YouSaid · the spoken record

April Dunford

lines on the record: 110
first: 2023-10-22
most recent: 2023-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, I think there's a really important thing. Like, when I wrote the first book, people started writing back to me and saying, oh, you know, your book was so great. And my reflex action was to say, oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. But then I kind of stopped myself and I was like, you know what? I don't actually care if you enjoyed it. Like this isn't, this isn't entertainment. I'm actually trying to create something that's useful. So what I really want is for people to read this stuff and come back and say, you know, that was useful. We were struggling with this thing and that kind of unlocked something for me. And that was useful. And that's what I'm trying to do right now.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I guess so. Like, you know what? Like, I'm in this phase. You know, I think I'm again, I think it's an old age thing. Like, I'm in this kind of philosophical phase where I'm trying, I'm not going to be doing this forever. And what I'm trying to do right now is get everything that's useful out of my head and out in the world before I'm done. And so right now I'm very focused on delivering useful things for other people. Like I didn't think I needed to write a book about sales pitches, but then I got the idea in my head, like everybody's sales pitch is so bad and there isn't a book on how to build a sales pitch. And I'm not saying mine's the world's greatest thing, but it's better than nothing. So this is what I'm trying to do right now. I'm trying to be useful to other people because, you know, pretty soon I'm not going to be doing anything, I think is the idea. So yeah.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so where can people find me? I'm April Dunfor.com. You know, the only social media I'm doing these days is LinkedIn. I'm a bit social media out. I'm experimenting a little on threads and Instagram, but LinkedIn is a good place to find me if you just want low lift way to follow my stuff. But I am doing all the things now. Lenny, I got a podcast. It's called Positioning with April Dudford. I got a newsletter that's also called positioning. You can find that if you go to it's on substacks. You can find it there. Otherwise, aprilover.com slash books and you can sign up there. But those are kind of the big things. And then there's the books, obviously. Like if you want to learn more about this stuff, everything I know is in the book. Like there isn't stuff that I know that isn't in the book, to be honest.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a great product management conference there called La Product Conference run by these folks at TIGA. Shout out to Tiga. So I've been there a number of times for their conferences and they do an amazing job and the venue is really great. It changes around, but last year, the last time I went there, which was two years ago, it was at an old theater in Pigal, absolutely beautiful. And that was a pretty great venue in a great city with a great conference. So yeah, shout out to French people”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I kind of get Paris. I like Paris. And so when I go to Paris, I just have the best time. Like, you know, I have my set of restaurants I want to go to. I have my handful of places I want to go shopping. I like, you know, pull my butt down in a cafe, look at the beautiful people, drink my nice coffee. Like I just, I just really dig the whole vibe of Paris. So, you know. And people are starting to know that now. So like French companies will call me and they'll say, do we get to Paris discount? Because we hear you like it. Come in here. And I want and I go. Okay.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's such a cliche, but I love Paris. Like, I just love it. But for me, for me, Paris is like, it is like a particular vibe. So when I was in university, I did an exchange when I was in engineering and I did third year engineering at a school just outside of Paris. And so I spent the whole year there, learned a bit of French. My French was pretty good at the end. My French is really bad now.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years. I don't know. His motto is the home of fun since'71. So he started it in 71. I think he sold it three, four years ago. So a long time. And, you know, and it all worked out good in the end. And so I don't know. I think there's something cool about growing up in a family where you can see the sort of highs and lows and then again be sort of like everything's, you know, we're just grinding and out over here. Like nothing's a big deal.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it's funny because it's a little bit related to that. So my dad ran a business. So I grew up in a really small town. And my dad in his cottage country in Canada. And so my dad ran the local like toys for tourists, like boats and motorcycles and ATVs and that sort of thing. And he ran that business for years and years. He sold it a few years back when he retired. It's a neat thing to grow up in entrepreneurial family because you kind of see those highs and lows. You know, like the business is really good, that the business was really bad. And, you know, and then we were all broke. And then the business was good and we were not broke, you know. So there was this thing. And my dad used to always kind of have this attitude of like, you just got to grind it out. Like you're just going to grind it out. There's going to be good stuff. There's going to be bad stuff. But the key is to just keep going. Like just keep going. And so he ran that business for whatever said third.