What is Command of the Message? (Sales Methodology)

in today's video I want to walk through my experience with command of the message to better prepare you as a rep to improve your skill set and or if you're looking to break into a company that trains on command of the message this can hopefully help you out in your interview process I do want to make it very clear to the average person watching this video that I am in no way shape or form affiliated with or representing command of the message which is a trademark by force management this is strictly a representation of my

own experience with the methodology and even at the time of making this video which I've had to relaunch on my YouTube channel I was not formally trained on command of the message again if you're trying to improve your game or become an SDR or account executive at a company that teaches command of the message I hope you get a lot out of this and it helps you prepare and ultimately break into the company of your choice the reason that I'm making this video is that I recently actually went through an interview process where the company

was big on command of the message now they didn't expect me not having trained on it before to be totally solid on it but that being said when I went to research a lot of information about it online even though it's very popular at many database companies many cloud computing and other Tech related cloud-based companies there's really not a lot of information on what command of the message is I think the big thing to keep in mind is we're going to use the context of a 30 minute Discovery call certainly this applies with an hour-long

Discovery Call Etc but regardless this will be in the scenario where we had a team agree to talk further about our product maybe they've come to us with a contact us form it's really on us now to use this framework to do very very in-depth and deep Discovery and you'll notice when done effectively you don't even really talk about your product all that much at all so in the context of a 30 minute call I think if you're doing effective Discovery with command of the message you're taking maybe anywhere from 18 to 22 of those

minutes to really understand that Prospect before we even talk about what our product does so this top portion here is talking to our Discovery Well it's going to be on you to fill in the specific blanks we're going to fill these in and talk about it momentarily the important thing is that we're going to spend almost 20 minutes in this section of a 30 minute call going through our deep Discovery and it's really built around this idea of better understanding their current state and also the negative consequences associated with those and so in my career

one of the biggest wins that I had was with an e-commerce company that if you think back to covid when everything's shut down we're working from home no one was going to stores at that time and it really accelerated that move to e-commerce as a whole by some studies showing five years Etc right and so all that to say this e-commerce company had been using our free database for a long time and now they really were having problems scaling their database they were expecting four times the amount of traffic that they had the previous Black

Friday and we were three and a half weeks before Black Friday and their database the free one that they were using was now crashing constantly and so they were talking to us they were talking to numerous different vendors and it would have been very very easy when they came to us and said hey maybe basically our entire world's on fire for me to sit there and talk about our different features but what I love about command of the message is it really makes a point to not only understand their current state but tie it to

negative consequences so as an example I'm going to set the stage briefly but the CTO came to us they have three and a half weeks to Black Friday their current database as is on their most busy days is already crashing and so they're expecting four times the amount of traffic on Black Friday and they're in a sheer panic mode right and so the rookie salesperson is going to sit there and say oh well we can scale and we can handle your needs and instead what Commander the message is saying let's really focus and dive in

on their current state and so instead of saying we do all these different things I'm talking to the CTO okay so you're expecting four times growth do you have any data to support that what gives you the confidence that you're going to see that much traffic increase and they're like well candidly we're not totally sure but based year over year we've already grown four times from last year when we look back to black Fridays and also with the shift to e-commerce we know that there's going to be a lot of traffic okay so I'm fairly

confident that that's real and that's not just the CTO stroking their own ego talking about how great their company is right now give me a better idea CTO what is it going to look like or what are clear needs that you have when it comes to the database are there clear trends that you're seeing that are causing you to crash are there any specific features that if you had today you think would solve the problem right and so I'm asking tons of different questions again this is going to be on you specific to the company

you're at to better Define that but you really want to get an idea and as an example not just talking about the tech but in the context of the database world I also want to say Hey you know you're about to make a huge change from a free and simple database do you feel that your team has the expertise on staff to even make that move to implement these more advanced features right there's tons of questions you can use to better understand the current state that don't necessarily have to be technical that can be more

