🏍️ It’s time to mobilize
Patrick takes us through his favorite deal since moving from sales leadership to individual contribution.
Selling into the Fortune 100 equivalent of the multi-family space, he had his work cut out.
Over eight months, he leveraged conference networking, added value in dark periods, & delivered an incredible buying experience.
Hear how he did it!
Guest Feature
Patrick was an attorney for 4-years before he started selling.
Junior had the pleasure of working with Patrick & watched him be the Sales Rep of the Year, every year we worked together. True rockstar seller.
Patrick ascended to VP of National Sales at Funnel. And is currently in strategic sales for LVT.
Deal details
Why did you want to talk through this deal?
- First major takeaway from a competitor & the reason they reached out is not the reason the deal was won.
What are you selling?
- Multi-family housing software
Where did the prospect come from?
- Inbounded after a conference event he hosted
Company type
- Multi-family housing
Prospecting method
- Follow up to a post-event email
Barriers to Overcome
- The deal expanded way bigger than they originally planned & led to some dark periods
Buyer types
- Director & VP of Marketing
Deal length
- 8 month sales cycle
Episode Highlights
Note: timestamps correlate with the full conversation
Demo: Using prospect quotes in your demos (18:19)
3 Tips for Account Executives
- Discovery is an ongoing & fluid process. Ask questions before, during, & after meetings.
- Don't get caught single-threading. Find your mobilizers & champions.
- Embrace the ghost periods. Continue to provide value until their ready
Watch the full conversation
Full transcript
Taylor Dahlem
Welcome back to How I Deal, where we relive a single past deal, how it played out each step of the way, and hopefully provide some useful sales tips that you can leverage in your deals today. My name is Taylor Dahlem, full cycle account executive, now content guy, and I'm joined as always by my cohost Junior Lartey, the heat-seeking commission missile here at Pickle June. What's up, man?
Junior Lartey
It's episode twenty-three and the only heat-seeking thing here is blowing up that nickname so it never returns. Let's just move on to the overview, please.
Taylor Dahlem
New nickname, new episode, you know how it works, but we will blow it up after this. Had to try it out. For those that have not heard Junior's ridiculous nicknames before or listened to a podcast episode of ours, a quick explainer might help. So each conversation we examine a past deal, leaving out all names and places that really allows us to tell a whole story, a complete picture if you will, and the lessons learned along the way. Starting from the first time, maybe you encountered a prospect at a conference on LinkedIn in your CRM, your target account list, really anywhere you find prospects these days, all the way to that final signature. And kicking off implementation.
Junior Lartey
We've got Patrick Kennedy and we're going to stick to the facts today because Patrick was an attorney for four years before he started selling and quite frankly, Taylor and I cannot afford a lawsuit right now. So I had the pleasure of working with Patrick, watching him the sales rep of the year every year that we sold together. I'm openly admitting right, that he outsold me. Patrick is now a VP of national sales at Funnel. Patrick, tell us about your role and the problems that funnel solves.
Patrick Kennedy
You bet. Thanks guys. I appreciate the opportunity to be on one quick clarification. I am going to turn it. I didn't get this bar Junior, so I'm still licensed to practice. Yeah, still maintaining the license for anybody listening. I didn't get to sparred and that's why I ended up in sales. I chose to be in sales. So yeah, been selling for about six years, so practiced law for about four and then made the unique transition over into sales, enterprise software sales because of the kind of the challenging side of it. I loved getting to learn about businesses and I love the business side of things. I'm a glutton for punishment. So while I was in law school I got my MBA as well, knowing that I would end up back in business, which is where I wanted to be. And enterprise sales seem like I get to learn about business and help people solve their business problems. So really excited about the opportunity to be in sales. Had an amazing mentor coming in. Felt like the legal background gave me some unique skills there and then. I can't say enough about mentorship and the opportunity that I had to learn under what I would argue is one of the best sales reps, no longer actively selling, but yeah, and then about funnel what makes us unique architecturally, we're built different than every other software that's in our industry. And so that gives us a unique value proposition that allows us to unlock business transformation. So really we're a business transformation tool. A lot of our competitors are just kind of adding features, small incremental changes, new mouse traps, but nothing that truly transforms their business.
