The Discipline Behind Nine-Figure Deals with Stuart Gwynn

You bet, and thanks for having me.

I listen a lot-

Of course

... to this episode, so, uh, the Revenue Builders.

So, you know, at Mongo I've been fortunate to learn from a lot of people who've been on your episodes.

And to answer your question, I think the most important stage in, you know, sales process is discovery.

And the reason for that is 'cause if you wanna have an educated opinion, if you wanna really understand how you can identify pain, attach that, and what are the, you know, PBOs, positive business outcomes, you can attach to, or EBs are gonna re- reassign money and actually spend to solve this problem, you have to do that in discovery.

You have to listen with intellectual curiosity and in a personable way, and you have to do that in a way that, um, I would say you can really understand the pain and if you can solve their problem.

And, and if we can do that successfully, then you're gonna be able to go speak with an executive and have an opinion that's relevant to them, and they're gonna actually listen to you and partner with you to solve that problem together.

Do you think that there's something that... 'Cause a lot of people get it wrong, right? They can't get in there in discovery, ask the right questions, connect with a potential champion to, to even get to the next stage to kinda quantify the pain, you know, in the, in what you might call the scoping stage.

So is there something that you do that's special in discovery that really helps you that you think is a possibility that a lot of other reps don't do?

I think I'm very intentional and personable in discovery.

So at the end of the day, we're talking to people, and these people are gonna have personal problems, they're gonna have professional problems.

In college, I was an econ major, and, uh, one of the things that stuck with me was incentives drive behavior.

So I really try to listen and understand what this person cares about, what motivates them, 'cause different people are motivated by different challenges or different things.

And so in discovery it's no different.

We may be talking to an engineer, we may be talking to an app owner, we may be talking to, you know, the VP of modernization, but all of them have a job to do.

They wanna be successful, and there's some implication if they don't do that job right.

And so in discovery, just really sitting it, and I think the biggest two words I like to say is, "So what?" I'll say that probably more than most.

But we may be, you know, searching for answers to fill out our discovery capture sheet, as we call it at Mongo, but the good reps really sit in it and really listen and ask the second or third level discovery questions to understand the implication.

So if you do nothing, so what? If you're able to achieve this outcome, so what? If we modernize and we move from legacy relational to MongoDB, so what? What implication does that have to the business? And I almost say follow the money.

So I covered a large bank for a long time here at, at Mongo, and I like to coach my team and the inside reps who join the team specifically to really look through the lens of intellectual curiosity.

Look through the lens of, if you're a client of a bank, everyone is, how is this gonna impact you? How am I gonna touch the process? What's wrong with it? And if you're able to fix it, what's the benefit to the customers? How is it gonna make or save the bank money?

Yeah.

But what I really hear you doing, because you're, you're sittingIn there, like you said, with intellectual curiosity, and you're trying to understand the pain that the customer's in, and you're trying to say, "Okay, so what? Big deal." You're not really thinking ever, and you haven't said it, thinking about presenting, talking about your solution.