
Most people think there is little room for negotiation in a proposal response.
But if you’ve done your homework to understand a buyer’s needs, you can negotiate in your answers to the questions on an RFP and offer solutions they may not even be aware of.
Don Carmichael is Chief PreSales Evangelist at Winning Skills Ltd., a boutique technology sales enablement firm. Prior to founding Winning Skills, Don enjoyed a 30-year career in PreSales, heading EMEA PreSales Enablement at both SAP and Oracle.
Don’s client roster includes Adobe, Deloitte and SurveyMonkey, among many others, and he is the cohost of Two PreSales in a Pod, a show that explores the world of PreSales and buyer enablement.
On this episode of the RFP Success Show, Don joins me to explain why everyone needs negotiation skills and what it looks like to negotiate an RFP answer through redirection.
Don discusses the concept of buyer enablement and describes how it might shift our approach to sales, challenging us to serve as trusted advisors or buyer coaches rather than traditional sales reps.
Listen in to understand why HOPE is a more effective sales strategy than FEAR and learn how to spot opportunities for negotiation in an RFP response!
Key Takeaways
Don’s background in technology presales for large enterprise software companies
How technology presales consultants contribute to an RFP response
Why everybody on an RFP team needs to be good at negotiation
The concept of buyer enablement and how it might shift your approach to sales
Why you can’t negotiate in an RFP response if you haven’t had pre-conversations with the prospect
How to leverage redirection to negotiate in an answer on an RFP
What to do when you can’t say YES to an RFP question (but you don’t want to say NO either)
How to build relationships through content to become a buyer coach
Why 43% of complex B2B solution buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience
Why HOPE is a more effective sales methodology than PAIN or FEAR
RFP Success Show EP117 Transcription
You're listening to the RFP Success Show, with eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture and RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20%, 30% and even 50%. And meet the industry trailblazers that are getting it right. Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Hello everybody, and welcome to the RFP Success Show podcast. I am your host, Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company. And I'd like to introduce you to our guest for today's episode, Don Carmichael. He's Chief Presales Evangelist at Winning Skills. Welcome Don.
Don Carmichael (00:43):
Thank you so much Lisa. Gosh, you've done so many podcast episodes, it's amazing. Thank you so much for the invite, I'm really looking forward to this.
Lisa Rehurek (00:52):
I'm looking forward to it too. For listeners, I was following Don on LoopedIn, and he was talking a lot about negotiation. And I thought, man, we've got to have him on the show, because there is a lot, I think in the world of RFPs, you think there is no negotiation really, until you get to the BAFO, but I disagree with that. I think there's plenty of opportunity for negotiations, so I'm excited to have you on. And why don't we kick this off by having you tell our listeners a little bit more about what you do, who you are, a little bit more about your background?
Don Carmichael (01:27):
Yeah, thank you. I'm going to have to define some things very quickly. But I was going to say, I've been in presales for about 35 years. And you're going to ask, "What's that?" Basically in the technology world, in your SAPs, your Oracles, Microsoft, Salesforce, those kind of companies, when they go selling, there's normally at least two roles involved in it. One would be an account executive, a salesperson, who's purely about selling, on the contract side of things, politics, navigating a way around the buyers, the stakeholders. But there's also normally a person who is a technology specialist, who understands technology, but also understands how that technology is used in the client's industry or domain.
(02:18):
In fact, their knowledge really has to be equal amounts of that. I think the American expression is, "Well, you've got to be stone cold. You've got to know the technology stone cold." Is that right? Sorry, from that accent, people will probably work out I'm actually from the UK. These of these Americanisms, I'm not 100% sure of.
(02:36):
This technology person, there's an umbrella term for it, which is presales. It's basically a consultant, a technology consultant, who's involved before the sale happens. It's actually quite an archaic term. We only really use it as an umbrella term, because the challenge we have in our industry and profession, is that we've got probably hundreds of different job titles. Things like technical architect, solution consultant. In the US, you see lots of people called sales engineers or SEs. There's different reasons for that. In different technology companies, it might be better to be called a cloud architect. In other companies, engineer works. But there's also geography and cultural things which as you go outside the USA, there are certain countries where you can't use the word engineer, unless you really are qualified as an engineer.
