Danilo 0:00

Let's, let's talk about sales nightmares.

Landon 0:02

Getting so stuck into it that you can't get out. Um, I find happens most often when you have a sales opportunity that you really, really think is gonna go somewhere and you really want to go somewhere and you're really invest into going somewhere. And as a result, you end up putting yourself in situations that you maybe wouldn't otherwise or making decisions that you wouldn't otherwise. And after the fact, you end up hating yourself for it and you go, why did I do that? And so I think our time today, hopefully we can share some experiences that will help you avoid those nightmares.

Danilo 0:39

so there is, I think a pretty straightforward. Qualification step that keeps you out of a sales nightmare, which is does the customer have the ability to pay?

Landon 0:54

Yeah, and that's an awkward question to ask, especially if sales is not your number one job, right? If you're not used to talking about money, if your typical conversations aren't about money, if you don't sit around your dinner table talking with your friends about how much money you make and how much money they make, and how much money you have in the bank, which most people don't do, right? That's just kind of awkward. Then when it comes to getting on a call, you've gotten all excited. The, the customer's gotten all excited. They love your product, you love your product. You want them to love your product too. And when it comes up to the, to the point of talking about money, you might be tempted to go, ah, let's just not talk about it. Or let's just make that a less important thing. Or, uh, maybe even, you know what, I just want him to use it and I don't even care about the money at this point. And all of those things are just going to end in total heartache.

Danilo 1:40

So it sounds really obvious, the and, and if you, you might be listening to this thinking like, why do we even need to talk about this point? Obviously we would want a customer who can pay. But lemme lemme tell you, I have been consulting and gotten so high on the particulars of what is possible with a customer that I have been blinded to the fact that even if all of this is possible, at the end of the day, this customer does not have the constitution. Or perhaps more practically does not have the resources to actually pay what is necessary to do the job that I am describing at the level it deserves to be done.

Landon 2:24

I've been there, I've been on those calls where you're, you've had two or three emails with a customer and they're getting excited. You're getting excited. Do you get on the demo call? You show them what your product does, and it's a perfect fit for what they need. It does everything they need it to. Um, in a post hog hog context, they're adopting 3, 4, 5 products. And then we go, okay. How much are you gonna use this? They're like, uh, maybe 500,000 events a month, which for those who don't know, post hog, that's free. Like you get that for, for nothing. And that feeling of excitement immediately goes to that pit in your stomach where you realize how much time and energy you've spent on someone who is never going to pay you a cent.

Danilo 3:09

So. How do we, how do we keep ourselves out of the nightmare of putting all of this time in when there's no return?

Landon 3:19

So step number one is do some due diligence before you even respond. So you've got your person, maybe they've called you, maybe they've emailed you, you've gotten your lead, somehow do some due diligence on that company. Are they a single guy in his garage? With zero cash. Are they a multimillion dollar company? Are they somewhere in between? Look at their LinkedIn, look at their website. See how many employees they have. If they're a startup, have they raised any funds? Like all of those are, are your first step to avoiding this. And usually you can get a pretty good feel about whether they're legit and have, have resources or not. Once you've done that, um, you hop on. Call with them or the email with them, and at some point in the process you bring up, Hey, this is what our pricing looks like. I realize this isn't a fit for everybody, but this is kind of what we think of value-wise. How does this align? And just give them a chance to say, yeah, that's in my budget, or, no, that's not my budget. And doing that is just gonna save you a whole lot of heartache as opposed to avoiding the uncomfortable question.

Danilo 4:26

Now I think there are a lot of people who can talk themselves and, and when I say a lot of people I've, I've absolutely been this, this person who can talk themselves into a situation like, well, let's not talk about the money now. Because when they see what's really possible there, then it's not going to matter to them what it costs. I feel like I've never, in retrospect, ever pulled that off. Is that ever gonna happen?

Landon 4:50

It's, I've never seen it happen. Um, at the end of the day, people will have a budget. They will stick to that budget. And if they don't have the money, it doesn't matter how good of a fit it is, they don't have the money for it. And so what I have found is having that conversation upfront, and maybe you don't even have to hit it directly. Maybe you go, Hey, here's our typical, uh, implementation size. Does this align with what you're thinking? Maybe it's, Hey, here's the point at which you're going to get, um, hands-on support. Is this the sort of thing you're thinking about? Just to give them a ballpark of where they're at, because. Most people coming to you should have an idea of like ballpark what your pricing is. But if you're doing something completely new or completely different, or maybe you price differently than other people, they may not have that ballpark. And so just being able to explain to them like, here's what this is and here's what this looks like, I think is gonna be really helpful for you.

