Eps 7.0 Design Flow - AE talks to the SE convinces to do the call

Role play next step - AE Talks to the SE and looks to convince them to invest their time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey Andre, how are you doing? Good. Okay. I'm good now. Okay. Just got off the call with our SDR team. Looking into this opportunity for a little bit now. And I'll tell you, this company is pretty cool. It's called Johnny's Trucking. I know you don't know them. They're sort of the unknown secret out there, but they were brought to us by Schneider Trucking. You know who Schneider is, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Uh yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah, vaguely.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yeah. You're a huge logistics company across the globe. Um doing a lot of business here.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Okay, like FedEx, UPS, all that?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, trucking. Long and short haul trucking. You know, they plus they they apparently own their own drivers, which is huge. So it's a pretty big business. They have about a thousand trucks. They have about six, seven depots across the country, and they're hot for some logistics change. They're having a huge issue with trying to ensure that all their trailers are full before they go out moving to other locations. Because if a trailer that goes out that's half empty, they're making half the money, right? Okay, okay. So yeah, so basically what we need, uh, we've got uh one of the senior developed senior IT official over there who contacted us. So we're not working with the line of business directly, which is fine because remember that deal we did last month. We we started that deal through the IT professional and we worked our way up the ladder to get to the line of business. This is the same thing. Now, they're available tomorrow at three o'clock. Now, I I think there's at least a half a million, maybe $300 to half a million dollar deal here opportunity. Um, and you know, they want to they actually want to see a custom demo. Uh they specifically said to us that you know what, they're sick and tired of seeing standard demonstrations, which means to me that they've seen other competitive deals or competitive technologies, and they still want to talk to us. So I I I figure I figure we got a great opening. Now, here's the thing. I looked at your calendar, I know you got a TP Morgan Chase call that ends at three o'clock. I might be able to push them to like 3 15 tomorrow, but they want to do a three o'clock call. In fact, just for you, Andre, because I know you're super busy and you're great at what you do, man. I mean, we've won so many deals with this company because of you. It's unfair that you're just a senior SE and not a staff SE by now. But I can help you. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'll start the call. If you need a 15-minute gap to get to wherever you are, now all I'm asking is I go find some logos about their product and just skin the front end of our demo. It doesn't have to be completely about it, but the narrative needs to be about uh logistics and and trucking management. Is that something we can handle by tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Uh well, I mean, I I need a lot more data to have like a pretty compelling demo, you know, like just show the standard stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I mean, really, this is more of a discovery call. We're not gonna close them tomorrow, but we need some more details. And I think, you know, by showing them a demonstration, it'll spark a dialogue.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Okay, well, like you said, but you said like they've talked to other people in the industry. Like, what what other demos have they seen? From who?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Uh they've seen a bunch from what I heard. Uh, you know, I we've got to imagine they're they're all the same competitors, right? They're talking to uh Fred Strike, you know, Fred Freddie's on the move and also uh Chuck's Chuck's got Chuck Wagon. I'm sure they're talking to those guys.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So well, what exactly are they looking to see though? Like are they, I mean, what exactly so what's the nature of the thing?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, I mean, like I said to you, I mean, the their biggest challenge right now, which is costing them a huge amount of money, um, is uh is around ensuring that the loads they run, both short and long, are are full. They're runner has full of what? Full of goods. Full of goods. Well, I mean, they they're a logistics company. They could carry um, but one thing they don't do is refrigeration, so there's no you know, spoilers goods on a saw load.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And they got six or seven depots, but where? So where are they carrying goods to and from? Like where, like what is this logistics?

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Well, right on the right on the website. It shows a US map, and there's a spot in Chicago, Atlanta, LA, one in New York. So, you know, they're all in the major locations.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Okay, do we know how they run these these lines? Like, what's the schedule? How's it based? Like, how do they create this? How do we, you know, like how to like this is important to understand like the how they do their logistics so we can see how it feeds in and like what's the data? Like, you know, what's the data set?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Uh but Andrew, you're you're making this way too complicated. Like, we don't need to get to that right now. Like, tomorrow's goal is to get those answers that you're asking. So I just need a little bit to kind of entice them to get us more answers. Now, uh obviously I'm gonna go back to him and ask, see if you can bring additional people to this call. So that way, you know, and I and I definitely can use this custom demo as leverage and say, hey, you know, um, Johnny, can you uh can you bring at least, you know, someone from your uh sales organization or from your marketing department to the call? Would that work for you?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Uh well, so I mean, who's the decision maker like overall for this? Is is this actually a defined project?

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah, we'll find that out tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

And so budget, timeline, like what do we look? I'm like, I'm trying to prioritize my schedule because you know, like you know, I'm flying on the plane because I gotta get the.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

But this is Q4, man. It's Q4. Every deal is an opportunity. Time kills all deals. You don't want to give this any more time than we have to, right? I mean, there are totally they they want to make they want to make something happen this quarter.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

I I know, but you know, Fred, I always gotta remind you, man, like there's there's one of you, right? There's one of me rather, and I'm supporting seven of you guys, right? So, like between you and Mary and Kim and Sean, like there's there's seven of you. So I'm trying to make sure I give priority to what's actually real, right? Like, this just came in today. Like, what's the time? Like, how long have we been, you know, we we known about this one?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

You know, Andre, I certainly appreciate where you're coming from, you know, and I get it. Um, and if I was in your position, I'd be asking these questions as well. And I'm and I would not put you in a bad situation. This is why we're having a call. This is why I checked your calendar. And you know, I'm willing to give you the 15-minute runway because I get you're gonna be over time. What other rep would do that for you?

