Introducing the PTV Method™
Introduction: The foundation of sales success hinges on quickly understanding customer needs and their propensity to purchase. However, modern sales methodologies leave sales people conducting messy discovery calls. Often those calls are without techniques or structure to hopefully uncover the root of this juncture. This stabbing in the dark blindfolded scenario has lead new and seasoned sales people alike to experience unpredictable, inconsistent sales pipelines. Where they completely miss opportunities, and waste huge amounts of time on the wrong customer. This document I created introduces the PTV Method™, a streamlined sales methodology designed to quickly uncover pain points. Once you uncover pain then you can quantify and prioritize those points. Until then, withhold demonstrating your value proposition to those prospects that are taking action.
The Current Sales Rep Landscape
Problem: The first problem is the average sales reps starts off discovery calls telling the prospect about the company history. If the prospect isn’t bored to death and they stay on the call, they then discuss the products they sell. If the prospect shares a product they are interested in, the sales rep feature vomits all over the place. Furthermore, current sales methodologies are too high level and lead to disjointed discovery conversations. Qualifying questions, if asked too soon, leave the prospect feeling uncomfortable. Requesting too much information before quantifying the prospects need as it relates to all of the org’s pain.
Even in well established sales methodologies, features are presented prematurely, and qualifying questions become a scattered exercise that jeopardizes trust. This often results in lost focus and a struggle to identify clear reasons for continued engagement. Specifically MEDDIC, and all its variations, are more focused for the entire sales process and don’t drill down far enough into the first discovery call itself, which is the most important engagement.
The Research
Foundational Research: Drawing on my own 20 years of sales experience selling products like Palo Alto, Watchguard, Zscaler, Crowdstrike, Picus Security, Microsoft, Okta to Global 2000 companies, I have over 150,000 cold calls and 2500+ discovery calls under my belt. Through this experience I have seen the average sales rep and coached them thru their sales technique gaps. I kept seeing the same patterns and complexities of other sales methodologies be too cumberson. So, the PTV Method™ was constructed to replace and simplify established sales principles in a revolutionarily new way. And to surpass their ability to qualify prospects because, qualifying is the most important step and it should be easy!
The Formula
The PTV Method™ addresses the problem by establishing a clear, easy sequence for the discovery conversation to get to the underlying issues and is broken into three key stages:
- Pain vs Gain Detecting: Actively uncover and explore the prospect’s pain and challenges. I will expand on how this is done utilizing keywords like anchors and gears as well as other psychological techniques in my book.
- Transition: With one magical six-word question we can prompt the prospect to quantify the cost and impact of their current situation and amongst all of their other priorities and internal initiatives. Once they have solidified this, the conversation will transition from talking about pain to talking about the value of your product. I’ll reveal this magical question in my book.
- Value Proposition: Seamlessly shift the conversation to showcase which of your products offer a solution that directly addresses their pain points and mitigates the consequences of inaction.
The Outcome
By streamlining the discovery call, the PTV Method™ empowers salespeople to:
- Build stronger connections faster with prospects through focused conversations,
- Reduce countless cold calls, emails, and meetings with customers that aren’t going to buy,
- Enhance confidence for new sales people through a clear and repeatable simplified framework,
- Accelerate pipeline growth by efficiently identifying qualified leads and move them along faster,
- In just 13 months, I closed $4M, landing my company as the #1 fastest growing MSSP in America on the INC5000 list and,
- Landed my first Cloud Sales Coach customer just closed a $4M deal attributing it to the PTV Method.
Next Steps
I will be releasing this book in 2025, that will share the principles and application of the PTV Method™. And will provide sales reps with a new simplified, structured approach to discovery calls. Students of this book will have more productive conversations, improved customer connections, and ultimately, elevate their sales acumen and Elevate Your Startup™.
Book Me Now below to see the Future of Discovery Calls: the PTV Method™.
V/R,
Jonathan Pierce, MBA
CEO of Cloud Sales Coach
Copyright 2023 Jonathan Pierce, MBA