(03:31):
My world has been these people who are working with the salespeople, in the sales cycle, but they're the technology experts. I've worked my way up lots of enterprise resource planning companies you'd call them, large software companies, eventually at SAP. SAP is, I don't know, number one or number two as it were, in the large enterprise level software arena. I've also worked at Oracle, who's probably whatever ... If SAP aren't number one, Oracle are-
Lisa Rehurek (04:07):
Oracle is.
Don Carmichael (04:07):
... number one. One of those kind of things. And the major roles there is evolving to be head of presales enablement. It's basically looking at how do you train presales people, what is best practice in it, how do you measure what they're doing, but also moving into things like RFPs as well.
Lisa Rehurek (04:25):
Wow.
Don Carmichael (04:26):
Because presales people in a technology company, tend to primarily be the people who are answering RFPs. Well, certainly the technology questions, one you've stripped an RFP down. They may not write the executive overview of the win theme, but they would certainly contribute to it. But they, hours, days' worth of time answering RFPs. And before I joined SAP, I used to work with lots of partner companies, and hundreds of RFPs that I've done. I used to absolutely hate them. And I'm kind of quite famous these days for writing articles about what an utter waste of time they are in the technology world, which doesn't earn me many friends in the RFP consulting world.
(05:11):
But my core argument with that though is, is that RFPs are actually very difficult to write, because how do you know where technology is going? If a client has written them, and you haven't had a consultant help you, if you're writing it, you'll tend to write it from the perspective of the technology and things you understand. One of the articles I wrote was a good example of that, would be Henry Ford, who famously said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would've said, 'A faster horse'."
(05:42):
I jokingly say, "Well, what would've happened if Henry Ford had to answer RFPs to sell Model T Fords? Because the RFP questions would be things like, how many hooves has it got? How far does it travel to a bag of hay? Do you see what I mean?
Lisa Rehurek (05:58):
Yes, yes.
Don Carmichael (06:00):
Because that's how people would've viewed world. And he would've went ... I'm going to go onto negotiating as part of RFPs. But that's a classic case of, you can't say ... A Model T Ford, you couldn't say, "How far does it go to a bag of hay?" Well, you obviously can't say 'Yes' because it doesn't work on a bag of hay. But you're moving into an area, you don't really want to say 'No.' What you want to do, is re-guide the question and say, "Well actually, I know you're interested in how many bags of hay, but actually in this case, it works with a thing called petroleum." You have to negotiate your way around the hay question. And I'm being quite flippant there.
(06:40):
But that's an interesting example of sometimes what happens with RFPs. And certainly in the technology world, the challenge we have, is they're asking questions, you go, "But it doesn't work like that." "The question you've asked, that's not how it's been in the last 10 years. We handle security in a very different way." And it's how, you know, you've asked me a question, it's got a yes, and a no, and a comment on it. It's really difficult for me, because I don't want to say "No." What I want to do, is re-guide you, negotiate around that that wasn't the right question in the first place.
Lisa Rehurek (07:16):
Well, you know that's an interesting segue into the conversation around negotiation. Don is a negotiation expert, and I wanted to have this conversation around negotiation. And so it's a very odd conversation around RFPs, because most people think, well, there is no negotiation in RFPs, unless we get to the BAFO stage of that, Best and Final. And then maybe there is some negotiation there. But what would you say is ... Well, actually, I'm going to start a little bit more at the beginning. But what kind of positions need to even understand the whole world of negotiation? Is it just sales? And if it's sales, what positions within sales really need to be good at negotiation?
Don Carmichael (08:02):
To be honest, this is going to sound like a cliché, but everybody, because everybody is ... If you really, really think about it, everyone is negotiating all the time. I mean, you know-
Lisa Rehurek (08:11):
Yeah.
Don Carmichael (08:12):
... quite flippant to say to your children, "If you tidy your room, you can get one hour on the PlayStation." Or my wife's version of that, which is, "If you tidy the office, you can have one hour on the PlayStation." But that's negotiating, because that at a simple, it's a give and get. If I give you this, we'll get something back.
(08:34):
Moving into negotiation skills, it gets a little bit more sophisticated that, because certainly in an RFP world, there are things that you negotiate, there are things called zones of tolerance, which is, "I'd like this, but I know you want this. And it's how much do they overlap." And you can't go too far, because that's well outside the other person's zone of tolerance. And again, dropping down in a give and get, you move into what I call value exchanges, which is if to give the client something, and it moves them towards their goal, you might say, "In exchange, do this."