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My thing lately is And maybe this is just like an old person thing. But my thing lately is nothing's a big deal. Nothing's a big deal. Nothing's a big deal. And so you'll have stuff like that you think is a really big deal. Positive or negative. And you'll be like, wow, if this thing happened to be so great. And then it happens and you're like, yeah, it's pretty great. But, you know, things are good otherwise. Or it'll be the opposite. Like, oh, if this thing happened to be so bad, then it happens and you're like, that wasn't that bad. And so I don't know if this is good or bad. But lately I'm in this zone of like I'm in this kind of chill zone where I'm like, nothing's a big deal. Everything's cool.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you actually come with a little cartridge that you stick in, or if you feel bad about the environment, you don't want to be thrown out cartridges all the time. There's a refillable cartridge. So you basically just stick it in the thing and go and it sucks it up. And yeah, you don't dip it in ink. That would be crazy. I can't take that on the airplane, man.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, these are actually really good. They're like rollerball pens. Rollerball pen, very good, but not as good as the fountain. The Mooji pen is pretty good. Yeah.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Lammy All Star. That's my great product lately. I don't have one right here. I should be a great prop to pick it up, but I actually don't have my bag here and it's in my bag. But let me all start you Google it. These are beautiful pens. And then if you haven't written with a fountain pen, it takes a minute to get used to it, but then it's like, gosh, it just feels great. Like you'll never write with a ballpoint pen again.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there's this company Lamy. They're based in Germany, and they make the world's greatest fountain pens. They're beautiful, they're amazing. Some of them are really expensive if you want to spend a lot of money on a pen, you can. But they have this one called the All-Star, which is not an expensive pen. It's 20, 30 bucks. I mean, it may be expensive for a pen, but it's not so much money that you wouldn't feel bad if you lost it.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, I'm kind of into I don't even know how to describe this category of things, but things that are kind of low tech, but are awesome. And so one of the category of things that I really love right now is I'm really into fountain pens. I don't know if you've ever written where the fountain pen is. I haven't, but I know what they are.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I stole it from a company that made me do it before I got hired. And I was like, this is a really smart thing. I'm stealing this. My thing was I got anxiety and I couldn't decide what product to write about. And I had literally just bought a new pair of running shoes. So I wrote two paragraphs about”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I used to love that test because people could either do it or they can't. And there's just so much stuff we end up doing in product marketing and marketing that involves a little bit of writing that it's just, it's kind of a foundational skill. And if you don't have that, that was the one thing I couldn't teach you.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you know, back when I was running teams internally, like back in my VP marketing days, I felt like a lot of marketing folks came with a certain amount of bad habits, particularly startup marketing folks. It's a bit of the Wild West in marketing. And so sometimes they come in and you get into somebody new and they'd be really smart, but they learn something at the previous company that you're like, please never do that here. It's not going to work here. And so I kind of developed a thing where I was just looking for attitude, like, you know, were you enthusiastic? Did you look, you know, are you super into what we're doing here? And I can teach you pretty much anything. The only thing I can't teach you is persuasive writing. And I think that's a learnable skill. Like I think people can learn how to do persuasive writing. I just don't have time to teach it to you myself. And so I used to give people a writing test. So I'd say, look, think of something you bought recently and write me two paragraphs and just sell me on it.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's polarizing. Like it's polarizing. You either think it's amazing or you're like, that was terrible. What did I just watch?”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's funny when it came out, I was working at a startup, and the CEO came and said, seen any good movies lately, and I was like, oh man, you got to see this movie Snow Pears. And he went on a first date with a woman. And he came back the next day, and he was so mad. He was like not just kind of mad. He was really mad at me. He was like, that was the worst movie I've ever seen. I was like, dude, you should have told me you were going on a date. I didn't know.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have you seen it? So I love this movie so much. So recently I went on a train trip with my dad and before I went to the train trip, you know, we got talking about trains. And then, you know, we all had to go watch Snow Piercer again. Like, me and my daughter watched Snow Piercer. We're really into this movie.