Patrick Severs

💡 Discovery Isn’t About Scripts. It’s About Curiosity. Here’s where most MSP sales training goes off the rails: We teach reps to ask what. •What systems do you use? •What’s your IT budget? •What’s broken? That’s not discovery. That’s box-checking. Real discovery? It’s powered by why. •Why did your last MSP fall short? •Why does your team escalate so often? •Why hasn’t this issue been fixed already? Those questions don’t just get answers. They get insight. And that insight? It builds trust. Not just for the rep, but for the prospect. They start to believe you get it. The best MSPs don’t run scripts. They run toward understanding. If your deals feel surface-level or stuck in neutral, the fix isn’t a tighter script. It’s deeper curiosity. Ask better questions. Then zip it. Listen like it matters. Because it does. #FoxAndCrowGroup #MSPSales #DiscoveryCalls #AskBetterQuestions #CuriousSelling

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Most sellers struggle at capturing metrics M123 They’ll note the challenge, they’ll pitch the solution, but they might not capture the result. Or worse, they fill SFDC with results that sound like marketing copy instead of customer- spoken language. This is where your coaching comes in. CSR (Challenge, Solution, Result) is a nimble storytelling framework suited for coaching metrics When a seller is forced to quantify results with metrics, it help them to ask better questions • C What was broken? • S What did we fix? • R By how much? If you don’t coach your team here, you end up with fluffy “we helped them save time” answers that nobody can use in a business case, let alone a board-level case study. An APAC SaaS leader I am working with has intriguingly flipped this around. He has pushed down and stopped forecasting deals that don’t include key metrics. He wants his teams capturing hard data: 37% reduction in man processing $1.2M in avoided costs 18% faster onboarding 9 weeks TTV 3% increase in NPS Such metrics later power CS case studies, executive-win stories, and ultimately, stronger pipeline credibility. The lesson is simple. If your sellers don’t know how to use CSR with metrics in their deal conversations, you’re robbing yourself of the raw material you’ll need to prove impact later. Coach your team to capture metrics now, tomorrow, the next meet while the customer’s memory is fresh. Otherwise, by the time you want a case study, you’ll be left with nothing but ‘anecdotes’. Here’s where your coaching makes the difference Challenge • What was the customer’s problem in their own words? • How were they measuring that problem before we showed up? • What was the cost of leaving it unsolved? Solution • What exactly did we deliver ..not the product “, but the business fix? • How does the customer describe the solution’s impact? • Who inside their org said, “this changes things by x” Result • Which metrics prove the fix worked? • Who owns those numbers inside the customer’s business? • How do those numbers ladder up to something the Economic Buyer cares about? • If you had to put one result on a slide for a board meeting, which metric would you choose? (Love this one) Final acid test: • Could we take your answers today, strip out the company name, and drop them into a case study tomorrow? If your sellers can’t answer these questions crisply, they aren’t capturing metrics. That’s an important gap you need to coach them out of .. = / = / = / = / = / = Metrics: Day 5 of 7 tomorrow 🗓️ ... off climbing 🧗‍♀️ TGIF !! Follow me for a daily teaching moment on MEDDPICC, deal reviews, and sales coaching - Mark ☘️ 😎

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The best enterprise sellers I've ever seen get mistaken for management consultants. That’s not accidental. It’s intentional. They open an intro call with an executive and never say the product name. They never say “software“ or “technology.” They start the conversation with: “I see pressures around your cash flow vs. your direct peers performance and against investor expectations… so I put together a pro forma, directionally accurate and defendable, identifying how to generate as much as $221.8 million in cash flow over 5 years with a direct payback as soon as X. Just want to go over the operational details behind that.” The executive pauses. Then asks… “Wait… what exactly do you do?” And the answer is: “Help folks generate these kinds of outcomes. …returns. But, to be clear, this conversation really isn’t about software. If it were, we’d be meeting with the tech teams. This is a business conversation, a financial conversation, a shareholder value conversation… Not a sales conversation. Silence. Then… “Okay. Keep going.” …Now, discovery has its place. The opening intro call conversation with an executive just isn’t it. One more thing I’ve seen the best sellers say early …especially when challenged. “I’m not on the technical side. I’m on the business side.” That one line resets the entire meeting. DM me if you want to learn how to hold this frame in your next executive conversation.

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Over the last few posts I have written about repeatable revenue growth: ICP, product-market fit, GTM fit, revenue quality, PE board visibility, Customer Success, renewals and partner-led growth. The thread running through all of them is simple: growth only becomes repeatable when the business is clear on who it is serving, what problem it is solving, how that value is proven, and how the customer is grown over time. This is where commercial operating rhythm matters. I have seen sales cycles slow down when the product vision gets ahead of the customer problem. What starts as a clear solution to one issue becomes a much bigger platform conversation. More stakeholders enter the room. More questions are raised. More conceptual features need explaining. The opportunity looks bigger, but it becomes harder to buy. That is the danger. The discipline is to diagnose properly with the client. Are they the right fit? Is the problem real? Is it urgent? Does the solution solve the issue they actually need fixing now? That should show up in the commercial rhythm. The best pipeline reviews do not just ask, “when will this close?” They also ask, “is this the right customer, with the right problem, at the right time?” If the answer is yes, focus there. Land the use case. Prove the value. Build trust. The wider product vision still matters, but timing matters more. In many cases, deeper and broader product engagement should come after the customer is contracted, live and seeing value. That is where Customer Success can create expansion from a position of evidence rather than promise. Do it too early and the proposition will lose clarity. Messaging becomes confused. Campaigns lose focus. Sales conversations stall. Customers struggle to understand what the product is, who it is for and why it matters now. That is not a marketing problem. It is an operating rhythm problem. Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Finance and Operations all see different parts of the growth engine. The value comes when those views are connected, not competing. For me, commercial operating rhythm is where strategy becomes execution. It is where ICP, PMF, GTM fit, revenue quality, renewals and partner growth stop being separate topics and become one connected growth system. That is how repeatability is built. What operating rhythm do you think creates the most value in a growth business? #saas #digital #valuecreation #productdevelopment #marketing #customersuccess #sales #icp #pmf

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Wholesale distributors: MaX sees you wrestling with aging CRMs, manual quoting, and chaotic sales cycles. Good news...AI can fix that. From automated forecasting to out-of-the-box sales productivity agents… your reps can finally stop “chasing data” and get back to selling. Let’s modernize your stack. https://hubs.li/Q03VR5ht0 #congruentX #WholesaleDistribution #AI #Dynamics365 #AIFueledRevenue #AIAgents

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