Danilo 5:45

So, all right. Let's say they can pay. Let's say it's fine. It's not gonna be a nightmare where you put all this time in, they actually have the money, they'll pull the trigger.

Landon 5:56

Yeah,

Danilo 5:57

What else? What other kinds of nightmares can we experience?

Landon 6:00

so the other nightmare that I've seen firsthand is almost the opposite end of the spectrum of they've got money. They've got all the money, they've got money for days, and they are going to shower you with an embarrassment of riches. As long as you just build this thing that you have never built before, have no idea how to build, have zero experience with, and has a very high likelihood of failure because of its complexity. Just, just build that thing and, and you'll totally make all this money. Um, and that's your second, yes, that's your second nightmare, which is it never ends up working out. It doesn't matter how big that amount is, you will end up putting in more time and effort than the amount of money that you got paid. Whatever that number is, a million dollars, $10 million, a hundred million dollars, you will end up spending more than that to build the thing.

Danilo 6:48

why doesn't it work?

Landon 6:51

So it doesn't work because you cannot build something complex on your first try. Right. When we think about building complex things, we have to iterate in building complex things. And if someone

Danilo 7:05

that's

Landon 7:05

to sh uh, I have a couple ideas, but I wanna hear what you think.

Danilo 7:10

that That's Gall's law. Ga.

Landon 7:13

Yeah, I was, I was gonna use the Agile example, but Yes.

Danilo 7:16

Yeah, GA's. GA's law says that a complex system that worked had to evolve from a simple system that worked. And if you'd never had that, you're never gonna get to the complex thing. And if what we're talking about then is the customer demands a kind of final outcome out of the ether, which you can, you can provide that if the product already exists.

Landon 7:40

Yeah, and you can provide that if they're willing to step through the MVP process with you. There are a lot of customers that are at your same size and they're willing to grow with you, right? Because they don't need the the end goal thing yet. The problem is, is when you have someone who comes with all the money. All the expectations and needs. The final product, not the process. Yeah, and it's never worth it. It again, it doesn't matter how much money they're going to offer you, you will always spend more money, more effort, more time than what you end up getting out of it. They won't be happy. You won't be happy and there's just no way to do it. Now, one thing I do wanna say is like, this doesn't mean don't take on challenges that are beyond. What you're currently doing, right? Obviously you should do that, but don't take those things that are so far out there, you've never done them before. For example, if you're a software company and you have this enormous organization come to you and offer you a hundred million dollars to do software that you've never built and hardware that you've never built, and integrations with 10 different systems and onsite integrations, that's probably not a good fit if you've never done that before.

Danilo 8:47

You. You basically need a joint and venture at that point. That's not a sales process at that point. That's like, we need to build a whole new company to address the thing you're asking for.

Landon 8:56

Exactly, and it's hard to say no to those because you see the money and you see the potential and you're excited about the thing that they wanna build, and you're excited about how you could do that, but it, it's never worth it.

Danilo 9:07

There is a good caution here because we hear a lot of aphorisms about, people don't recognize opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. And there's a difference between stretching to reach a new level, finding a new gear for yourself. And overextending yourself, and you're really talking about the overextension piece. I just, I wanna underline that because we are, we're ambitious people and we support ambitious people. Ambition is great.

Landon 9:39

exactly. And I think it is a really a factor of complexity and, and the way that I like to think about it is, are you taking on one new complex thing you haven't done before? That's great. Like, take on that challenge. Are you taking on two? Okay. Like, we're starting to get into uncharted territories, but great. If you're taking on tin. Complex things you haven't done before,

Danilo 9:57

You're in

Landon 9:57

going to fail.

Danilo 9:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what about the stuff where they're not honest or where they're not being above board about what's going on? Do you, do you deal with, um, shall we say, bullshitters

Landon 10:13

I do, and honestly, this one is the one that sucks the most because we try to be transparent. We try to be completely open with people, and if people will be completely open with us, it would just make everyone's life so much better. Like if someone comes to me and goes, Hey, you know what? Here's the deal. I might be interested in your product, but the reality is I'm really not that interested. What I really need is I need a quote from you so I can go back to my current software vendor and use it as leverage against them to get a better deal. I have zero.