(09:12):
Now, the way a value exchange would work is, you're looking for something that's low cost for you, but high value for them. That they would perceive as high value. A classic one of them, let's say in a technology sales situation might be, they are looking for something. You say, "Well, how about in exchange for that, we give you let's say, a technology audit exercise? We'll come on site for one day, and we'll do this technology audit. And to us, that's worth this amount of money." But it isn't, it's worth a much lower cost. It's one day of a consultant's time, but to the client, something like that is worth let's say, six to seven times what that value is.
(09:56):
A lot of it, negotiating, is understanding, is having ready what these value exchanges are. Understanding and negotiating them upfront, which in an RFP, would probably be a lot to do with anticipating the kind of things that you're going to get asked in an RFP, because RFPs are all about speed, aren't they?
Lisa Rehurek (10:16):
Yes.
Don Carmichael (10:18):
Deadlines are always looming, so you don't want to have to have too many discussions about these things. It would be better if you were prepared. And just to take that off in a little tangential direction, which is, in the technology world, one of the things I'm really interested in at the moment, is the rise of something called Buyer Enablement. Buyer Enablement, the shorthand for it is, because consumer behaviors have come into the business world, and consumers don't want to be sold to. They're subjected to 10,000 advertising messages a day.
(10:51):
It just washes over them. They don't want to be sold to, so to kind of resist or stop that happening, they're spending 70% of their buying journey doing their own research. Looking at your website, finding out things for themselves. Probably getting quite confused, because they get overloaded with content. But 70% of the journey, before they actually put their hand up and say, "You can now sell to me."
Lisa Rehurek (11:15):
Interesting.
Don Carmichael (11:19):
"I am now a prospect." The world of Buyer Enablement then, is what happens next is, you're not really selling to, especially large organizations anymore. What you're actually doing, is you should be coaching one of the buyers, the champion, or the internal coach in the client. You should be coaching them, or helping them to sell it internally. Do you see what I mean by that?
Lisa Rehurek (11:40):
Oh that's so interesting. Yeah. When you were talking, I was thinking, is that true of organization buying?
Don Carmichael (11:48):
Yes.
Lisa Rehurek (11:48):
You're saying yeah, because there is a single person, who is looking for the sale here. They're looking for whatever they need to buy. That's very interesting. That goes-
Don Carmichael (12:00):
If it's a complex product, or a complex sale, and there's a complex buying team, not just one person that you talk, but multiple people, and a lot of RFPs, if you've gone into the expense of doing an RFP, because of course, it's an expense to the client to put it together, but also to analyze it and make a decision on it afterwards. If they've gone into the expense of that, it's probably not one person buying it, it's a large team of people. And the challenge with that these days, is you probably will only ever find out about, let's say half of them. The people involved in it.
Lisa Rehurek (12:33):
Yeah, [inaudible 00:12:34].
Don Carmichael (12:36):
Yeah, if even that. The big world now is, you can't sell to these people who are hidden, what you've got to do, is you've got to anticipate their needs. And then all this feeds into the RFP as well. You've got to anticipate their needs, and you've got to coach and enable the buyer to do the selling on your behalf. The world of Buyer Enablement, it really changes your head around what it is you do, when you're selling, especially complex technology, to enterprises.
(13:04):
It goes away from selling, and I think we may come onto this as well, because this also impacts the language you use as well. And the emotions that you're trying to do, which is traditionally, we've been about fear and we've used words like pain. Technical pains, and, "What's the functional pain?" And it's a very particular type of language, and it comes from sales methodologies that are actually quite old. There's one ... What is it? Sandler, which is older than me.
Lisa Rehurek (13:36):
Oh yeah.
Don Carmichael (13:37):
And for people who are listening to the podcast, I'm pretty old. I'm just saying. Check me out on LinkedIn.
Lisa Rehurek (13:39):
Oh, he's not that old. Don't let him fool you.
Don Carmichael (13:46):
I'm no spring chicken. That language has been inherent in selling for a very long time. And in the world of Buyer Enablement, you've got to start changing. Some of this stuff has got to change, because it's not working for you anymore. Feeding into RFPs, the whole kind of where you are in a stage when an RFP comes along, and who is on the other end of it, and anticipating the fact that the RFP is for some people you will never get to meet, so you've got to ...