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, I'm going to get in trouble for this. You know Bong Jun Ho, there's the guy that did the movie Parasite. So before Parasite, there was this book called this movie called Snow Piercer. It's really old. I think it came out.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For your mind, like, you know, I have my copy of it is dog eared. I probably read that book a hundred times and I still see stuff in that book that I didn't see before. So I think if you really want to go deep on this positioning stuff, my book is like the how-to book. Their book is like the what is it in the first place book? And I think everybody that's interested in positioning should go read that.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's an easy question. So, right now, I'm really into Matt Dixon's work right now, which we've mentioned him a couple times on the podcast. But Mad Dixon's new book called The Jolt Effect is really great just because there's all this data. And the things that he discovered with that data, a lot of it sort of go against what we would consider like accepted sales wisdom. And so I think that book is full of juicy nuggets and everybody should look at it. His previous book, The Challenger Sale, and there was a companion book to that called The Challenger Customer, those were also excellent. And based on a deep set of research, and those books are older now, but what we see in the Joel effect is all the stuff holds true, like all the stuff from the Challenger sale has not changed in 10 years. So I think those books together are really cool. The other one that I always recommend is like the original book on positioning, which is the book by Reason Trout Positioning.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, but here's the thing that I think people should think about when they're looking at all this stuff because, you know, it's terribly confusing if you're trying to figure this out. You know, the one thing I really dislike about the category creation folks is they say that's the only way that you can be successful. And in general, that's just not true about anything. Like there's lots of ways to do everything. And so I think people should mess around with stuff. And for any of these frameworks, I think they should look at it and see if it works for them in their situation. And maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. And I think they should steal things from wherever they can steal it and figure out what works in their own situation. Like my stuff, like I like to think as a starting point. Like folks should use it as a starting point. But people shouldn't be slaves to it.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuff and investor pitch. In fact, we want to go there and investor pitch. Sales pitch, you know, sales pitch is all about right now. Sales pitch is like, okay, I'm going to exchange my money for right now. Like you can't get too far into the future. Otherwise, all I'm doing is giving everybody a reason to delay, which they're kind of likely to do anyway because they're indecisive about what they should do.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the trend in the same way. So unless you have a particularly unique take on the trend, well, then it's not the trend at all, really, is it? It's kind of your insight into the trend. So I don't think trend is that great because it's not always unique to you. And ideally, what we want is something that we can say that none of our competitors can, and typically, you know, a trend is something outside of our control, it's out in the world and everybody else can see it too. So I don't think it's great. I think that structure looks a lot like the structure we use in a VC pitch or an investor pitch because we're talking about much longer timelines and we can say, look, the world is really changing. And 10 years from now, there's going to be chaos and destruction. And the only one standing is us. And, you know, therefore, there is no competition and blah, blah, blah. And because the timeframes are longer and we're talking about disruption of an entire market, which is pretty theoretical, we can get away with a lot of that.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the time, the customers are going to want to know what's better about it? Like, tell me what the value is that I can't get anywhere else. And you're going to have to get more specific than just saying, trust me, it's new and new is good. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, this idea of starting with a trend on the surface, it looks kind of good. But the problem is often the trend is not unique to you. So everybody else sees the trend too. And so you're starting in a way that any of your competitors could start the same way. So I did this for years where I was taught to do problem solution, right? And so we would define the problem like a trend. So we'd say, well, the change in the world, like I would sell the databases and I'd say, change in the world like data is exponentially growing, you know, and it's like, no, we all know that. All of my competitors could say that. And all of my competitors deal.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, usually, I've got to thread the needle, and so that's the first thing. The second thing is that for most companies, like if we really understood customer indecision, old is good. It's safe. It's not risky. And like, does anybody ever say, no, I'm not going to buy? I'm not going to buy Salesforce. That's the old stuff. I just don't think that happens. So in a lot of cases, I don't think you can rely. It's lazy to say buy this because it's new and new is better.