Transcript
Intro
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teams…teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. It's a question that I know is on your mind. Can we actually close out deals before we even meet or engage with the customer? I have to say the old Ben would have said, no way. Don't be ridiculous. There's no way we can build a long term relationship that benefits both parties without even meeting or presenting to our customer. The new Ben. Well, perhaps the older Ben certainly now sees the distinct possibility in how this can happen. And quite frankly, it's not just a product of gaining more experience and in essence, getting older, but it's also a product of a changing environment that we see in our world. So if we wind back the clock pre Covid. It's funny how we talk about pre Covid now as an era almost completely different to the one that we live in now. But certainly if we look back pre Covid around how buyers, decision makers and people involved in deals, projects or any terms of relationships made their decisions, the decision making processes have actually changed quite significantly, which is why the new Ben believes that certainly there is some scope now to be having decisions being made before we even meet with our customers. Now, that's an outlandish statement, and I encourage people, and those listening who know me well will recognise that I encourage people to start with the facts and then come out with the outlandish statements. But I've hit one straight out of the park early in this podcast just to spike an interest in terms of what we're going to be exploring over the next 20 minutes or so.
So what do I mean by closing out deals before we even meet customers? Well, in essence, what I'm talking about is having a customer make their decision that you are their chosen provider before you even meet. And meeting can be over the phone, it can be virtual via video, it can be face to face, whatever that format works and how it is for your team doesn't really matter. But the concept here is how can we have buyers or decision makers actually deciding you're their person or you're their business before you've even met? Well, let's wind back to pre Covid. And I use statistics that I paraphrase, because they do vary across lots of different reports. But I think Gartner is a great resource to be able to check some of these up. And that is that pre Covid, there were typically two to three people involved in business or commercial decision making. So we're talking about a B2B space more predominantly here. Post Covid, we've seen that number change. I'll get to that in a moment. Pre Covid, we were typically seeing five to six touch points with a business or a salesperson for a decision to be made. So two to three decision makers and five to six touch points, that comes out at around about 15 touch points across all decision makers, many of which you can work through at the same time. Having people in the same room, for example, at once, some of those which are run independently. When we roll that clock forward to 2023, which is obviously in that kind of post Covid era, what we've seen change is that those two to three decision makers have extended out to five to six. So they've roughly doubled. And I like to use statistics in a broad and generalised approach, rather than specific numbers, because we can often use statistics to prove or disprove anything we like. But certainly the theme here is that the number of decision makers in commercial dealings has roughly doubled from the pre and post Covid area.
Why has that happened? Ideating around it, budgets tightening, risk profiles absolutely changing. And also, I think, to an extent, less experienced people moving into leadership and decision making roles, certainly more so than we have in the past, with the higher employment numbers and the harder or the greater challenges that leaders are having in employing people into roles. So naturally, people are being given more opportunity earlier than they perhaps would have in the past. So two to three decision makers now out to five to six, and the five to six touch points now extending out to eleven to 13. So where we previously had 15 to 20 touch points across varied decision makers, we're now working out at around 50 to 70 touch points around varying decision makers. So does that mean that we are meeting more and more with our buyers post the COVID era? We know that's definitely not true. It is harder than ever to have face to face meetings. And I'd also argue it's harder than ever to get people on the phones. Certainly challenging to get people on the phones. But Gartner using that as a great resource, they come up with a number of about 75% of decision makers actually not wanting, or buyers not wanting to meet with salespeople.
So we're in an era where we have more decision makers, more touch points being required with salespeople or businesses, and more buyers not wanting to actually meet face to face. So that can lead to a particular head scratching moment where you start to wonder, well, hang on, how am I going to get more touch points with more customers when they're generally not wanting to meet or engage with salespeople as often as they have in the past? This is where I think the opportunity to have decision makers or influencers choosing who they're preferred salesperson or business they want to work with is prior to even meeting becomes so relevant. And that's because in order for those decision makers to get across the concept of what they're purchasing and those touch points to occur, we're seeing more and more buyers or influencers of decisions doing their research before they meet with salespeople.
So what we're talking about here is a significant structural change where the buyer's process is involving more research, pre salesperson meeting. Why is that so? Clearly, the availability of information is driving that. There is so much information at people's fingertips from a generalist point of view, when they're looking into a topic or from a specific point of view that is around companies, there is just so much of it now for them to be able to begin that decision making process and that data collection process that they need to go to. It doesn't matter what company or what industry we work in, whether it's renewables, whether it's healthcare, whether it's manufacturing or services. Businesses have social media presences, they have websites, they have reviews, they have a heavy general involvement around referral programs. And it's just so easy to find out information on these companies and also the general industries that you're looking at.