(14:19):
Even the language you use inside it, and how you answer it, and understanding sometimes you've got to move up a level, and use negotiation skills with people that are hidden. I think these things are, when you're answering things, sometimes it has, I think, things are a lot more complicated and sophisticated than you might immediately think. In just answering an RFP, there's probably a lot more going on, and a lot more subtleties to questions.
Lisa Rehurek (14:48):
Yes, well, and-
Don Carmichael (14:50):
Things are a lot more complicated.
Lisa Rehurek (14:52):
Yeah, things are more complicated, and it's interesting. If you've got a pretty sophisticated organization from a proposal perspective, and you've got a big team, and you've got a capture team, and proposal team, you'd probably understand all of that. Most of our listeners are more kind of the mid-market, and they don't necessarily have a huge built-in proposal team.
(15:12):
And one of the things that we see a lot with our clients, is that they come to us and they're like, "We just found this RFP, and we think that we're perfectly positioned to bid on it." And we're like, "Well, you're not perfectly positioned, because you've had no pre-conversations." Everything that you're talking about here Don, is you've got to have those conversations before that RFP hits the streets, right?
Don Carmichael (15:33):
Yes.
Lisa Rehurek (15:33):
Because then if you come in, there's no way to negotiate in the answers that you provide, and everything that you're talking about. I love what you're talking about, because it really solidifies that need to have pre-conversations, pre-RFP conversations.
Don Carmichael (15:50):
I love that you said that, because that's huge in our world. In the presales world, it is discovery, because traditionally, presales people, it's all been about doing a live demonstration. And the salesperson, "And here's my technical colleague who will show you. Move the mouse around and click things, and will show you how the technology works." And that was good, and some companies still do that. But it is really kind of, that's like 10 years ago.
(16:16):
Going back to what we were talking about before, buyers want something different from technical people, they really want advice. In one direction, we'd use the word influencing. But they don't want to know that they're being influenced. In their direction, they're looking for advice from people who are credible and authoritative on the technology.
Lisa Rehurek (16:37):
Trustworthy.
Don Carmichael (16:37):
Exactly, trust.
Lisa Rehurek (16:37):
Rapport.
Don Carmichael (16:37):
Can build rapport about the technology and the industry that they're in. And have got obviously good people and communication skills, as well, to feed into all that.
Lisa Rehurek (16:49):
That's really important. I love that we're having that conversation. Something else you said earlier that I want to go back to, is that you were talking about how you can ... Well, there's two things that you talked about. I'm going to go to both of them. But one was, that you can kind of redirect in your response. Negotiation seems hard if we're thinking about if you were writing a response to a question that they've already given us. But you can still negotiate in that answer. It's a balance, and it's a nuance, but I love how you talked about how you can take that answer, and answer the question, but kind of almost redirect them to something else. It's almost like you're silently coaching them. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Don Carmichael (17:32):
Absolutely, that's this classic ... What did we call it? It's an RFP answer, where you can't say "Yes" because remember as well, proposals and certainly RFQs, you're commercially bound by the answers to these, so you can't guess these, you can't kind of go, "Well ..." I mean, you're obviously not going to lie, but you can't stretch the truth either, because this will come back and, excuse the expression, bite you on the bum.
Lisa Rehurek (17:58):
Yes, absolutely.
Don Carmichael (18:00):
Because I've been involved in a lot of deals, where we closed the deal, and I don't know, months later, people went back to the RFP, and they said, "Well, hold on a minute. You said that it was going to do this. And it quite obviously doesn't." And that's a surefire way of souring a relationship. And certainly in the technology world, a lot of the time we're into what's called subscription selling or consumption selling, and the problem is, it's very easy for people to just go, "Well, we'll just not pay for it anymore." They come to next year, and they don't pay next year's subscription, and that's you've lost ... It cost you a lot of money to gain that client in the first place.
(18:37):
But going to that "Yes" essentially you're in this position where, I can't actually say "Yes" to this, because they've put yes, and no, and a comment. I can't "Yes" but I don't actually want to say "No" either. What I want to do is say ... If I was allowed to ... I'd say, "You're asking the wrong question."
Lisa Rehurek (18:53):
Love it. And that happens often, right?
Don Carmichael (18:56):
It does.
Lisa Rehurek (18:56):
Because you can have maybe no influence on the front end of the RFP, and you're like, they don't know what they're asking here. People get mad about that all the time, so I love this.