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the thing with that framework is I do think it works in certain conditions. But again, I think the conditions might be kind of edgy. So there's a couple of things that I think are lacking in that structure for a sales pitch. So the first one is there's actually no concept of differentiated value in that pitch, which for me is a giant miss. So in that pitch, it assumes that new is inherently valuable and old is inherently bad. And sometimes that's true. So sometimes there's just you versus the status quo and the status quo is some terrible old thing, some legacy thing, or it's manual processes or something, and you're the only thing out there, then you can get away with that. But most of the time we don't have that. Like most of the time, there's multiple new ways of doing something and you just can't say, well, I'm the only new and the rest of you are old and bad.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a big shift in positioning, though I'll tell you that. Most of the time, we're not doing that. Most of the time, it's a tightening, right? Like, we're not saying, oh, we used to be this, and now we're this. Most of the time, it's a tightening. But usually, like the pitches are so bad. I'm telling you, they're so bad that there's this low hanging fruit there that if we could improve it even a little bit, it actually has this big impact on how much stuff survives down the pipe.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so people don't like me talk about revenue. Hugely, what we've seen, though, is again the immediate impact is felt in sales, and everybody's very jazzed about that because sometimes what the worry is, is like we've got this old positioning and they came in through the pipeline that way. So they were exposed to our marketing somewhere with this old positioning. And then we hit it with the new positioning, with this sales pitch. And aren't they going to be all like, oh, you move my cheese? And usually it ends up not being a problem at all. So usually what we see immediately is an uptick in what's happening in sales. And so I've had a couple of companies tell me they've doubled the number of deals that they're bringing from first sales call to opportunity just by tightening up the pitch and getting that going. I think that's not unusual. I worked at a company where we did it in-house. Where I was the VP marketing. And we within two quarters had doubled the revenue.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Positioning, and then that's when we'll re-look at the pitch. So we would look at recertifying the reps every quarter on the pitch and all that kind of stuff. Good product marketing organization generally is very concerned with the positioning in the pitch, and those two things sit in their purview, but depends on how you define it. I can't wait till you get Airbnb to tell us how this stuff works. I mean, they're different because they're consumer. Companies are arranged in all different ways. So, you know, if you have product marketing, it looks one way. If you don't, it looks another way. Somebody's got to kind of be the owner of this thing, though. And so we have to decide who that's going to be.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So usually marketing is going to end up being the stewards of the positioning once the positioning is done. So they're going to end up being like positioning police after this because a lot of the positioning stuff is going to take the form of marketing things. So they're invested in this. So when I was the VP marketing, I was the person that would instigate the positioning thing. Let's get everybody together and work on the positioning. And then I would usually be the person that is driving getting to sales pitch figured out, but it's me and sales and product working together. And then once the sales pitch is done, depending on whether the size of the organization and whether or not you have sales enablement or somebody inside sales that can babysit the pitch, usually me and the head of sales would work on, okay, this is the pitch and this is locked down and we're not actually going to change this pitch until something happens that requires us to change the pitch.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes you're like IBM, and who knows when you get to it, right? But most folks could get through it if everybody's motivated, we can get it out and have it running in a month.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So, in the customers that I work with, when we do the positioning stuff, the positioning stuff takes a week. Like we're beginning and we're done in a week. Like we're all about speed on this thing. We're trying to get the thing happening fast. So we're in and out on the positioning in a week. It might take you like it depends on the company. Like the bigger the company, the slower this is. But some big companies are actually quite fast. And if you're motivated, it shouldn't take long for us to take that pitch and make it real. Then we got to find a rep, train the rep. And then how long it takes us to test it really depends on how much deal flow you've got. So if you're working on monster deals and you don't actually get that many qualified prospects to pitch, that might take a few weeks. But if you've got a lot of prospects coming through the door and you can get through this fairly quickly. So I've had companies do it start to finish. We got new pitch out the door and people using it in two weeks. That's about as fast as you can get it done. Most folks, I would say take about a month.