Taylor Dahlem
Patrick, that was an incredible life story there. I noticed the part where in college you did a lot more than I did. So classic overachiever stuff. But now we're all in sales. We're on the same level playing field here, but excited to hear what deal you're walking us through today.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, so I'm in the multifamily apartment industry, which is where I'm at. There's a deal, actually not the largest deal that I've sold this year, but it had some unique things about it that I thought would be really interesting as Junior and I connected on this. And so forty thousand unit company. So I work with the fifty top largest companies in the multifamily industry. So those fifty companies are all enterprise size, really large deals in Junior and I worked together previously, I could have only dreamed of working with some of these companies, still did very well. But yeah, these are really big companies and initially kind of connected with their director of marketing and so that was kind of my initial interaction with the company.
Junior Lartey
All of these companies are like the cream of the crop, right. They're like the Derek Jeters of baseball. They're the messes of soccer. Everybody knows that when you go to a trade show, it's like, you know, all of these companies, like they send tons of their people. So to be able to work with the top fifty is a really big deal. Something that for sure, like we'd be cutting our teeth to get in our previous place of work. But ultimately you've got a deal here. Let's talk about it. How did you find out about this company? And research is always a big thing because it's multifamily, relationships matter. Tell us about where you became aware and how you got into this thing.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, so conferences are pretty big, as you're aware, in our industry, and so they're with an attendee list at a conference. And so I was kind of coming through the attendee list and looking at those top fifty companies and who was going to be there, because I've got fifty companies, I know them fairly well and I do fairly regular update research on them. This one had the back end accounting software that we align very well with and then they were a competitor. They were using a competitor from a CRM perspective. And I'm a pretty competitive guy. And so from my days in college of playing a sport like that's also a thing that drives me in sales. I want to be number one. I don't even care about the commission. I mean, I do care about the commissions, they're great, don't get me wrong, but honestly, being number one is what I shoot for. So this was a competitor's, one of their larger customers, and I thought, you know, if I could get them interested, that would be a big deal. And so I sent out a few messages, but honestly didn't hear much back. Wasn't able to connect with them at the event. In a follow up email, you know, kind of saying, hey, sorry we missed you, and then actually got a response.
Junior Lartey
I think one really unique thing is the event space. Like going to events, getting in front of people. We could probably run a thirty-minute podcast on how to do events the right way. Patrick, I know you've been to a ton of events. Give us maybe a thirty-second scope. I'm an account executive selling in the SAS space. I have an event coming up. What should I do?
Patrick Kennedy
Such a loaded question. Jeer, I hate when I put you on the spot. Yes. I hate sequencing with a passion. There is probably nothing more than sequencing, especially automated sequencing. There's good tools out there, don't get me wrong, but I hate them. My thing is try to connect with somebody on LinkedIn, find out something unique about them. Like, I was just reading about somebody who said, I just got an inbound inquiry from somebody who mentioned that they saw I was training for a marathon. And I responded to the email because of how personalized it was. And so I think it's really hard to personalize automated sequencing. So if you can put some time in, get to know your people and put that in your email out to them, I think that'll open the door way more than kind of spraying for a shocking approach.
Taylor Dahlem
Got you. So with this being a multi-touch inbound prospect more or less, right? Like you met him at a conference, had a great conversation, and then at that point they went from a cold lead to a pretty super warm lead at that point. Curious after that fact, maybe it's not necessarily a classic prospecting play, but what messaging, maybe what channels as well, really stuck within that you leveraged to kind of get your foot in that door even further than it already was and maybe why did those work?