Don Carmichael (19:04):
That's it. A classic one in the tech world would be, "Well, we can't actually do that, but we work with a partner who does do it." The way to answer it then is, you've got to say "Yes" or "No" and if there's a maybe or a halfway thing, you'd go for that. But then actually, if you think about what you do next is, you are negotiating, because you would say, "Okay, we can't do it the way you've asked for it" or, "We don't have that functionality ourself, but we work with this other partner."
(19:34):
Now, if you just said that, and left it, you've kind of, you know, people who are looking at an RFP would go, "Well, that's a no, isn't it? Why didn't you just say 'No' you can't do it?" What you've got to do is, you've got to say, "We work with this other partner. The advantage to you, is this, this, and this."
Lisa Rehurek (19:48):
Ooh, I love that.
Don Carmichael (19:49):
Which is then when you move into, you're kind of negotiating that, "Okay, that's not what you wanted. You wanted us to provide the functionality. But by working with this partner, you'd get these other added benefits." So that you're actually in a value exchange there, which is, "Okay, we can't do what you want, but by doing it this other way, look what extra you get." It's always, there's this subtle extra bit you need to, I think, put in those kind of answers, because it's the classic one. I always get it down, it's like saying, you can't say "Yes" but you don't want to say "No." It's those answers.
(20:25):
If you think about them, anything you answer after that, you're going to say, "We have this other way of doing it. What you don't want to do, is say something like, "And that's going to be in the next version." [inaudible 00:20:38] compliance, I think, will be all over you, if you did that. But I think people like Salesforce, you're not actually allowed to do that at all. But it's that negotiation piece, is understanding what would the value be to them? And this idea of a value exchange, which is give and get. They're not getting what they want, so what can you give them? And how can you spin it to look like it's more value to them? And that's negotiating.
Lisa Rehurek (21:08):
Brilliant, I love that. The other thing you said that I want to come back to, is you were talking about coaching, kind of on the front end, before the RFP comes back. I want to dig a little bit deeper in that. But before we do that, I want to take a quick break for a quick commercial.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
You're listening to the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek. If you're filling your scratchpad with takeaways from today's episode, let's talk. Gain an outside perspective about your RFP process, and learn about how we're assisting clients with consistently high win rates. Book a call with us at the RFPSuccessCompany.com.
Lisa Rehurek (21:45):
All right everybody, we are back with the RFP Success Show and Don Carmichael. We are talking all about negotiation skills. And he's already given us some great golden nuggets. Don, before the break we talked about, you had mentioned the word coaching. And I homed in on that, because I had never actually heard somebody use that term in this context. If we're talking about, again, pre-RFP, before the RFP hits the deck, we want to be in there, having conversations ... What we usually say is ... So that we can influence that RFP itself.
(22:22):
But you talked about coaching. And I love this so much, but I wonder if you can help our listeners? And I'm just tossing this question out to you, so I'm hoping that I'm not throwing you under the bus here, but how does somebody get into a company, to really start that conversation, and become that? It's got to be a trusted relationship, to be able to get that coaching conversation going. To coach them into what they want. For our listeners, how do they even get that conversation started?
Don Carmichael (22:54):
Do you know what? That is so interesting these days, because a hyper-modern piece of research, I think it only came out in the last week, and it's related to something called the Jolt Effect, which we'll maybe come back to later. When a lot of tech companies looked at where did their leads come from, their marketing engines look at, ooh, someone tapped on a button on the website. Or there was some kind of social thing. And a recent piece of research has said, "Actually, that's the wrong place to put all your money. Where people are actually starting conversations with your company, is things like this. Podcasts, webinars, social posting. Certainly in complex things, they're already looking for people who are knowledgeable, that they can trust that are one step removed, as it were.
(23:45):
The relationships are already being built through content like this, before buyers actually elect to put their hand up. The idea about who gets to coach them, is they've already decided some of this from some of the content that they've consumed. Another aspect to this is that, unfortunately, there's a lot of content out there. Anyone who goes on your website, a competitor's website, there's probably lots and lots. There's whitepapers there, there's loads and loads of different content. And the other perspective with this, is that buyers are confused. They're just overwhelmed by all of this. And there's been research where they've pulled out this thing called, the first person who can create some sense from all of this content, and say, "This is what's important."