Danilo 10:42

are you, are you happy to just give them the quote

Landon 10:44

Exactly. Exactly. I would be so ha, because I'm not gonna waste a ton of time and a ton of effort. We don't have to get on a call. Everyone is is better off they could be. And I get why people don't do that because. I think maybe a lot of companies wouldn't be willing to engage and they just ignore them, but like, like megaphone out to the ether. If you are going to do this, like instead of spending 20 or 40 hours, like stepping us through an RFP process that we're never going to win, just tell me you want me as, as leverage. I'll create a quote in 15, 20 minutes. You can go get what you need. I'll be happy. Everything will be good. There are others too, like they're the folks that come in and they're not really interested. They're just kind of kicking the tires. But what I found is there's an inverse relationship. The less interested and engaged they are, the more they want you to do all the work to give them everything. So they're not willing to read the docs, they're not willing to look at any of the demo stuff. They, they don't really want to engage. And, and what I have found with those folks is the way to deal with these is ask them questions that make them have skin in the game. Hey, I, I'm happy to answer your questions for you, but I need some context. What problems are you trying to solve? What tooling are you currently using? Um, what does your stack look like? Um, what products are of ours? Are you interested in that? I can help, like build a demo for you? And what I found is one of two things happens. Either they come back with great answers to those questions, in which case, great, like we've had some value here and I can create a great demo. Or they completely ignore you, or just double down on, just, just give me a thing. And then those are really easy to deal with that you just don't.

Danilo 12:24

So let, lemme just get a little clarity on this point. Because I think the expectation would be that, oh, you know, kicking tires is, is normal and it is the job of the sales individual to take that and turn that into an opportunity. What is distinct from that perspective and what you're warning about here?

Landon 12:47

What I'm warning about is someone who isn't actually willing. To take the steps to adopt the product or even go through the steps of thinking about adopting the product. So let's use a more practical example. 'cause I think it's hard when you think about like amorphous things like software. Like let's say someone walked into a car dealership, you're gonna go s slap down some money on a new, uh, Toyota Camry, right? Um, and the, uh, salesperson goes. Hey, great. What do you want in a car? No, just gimme a car. Alright. Like what color do you want? No, no, I just Tell me about cars.

Danilo 13:27

So you can't even have a sales process with such a person. That's why it's disqualifying is that they just can't meaningfully provide inputs to a productive process.

Landon 13:37

do you have a family? Do you need an SUV versus a sedan? Like are you gonna be towing things Like do you. Plan on going off road or in the snow? No, no. Just tell me a car and a price. And you're like,

Danilo 13:49

to look at a car. Yeah.

Landon 13:50

that could be $20,000 to $50,000. Like what do you need? Like what kind of car do you have now? Nah, nah, just car. Right. And I, I think there's, part of this is a little bit of a side effect of the AI stuff going on, where I've noticed some people tend to interact with us as if we are AI agents as opposed to human beings. And they keep going, just give me the thing. And we're not, we're not robots. We can't read your mind. Like there has to be some give and take there. So I think that that's another one that's worth.

Danilo 14:21

So I, I really wanna underscore this because I think it's important. What you're describing is not that a, a, a reluctance to do the work. It's, you need to have a good fit in a collaborator to do the work. And regardless of whatever the reason is behind it, there is a category of person who is not doing the work with you, and you can't effectively sell to that kind of person. And them's the breaks. Is that right?

Landon 14:45

E exactly. Again, if they're, if they start there and then as you ask them questions, they're willing to engage you, great. Now you have turned that into a real lead. If they double down on not answering your questions, they weren't actually ever a lead to begin with, right? They weren't ever actually interested. They were never actually going to use your, your product, right? They were simply. Going through a process and who knows why they went through that process. Maybe their boss told them, go and find 10 vendors to compare. Right? Maybe they're an intern doing some, some research for a college class, right? Maybe they just, I don't know, have time on their hands and, and need somebody to talk to. Like there's all sorts of reasons why someone might go through this process and not actually end up being interested in what you have.

Danilo 15:29

Now, I think you had one more nightmare for us.

Landon 15:32

I do, and this is, this is an interesting one. Um, I've been doing this for, I don't know, six, six and a half years now, like officially as a job.

Danilo 15:42

Yeah.