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we should see is an immediate uplift in what happens after first call. So most of the time what that is, is we get a higher percentage of deals converting into opportunities after that first substantive calls. Sometimes, depending on the quality of the pipeline we had coming in, we're actually disqualifying more, but sometimes that's a good thing. But what we should see is an immediate uptick, it's stuff coming into the pipeline. It's a neat trick to pull when especially right now, when everybody's budgets are really tight and you're just trying to squeeze more juice out of the lemon, it's a really easy way to get some more juice out of the pipeline. Just go in, tighten up your positioning, tighten up that sales pitch, and we can have instant impact with that because we can roll that out in a couple of weeks and start getting better deals flowing through the pipeline because these customers are understanding your value better.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trust me, I'm the best rep on this whole team. By the way, here's the list of deals I have cooking in the pipeline that I got using this deck. You should go do it and I'm going to teach you how to do it. Now I got sales teach and sales instead of marketing sort of throwing something over the wall and crossing their fingers and saying, hey, I hope this works”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm not going back to the old pitch. I'm sticking with this pitch because I think this one works better. An experienced sales rep will know that whether the pitch is better than the old pitch if you give them the opportunity to feel comfortable with it, work with it a bit and pitch a bunch of new prospects with it. So if your best sales rep says, oh, this is way better than the old pitch, I can just feel it from the way people react to it and the number of times we've been able to convert people over into actual opportunities from a first call, then what you do is at that point I call that pass. So then we take that rep, we can film them doing the pitch for training, and then we can take that rep, go back to the rest of the sales team, and have that rep sell everybody else on it. So that rep goes back and says, listen up, people, you're stupid if you're using that old pitch, which sucks. This new pitch is way better.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Test the pitch with qualified prospects. So we don't go to existing customers. They've already been polluted with the old positioning and the old pitch. And this needs to work with a qualified prospect. So let's do it in the way it was intended. We're going to take qualified prospects and work that new pitch with them. Usually what we'll do is a test period where after every pitch, we'll huddle and say what worked, what didn't work. Maybe that word is tripping people up. Maybe we need to move this slide from here to here. And so you will tune it. And then after we've done a bunch of pitches, one of two things happens. And so in this test structure, I am very much relying on the expertise of my best rep to know what's good. So after the best rep is comfortable with the pitch, done a bunch of pitches, we twizzled it. At some point, the rep will say, okay, I think we're done, you know, optimizing this pitch.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you got to get sales management involved and building a new pitch. And then I would never just build the new pitch and then heave it over the wall and say, good luck, Chuck. Because what will happen is they'll come up with all kinds of excuses why they can't use this pitch. Instead, what you do is you take your best sales rep, your best one, and you bring your best sales rep over and you train them on the new pitch. They got to learn it. They got to pitch it to you, pitch it to the head of sales. We do a bunch of repetition on that. And then we have that rep.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then go in to test it. So I think there's a bunch of things in testing that are really important. So, one is we absolutely need sales involved in building the pitch. If we don't have sales involved in building the pitch, the pitch is never going to stick. Like the rule with sales reps is even if they don't like their current pitch, they're comfortable with the current pitch, then they know it and they memorized it and they have a little joke they tell on slide three. So they're not going to give up the current pitch without a fight.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so generally, if the sales pitch isn't working, it's because the positioning was weak. And so companies that jump straight to building the new sales pitch without going back and really making sure that they really nailed the differentiated value, who knows, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. And a lot of times it doesn't, I think. And so in the work I do with my clients, we go all the way back to the beginning. So we go right back to let's work on the positioning first. Now, if I've got the smartest people from the company in the room and we've done enough deals that we're pretty knowledgeable about how customers buy and what they like and what they don't know, if I've got the senior executive team in the room and they've got a reasonable amount of customer experience, we can pretty much feel good that the positioning we come up with, if we're following a process, we'll be good. Then it's just a matter of taking that positioning, mapping it to the sales pitch.