Todd Caponi Sales Babble
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The Transparency Sale Part 2 with Todd Caponi #222

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Todd Caponi Sales BabbleThe Transparency Sale Part 2 with Todd Caponi #222

This is the second of a two part series interviewing Todd Caponi, the former Chief Revenue Officer at Chicago’s PowerReviews. Todd is in the process of authoring a new book titled “The Transparency Sale”. This book is in response to the changing influence of social media in selling and the failure of former challenger sale strategies. Todd has held leadership roles with three tech companies, including ExactTarget, where he helped the organization to a successful IPO and a $2.7B exit to Salesforce.com.

Reality of Decision Making

Customer decisions are filled with imperfection, tied to subconcious decision making and feeling. People make decisions with feelings and back them up with logic. Sellers who understand this fact quickly learn to focus on feelings first to snag interest and then generate desire.

Negotiation Strategy

Negotiating policy commonly recommends holding your cards close. Todd disagrees. Play your cards immediately at the start of the negotiation. Consider the following values and leveraging them for discounts.

  • How much you buy
  • How fast you pay
  • How long you commit
  • When you sign

Discounts are based on what you’re willing to agree. Each buyer can optimize their deal by applying the levers in tandem. This is a very tranparent way to negotiate. Never use any one lever by itself.

Presentation Mistakes

Consider the thinking of the audience attending your sales presentation:

  1. Ugh I don’t want to go
  2. I hope they can help my problems today
  3. Ugh they are only talking about themselves (First three slides talk about the vendor)
  4. I think I’ll check my Facebook account and see what my friends are doing

Have empathy for the people you’re talking to. Start with their problems and find out their challenges. Provide no NASCAR slides showing what a great vendor you are, Nobody cares. What they want to know is HOW you can help THEM.

Transparent Contracts

If you have terms and conditions in a contract, lead with transparency. Point out sections in the contract where some customers have had an issue. It’s very honest to call these out. This will speed up the signing the contract. If you hide stuff it chips away at trust e.g. auto renewal (explain the value to your company honestly).

Parting Thoughts

We can no longer be bartenders and serve people what ever they want. The Challenger Sale recommended  we become personal trainers with advice on how to be better. Now we need to be doctors and neuro scientists to understand root causes. Lead with transparency.

How To Connect With Todd Caponi

Books Mentioned:

  • The Transparency Sale is slated to be published in Fall 2018

The Power of Social Selling

Here are some previous episodes on the power of social selling.