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah. So? I don't know. I mean, from there my approach is really trying to get them to a discovery call. Once she responded back, I knew briefly what she was interested in, which product, which was our AI product. And so I had an idea, and again, it wasn't anything sexy. I didn't send over a ton of marketing material that was like, let me educate you on all this. Honestly, it was, can I learn about your business. Can we hop on a quick call so I can really learn and understand what it is that you're trying to solve for and why you're interested in this tool of ours?
Junior Lartey
So really quickly, before we move into the Discovery aspect, how did you know she was interested in just the AI aspect?
Patrick Kennedy
Some of the outbound that we were doing at the time was focused around AI. Right? So it was, are you trying to solve for the staffing shortage problem? How are you handling staffing turnover in the industry? Are you trying to automate some things? And that was kind of what she responded back and said. We are looking for an AI tool to help automate tasks that our team has.
Junior Lartey
It seems like really clear messaging. It's like nice when an inbound comes in based on a few avenues to open up conversations, this being one of those for funnel. Great job on the marketing side. Right. So you've got the meeting booked. What does discovery look like? And I know Discovery is your big thing just from our days of selling as well. So talk to us about how to run an effective Discovery, but also specifically what you learned here.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, so I had two Discovery calls on this one. Each one of them was about thirty minutes. And yeah, I'm a big discovery guy. I feel like if I can learn enough about your business, then I can figure out how and where our solution fits in. Oftentimes a teammate of mine will speak about our product and he always says, what if people ask you, tell me about your product. I always turn it back on them and say, I'm happy to tell you about the product, but I just want to learn about what challenge you're trying to solve for or what it is that you're looking for in automation. Why? And really drill down. Even if they give me an answer, I'll still say why though? And ask. I try to ask why at least three times without making it awkward on every question. Because if they can answer why three times, then I'm starting to get down to the root cause of it. And so I never talk about our product on a Discovery call. I never show features. On occasion, rare occasions, I may show one slide that shows our stack, our tech stack, but I do it at the end of a call to maybe show how and where they would fit in and why, from a value proposition standpoint, why that makes us unique. But it's usually a thirty second let me show you what it is that our company offers. And so, yeah, I love discovery. I think it's an ongoing if you're not doing Discovery before your first demo, during your first demo, after your demo, leading in to the first demo, I've got either Mobilizer or Champion. And then I try to ask who's in the meeting. Sometimes I find out sometimes I don't. If I find out who's going to be in the meeting, I outbound to them and say, I'm working on an agenda. I want to make sure I cover what it is that you're interested in and what challenges you're trying to solve. Do you have a few minutes for a quick phone call to try to understand what that is? And so, yeah, I love discovery. It's my favorite part of it.
Junior Lartey
Patrick, I think that piece, Patrick, you.
Taylor Dahlem
Were mentioning, like, the concept of discovery itself is a fluid motion, right. Ongoing. And I think a lot of maybe this is something Junior, you can expand on to, but I think a lot of account executives see it as almost a linear process, right. Like, if then this, right. I need to have this discovery meeting so I can move on to the demo. I'm curious from maybe both of your perspectives here, what does that ongoing look like? You mentioned a phone call.
Patrick Kennedy
Right.
Taylor Dahlem
You can chime in at any point, but are there different mediums that you're utilizing to continue discovery? And if so, what are the questions you're maybe looking to answer each step of the way? Or is it like, do you have a framework in mind, or is it just kind of wherever it takes me is where I'm going?
Patrick Kennedy
I do have a framework, but it's going to start anywhere, go everywhere type of approach that I take. I want it to be conversational. I want them to feel comfortable, because when they feel comfortable, guards come down. Right. And so I've seen other reps where they have a list of questions they're trying to get answered, and it's painful. Like, when I was managing reps, it was painful to watch. I was stressed out. I would have to turn my camera off because I was like, that is uncomfortable. Yeah. And I'm on the same team as you, so I think it's got to be conversational. You got to try to learn about them, be curious, ask a ton of questions.