(24:34):
Of course, what you said, what you're doing is actually starting to coach the buyer, but you need to have established some level of credibility beforehand. Some people are very good at doing that at the first touchpoint, as it were. But I think we're moving into this world, where people have already made their mind up, about you, through content like this. A podcast, or through social, so the ability to coach someone may be established long before they even meet you. And at that point, you have the credibility. Maybe they don't want to use the word coach. You can advise them. The coaching comes into it, because many people who are buying technology, have never bought whatever it is, that type of technology before. Or if they have, it probably was done in a completely different way.
Lisa Rehurek (25:24):
Or they screwed it up so bad.
Don Carmichael (25:27):
Absolutely, or it was a really bad experience the last time. The coaching comes in that, what is it a buyer really wants? Is really, someone who can anticipate what are the steps going to be that they're going to have to go through? But being honest and open about it, which is you're in a larger company, you know, client defined. And at some stage, your procurement team with want you to go through, that you've actually thoroughly looked through and compared, let's say different vendors. Normally, at this point, there'll be an RFP. Don't be frightened of that, that's what's going to happen. And a lot of buyers, sometimes the person who's going to buy, may not even know that an RFP is part of the process, until procurement-
Lisa Rehurek (26:09):
Right, it's true.
Don Carmichael (26:09):
... or a consultant gets involved in it. The idea with coaching, is not just coaching about the product, but also, what is the buying journey going to be like? And one of the things we look at in the technology world, is the idea that anyone signs something, is actually just part of the journey to actually achieving the value or the outcome, that you were actually looking for. Which may be six months, a year, further down the line. We do these things called customer journey mapping, where you're looking at emotions. And sometimes, when someone has actually signed the contact, that's actually one of the worst points in it, because that's when the fear kicks in, from them, which is, I've signed it, all the responsibility is now on that person's shoulders, and they are so ... They were now absolutely relying that you're going to deliver what you said you were going to deliver.
(27:00):
To what you said there, coaching, I think it is the right word, is that a lot of people, if there were a lot of buyers, certainly in the technology world, if they were truthful, then really, they need help about what how and what their buying journey is going to be like. And they need someone who's been through it many times before, to help them anticipate the challenges that they're going to have. A business buyer, who is maybe buying kike a CRM system, which hopefully a lot of people have come across, they may not know that at some point their internal IT department are going to jump on this, and go, "Yes, but what about all the security testing?"
(27:35):
And if someone can help them anticipate that, and say, "Your IT department are going to probably ask these questions. Here's the answers to them up front." Let's not wait until later on. It was like, it becomes just a part of an RFP. Maybe we could answer some of these things up front, and that would sate that particular, you know, departments. And the information lead they've got. I mean, I just want to say, with RFPs, the whole point of an RFP though is, pulling all of these things from different departments, isn't it?
Lisa Rehurek (28:03):
Yes.
Don Carmichael (28:03):
Have a big, perhaps a legal bit to it, an IT bit to it, there's a business bit to it, there's a commercial bit to it. Procurement, will want to put their things in there, because they've got to add their value to have the process work. RFPs tend to be good ways of dragging everything together.
Lisa Rehurek (28:20):
[inaudible 00:28:20]. Well, it was interesting too, because something else that I heard that you said, you shared something that 43% of complex B2B solution buyers, prefer a rep-free buying experience.
Don Carmichael (28:32):
Ooh, yes-
Lisa Rehurek (28:32):
I thought that was interesting. Tell me more about what that means. And then if you can relate that back to how that relates to RFPs, if you can, that would be great.
Don Carmichael (28:41):
Well, there's a challenge. Thanks Lisa. By the way, on all of these numbers and things I'm throwing around, it's all come about in the [inaudible 00:28:53]. These people doing this research. 43% of buyers want a rep-free experience. I mean, that wow, okay.
Lisa Rehurek (29:03):
That is really wrong.
Don Carmichael (29:06):
And apparently it's even higher with millennials.
Lisa Rehurek (29:07):
[inaudible 00:29:08].
Don Carmichael (29:08):
And it all goes back to something we mentioned earlier on, which is that in the business to consumer world, no one wants to be sold to. Do you remember Pac-Man?
Lisa Rehurek (29:18):
Yes, of course.
Don Carmichael (29:19):
It was a game.
Lisa Rehurek (29:19):
I think we're probably a similar age.