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or sounds good, but maybe it's going to be too expensive or something. And so you're going to handle that objection as best as you can. And then you finish with the ask, which is, you know. Whatever the next step in your sales process is. So if it's, you know, hey, well, so what do we have to do to get a deal cooking here? Do we have to get IT involved? Does IT need to see it? Would you like us to come in and present with you with IT? Or do you want me to just help you work on some stuff for IT? Like it's whatever your next step in the sales process is.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's one way to prove it. If I had some independent third party data that proved whatever I was claiming I could show that there too. But a lot of times what we're doing is we're like, let me show you how this worked in a company that used our stuff. So this is what the before looked like. They did this thing. Here's the after. And so customer case study is usually good way to do that. But there's usually a step called proof, which is I showed you the value. Now here's the proof that I could actually deliver on that value and it's not just me blowing smoke. And then the step after that then is this optional objection step where they say, Oh, yeah, sounds good, but IT's never going to go for it.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's what we're doing there. And then we end with these three little pieces. One is generally I got to show you some proof that I can do what I say I can do. So if I'm claiming this thing delivers an amazing customer experience, how do I prove that? Well, I can prove it by other customers saying it was amazing.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we believe that. That's why we built what we built. So here I am. I'm Hell Scout. We're customer service software for digital businesses, whatever our market category is. So we introduce it just to get people straight in their mind about what it is. And then we move to here's the value, here's how we do it. If we think about a typical sales call, like let's say a sales call is half an hour, 45 minutes, I would expect it's been more than half of the time in the sales call in this differentiated value phase. So if we're doing a demo, that's the demo. And we're saying, okay, step one, let me show you how we do this, right? So easy to use as an inbox. Here's the features. Never have to outgrow it. Here's the features. Delivers amazing customer experience. Here's the features. And so that's where we're doing, you know, we're getting to the meat of what you thought you were getting when you clicked on the button that said, give me a demo.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the follow through. It's really focused on differentiated value. So in the second part, the first step is usually we introduce our stuff, which is where the market category is important. So we come in and we say, okay, can we agree that a really good solution should tick these boxes? Yes? Okay, good. Now let's talk about us.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the customers either like, yeah, right, or they're not. And so if they're right with you on this definition of the perfect world, then I've got you. Like I've already won the deal and I haven't even talked about us yet. Because the way I've set it up, I'm the only one that can deliver that. So, if you say right, all I gotta do is prove that I can do that and get you over the hurdle that it's possible for you to adopt it.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is the conclusion of the setup phase. Know if I'm help scout, for example, the conclusion is, you know, we say, look, you really want customer success software that's as easy to use as an inbox. You're never going to outgrow it. But it was built from the ground up to be to deliver an amazing service. And so it's this part of the pitch where we actually get agreement with the customer that we are aligned in terms of our point of view on the universe. So it's where I say, okay, we've had our little discussion about the pros and cons of the other alternatives. And we say, so look, so are you with me, man? Like, can we all agree? A really good solution for you would have A, B, and C?”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Market leader, and then I overtake them. So the example for my early career was I worked at this company. We thought we were enterprise software. We narrowed it down to CRM for investment banks. And so we literally drew bowling pins for our investor and said, lead pin is CRM for investment banks. Once we knocked that over, then we're going to go to retail banking. Then we're going to be CRM for banking. And then once we knock that over, we're going to go to insurance. Then we're going to be CRM for financial services. Once we knock that over, then we're going to be a great big company and we're going to challenge CBOL to be CRM for enterprise software. Instead, we got acquired by CBOL for like a billion bucks, but whatever. So most companies, if you look at the history of them, they actually start that way. And so, yeah, if we just fast forwarded to when they were 300 million, we could say category creation is the only thing to do. But it's like, well, what happened before then? That was something different.”
2023-10-22 · Lenny's Podcast · A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source