Good morning sales people.

Welcome to The Best Sales Newsletter.

One tip every Sunday to help you build more pipeline, close more deals and earn the income you deserve.

Let’s dive in!

Ten by Fred Again may be the best song I’ve dropped on this newsletter, ever.

And now that we have our vibes right…

Let’s get to the good stuff.

We all know how important discovery is.

But there’s one question that’s 10x better than all others. Especially for learning top priorities and challenges.

In this week’s newsletter I’m sharing that question and how to use it in different situations.

Let’s get to work.

Before you can ask the question you need to know the following for your personas:

1. Cost of inaction (COI)

2. Common priorities and challenges

3. How you help and how your solution’s different

Here’s a workbook you can use:

If you’re more of a google sheet person…

Check out this post from Kyle Asay on building a “persona matrix”:

Now that we got our personas down it’s time for the best question of all time…

Giving your prospect options that demonstrate subject matter expertise and the most likely priorities or challenges they have.

Here’s an example you can steal:

Two main ways to ask this question. Both of which are on the discovery call:

Scenario 1

Use your pre-call research to ask right out of the gate. For example, using the SDR notes, or what you heard on the cold call that booked the meeting:

Scenario 2

Ask the question right after they’ve shared about their business. For example, if you asked them some form of “what brought you to Acme?” to open your discovery call:

Either approach is great.

It’s really up to you and your selling style.

One thing for sure…

A lot of sellers don’t use this strategy. So it’s a great way to stand out and build trust with your customers.

Sometimes your prospect will list multiple priorities or challenges.

When that happens it’s important to ask them to stack rank them.

That way, you learn what their true #1 priority or challenge is and you can make sure that’s the focus of your sales cycle, differentiation and establishing yourself as the “provider of choice”.

Complete the Persona Workbook or Persona Matrix, give this question a go on your next discovery call and let me know how it goes!

Alright, that’s it for me my friends!

See y’all next week!

- Mike G

When you’re ready…

Check out The Best Sales Course.

Over 250 pages of frameworks, tactics, strategy and tips to help you source more pipeline, close more deals and earn the income you deserve.

These are the exact sales systems I’ve used at three of the fastest growing startups of all time: Zenefits, Flexport and Deel.