Okay, so setting the scene here, we've got more decision makers who need more touch points in a post Covid era where they're less likely to want to meet with salespeople. And as a result, they're doing lots and lots of research before they're actually meeting with those salespeople. So for me, that is leading to a natural environment where decisions actually can be made before meeting with salespeople, where it becomes a rubber stamp or a risk management policy for businesses to meet with salespeople, or where we have a very complex or higher value decision making process where salespeople are more likely to be involved. But one thing's for certain for me, if we have our buyers out there doing more and more of their research, their data collection, and even their early decision making before we even meet with them, what becomes so important is how we interact with our customers before we actually get to see them.
So today I'm going to run through ten techniques that I'm seeing really commonly used out in the market by businesses, by individual salespeople that are helping them encourage their buyers to make decisions on them and to choose them before they even meet.
So let's go through these. They are by no means exhaustive, but there are some silver pellets in there, perhaps a silver bullet or two as well, that will help you influence that process, but also structure your thinking so that you are spending enough time prior to meeting with your buyers to be able to have them choose you for validation when you finally get face to face.
Okay, so, number one, before we obviously are meeting with our customers, there's generally going to be some inquiries into our businesses where I'm seeing really successful salespeople influence the buyers, and their decision making process is getting really clear on what they want from their interaction at that very first phone call, at that very first interaction, email, whatever it may be. In days gone by, that was often left until we got to our first meeting. But where successful sales teams that I'm seeing operate in this space are changing, is they're bringing forward that information collection to the very first time they meet with someone. And what happens from here is that it allows them to govern all the information that they can proactively provide. And there's lots of ways where they can be getting in front of their buyers without actually being face to face or video calls or on the phone that can influence that decision making process. So if we're able to identify straight off the cuff what our buyers are needing from their engagement with our brand or our people, then we are ahead of the curve. So that's number one, bringing forward that needs analysis, that understanding what customers want right to the very first point of interaction.
Number two is getting a form of contact out to their customers to get to know the salesperson prior to meeting. Classic example here, which I don't think is used anywhere near enough, is video. So post an initial inquiry. Post an initial needs analysis piece, post any form of engagement that a customer or a buyer is having with a business. Getting a video summary out to get to know that salesperson that they’ll be meeting with has been very, very effective for a number of brands I'm working with now, where we see number one is all about understanding what their needs are. Number two is actually about building a relationship before you get the chance to do so face to face. I certainly use video. I use it extensively and those who know me have seen it used in just about any form of what we do. But by no means am I the only one. And I've learned from some very exceptional, talented people around the use of video. And there is no doubt in my mind that building rapport and a relationship can be sped up through some video engagement. So how are people doing videos? Typically we're looking at 1 minute videos, keeping them nice and short. There's a whole lot of format around lighting and pace and matching. And certainly that's a deeper topic, not for today, but they're short, sharp videos that are often summarising a customer's needs or what they understand that they want from a process. Actually rolling number one into number two, or just giving them a bit of a flavour about who the person they're going to be meeting with is and helping just tick that journey of choosing that person along.
Okay, number three. Number three is one of the more creative ways that I'm seeing businesses, particularly this is at a business level, engage with their customers before they meet and that is getting them involved in a DIY project of some sort. And what I mean by that is getting them to actually engage with the brand in a meaningful fashion, that can have an impact on what they're planning to do. So if they are, and I love this example, it's a classic example in the renewables industry. If they are looking to put a product on their roof, giving them the opportunity to start with some 3D modelling. If you're looking to install a pool, if you're looking to do some landscape gardening, if you're looking at a business level to do a redesign of some of your facilities, having an online tool where you can engage with and do some calculations, super powerful to building an affinity with your brand. If you're looking at in the finance industry around rates and interest and the impacts around financial models, having a self service model that gets you moving forward, super impactful. If you're in an industry that's selling product and you can see online demonstrations or 3d modelling, or that you can design your own avatar of that product. Very, very compelling to start building relationships with your customers. I would have to say this is probably one of the strongest of the ten when it comes to having customers or buyers choose you before you even meet. Because understanding a product or a service is just so powerful. And I think when we can do that, have an understanding of a product or service as a buyer, we are so much more comfortable when we're meeting with our products down the track.
So number one, bringing that needs analysis forward to the very first engagement. Number two is using video as a summary form to get more familiar with a salesperson. Number three is a DIY product or service involvement with what your business offers.