Junior Lartey
Yeah. In my opinion, too, discovery changes as you get further into the deal because you've learned so much about the business, and you want to do that as early as you can. But then as the deal moves on, there are other things you want to uncover. Like, specifically things that I'm thinking about are, like, just a temper check. Not everybody is going to be like, hey, I'm an eight out of ten. I'm a five out of ten. But with my champion, she may be or he may be like, yes, the decision maker is like a four. We really need to do something to impact them. So I'm trying to discover less about the business and more about the deal and how to win the deal specifically. But Patrick, another piece. This whole discovery thing that we're talking about, like, all of this is gold. I love this topic. You outbound to people that are going to be into the next meeting and I think that's a huge miss for a lot of reps that aren't doing that today. Like if somebody else is being looped in, you now have permission to just go. You have permission to reach out, you have permission to call and you have permission to get in front of them. And the talk track is, hey, we've got a meeting booked in two days, three days from now. I'd love to get your perspective on X, Y and Z before we wrap up Discovery as a whole. Were there any main problems this specific customer had that you were like chomping at the bits as soon as you heard you're like, yes, I know we're headed in the right direction.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah. So I think two things, one is the first one really was automation and we have a couple of things that we do unique, different from our competitors, right? Yes, we have AI and that can answer questions and take some things off of their plate, but we also have marketing automation that does some other things that existing their current provider did not have. And so I felt like, okay, we've got a couple of things that I heard during Discovery that I thought, I'm going to latch onto those for the demo and show them. I'm not going to talk about them now because I want to get them excited. But I might dangle something out and say we've got some marketing automation, especially from a director of marketing standpoint, which is they're all about marketing automation that we could unlock there. And the second thing was they kind of admitted, hey, we have a good partner today, but they honestly have not done a ton to innovate and we are looking for a partner to help us transform our business and future-proof our business. They just didn't feel like that was the partner kind of after the second Discovery, after we had some of those conversations.
Taylor Dahlem
So at some point Discovery, it's fluid, it's ongoing, but at some point cars need to come on the table like you got to show what you've been talking about, show product. I'm curious, like the pain you surfaced throughout those multiple conversations and Discovery, how did that translate either a personalized demo or a personalized tour walkthrough of how you're going to solve those problems?
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, again, me personally, I like to kick off my demos with a review of Discovery essentially because I want everybody that's in the room to know what was spoken about and what was important to them. So I do a slide that says what we heard right. And I have either bullet points or whatever you want to call it, but quotes, either direct quotes from them or a summary of a conversation that we, you know, a topic that we talked about and so I lead with that and say these are some of the things we talked about, did I get it right or did I miss anything? And the secret to that is I'm every one of those things that I put on there is pain. It's not just that, here's a summary of what we talked about. It's pain that they verbalized to me or kind of admitted that their challenges that they're trying to solve for can't figure out today. And then I start to pivot that into. My next comment is, you're not the only one struggling with this. I talk to people every day. These are the same challenges or very similar challenges so that they don't feel like they're the only ones, that this is a problem that a lot of their peers are trying to solve. And then I pivot to a here's how I think you should solve that in speaking with your peers and some of those who have started to make that transformation. Here's some of the things that they're doing. And then finally with our product, how our product ties in to that business transformation. And so, again, I don't talk to our product, and that's when I finally show our product, right? So it's about discovering the pain, doing some education, and then finally talking about, here's a solution, and here's why I think our solution fits into solving your problem.
Junior Lartey
It's like a super pointed actionable framework that anyone listening can literally just take and deploy, right? So it's first a recap of their pain using their words, an outline of other companies experiencing something very similar, talking about how to solve the solution, and then where you and your company comes in to absolve all these pains and problems. So there's the framework. Steal it, use it, go full-blown attorney on it. It will work. So at this point, it's a great deal. The flow here is really smooth. Did you face any barriers that you had to overcome?