Don Carmichael (29:23):
This game, for anyone else who has not come across it, you've got to try it out. It's like one of the earliest video games. You're a person going around this ... I suppose it's a maze, and there are these ... I don't know, they're kind of ghost things, that are going to come around, and you've got to avoid them, but also get to these little tokens, because if you bump into one of these ghosts, then that's a life over. Someone told me this great story about buying a bed. And this is to do with salespeople.
(29:53):
And he said, they went into this shop to buy a bed. And they were wandering around, and they could see out of their peripheral vision, this salesperson starts approaching on side, so they kind of moved off to the left away from them. But then there was another salesperson that was following them from behind. And they thought, oh, I've got to avoid them, so they started working their way around this maze of beds in this bed shop. And the analogy as I said, it was like playing Pac-Man, trying to avoid salespeople. And if you put that mentally in your head, people go to extraordinary lengths not to have a salesperson interrogate them or challenge them in any way.
(30:31):
That behavior has come into the business world, because basically, if you've not bought technology or an enterprise level product before, of course you're going to bring the behaviors you've already got. Which is, I don't want to be sold to. I'll desperately do anything not to have to speak to a salesperson. Because I live in the world of technology selling, we don't help ourselves either, because we sit there.
(30:55):
We're constantly, what's called qualifying people, which is in its most basic terms, this is a really old one, is a thing called BANT, which is we're constantly, "Do you have budgets?" "Have you got the authority to do this? Or are you ..." you know, "Is there a need there?" And then timing. And timing always turns out to be the most important thing is, "Why would you want to do this project now?" And if you haven't got an answer to that, you don't get any further. A business developer will just close you down and maybe put you on a list, and you get some emails. That's about all you're going to get from the technology company.
(31:31):
You can understand that, why a lot of people prefer to do a rep ... Not to have to speak to a salesperson. But that doesn't mean that they don't want information. They do want access to information, and they also are going to be stressed. There are two or three potential products here that we could buy, you know, how do I chose between them? And an RFP, in a way, is also part of this rep-free thing, isn't it?
Lisa Rehurek (31:55):
Yeah.
Don Carmichael (31:55):
Because in a lot of ways that clients work with RFPs, is they deny you any access to do any kind of discovery. It's, "We put all this work into an RFP. It's got everything that you need in there. You need to answer it in the way that we ask." And giving access to be able to do discovery, you've got to be careful with that, because is it giving preferential treatment to one vendor over another? So you've got to be understood about that. I think RFPs can fit into this world of, "I don't want to be sold to" because it's also a way of fending off salespeople, who are trying to influence you, isn't it?
Lisa Rehurek (32:36):
Yeah, but you know what else-
Don Carmichael (32:36):
So an RFP works really well in that world.
Lisa Rehurek (32:36):
Yeah, you know what else is interesting about that though, and I've said this to numerous people, because people always hate RFPS, like, "Ah, RFPs." And I'm like, "Look, everything that you need to pre-qualify a sale, is already pre-qualified when an RFP hits the deck. You know they have a budget. You might not like the budget, but they've got a budget. They've got a need. They've got a timeline. All of that stuff, that when you're in sales, and you're trying to pre-qualify, that's already pre-qualified.
(33:02):
Now, you've got to build the trust, and show them that you are the right ones, and that's the job in an RFP response. But it is true what you said, it's a great way for state governments and corporations to say, "We don't want to talk to you, but respond to this RFP." Another reason why you've got to get in on the front end, and you're not selling on the front end. You're building a relationship and just getting them to know you, so that when you do respond to that RFP ... And you know, I also always say that there is a lot of trust that you have to build in that response. And I have one last question for you here before we wrap. But was is the most powerful buyer emotion that you see as a salesperson, as a negotiation expert. What is the most powerful buyer emotion?
Don Carmichael (33:49):
Absolutely, I love that question, because we've already partially mentioned some of this. Which is that, there a lot of sales methodologies that are out there, that salespeople use. The emphasized, fear and pain, and they use quite negative words. And the rationale behind that was, you're looking for the client's pain is because that will motivate them to do something to alleviate the pain. Well again, going back to some recent research-
Lisa Rehurek (34:18):
Love it.
Don Carmichael (34:19):
... it turns out that, that doesn't work anymore, using fear. All it does, is actually it drives people to make no decisions. This was a load of-
Lisa Rehurek (34:29):
And it like paralyzes.