Landon 15:44

And, uh, there has only been one instance where someone has accused me of running a bait and switch on.

Danilo 15:52

Wow. Okay.

Landon 15:53

I'm proud of that because I feel like I try to be really transparent. This is in a situation where a person came and they wanted support for their website. Um, it had been, uh, they decided not to build the website with us. They decided to build it with a different vendor, but that vendor was too expensive for them from a support standpoint, and they wanted us to support it. Um, so we took a look. Uh, the salesperson, I wasn't even the salesperson on this. I was the implementer in this case. So not, not the salesperson, salesperson sold them an audit to go through, look at their site and see whether we could support it or not. Right. We didn't build this, we don't know what it is. We need to know whether we can bring this in or not. It's a, it was a

Danilo 16:33

that isn't free. You have to spend a lot of time evaluating stuff for that. Sure. Yeah.

Landon 16:37

It's a, not a huge amount of money, but it's not a zero amount of money either. It's a, it's a commitment. Right. So I talked to our developer team and there were some interesting things about how the site had been built that basically the person who built it significantly over-engineered it and over instrumented it for what it was. And for us to take on that site and effectively support it, it was gonna require double or triple the engineering time that would normally take for a similar type of site. And so we wrote up a full, um, document of the audit, gave that audit to them and said, Hey, this is yours. You could, all this information is yours. Do with it as you will. This is what we found, and as a result, here's the price of what it's gonna cost for us to support you. Um, and they did the whole like, oh, well that's, that's not in our budget. We wanted like, uh, if the number was a hundred dollars, it wasn't, but if the number was a hundred dollars. They wanted to pay $5, and we're like, no, that's, that's not gonna

Danilo 17:39

not the universe we're living in.

Landon 17:40

no. Like, Hey, if you could find someone else to do it for $5, great. Like, we weren't the ones that built it. You guys decided to go with someone else to build it, like, you guys are gonna have to figure this out. And they sent a multiple emails, multiple phone calls, trying to twist our arms into supporting it at that price. We just kept saying no. And then after that whole process, they filled out an NPS survey where they specifically called me out by name and said, I bait and switched them. And I think about that because what is the sales nightmare here, right? I think the sales nightmare here is you have two people that from the beginning were misaligned, right? And part of the problem was, I wasn't the salesperson on this, I was on the implementation side. So I was kind of taking what was rolling down to me.

Danilo 18:25

sure.

Landon 18:26

The salesperson should have started with a, here's the framework of about what you should expect to spend with us, because that would've stopped them from even getting that, that audit, right.

Danilo 18:37

Right. We're back to ability to pay as a qualification component, right.

Landon 18:42

or, or just willingness to pay or conceptualization around value, whatever that thing is. I don't know what they were stuck on, but yes, fundamentally it was about the, the, the cost. But there's other pieces to that, like. They chose not to implement with us and go with someone who is a lot cheaper, but then that as a ne necessary result means that our support of that is going to be more expensive. It's not our thing that we built. We don't know it intimately. We need to onboard it. We need to go through this process. And so there's also a little bit of. Be aware of setting those expectations early on, but also be aware of someone who's just gonna jump from vendor to vendor to vendor to try and find the best price regardless of what that thing is, and then expect you to jump through hoops as if you have been there consistent vendor that whole time. That's never going to be a path to success.

Danilo 19:33

You might be listening to this and thinking, this is incredibly outrageous and, and this would never happen to me, but especially if you embark on like a freelance adventure, as a software person, you really have to be careful and qualify your potential customers. Very well for this kind of stuff because one of the hazards that you can get into is that you're dealing with the person who does not understand the complexity of the thing that they are demanding and then has an unrealistic expectation of what it's going to cost you, the person on the hook for actually delivering that software to do the thing that they wanted to do.

Landon 20:11

I'm so glad you said that.

Danilo 20:13

really big red flag there. Good to have on your radar.

Landon 20:16

I'm so glad you said that. I think the, the classic example of this is. Whenever I hear from a customer, oh, you only need to, or, oh, if you would just, or, oh, it's really simple. Just run away from that. That is someone who, to your

Danilo 20:30

and simply are the, the three biggest, uh, horsemen of you having a miserable post-sale experience, especially from a freelance perspective. Be warned and be safe out there.

Landon 20:46

But if you're an engineer and you're doing sales, you're ultimately the one that's gonna have to support that. So it's in your best interest to flag those early.