Number four is education. I think education has been around a long time, but giving our buyers or decision makers or customers more information that they can get access to without needing your support is no doubt helping them decide on who they're going to choose as their provider. In days gone by, we'd often see that education and even some of that DIY product that I've spoken about was held back until we met with customers face to face. However, I think with the changing landscape and the increase in the amount of research happening pre meeting, the more as a brand that we can be sharing with our customers early, the stronger the affinity we're able to build with them. Now, that doesn't mean we're giving away competitive or proprietary information. I often talk about a competitive mode or having a sizzle in your product that we want to make sure we're protecting, but certainly having our potential customers learn more about the product category that they're buying from, i.e general research. But also our brand, before we meet, is going to allow them to have a really compelling meeting with us when we finally do get that face to face opportunity. So that's number four.
Number five, an oldie but a goodie, but also with a slight variation. And that's getting product or service in hand. So being able to test a product or service again, we've often waited until we're face to face or we're further down the buying process. But my argument now is to actually bring that forward and to start offering customers value and outcomes as early as we can. Because that's the time when they're doing their own research and really driving their opinions on brands. So whilst we may not want to be showing every feature of every product or service that we have, giving our customers a taste of getting product in hand is super powerful. Because without question, once we have used or tried something ourselves and we are more comfortable with a product or service, we are more likely to go back and use that again. All right, that's five done. We're moving with some pace here.
Number six here. Case studies and examples of the product in use. Case studies typically, again, have waited till later in the process and they haven't been super interactive. I think now, with the rise of drone footage in particular, video case studies are very impactful and very easy to create. They are no longer as cost prohibitive as they were, but particularly when we can roll salespeople who are dealing with customers into the case studies or examples of the product in use, that's when we can start to not only build a relationship with a salesperson, a level of familiarity, but also we can start to see the products in use. Given how relatively inexpensive it now is to build case studies, and particularly those that are interactive, I'm really encouraging you as a business to look at the segments you deal with, pick the top six to eight, and have specific case studies that are interactive that specifically relate to each of those segments. What that's allowing us to do is get a very specific case study out, even accompanied perhaps with a video, with a personalised video that customers can feel like they're particularly involved or the hero of their own story. Where case studies aren't as powerful. Are those generic one pages? Go to the website, see our product in use. We email you out a PDF. I'm not seeing them work as effectively as those that are interactive, but certainly where we can get interactive, we're increasing customers' familiarity with us or our brand, and therefore their level of comfort when we do get face to face.
Okay, so that's six down. Number four, five and six were education. So that's getting customers the opportunity to learn more about the general category or our product. Number five, was product in hand, but getting it in hand earlier in the process. And number six was moving our case studies from being static to interactive and allowing customers the chance to not only learn about our salespeople, but also our brand.
Number seven, social media. Where typically we see social media being used as lead generation. And I certainly get hit up with cold calls and cold solicits around wanting my business very regularly. What I'm recommending here is using social media as a way to increase the levels of familiarity with our product, service or salesperson. There are 1 billion users on LinkedIn alone and where we can be meeting our buyers, where they're at now, that is connecting with them on social media. Once we know they're looking into our product, or service in particular, then we can start providing them content that's helping on those eleven to 13 touch points across five to six buyers. But in particular, the eleven to 13 touch points where we can be providing case studies, where we can be writing good, valuable content, or in fact, any of the things that I've spoken about earlier, where we can be getting them in front of our buyers or our potential customers at the right time. That's when it can be really powerful. We've all heard the sayings around, you buy a red car, you see more red cars out on the road. The same here goes. When we're looking at products or services to invest in, once we start to look, we will generally see the cues more and more frequently. And I think that goes for social media. So if we can be connecting with our customers and be providing them value through that social media channel, then we are starting to influence their decisions and choosing us before we even make them.
Number eight is cross threading. This is tied very closely to social media. So where social media will help us increase the familiarity that potential buyers have with our brand, we can also use social media to cross thread. And that's to get across the five or six decision makers involved in the process. Who we at this stage probably don't know, but where we can use common sense and start to look across. Okay, well, in a typical B2B buying arrangement, we might have a procurement specialist, we might have a technical person, we might have some end users, we might have someone in operations, someone in finance, and someone in the executive level, all involved in decisions. Then we know who to target. We know where we need to be spending our time, and social media is a great way for us to do that. For those businesses who use something like a LinkedIn navigator, very easy to go, and type in a brand name, look for the key people within that brand and then connect with them. So where we can start to do that, we see the beginnings across threading, and more and more of those touch points ticked off across the process. And so at a more advanced level, for those who are less confident using social media, where cross threading can also be achieved is by asking our potential buyers or decision makers before we're meeting with them who else needs to see some information about our business. Try it. You would be amazed at how many times potential customers will share that data at a very general level, if not specifically down to titles and position names. So super impactful is cross threading.