about the broader team and by extension okay so now I have a good idea of the landscape you don't have the technology to handle it you are confident with a 99.9 certainty that you are not going to be able to handle Black Friday but tell me more like if we're not if we're staying right here and we don't do anything what what happens on Black Friday if we can't handle that and when we got into it it became very clear that there were millions of dollars at stake and to give you an idea I I

don't want to jump too far to the conclusion but we did ultimately make this sale we did solve their problem every day from Thanksgiving to the Wednesday after Thanksgiving that year was a brand new company record in terms of sales and so there were millions of dollars at stake here and the reason again that you use this framework is the average salesperson is not going to probe that deep there's not going to make the CTO articulate and say out loud that they have millions of dollars that they are going to lose that they are directly

responsible for if they don't fix it by extension I mentioned as an example in this current state maybe we identified that he's not confident their team can deliver that the average salesperson is going to take that and talk about how great their support is or now I'm going in and I'm saying hey tell me more about that so your team's not equipped have you tried to hire database experts before have you tried to bring anyone on staff and again through these types of questions he was very transparent to me and told me that for the

last two years they'd hired two different database Engineers to come in and they both couldn't solve this problem they both couldn't fix it so now not only do I know that sure he can tell me they need support and that was valid but now I know he's probably spent over two hundred thousand dollars hiring Engineers that typically have a salary around 150 000 a year to fix this and they haven't been able to do it and so now I have this ammo to know that not only is the tech that we provide very valuable but

also the support that we provide of course it's valuable but it is way more valuable knowing that he's already burned two hundred thousand dollars of that effectively right and so again just restating the current state we want to build a lot of questions and not just take surface level answers okay well your current solution doesn't work what do you need in place have you identified what the fix is how bad is the problem right and this line of questioning you can take further and further and there's a lot of times where prospects will say well

hey we really need to scale to handle our Black Friday traffic you can simply just ask why right why are you expecting more traffic why do you need to scale what is the importance of scaling now why are you sure that your current solution doesn't work and it's these types of questions that really flush out the people who are serious and have a real need versus the ones who are going to be wasting your time and like I've seen in many many cases a lot of people are get really excited get really jazzed up about

technology and when it comes time to pay it's a totally different conversation and you lose all the momentum you had because you didn't use this opportunity up front to really understand how serious they were and the business implications now let's go and focus that's again maybe the first 8 to 12 minutes of your Discovery call now we want to take the next eight or so minutes to take us up to 20 minutes in total focusing on the outcome if we do fix this what is the positive business outcome to you so now that we've spent

8 to 12 minutes really diving into the current state really understanding and having them articulate the negative consequences and the example of that e-commerce company they wasted two hundred thousand dollars trying to hire the right people who couldn't ultimately do it successfully they know for a fact that they're going to have at least four times increase in traffic and they know with a high degree of certainty that they're not going to handle that and that means millions of dollars eighty percent of their revenue was accomplished in the week of Black Friday for the entire year

I had the CTO articulate that to me on the phone and now when I talk about the after State now when I talk about what he wants out of it personally from a business outcome it's very clear and we've started to take control of that conversation and start to guide it and make as an example a 200 000 purchase seemed trivial in the scope of what's at stake right when we're talking about this after State a lot of times you've probably uncovered it through some of this current state and negative consequences conversation but again now

we're really crystallizing hey okay solution aside my company aside we've talked about you need to scale specifically right what does that actually look like are there key criteria in place that you've already identified given your use of a free product that you know with 100 confidence if we had this we'd be in a great situation by extension we have this what does that mean for you obviously we have the immediate need ahead of us of handling the Black Friday traffic but in our case what we found in this example with the e-commerce company is as

this database was having tons of different problems over time what that meant is the CTO himself and three to five developers at any given time had to stop what they were doing on any given day the database had a problem and work for two to four hours to fix it that is incredibly inefficient and what that means longer term is that even if we get through Black Friday even if they hit record numbers they're still basically putting duct tape on this database and they don't have the ability because they're spending so much time keeping that

