How to Avoid Clawbacks: SZN 4 EP 3

what's up guys welcome back to the sales cast podcast and today we're talking about how to avoid clawbacks because we're putting in all this work to push the deal over the line we deal with legal procurement you're about to get your commission check and it gets ripped away from you how can we make sure that doesn't happen so max what are some steps you guys take over there at branch to make sure we're not getting deals clawing back? Yeah, I think you probably have a couple more tricks up your sleeve than I do.

But one I'll just kick off with, I'll preface it, like this isn't going to be common across like all software sales roles, because like the world that I live in right now is more of a consumption based model. Initially, our product is free, so a little bit different. But you could kind of adapt this line that we typically use. This is something that we've been doing recently.

I actually did an onsite about a month ago with like one of our largest deals of the year so far. Flew out to Ohio, did a whole presentation. We're negotiating with them in person. And something that came up was, you know, their operations team and payrolls team concern around, you know, what does support look like after we sign?

Like you can tell them, like you're a salesperson. You can tell me all these things now. It all sounds amazing. And then I get into it and your customer success team isn't great.

you know like our your support team isn't 24 7 when you said it was going to be you have a support team that's not actually u.s based they're out in like the philippines we have a hard time communicating xyz so that's kind of the concern that they brought up and so like what i like to do and this is a line that myself that i used in that meeting in person as well as my reps use on calls now is we like to say something along the lines of like hey look we a free product and And so for us to make money you actually have to onboard and use the product And so for us I know it important for you guys to have that set up the top tier when you guys get going.

But for us, it's even more important because at the end of the day, if you guys come onto our platform, don't like it, and you churn, we don't make any money as salespeople. And it makes it really hard for Branch to employ us as employees. And so I know that's a little different if you're hearing it because you probably sell a product that has like a subscription fee, typical SaaS, whatever, but you can kind of adapt that. And you can even say something along the lines of like, Hey, look, clawbacks are a real thing in my world.

And so for me and my team, it's even more important in that first 30 to 60 days that you guys are onboarded properly, or else I'm not going to make a commission check. And so I'm a hundred percent dialed into what your onboarding process is going to be like in those first 30 to 60 days so that I can actually get paid and make money that I told I was going to make when I first started working at this company. That's kind of a way that you could transition it, but that's kind of the gist of what we've been doing, Luke.

I don't know if you have anything different. Yeah, a couple of things. One big concern that all executives have is what happens after I buy? Because they're sharp.

They understand concepts like that, but their concern is, okay, what's the onboarding process like? How much from my side are you guys going to need? Who's going to own the project? And this is something that's kind of been uncovered to me recently.

It's like, it's great having C-level buy-in. We have an economic buyer. We have a decision maker. We have somebody who can help bring this deal across the line.

But what happens when you get two weeks in and there's no end user or influencer or champion to actually carry the product forward and say, hey, I can't do my job without this solution. What are you going to do then? So even and this is maybe more applying to how I tend to sell but going top down even if you get CEOs to agree to this agree to the concept you need to have some sort of end user an operations person or somebody in the department who actually going to use the solution to be on board and a champion for it before the deal closes I don't know if you guys run into that at all.

Yeah, so I think for me, that's a big part of the multi-threading process and just making sure that you have those people on board initially. In that on-site deal that I talked about earlier, really good example of that we got there on site and they had about seven or eight people like four or five from payroll one guy from operations who we looped into the deal and then obviously like the dm who was there um and they started asking all of these technical questions that were very hard to explain to people who don't understand the technical side of the business thankfully we multi-threaded the deal, had this guy on the call or not on the call there in person.

And he answered every single question for me. I didn't say one word. They were coming up with questions and he was like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. We're going to automate this.

And that's the, and this is the best thing. I think this was like probably four years ago. You said this to me, like the most beautiful thing that happens when you're on a sales call is when you can step back and you have your one side of the prospect. Who's, you know, a little bit skeptical, has some issues, has a bunch of questions.

And then you have another part of the prospect of that deal, who's a hardcore champion, loves the idea and has all the solutions. And they go back and forth and you can just step back and they talk for five, 10, sometimes even 15 minutes straight. And you don't have to say a word and they just solve it internally. And I feel like when those things happen, it's kind of like an indicator that, you know, you have a pretty good chance of winning the deal.

And so, yeah, long story short, multi-threading, super important in those situations. Absolutely. Just be able to have them sell themselves is so different than having an outside voice who doesn't know their business to a T We try our best but we don know exactly what goes on internally Having somebody who does know and knows the right words to say to the right person can make a huge difference And that where I think coming back and everybody on the same page with the what happens after we buy plan?

Three calls for onboarding. Here's the resource we need from your side. Here are the resources we're going to provide. And here are the dates we're going to schedule this out at.

As I move more up market and more enterprise style sales, you need to be able to have that same playbook that they're agreeing to and actually delivering on. Because if they're not delivering on their side, you're not going to have the deal close or it's not going to stick afterwards. But one other thing I would mention is you run into people who want to trial, who want to do POCs, and you have to figure out what their intentions are. And here's what I mean by that.

Is, are they going into this, the glass half empty, this probably isn't going to work, I'm not going to put any effort into it. or are they putting their best foot forward trying to make this trial or POC work? Because that's a huge difference. If they're not going to put in their best effort, why are we going to show up?

We're commissioned and paid out on our customers being successful. So it seems like if you want to actually use the software, Mr. Prospect, and get the ROI we're talking about, you have to be bought in on doing the work there to get there. And so that's one other way you can test and make sure you're not dealing with clawbacks is having people excited and ready to run through walls at a test or a rollout.

Are you giving this the best possible chance for it to succeed? Or are you coming in with a glass half empty mindset? That's one final thing that could make or break you guys keeping your commissions. All right.

So yeah, that's kind of been our sales cast podcast today. How to avoid clawbacks. We're just trying to make prospecting simple and closing predictable. We'll catch you guys next week.

Bye.