I’ve been consulting with a large multi-billion dollar company recently to help them source the right tech & vendors for their ongoing Digital Transformation.
It has been an interesting experience to manage such a large number of vendors of varying sizes in such a short amount of time and there’s a lot to unpack here.
For the first series, I will be looking at the Sales part of their approach trying to identify what worked well & what was truly horrendous.
Maybe you can identify with a few of these situations yourself – regardless of which side of the table you sit on 😊
Preparation
I spend a considerable amount of time with every vendor before their first big meeting with the larger buying group.
I’d give specific examples of what the expectations were and what type of messaging to completely avoid (stereotypical sales & marketing messaging which usually means nothing to most).
What blew my mind was how people would nod in affirmation during these briefing meetings – ask smart questions about the approach – and then completely disregard it during the actual meeting – and then be surprised when the response was less than ideal for them.
What blew my mind even more was the fact that not a single one of them made the proactive effort to reach out to me or to the individual stakeholders to understand what would make this a worthwhile meeting for them.
Not. A. One.
The bar is quite low to differentiate yourself then.
Here’s what I’d do if I were in their place
- Listen to the buyer point of contact – that dude knows more about the buyers than you do and it’s in their interest to have a valuable meeting for their colleagues.
- Even if the buyer hasn’t reached out with this additional context, make the effort to start mapping stakeholders. By this, I don’t mean that you should start interrogating your point of contact about the economic buyer etc. without even delivering any semblance of value.
One way to do this would be to reach out to each meeting participant & ask them what would make the meeting worthwhile for them. This also gives a way for you to reach back afterwards to confirm that they got the insights that they wanted & what’s missing.
Deliver value to expand your network – make your conversation only about their KPIs and the issues that they’re trying to solve.
Asking for 15 minutes or 30 minutes debrief meetings without a clear agenda and more importantly, without delivering value will only hurt your brand.
The Meeting
No one wants to know about your company and its accolades and recent funding amount and full product portfolio etc. – unless it impacts them.
You’d be surprised how many big-name companies insist on using the first 10-15 minutes of their meeting to talk about their company or explaining industry trends which are extremely evident to anyone who has been in the industry for more than five minutes.
This can be such a big differentiator – because again – the baseline is so low.
Even if it’s an intro meeting, I’d much prefer to listen to insights delivered in the form of Zuora’s “best sales deck”. Just google Andy Raskin medium zuora
Even if you’ve to talk about your product portfolio, contextualize them to the buyer’s needs. I’ve had people talk about the overall functionality and losing the audience in minutes as compared to others who would really think through the use cases and tell a story that would link it all together cohesively.
If you don’t have that, work on creating one and test it continuously to evolve.
One of the most memorable meetings has been with a vendor who focused on case studies & use cases to draw parallels between where we are and want to be and how they’ve helped others along the same journey.
This makes such a difference.
Sales & marketing lingo doesn’t work with most audiences – people have evolved to put up defense barriers against it. I’ve been tempted to put a swear jar in the middle of the table and ask the vendor team to put in a dollar in it every time they use the word Digital, Value, Capability, Platform, AI, ML, Paradigm-shift & other similar ones without explaining specifically what they mean by it.
If you were to do a mock-meeting with a swear jar in the middle – how many dollars would be in it by the end?
Is it more important to talk in your language – or speak your client’s?
Happy Ears – Buying Signals
We hear what we want to hear – no matter how objective we endeavor to be
This is why having multiple people in a meeting helps in triangulating the truth
Here’s a hilariously bad example of happy ears
An incumbent vendor comes in to talk about how they can help in the org’s future journey
The org is working against time
And this meeting is a bust because despite being intricately involved with this organization, they demonstrated quite clearly that they didn’t get the new direction
So their argument for a continued engagement was that they were uniquely placed to help in the future because if they were finding it so difficult to wrap their heads around the journey ahead, any new player would find it even more difficult
Citing their past incompetence as a USP is brave – but it’s seen as an additional incompetence by the other party – that of comprehension
And that point was repeated by other vendor people in that meeting so I could actually visualize their drive back to the office where they would cite this as a USP and be convinced that they are getting the deal
If everyone in your debrief meeting agrees on most things that happened in a meeting, it’s time to have a dedicated devil’s advocate.
A seasoned sales guru at one of my previous stints a big corp once said – only bad things can happen from hearing a yes & getting the signed paperwork.
It doesn’t hurt to be a bit pessimistic to figure out what could go wrong – and then proactively mitigate those risks.
Answer the unasked questions – figure out why a question is being asked and address the underlying need
The baseline is so low – it’s easy to differentiate yourself simply through the way you interact
The follow-ups
Follow-up within 24 hours – without fail – even if you don’t have all the answers at least list out the actions and owners
Not sending a meaningful follow-up email is bad enough but you know what’s worse?
Sending a delayed follow-up with an excuse that makes the situation worse.
e.g. a big name vendor’s salesguy missed out on taking any action after the initial meeting so the buyer moved on with conversations with other vendors
Due to internal pressure, he remembered the client and sent out a correspondence about a month too late citing an excuse
The excuse being that the team was busy in a local event – and my initial reaction after hearing about it was to tell that sales guy to go back to the event and try to make his numbers from those conversations instead of this one.
Reviewing your email before sending shouldn’t be just for typos or completeness – but also from an emotional intelligence perspective
Another useless follow-up is to seek face time without an explicit agenda
Everyone’s time is precious – in order to earn the right to book it, you need to show them what’s in it for them.
There’re usually two ways a no-agenda meeting request can work – either the other person has nothing better to do – or you’ve delivered enough value in previous interactions that there’s trust that you won’t waste their time.
On the flip side, if you’ve already wasted someone’s time before – you’ve to work that much harder to get time again – so work for it.
No one ever got fired for buying IBM
Most people in corporate haven’t made a career out of taking unwarranted risks
In fact, most people would rather not take risks at all
So, in your value proposition, how much of an effort is made to mitigate your prospective clients’ risk(s)?
Citing big names who have worked with you in the past wont cut it.
Think specifically about the platform, architecture, software, implementation, change management risks
How have you solved them for your clients in the past? And if you haven’t, how did they solve those risks on their own?
Without this insight, your value proposition will remain weak.
You’re unique, like everyone else
As a buyer, you hear just about every vendor talk about their uniqueness
Vendors may have battlecards & other marketing mumbo jumbo to convince their sellers of their uniqueness
But it’s only the buyer who is in a position to judge that uniqueness
And in most cases, there’s no uniqueness in the product, service or the way it’s presented
And this lack of uniqueness means that there’s competition
Sellers, especially junior sellers often don’t understand why a buyer wouldn’t give their offering due consideration
A better understanding of your competitors will help sellers in understanding what they’re up against – perhaps interviewing the prospects that you won and lost
Understanding the market isn’t just marketing’s job – and often they’re late in picking up signals
Sales superpower is their proximity to the buyer – so use it to build up your organization’s understanding
I’ll continue to add more as I go through my notes. Any thoughts, suggestions, reach out over LinkedIn.