afloat to develop future features that are going to make their product even better that are going to make their offer more compelling get more customers get more clients right and so these are the types of things that it's easy to paint this utopian State and again the average salesperson is going to sit there and say oh well yeah we think we can get you here and get you to the promised land and we promise that you know we'll help you not lose millions of dollars right but it's go even further not only painting the picture

of how we can solve their immediate need but even planting seeds of other features of our product that they may not be aware of that are going to pay dividends 12 to 24 months now because that's so much more comforting for someone in the example of this case that has to get a solution in place in a month yes we can sit here and say we're solving the issue we've got extreme Clarity we very well Define that in the after State asking questions of what their success criteria might be but also if I can say

hey I do want to take a quick note to talk about how we are definitely going to solve this but also 12 to 24 months from now some of these other things that you mentioned we are going to solve for after this immediate need as well it becomes very compelling we have much more leverage and it's much more comforting from the CTO whose job and life basically is on the line to know that we're going to solve both the short and long-term needs all right so we've gone and spent the first 66 of the call

talking about our current state negative consequences after State and positive business outcomes now when it comes time to actually talk about our product again we can sit here and say all the great things that we do but the point of this methodology is to make it very streamlined make it very presentable and also focus on what's most important to the prospect on the first call yes I'm sure there's tons of things we could talk about but in the 10 minutes 8 to 10 minutes we have left what is the most critical how can we create

a lot of interest and get them set up and go to that next call again somewhat of what we've already talked about with this after State we want to better understand the required capabilities so going back to this example of the e-commerce company yes we know they need to scale yes we know there's lots of money on the line yes we know they would really benefit from our support because they don't have the expertise in-house but when I'm talking to the CTO now because I've done this really good Discovery I've let him know that I'm

an expert in our domain of the database world now I come to him and say hey we have three and a half weeks I need to know from you what are the most important things that you need to see in a test to feel confident to move forward and there's obviously different ways you can ask that question but again we have three and a half weeks it's not going to be possible to move your entire company onto a new database and test every feature it's just not realistic so let's really take a minute to think

about if we were to show you maybe three different things of our platform what do you need to see to have that confidence to move forward right he's going to talk well we need to scale I mentioned we have Forex you know the the users what that means is we're probably going to at least quadruple the amount of data we need to store but we're also going to have a lot more visitors on our website at once which means all these different technical criteria right and I'll go in and get that also now question number

two around these required capabilities hey so one of the things you mentioned is the lack of In-House expertise what is your thought on yes we can get you up and running quickly on our database but how much can our team help are there certain specific lower level features that our experts can come in and prove for you immediately that you would want to see right that's another conversation and of itself and notice we're almost at the 22 to 23 minute Mark still have not once talked about a feature of our product and now you know

maybe I have one more question like hey you know maybe it's around budget maybe it's like hey I know this is an immediate issue I do just want to make sure we're aligned on price do you have a budget in place or is there anything that if we put a number in front of you that would be a showstopper right and so maybe just trying to quantify that get an idea around at least everything that we can and now as we introduce the product itself it's very important it is a small distinction but again this

Nuance sometimes is very borderline OCD right but I think it's so important because you craft a very compelling message and you're also respecting everyone's time because you've structured and had very clear Discovery you've made it very clear almost at a subconscious level that it's not even worth your time unless you have a firm understanding why would I tell you about what our product does if I don't even know how we can solve your issue right and so now when I'm talking about our product I'm going to start with how we do it you mentioned scaling

is a huge need you mentioned 4X you know the traffic you're going to quadruple your data you mentioned that you want to see X Y and Z right so right off right out of the gate with our product you're going to see that we do scaling by this measure right and in the case of my company the nice thing was is it functioned very similar to that free database but it abstracted and automatically took care of a lot of the scaling things that he needs so right out of the gate because I've done this extensive

