I consistently review conversion rates across our entire sales process. I look at how the entire org is performing, then I look at teams, and I finish with outliers.
The goal is to learn from outliers (both what works and what doesn’t) and understand where to invest resources to level up the entire organization.
Recently, an outlier stood out with insanely high conversion rates: this rep converts 89% of his discovery meetings to opportunities.
Then, he wins 61% of those opportunities.
I dug deep into his operating rhythm so that I could teach the rest of my orgs how to improve. Today, I’ll share the same with you.
The one thing he does much better than his peers is challenging his prospects to engage the right resources early in the deal.
His goal is to make sure they are serious about evaluating LaunchDarkly and have enough “pain” to justify an eventual purchase.
As he gets through discovery, he helps the prospect understand which other teams would need to be involved to successfully test and eventually deploy our solution.
Then, he challenges his contact/champion to get them involved early.
If they won’t (or can’t) he knows he’s either talking to the wrong person or there isn’t a big enough pain to solve. He’ll DQ the opportunity and either move on from the account, or begin outreach to other prospects at the same account.
When they do engage the right team members the deal accelerates. We see three key benefits:
- We immediately have access to all relevant stakeholders
- The proof-of-concept is easy to set-up
- Evaluation moves quickly
His remarkably high conversion rate is the outcome.
To get more people involved early, you need to take control of the evaluation:
- Map the typical stakeholders involved for your prospect
- Explain why they should be involved
- Teach best next steps
After a discovery call, it may sound like this:
“From here, we usually schedule a demonstration to walkthrough [agreed upon use case]. It’s best to involve your [title one], [title two], and [title three] to make sure we understand the perspectives of everyone involved with [use case] today.
Who else would you recommend looping in?”
At LaunchDarkly, it may sound like this:
“From here, we usually schedule a demonstration to walkthrough guarding your releases. It’s best to involve your VP of Engineering, DevOps Manager, and one or two software engineers to make sure we understand the perspectives of everyone involved with releasing software today.
Who else would you recommend looping in?”
You won’t always get everyone you want on the next demonstration. But taking control of the next step and giving proactive recommendations will lead to getting more people involved, and one step closer to getting everyone you need engaged.
Give this a try after your next discovery instead of just scheduling a demo and saying, “feel free to add anyone else you’d like to join!” and let me know how it goes.
Have a great week,
Kyle
