Sales Brew - Tyler Meckes, AM at Dooly on Discovery Calls

For the first-ever episode of Sales Brew by barista AI, we had the pleasure of hosting Tyler Meckes, Account Manager at Dooly and host of The 20% Podcast. Tyler is a great example of how a great personal brand increases your credibility and awareness, and we actually got to know each other through his personal content that caught our attention. So, prepare your popcorn and hit play, you won’t want to miss out on Tyler’s great tips on sales discovery calls.

To watch the full interview and get updated on every sales brew episode, subscribe to our YouTube channel. A short version and transcription are below. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy the show!

What’s your best sales discovery call tip?

Building rapport with your customer. I think it’s really important to go into a discovery call and make sure that you have your research done. Don’t ask questions that you could already have the answer to yourself. You need to know about the company. You need to know about the person you’re talking to and why you’re having the conversation. If you had a discovery call, that means that there was some prior step to get that call. So we need to make sure that we’re setting the table and understanding exactly what it is. That is why we’re having this call, and to make sure that it’s crystal clear on the pain that they’re trying to solve or the area that they’re trying to improve. Then make sure that every single thing that we do throughout the course of the call, we are always tying it back to that pain.

I think it’s really important to know that pain, first and foremost, because later on in the sales process, we’re always discovering if for whatever reason. You start closing on the discovery.

Do you show a demo on the discovery call?

Typically I do. But I don’t want to necessarily say that I’m diving at full speed. What I want to do, is to make sure that we have that open conversation first. I’m not doing any of that stuff until we have the meat and potatoes of exactly what we need to do. But after we had a well enough discovery, I will demo on the discovery call, mostly towards the end. So, yes, the short answer is I do demo on a first call. It’s typically that 10,000-foot view so that they just get a taste of what they’re doing. Almost like a free sample before the prospect decide whether to move forward or do we not. It’s important because I don’t want to spend any more time on discovery or bringing extra resources into that call If we’re not moving forward. Because it’s just wasting time and effort on my company side of things. So, we want to be as efficient as possible. And that’s the duty of the sales rep as well.

What was the worst discovery call you’ve ever made?

Obviously, there are bad calls. Unfortunately, bad calls happen even if you’re prepared, but going back, mostly when you don’t. I would probably say that some of my worst calls were when I wasn’t prepared. This obviously has excelled over time, when I was just making sure that I actually do my research and know who I’m talking to. There’s been a couple of times earlier in my days, when I just wanted to go and show the product. So I did not really dive deep into that problem. It’s almost like a dog chasing after a tennis ball or something. You hear that one pain point and you want to jump right into the demo and show them how you could solve that. So I don’t have a great example of just one specific scenario of that, but it’s happened from time to time again.

What’s the best question you’re asking in the sales discovery call?

Your goal is knowing exactly what the pain is, and there’s not one particular question that’s going to get that specifically. You don’t want to just go in there and say, hey, what’s the pain? Right? So one of the best questions that I’m asking clients is: what are they trying to accomplish with this call or with the solution? I know it’s really vague and really simple, but there are so many sales reps that want to just sell what they want to sell or what’s the biggest promotion that their company is trying to run, versus actually understanding what the customer is looking to solve for or what’s in it for them. It’s not only just what’s the problem that they have, that’s just a surface level area potentially, right? We need to solve this pain point, but to move the deal forward, or build more rapport with that customer, The question that I ask next is, how does that affect your job? What happens if that doesn’t happen? Because the customer is not going to make a purchasing decision, unless it’s personal to him and he has some kind of stake, or some kind of gain to win or some kind of loss to avert.

What do you love most about sales?

The thing I love the most about sales is truly helping people solve problems that are going to help them with their job. It is a goal and mission of mine, to get more people to go to the sales profession and really flip the script on how sales professionals are looked at. There are sales reps, and there are sales professionals. There’s a lot of people that think of like the used car saleswoman or salesman who is a shifty, shady person just trying to do whatever it takes to get their quota done.

You need to be passionate about what you’re actually selling because when you’re passionate about a problem that you’re solving, then you could have that emotion in your voice and you could say: “hey, I completely understand where you’re coming from, and this is exactly how we help this”. When you’re enthusiastic about what you’re doing, that’s essential. I also love working with a diverse group of people working across the world with different people. Solving problems for different kinds of people at scale is a real perk of being a sales rep. And then, a positive part of being in sales is making money. And it’s not even to just say: “oh, yeah, I have this nice car or I have this house”. I’m motivated to make sure that I’m giving my family the experiences that I can to give them the best life possible. And that way you do that is by having the financial means to do so.

How do you like your coffee?

I like my coffee black. It’s funny, I didn’t like coffee a long time ago. Only a couple of years ago when my wife and I started dating. I never drank coffee, so I don’t know if it’s being in sales started me drinking coffee or if it was grad school late nights. Over time, I used to drink a ton and I used to love it with a ton of creamer because I didn’t love the taste of coffee. But now when I do like its taste, I like it plain and black.

To watch more from Sales Brew sales discovery calls and more:

• Episode 1: Sales Brew with Tyler Meckes, Account manager at Dooly
• Episode 2: Morgan J Ingram, Director of Sales Execution and Evolution at JB Sales
• Episode 3: James Buckley, Chief Evangelist and Master of Ceremonies at JB Sales
• Episode 4: Nieka Mamczak, Head of Sales Enablement at StackOverflow
• Episode 5: Sam Sweeny, Sales Operations Manager
• Episode 6: Benjamin Roach, Global Sales Operations Manager at Ardoq
• Episode 7: Elgun Aliyev, Salesforce Admin at CentralReach
• Episode 8: Amanda Harwood, Sales Operations Manager
• Episode 9: Jake Rasmussen, Salesforce Consultant