Discovery when I tell them that we scale and how it abstracts all of the things automatically for him he really buys into the fact that and understands how great of a feature sure that is right and also again I'm not saying hey I know you're talking to eight different people we're better because of X Y and Z the reason of why this better thing comes up is after we've established how we do things if we've already had a conversation about the competitive landscape at this point we're going to talk about how we do things better

or different right and in the case of the database World there are many offerings that on the surface level seem very similar and it was very clear when I was talking to the CTO that he had one other competitor in mind and I'm not going to sit there and say oh that competitor sucks they're horrible but I am going to say hey one of the things you're going to notice is that feature that I just talked about in terms of scaling does not exist with our competitor and they do it a fundamentally different way I

would encourage you to talk to them about it but that is why we've had a lot of people going to these proof points ideally I have a past customer like Shopify or some e-commerce company or whatever it might be I've got a customer that maybe has gone from that competitor to our product because of that feature right and again I know I'm kind of getting meta here I'm getting abstracted I hope you're following with me but because we've done this really extensive Discovery I've queued up and understood their required capabilities but now I can position

the products in a way that makes me command the message I am only talking about the most relevant features because we only have 30 minutes to talk but the features that I'm bringing up are directly relevant to their required capabilities and I'm also showing him that we are better with social proof with case studies with all these different things I'm going to send him immediately after the call that we are better because of how we fundamentally do things different right and additionally kind of in line I I mentioned this with the required capabilities a little

bit but we really want to get metrics can we end the call as well both with these proof points and metrics of hey so I want to recap we've got maybe two minutes left on the call right it sounds like we can solve a lot for you and I know we've got a very short timeline so I want to make sure if you know we need to test for instance 4X a workload if you have a simulated workload if we can do tests right confirm these with metrics what are maybe the top priorities for you

and the actual metrics whether it's you know it's going to be specific to your technology G so I don't want to get too far down the database rabbit hole but yes we have these required capabilities that allows us to talk about how we do things but again because we've inserted the relevant technology how we do it better than competitors and some proof points now we have the ability to really ask what metrics do we need to see and it plants the seeds for the next conversation that we have right if I've had such a great

conversation that not only have I thoroughly understood their problem I've talked to them about what they'd want to see in a solution I've talked to them about how what we do solves their specific need not just generic scaling needs but their specific need now hey it sounds like we should really very quickly get together and probably block an hour I want to know from you so I can prep our team for the next call what are some key metrics that you would want to see whether it's speed whether it's latency whether it's all these different

database terms Etc right but now I've got the ability to ask these questions and he knows that I am coming in and adding value and being very consultative in this sale right and honestly this was a huge Key to Our Success in this example I competed directly against Amazon and we ended up winning yes because our technology G was better but at the end of the day you know there's the old saying way back in the day in the tech world that nobody got fired for buying IBM because it was the big Behemoth The Safe

Company we got them to buy our solution at a 300 person startup over Amazon which is arguably like the safest and most prominent tech company in the world right because at the end of the day if you buy from Amazon it's the most popular web provider in the world right of all these different services and so if there's a problem you can't blame the provider right but he was willing to take a chance on our product because I went through this workflow at the time I didn't even know command of the message but I think

some of that is my technical background and I admit I have fully endorsed this and this should not be a replacement for the full-on training of command and message but this workflow when I look back on that experience was somewhat what I followed at a very high level framework and that's why I love this approach because it really concretely puts all of these definitions in place and gives you something easy to latch onto and when you have a very clear focus when you have a very clear framework when you do this time and time again

whether it's in interviews when you do this time and time again when you're talking to different prospects X yes there's always going to be things that are unexpected there's always going to be candidates that will not let you talk in this exact manner but when you're striving for this you come with a game plan it makes all of these different variables and unknowns much more controllable and over time you're going to have a lot more success and put yourself in a position to win so I hope that helps again if you like these whiteboard formats

I would love to get your feedback below I'm definitely open to doing more of these and if these deeper dive types of conversations are valuable more than happy to not only take your feedback of if you like this but if there's any types of videos you want me to make on this longer format really appreciate it if you found value in this video and you haven't subscribed but also appreciate that as well but I look forward to seeing you in the next video and hope this one helped see you next time thanks