Number nine. I'm going to move through these last couple nice and quickly. Is referral and common connections where we have common connections or we've been referred, if we can use those to provide the potential customers that we're working with more information about our business. Then again, we're starting to add another layer towards choosing us as their provider before we even meet. So from a common connection point of view, we can use social media to work through that. Or often we'll find that in our early stages of having involvement with customers, that they've been referred by someone they know someone else using the product, or they've seen their competitors using it. So we need to leverage those wherever we can to build that trust and that emotional bank with our brand before we meet.
Last but not least, is nice and simple, is confirming their meetings in advance. Now, a little bit of a technicality here, it's still before we meet, but one thing that I see the most impactful salespeople that I've ever worked with do is build that relationship through confirming a meeting. So it could be a video, it could be a phone call, it could be an email. But what comes with that confirmation is a little piece of information or a little gold nugget about the brand that helps move the buyer to that next stage in their service. So if we a product and we know that it's just won an award or it's just done something amazing for someone else in the industry, we put that information down on the meeting confirmation. For me, what I like to use is a video as a confirmation to say, hey, really looking forward to meeting with you tomorrow. If there's anything outside of one, two, three that you want to go through, please let me know in advance. Otherwise, I'm really looking forward to providing you with. And that's when I'll jump in with a solution to one of those needs that I've identified. For me when we walk into that meeting showing we care and with a genuine interest in what they're trying to achieve, evidenced by confirming the meeting and providing some value. Then again, we've moved out our buyers that one step further to choosing us before we even meet.
So, to wrap that up, number seven was about social media. Eight was cross threading, nine was leveraging the referrals or common connections that we have. And number ten was confirming our meetings in advance.
So there you have it. That's ten ways that I'm seeing salespeople or businesses having buyers actually choose them before they even meet. Previously, five years ago, I don't know how possible this was, but certainly now I see an infinite opportunity for businesses, brands and people out there who are prepared to bring forward a lot of that value creation that they focus on to before they're meeting with their customers really succeeding. And to summarise it, it is all based around our buyers not only having more people involved in the decision making process, but doing more of their research before they meet salespeople, which in turn involves more touch points with businesses and products or services. So by providing lots of value as early as we can, we are indeed allowing us to be the chosen provider before our customers meet us.
Okay, so before we finish up, I'm going to run through those ten just as a quick summary.
Number one, making sure we're bringing forward needs analysis in our customer engagements to the very first time we contact with them.
Number two, all around using video as a tool to build some engagement at a personal level.
Number three is the DIY product or getting them involved in our product or service to actually increase that engagement by using our product.
Education is number four, not dissimilar to DIY, but enhancing that learning process early.
Number five, getting a product in hand, noting, we want to protect our competitive moat, but start to provide that value around product earlier.
Number six is using interactive case studies.
Number seven and eight was social media. Using social media to get in front of our customers more and more, not to generate leads, but to provide value.
And number eight, being cross threading across an organisation.
Number nine was all around leveraging our common connections.
And number ten was confirming our meeting in advance.
So that's it for today. Lots of information in there around having buyers make their decisions about us before we even meet.
But before we go, I'd like to throw in a health and fitness tip. It's been a little while since we've done this because we've had so many guests on there, but for my own personal health and mindset, and absolutely my customers and teams that I work with, we spend a little bit of time around understanding failure and our perspectives around failure. We often hear fail fast, fail and learn, understand why we failed to be able to move on to the next stage. They're very, very common approaches, but for me, they don't necessarily help the mindset of failure being failure. However, what works really well, certainly for me at a personal level, and without question across a number of the people I work with, is understanding that failure is a necessary part of our process, be it necessary for us to grow, be it necessary for us to make progress in our offers and what our business does. I think they're semantics. The most important piece is that we see failure as necessary and part of our journey. Because when we can accept that failure is going to happen, I think the impact and that heavy anchor that often gets associated with it starts to lighten and we see that simply it is just taking us one step closer to our next steps or our solution. So please embrace failure as something that we need to achieve. I know I struggle with it. I know I'm constantly reminding myself of it because I'm human. But I find that when I recognise that failure is simply part of that journey and I'm one step closer to where I want to be, I'm a happier person from it.
So that's it for today. Until next time, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.
Yes, We Can Ensure Buyers Choose US Before We Even Meet!