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, a couple, honestly. The first one was that my mobilizer went dark on me. We had a couple of great discovery calls, did a demo, an initial demo, and then she kind of went dark. And Junior, you and I talked about this. There's the adage of time kills all deals. And I think, yes, to a certain extent, depending on where you're at in that deal, but if it's late stage, probably not a good sign if they go dark. But this was still very early stage, and so I had spoken about the value proposition and how we could help them transform their business. What I didn't realize at the time, it seemed like the deal was not going well, that it may die. What I didn't realize was behind the scenes they were talking about, hey, this is a much broader conversation that we should be having. This is not just an AI tool conversation. This is a how can we future proof of our business conversation. And so I didn't have a champion at that point. I had a mobilizer but I didn't have a champion. And so it was a little nerve-wracking. But as I was able to reconnect with them, I learned some of those things and they shared that with me. And at that point I knew this was my deal to lose because I had educated them and opened their mind to a value proposition that was unique to us, that their current provider couldn't give to them. So that was the first one. Should I pause there?
Junior Lartey
Yes. Because I have a question.
Patrick Kennedy
Sure.
Junior Lartey
Thanks for pausing. Coach us. This is like me sincerely asking coach us through. I have a multi-product company, I'm working on a multi-title company. I could sell maybe one feature-like functionality thing, but I also know that I can blow up their full tech stack. What's the balance between, hey, let's get in and just solve for this small thing and then hope for the larger business. Just talk about that balance because I'd love to just learn from you.
Patrick Kennedy
I love that question. Junior, for this reason, after I left where you and I worked together, I went in between to another company, which was a large SaaS company and their model, their selling model was land and expanded. And when you and I were together, I had always been taught kind of go for everything, right. Expand their vision beyond just this narrow focus. So I would say kind of two things there. Climb the ladder. If you've got a mobilizer champion, that's great. Find out who your C-suite is and find out what their vision is. And so I hated the land and expand model and so I honestly always went at that company. I was there a very short period of time, but I went from thirty th on the team in pipeline to third on the team in six months. And honestly, it wasn't because I was some amazing seller. I was brand new at selling that product. It was because I was going after enterprise-size deals instead of previously how they had approached it, which was land the deal and then try to expand it. And so the same thing here. I would say you got to think bigger. You got to think don't just think how can I get my foot in the door? Think how can I kick the door open because the vision is so big? We're going to need the whole door open here.
Junior Lartey
I love the thoughts inspired a few fireworks here. So thanks for sharing.
Taylor Dahlem
Patrick, I'd be remiss not to say that mobilizer is such a cool term. I have not personally used that in a lot of my deals, but maybe my ignorance and maybe some pod listeners as well. What is a mobilizer? Maybe is it similar to a champion? Are there differences in your mind and how do we just use that term more often?
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, so mobilizer I view as somebody who has been tasked with solving a problem. Champion is somebody who's on your side. Hey, this is the solution that I want. Right. And whether you've value sold them into becoming a champion, maybe they started out as a mobilizer. So I view a mobilizer as, hey, this person has been tasked with helping the organization come to a solution for this problem that they have. I want to turn every mobilizer into a champion. That doesn't always happen, but somewhere during the process, you need to try to find a champion who can filter you information, secret information from that organization. How's it going? How am I doing? Where am I missing? So Junior talked about the scale of one to ten. Is somebody on a scale lower than a five, or how do I get them from a six to an eight? What is driving the conversation back there? So using your champion to kind of glean the secret information that you may not have as an insider on the other side.