SPEAKER_00 6:03

I Fred, I totally understand. I do appreciate that. But I mean, I want to let me remind you though, we had a couple that we did, we we've turned some calories on a couple here in the last two quarters, and I want to make sure that you get your dollars, right? Like, if you look through all of your pipeline, is this the deal that you really want to spend some time on? Like, yes, if I'm giving out some some tokens and some chips, uh you know, you only have one left for this quarter.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

This is your this is the chip you want to use. This is the chip I want to use, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

And you're gonna cover the first 15 minutes. You're gonna can you get in the first 15 minutes, can you get the details that I'm asking for? Like timeline, budget, executive decision maker. Can you get all that?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll start working on that. Yeah, but you know how this works. I mean, you you ask some of those questions, they'll answer it versus me, because you know, typically I'm the sales guy, right? So, like you did the last time on the deal, you did a great job at asking those questions.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

All right, Fred. I guess we gotta do what we gotta do, man. I'm trying to help you in quarter, bro. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

And I'll talk to John, uh, you know, the R VP, and let him know how responsive you are.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah, I appreciate that. But um, I'm gonna have to run this up to my leadership too, because they're gonna ask me like why this versus, you know, I got some other deals that are sitting here, and at some point we're gonna have to have this conversation as to why we're burning the calories on this one. So make sure you have something that we can stand on here, okay?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Absolutely, buddy. I'll take care of you. Don't worry. We'll get you into that staff uh SC position soon enough.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

I appreciate it, Fred.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Thank you. All right. Don't hang up, don't hang up, don't hang up, don't hang up. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Oh my gosh. So royally screwed. That's what the SEs get. Uh I got nothing. Nothing, Fred. Nothing. And even when I asked for something, the give get, I got back more work. Yeah, man, you know. Yeah, but when you get there, you can get it. They're not gonna talk to me, but I'll burn the first 15 minutes. I was like, what? Crazy. Uh this is the life, dude. This is this is true. It's, I mean, you gotta laugh from crying on some of these. Yeah, yeah, this this is uh like we don't know who's gonna be in the room. We don't know much about the company other than go to the website like anybody else, right? Like the whole purpose and the value of having these conversations with the actual person, even if you got them on the line once at the SDR level, is to have the conversation. And as the AE, and again, this is you know, not for Kevin, Kevin knows this. For free hollow team, like, this is why this agent is so important, right? All of those things that Kevin and I keep servicing that are misses, right? Budget, timeline, who who's in the room, who's supposed to be at the meeting, what are we talking about, what are the logistics, etc., etc. etc. The agent and pull in before we get this far down the path, right? We have literally walked through in I don't know, this hour and 20 minutes, we've been kind of just you know riffing on this. We've walked through three layers and burned some major dollars in time and calories to get nowhere. We got the same exact things that we had at the SDR level on the first call.

unknown 9:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

And in a real world scenario, even though we played all this out in an hour and 20 minutes, this will play out in a two-month window sometimes because they sat on it, they didn't come back to it, then they resurfaced it after a PBR and they got pulled something else in or something like that. Like they'll go back and say, Hey, sorry we didn't get to you on that demo, we kicked the can a little bit, but yeah, we're ready to engage now, still have no answers further than we had in the first call. Right? So, again, a lot of time wasted, a lot of uh trials and tribulations going here. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, and and you know, granted, we might be taking this to the extreme, you might think, but we're really not. No, no, no, we're really not it's it's tough, dude.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I mean, when you I don't know, I look it's one of those things. I remember my grandma once saying like reflection is the master teacher. It's because like when you're going through all this, you don't realize just how ludicrous some of this is. When you start role-playing this, I'm like, I like the fact that this is a reality and that I've lived it is is ludicrous. Right. And more importantly, the fact that I'm not the only one, right? I'm one of many, many, many, many, many others, and it still happens today. Like it's one of those things, even over time, as an industry, we haven't evolved in this space enough. There's a lot of tools out there, a lot of things out there, resources, but yet this is still how things play out day in and day out.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

So yeah, so this is where the agent you know can play a very significant role, especially, you know, come to think of it, we we didn't consider we didn't consider the uh the agent for the SDR, because the SDRs are making so many calls, and to interrupt the SDR is just not gonna work. But the agent sitting on this call with the SDR and the account executive, I think would be a critical component. And I'm I'm thinking as much as the agent could participate and help push back on the SDR, whereas maybe the rep umas to ask the tough question of the of the uh SDR. And in fact, maybe if I'm an AE, I'm gonna have the SDR talk to the agent before they talk to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I was about to say that's it, right? Because the win here for all of us is that before it gets to the technical level or to the SE, CBC Act, before it gets there, that's where you true everything up. Because you really don't burn calories on the front end. But once you get to that C that C Act, that's where you burn calories because they are the resource. Again, they are the Swiss Army knife. They are the most constrained resource, but they're also the most phenomenal resource in terms of truly driving something to fruition, right? Without with that gap, if that gap exists, 98, 99%. I mean, throw a swag out there of these deals don't happen, right? Because you need that component, not just for the technical chops, but because they have a unique knack to bridge business to technical. Again, that's a utopia, right? But the reality is because of that, you have to overvalue that. You can't undervalue, and that's what happens today, right? You have to value that to the nth degree because when you come to their level and you want to burn their time, right? Just like you saw in this scenario play out, they're already between calls, between plane flights, between every like we're not even talking about a personal life. We're just talking about like driving business and they're already strung out between everything, right? And now you're trying to shoehorn something in. You got to make sure that when you show up to that level, to that plate, you have everything that you need and then some, right? If you're short 2%, 10%, okay, but you can't be short the 80%.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, spot on. Spot on.