Kevin Deldjoui started as a door-to-door salesman selling paint jobs. Even after he had doors slammed in his face, he wasn’t ready to give up on sales. Over a decade later, he’s now a Senior Account Executive at Localize, with more than 7 years of sales experience.
Having been an AE for around 3 years across different organizations, he has hit 100% of his annual quota in 2022 and 125% quota in 2021.
In this second chapter of the Closers X Factor series, we reveal how he runs disco and demo calls, how he builds urgency in the buyer, his negotiation tactics, and all the behind-the-scenes activities that help him close sizable deals and crush quota every year.
1) Kevin's Discovery Call Superpower: Being Consultative
For the discovery call, Kevin prefers a consultative approach, where he acts like an adviser to see what’s the best solution for their pain points. His goal is to understand their pain points as thoroughly as possible and see how well his solution can fit their requirements.
In a 45-minute call, he asks prospects questions based on the BANT lead qualification framework, along with questions he framed based on his experience. Here are a couple of examples:
- “What boxes do you need checked off before moving forward with us?”
- “What does your buying process look like?”
“I want to make sure that what I'm working with is going to fit their needs. So, I have to ask as many questions as possible.”
2) Win Back Wandering Minds With Open-Ended Questions
Given his long experience in sales, Kevin can sense when the prospect loses interest during the discovery conversation. A dead giveaway is when they stop nodding, smiling, or maintaining eye contact.
Once he knows that the prospect is no longer with him, he’d ask open-ended questions like:
- “Can you tell me a little bit more about what's going through your head?”
- “What are your thoughts on this?”
“I just try to get them speaking because, more often than not, they're going to tell me what they're thinking.”
3) What Do Water Coolers Have To Do With Rapport Building?
When building rapport with prospects, knowing where the boundaries are is important. You can’t get too personal, but you can’t keep things too professional and come across as stiff.
To strike the right balance, Kevin has a thumb rule: Any conversation that's appropriate for colleagues to have during a water cooler chat holds good during a call as well.
Here are a few tactics that he uses to build rapport during the discovery call:
- He’ll be the first to open up by giving personal anecdotes about things like what he did over the weekend. This makes the prospect feel more comfortable.
- He avoids any topics that are political or controversial.
“If you're in sales, you should be comfortable talking to a random person you've never met before. If you're in line at Chipotle and feel weird doing that, maybe sales isn't right for you.”
4) Why Overselling During Demos Is Not a Good Idea
Armed with the information from the discovery call, Kevin sets up the sequence of the 30-minute demo call. The call comprises 10 minutes of the product walkthrough and a Q&A session.
But, he resists the temptation to oversell. He says prospects might feel flooded if they’re shown features they don’t need immediately.
So, he’ll focus only on the features which will help prospects achieve their goals and are related to the initiatives they’re currently working on.
“Sometimes, you need to just stop selling. It's sold, and everything else is just a nice-to-have. You solved what they needed to do. So, just briefly mention the other stuff and say, ‘We can go into it if you want to.’”
5) How Kevin Counters the Prospect’s Procrastination With His Persistence
Some prospects might not articulate the next steps after the demo. They might end up saying things like, “Let us think about it,” to buy time, and might fall off the radar.
This could be a huge stumbling block for most AEs. Not for Kevin, though. He stays persistent and probes into the real reason behind the objection.
When he senses that prospects are not making a clear decision after the demo, he overcomes it by presenting the alternative: How will it affect their goals if they don’t purchase the solution?
If a prospect tells him they’re mulling delaying the purchase by 2 or 3 quarters, he will proceed to ask them:
- “You said you wanted to do X, Y, and Z by {particular time}, so will the delay cost you something internally?”
- “Is that going to delay your expansion?”
- “Is that going to interrupt your existing clients’ experience?”
If they’re exploring a competitor, he’d ask:
- “What do they have that you like better?”
- “With {particular function}, did you know that we can do this?
“Not interested is never an objection. There's a real objection under that.”
6) Budget Check: When’s a Good Time To Bring Up Pricing?
Although Kevin brings up pricing only at the end of his demo call, he'll bring it up in the discovery call if their budget is significantly lower than the solution’s cost.
When he asks about the budget in the discovery call and the prospect gives a fairly low price, he'll tell them:
- “Just to let you know, our range is closer to {price}. If we can solve exactly what you're looking for, is that something you'd consider?”
For other prospects, he’d normally give the price range of his solution at the end of the demo. Next, he schedules a separate ROI call, where he discusses the solution’s value by asking:
- How much time and money can his solution save for the prospect?
- Why will his solution keep the prospect from going to a competitor?
7) Why Relentless Follow-up Matters During Negotiations
Kevin’s negotiation process is call-heavy rather than emails, as he can immediately address their hesitations and objections in calls.
Another advantage of calls—apart from being more time-efficient than emails—is he knows that the deal is going sideways if the prospect is resistant to setting up the call or if they no-show without informing.
Once he offers a free trial of his solution to prospects, he tries to schedule a recurring weekly call during the trial period to check in on them. As the deal heads toward closure, he’ll schedule as many calls as required within a week.
According to Kevin, the prospect’s intent to purchase the solution loses steam as time passes. So, he ensures meticulous follow-up during the negotiation phase.
8) Time = Money: Kevin’s Strategy To Build Urgency
Kevin stresses that the best way to build urgency to close the deal is to convince prospects that any delay in closing the deal will lead to a delay in achieving the goals they have set for themselves.
While negotiating with prospects, he builds urgency by:
- Bringing up the prospect’s pain points from the discovery stage
- Quantifying how his solution will help them save money and resources
- Highlighting how their high-priority goals are achievable with his solution
9) How to Close Deals During an Economic Downturn?
The economy has slowed down, and a recession is looming. To close deals in this challenging economic climate, Kevin puts more emphasis on the prospect’s goals and his solution’s value.
- In his discovery and demo calls, he tries to learn more about the current initiatives in the prospect’s company. If they bring up layoffs, he checks with them about the company’s financial health and whether it’d impact the closing of the deal.
- While negotiating, he quantifies how much money his solution can save the prospect’s company so that the prospect is convinced of its ROI.
10) On the Side
What Are the Longest and Shortest Deals You’ve Ever Closed?
“The longest deal took me like a year and a half. I've also closed deals within 2 days of first speaking to them.”
How Do You Keep Abreast of the Latest Happenings in Sales?
“I have a lot of friends who were in sales and are still currently in sales, too. So, I love keeping up with them. I keep up with the majority of my old coworkers also.”
What Is the Best Sales Advice You’ve Ever Received?
“Just be real and believe in what you're selling. And everything else should follow.”
That’s a wrap on the second episode of The Closers X Factor series, where we uncover the processes that help top-performing AEs close deals every time. We'll be putting out a story of one outstanding AE every week, which you can read here. The series is written by me, Akileish R, and edited by Ashitha Jayaprakash.
Also, if you’re in the mood to learn how top sales reps can break quota records, here’s the previous season—The SDR X Factor series—featuring 8 quota-smashing SDRs from companies like G2, Metadata, Zinc, and more. See you real soon!