Taylor Dahlem
Love it. No, I appreciate that explanation. I think there was one more barrier you wanted to bring up quickly. I just want to make sure we cover them all.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah. So single threading. So early on, I had this VP of Director of Marketing excuse me. And I was single threading with her. She was bringing some people in. I had done some discovery, but they were lower than her. And so I had not done a great job of fully understanding who the decision maker was. And so on a demo, I see this name pop up, and I didn't know who she was at the time. As I started to engage her, and that's my thing. If somebody's on the call, there's a reason they're on the call. So I'm going to engage with them. As I started to engage with her, the way she was answering the questions was much more visionary than it was in the weeds. And I thought, this seems like somebody more important than they're playing on. She was off camera and early on wasn't participating too much, and I must have struck a nerve, because all of a sudden, she engaged. And then I was like, here's my decision maker. And then I instantly started to at the end of the call, I didn't want to throw my mobilizer under the bus, but I knew who the decision maker was, or I was pretty confident I did. And so I asked the DM, I said, Should I interface directly with you, or should I continue going through this person? And she said, no, no, interface with me. You and I will work through this. And at that point, I knew she's the decision maker, but I also did not want my mobilizer to feel like, hey, I'm chop liver now. And so I continue to interface with her and say, how can I help? What do you need? What is going well, what's not? And things like that. So I didn't want to throw her under the bus and just leave her behind.
Taylor Dahlem
Got you. Okay, so I guess let's quickly recap. It seems like the timeline here is a little extended with some dark periods. But I want to quickly recap the timeline and maybe walk us through behind the scenes. The deal management from your perspective. And I know just from your background in our past. Conversations like this is a big point of emphasis for you. As well as when you've been tasked with the scale with other team members when it comes to sales process and deal management. Maybe tell us about this personal deal and how it works, as well as some thoughts on scaling it at large and how do you make sure your team is doing it properly?
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, so from beginning to end, it ended up being with the dark period, which ended up being about three months. It ended up being about an eight-month deal. So fairly long deal. We had probably twelve to fifteen meetings, a bunch of calls sprinkled in there, calls and texts. I'm a big proponent of trying to get cell phone numbers of anybody involved in the decision-making process and then being able to interface with them. Quick question here. There I'm not always great about emails, but if somebody texts me, I'm usually pretty quick. And a lot of the people we're interfacing with are busy. They're running businesses that are not software decision-making businesses. Right. They're running multifamily apartments, a lot of them across the country. So they're super busy. And so if I can get a cell phone it's a quick question here. This is the next step. Can we get a quick call? Things like that. And then we're tasked with getting it into we use salesforce on our end. We're tasked with getting it in. I'm terrible about doing it, so I tend to lead with a Google Doc that I have, running tab of all of my meetings, calls, summaries, and then that's what I share with the team. And then try to get as much of that into salesforce as possible. Yes. Go ahead, Junior.
Junior Lartey
No, I was just going to say, when you say Google Doc, I just instantly think like the ramblings of a madman. But I'm sure it's a bit more organized than that.
Patrick Kennedy
No, it's very much that they are the ramblings of a madman.
Taylor Dahlem
Just bullet points.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah. Everywhere. Just all over. And then as far as early on in funnel, I had been tasked with teaching the team that I was running at the time with managing deals. And there were some challenges there, whether it was maybe a flaw on me as a leader on running deals. But I'm also, like I mentioned before, hyper-competitive, and I thought, I can run these deals better. And I honestly missed being an individual contributor. And since the deals weren't being run the way I or some of these executive team thought they should, i. Said, why don't I step into running these enterprise-level deals. And so I took that on. And so yeah, that was the move.
Junior Lartey
That's amazing. Recognizing one, this is where I'm most passionate, this is what I'm the best at. And then of course proving to the team that you truly are competitive and better at selling.
Patrick Kennedy
Junior, can I speak to that? Because I think there's so many sales reps that are chasing, and maybe not maybe I'm total misconception here, but I think they're chasing a title. Find what you're good at and if you're good at being an individual contributor, own it. Do that. I thought for a little while I wanted to chase the title and I learned a ton of stuff. Not to take anything away from that. I just know where my strengths are and where I'm good at and that's in deals, doing deals. And so I moved back into what my strength is. Not the analytics and data side and pulling reports, which I hate, but more in the how am I going to advance this deal and work it properly.