Don Carmichael (34:30):
Yeah, paralyzes them, because they're already fearful of making a decision. And just to ratchet it up by making them even more fearful, doesn't get you anywhere at all. There's a book that's only out in the last few weeks called Jolt, that's don't a lot of research looking into the language of how remote selling works. Because basically if you think of like a Zoom, or a Google Meet call, you can record these. You can run natural language processing over the top to find the words.
(34:59):
And then you can run machine learning over the top of that, and find out what did people say at what point? What words do they use? What emotions are they trying to drive? And then what you can do is match that to the CRM outcome, which is it closed won, is it closed lost? What they're drawing out of that, is that it's not working driving that negative emotion. It's much better to drive hope.
Lisa Rehurek (35:25):
Oh yeah.
Don Carmichael (35:28):
And so hope is a much more ... It's a stronger word than fear. If you're a salesperson and you've been taught to drive the fear, it's not working. There is statistical evidence, all it's doing, is driving no decision. And a lot of people hid that in sales, because they go, "Well, we lost it." It's closed lost.
(35:49):
Once that's analyzed with what actually happened, what was the behavior of the buyer, a really high percentage of those are just, they've not been lost at all, it's just no decision, you know?
Lisa Rehurek (36:02):
Yes.
Don Carmichael (36:02):
And remember, no decision is not the same as consciously staying with the status quo. As in, whatever we've got at the moment, staying with it, that's a conscious decision. It's these people are just ... They're so fearful, they can't make any decision at all. And who's going to put their head above the parapet and do something that could be potentially career limiting? We're doing it the wrong way around. It's got to be about hope.
Lisa Rehurek (36:25):
I love that. I love it being about hope. That is a great thing to build into the RFP responses too. Don, this has been so fantastic. I so appreciate you being here. Now, you have a podcast of your own. Tell our listeners a little bit more about that, and where they can find that.
Don Carmichael (36:41):
Oh thank you.
Lisa Rehurek (36:41):
Absolutely.
Don Carmichael (36:45):
It's called Two Presales in a Pod. And I've talked about this umbrella term called presales, which is the technical sales, sales engineers, solutions consultants, architects, engineers. It's the technical selling arm. And we've done ... What is it? 58 episodes we've got to, so nowhere near yours, the number of your episodes, Lisa.
Lisa Rehurek (37:07):
I'm older than you Don. There we have it.
Don Carmichael (37:12):
And we talk about the challenges of the role, but we also have lots of guests, similar to yourself. We've got different perspectives, and who challenge us, and we have lots of discussions in the podcasts about how to respond to these challenges. And also, we do a lot of discussion about something I mentioned earlier, which is a thing called Buyer Enablement, and now that is dramatically changing the role of how you go about doing sales in a modern technology world.
Lisa Rehurek (37:39):
Wonderful, well, we'll have a link to your podcast in the show notes, along with ways to get in touch with you through your LinkedIn profile and your website. That will all be in the show notes for everybody.
Don Carmichael (37:51):
Thank you.
Lisa Rehurek (37:52):
Again Don, thank you so much for being here. Do you have any last words, or any last thoughts for our listeners?
Don Carmichael (37:58):
I was just going to ... Can I tell you a little story? Remember, I really don't like answering RFPs. I have a colleague, and I'm not going to mention his name, because he still works in the technology industry. But when we used to work together, we used to randomly put the word sausages in our RFP responses, to see if anyone noticed. And in, I think about four or five years I've worked with him, and hundreds of RFP responses, no one ever spotted it.
Lisa Rehurek (38:24):
That is hilarious. Hilarious.
Don Carmichael (38:28):
It's true. It is true. He put them in and no one ever ... I think maybe what happened was, they spotted it and just thought it was some kind of weird, kind of like-
Lisa Rehurek (38:39):
Autocorrect?
Don Carmichael (38:39):
... autocorrect thing.
Lisa Rehurek (38:39):
You're almost cracking me up.
Don Carmichael (38:40):
But no one ever came back and said, "What are you ... I thought you were selling technology, not sausages."
Lisa Rehurek (38:47):
That is pretty funny. That's funny. Well, thank you again for being here. To all our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you find value in this podcast, please share this with your colleagues. We appreciate you, and thank you again for listing to the RFP Success Show.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
This has been another episode of the RFP Success Show, with Lisa Rehurek, eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company. Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcast@RFPSuccess.com. No matter your business size or industry, if you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, the RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10%, 20%, and even 50%. Learn more at the RFPSuccessCompany.com.