Speaker: Tom Savoie, Corporate Account Executive
Tom Savoie: I can be asking my prospects. When I began working with Charles, one of the bigger challenges that I had was that I would ask very surface level , I would almost say 'templatized' or formulated questions that, while they would get me an answer that checked the box, they didn't really help me do a good job of understanding my prospects. To the second point, I think what Charles ultimately taught me to do is to lead with insight, I'm significantly more confident in my ability to speak to prospects as a peer, share insights around what we're seeing from similar use cases, their peers in their industry and using that as a way to get the prospects to open up more, share more information, as well as provoke thought and prospects who may not have considered certain challenges or who may not have thought about certain opportunities, but that ultimately end up finding those particularly valuable.
What makes Charles' discovery coaching style different at all?
Tom Savoie: How Charles's approach has differed from other folks who have given me coaching on Discovery is that He really takes a very personalized and 1-1 approach to help you understand a concept or topic but make it your own and enable you to feel comfortable utilizing a particular technique or asking a particular question in a way that feels authentic to you. Um and I think that as a part of that, What really stuck out to me as I've worked with Charles over the past two plus years is, (1) he tries to make you really comfortable, not only with the material, but also being yourself in the coaching sessions. He's very open to understanding your thoughts. Any hesitations or concerns you have around a particular technique or a particular course of action and really having a thought provoking conversation to work through those together and try to find a way to either overcome any potential head trash that you as an SDR or an AE may have as well as additionally really working with you to hone a technique and make sure you're comfortable implementing it so that when you are on client facing calls, you end up having significantly more success.
Why would you specifically recommend other AEs have discovery sessions with Charles?
Tom Savoie: Why would I recommend other AEs to Work with Charles through Discovery sessions? Candidly, I think Charles has had the biggest impact on my growth and development of any individual at CB insights in the 2.5 plus years I've been here. I think he, within the span of four weeks, dramatically changed the level that I could do Discovery at. I think in terms of working with him over the last two years in particular my Discovery has reached a level that flat out would not have been possible without working with him on a recurring basis. When you think about Discovery, I think Discovery is critical to everything that we do. If you don't know how to have a good client facing conversation as a salesperson, you're effectively screwed. So I think what Charles does particularly well in these sessions to make them valuable is (1), he brings a lot of knowledge and insight but he does a really good job of getting to the point, synthesizing it, and being time efficient on how he presents information as well as additionally, being very consultative in his recommendations, working with you to understand your own personal style and being able to coach you in a way that helps you feel authentic as a salesperson and not like you're just mastering a technique and using a script on a call but working to find something that you're truly comfortable with and that fits your style and your personality when you're on calls and client facing. So, I literally recommend Charles to every single AE that I speak to as well as every SDR that I work with. Every chance I have. If I had the ability to make working with him mandatory, I would 1,000% institute that and I cannot more strongly endorse folks working with Charles than the success level that I've had entirely based off of the help that he's given me.