Junior Lartey
Amazing. Like find the passionate and do that. I don't know if I'm like that. Great at the deal management side of things, but I feel like we've got the podcasting thing locked in too. This is like my fifty-year passion right now.
Patrick Kennedy
Love it.
Junior Lartey
Let's wrap up the deal as a whole. I'm sure you learned a lot of lessons, right? So many things, some great takeaways. We're going to try to like what are the three to four things you learned in this deal that if any rep deployed today would do them a lot of good.
Patrick Kennedy
So I say first of all, discovery, it's your best friend. Discovery is not about you. Discovery is about them. So be super curious, learn as much as you can about them. Show that you are truly interested in their business, that you understand the industry I think that you're in. I think the better you are at discovery, the better you will become as a consultant. And really from a sales perspective, I think if you're viewed as a consultant as opposed to a sales rep, you're going to get into deals and win deals that you would not if it's always about your product and always about you. So the first thing I take away, I would say is focus on discovery. Make it about them and you'll win more deals than you lose if you get better at discovery. Second takeaway, I would say is don't get caught multi-single threading. Don't forget to multi-thread. Right? That was a good reminder for me. It's not that I learned a lesson, I know it's multi-thread, but this deal was a hey, you know, I did not do a good job of asking in Discovery. And this again goes back to me doing a better job of discovery, of asking in discovery, who needs to be in this demo or who would be offended or, you know yes, who would be offended if we did not include them in this next meeting or in this demo. Because that really will help to start paint a picture of the team that's whether it's decision by committee or is one person. And so that was a good reminder from this deal of don't forget to multi-thread outbound as soon as you find out anybody that's going to be on that deal, don't ask permission to outbound, just outbound to them and say, I'm building an agenda and I want your input because I want your contribution in the meeting. Right? Another one is, again, caveatting this comment, depending on where you're at in the deal, don't be afraid of dark periods. Continue to provide value. One of the things I talked about was, or at least I think I talked about, was connecting with them on LinkedIn, following some of their posts, learning about them. Those are things that if they go dark on you, you can still contribute in that way. You can like a post, you can comment on a post, you can provide something, send an email saying, hey, I saw this on LinkedIn, or I saw this came out about the industry, I thought of you. Touchpoint, right? And maybe they are dark, but you're constantly adding value to the relationship and you never know behind the scenes in this deal. I didn't know behind the scenes because of the vision I painted and the way I sold this, it became a much larger conversation. So it became an enterprise deal as opposed to a land and expand deal. And then the last one, I would say this kind of goes back to what I was talking about just now, is education. Don't be afraid or don't be afraid to be the expert. You're the expert. Provide some value by educating them on what's going on in the industry, how they can solve that problem, and then tie in your solution. Again, keep it about them. Make it about them. At a certain point down the road, you're going to show them how your solution solves their problem, but always make it about the problem. Poke on the problem, touch the pain frequently and remind them of that pain that they currently have.
Junior Lartey
Patrick, it's been great having you on the podcast. Like, these three tips are amazing, but we also outlined a framework for when you go into demos. We talked at length about how to do a better discovery. Just so much like tactical information come from this. So really appreciate you jumping on and sharing this deal with us.
Patrick Kennedy
Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I really enjoyed it. It was great chatting with both of you.
Taylor Dahlem
Ton of value in this one. Can't thank Patrick enough for joining us. And just like that, another episode of How I Deal is in the books. Thanks to everyone for tuning in. If you want to connect with Patrick on LinkedIn. There's a ton of wisdom there. So we always enjoy leaving reviews, comments, things you liked about the episode. So please don't be afraid to do that with Junior and I as well. But until then, we will see you next time.
