I'm all about getting credited for value delivered, not just sale made. It
actually causes me to be able to think differently and put some of the best
practices we've talked about here in place. That's my job. You're listening to
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Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel klap Miller.
Today we are going to talk about value throughout the customer engagement process and
how to keep it top of mind after the initial sale. Joining me for
this conversation is our own Tim Cato. Hi, Tim, this is such
an important topic. By there, Rachel, I could not agree with you
more. Yeah, you know, we put a lot of focus on that
initial deal, but there needs to be just as much focus throughout that full
customer engagement process. And for the people who aren't your traditional sellers, they
are in that traditional sales roles and I hesitate to say that because we all
sell right, you got it. And you know, it's such an interesting
topic because good bet are indifferent, we have the tendency to focus on us
when we're talking about their value we're providing. You know, it's actually kind
of an ironic twiss and it's a source of why a lot of us get
hung up on this idea of value. Here's the bottom line, Well,
there's two bottom lines this that we'll talk about throughout the soil contitution. Bottom
line number one. Value, as I've said before, is like beauty,
it's Sidney, I had the beholder. So whatever we think the value is
we're providing, honestly, almost doesn't matter. It's what value they think matters,
right, And I know that's a subtle twist, but you look at
all the case studies, all the discovery guidance, all the business value assessments
that we do. It's us, the selling organization, creating our view of
the value we will create for the customer. And unfortunately sometimes we get so
caught up in that we forget to just ask this simple question, what do
you think you're looking for? What are you looking for a customer? How
you define value? And I know you're going to be shocked to hear this
as much as our listeners will be shocked. Sometimes the customers are looking for
different value than we create, all right, or at least we believe we
create for them. Not that any of those things are bad, because often
they expand the customer's view of potential value we could create, But we got
to remember whatever's top of mind for them, that's the value that we're pursuing.
Second thing, no customer receives value from buying our solution. They get
value from implementing and using our solutions. And I know, again a subtle
twist here, but when you have those two things in mind, value is
defined by the customer and number two, value is only received when they use
what the solutions we provide them. Then that sets up a whole different kind
of interaction and engagement with them from the beginning during the selling all the way
through the commit both of us are making to each other to achieve those outcomes
the customer's investing in all along. I love that that's so important. Small
nuances, but they make a big difference. So, Tim, you kind
of just touched on this, but let's just talk about the basics we need
in place. Let's level set the things we need in place with the initial
deal to make sure we are able to continually create and capture that value as
we move through implementation and ongoing use. Yeah. I always like to break
down on basics in two broad categories, mindset and practices. Right, So,
the mindset, the way we think about things. I've kind of teed
that up already with those two bottom lines I mentioned that has to be from
the very beginning, all about helping them achieve their success. A lot of
selling organizations and we see a lot with organizations that maybe focus on a technology
sale, the focus of the sales versus on achieving the sale, and it
becomes so obvious to people that buy for a living. As we mentioned many
times, I spent a lot of time working with people that buy for a
living, and they consistently tell me within the first five to ten minutes,
I know what kind of seller this person is. You know, are they
focused on me and my success or they focus on selling their stuff and closing
their deal by a certain time period. And unfortunately, their expectations go way
down of the ladder meeting. They don't expect to get a lot of new
ideas of potential value from folks that are there to sell solution and close the
deal. They figure they have to do that on their own missed opportunity.
So that mindset of I'm here to focus on your success now, that has
a lot of practical advantages to it. As we've covered an on the podcast.
It allows me to be able to more effectively demonstrate my value because it's
value created, not value promised. Right. Second thing, it likely gives
me access to a broader set of folks on the customer side for whom we're
creating value for upstream and downstream from the exact solution we're providing. And lastly,
when you're doing that, actually set up potential competitive vantage. So that
mindset is really important. And then the second part up practices right number one,
great discovery that allows us to focus in on the customer definition of value.
We owe it to our customer facing team. They said that a purpose
customer facing team to give them the kind of discovery questions, not just a
this is value assessment formula. You know, plug in the customers numbers in
this formula and then you'll define value for them. Important, but way more
important is the discovery that helps broaden their eyes to the potential value that could
be there. And once we give folks that kind of discovery, it has
to be backed up by providing our customer facing team guidance on what kind of
value we create across the more globally for other organizations, just so we've got
some idea the places we could go. Right, and that, by the
way, not only includes outcomes we can achieve, but the value we can
create for other users or func groups inside the customers or organization. So guidance
on discovery, guidance on that kind of value that we've achieved in the past
for others, right, part proof points, part just expanding their view.
Then we got to make sure when we're selling, we're also selling measuring and
tracking the accomplishments that we help them achieve. Right, So that's the metrics
if you will measure and track them. And then the last best practice from
the very beginning, I'm setting an expectation with the executive sponsor or the person
or functions that own the positive business outcomes we say we're going to deliver.
I got to set an expectation from the beginning. We're staying connected, right,
I'm going to report out I've got a team, You've got a team.
They're all working, but you and I we're going to stay connected to
track the business delivered because A they need to know that. B. I
need to get credits for the value of creating. Yeah, setting those expectations
helps so much, right because they know what they're walking into, and then
when the team takes over, they aren't surprised by regular check ins and having
conversations about those things you talked about, metrics and so on. So let's
talk about how you approach those check in conversations for lack of a better term,
right throughout the implementation and beyond, to make sure that you're keeping value
top of mind. I would expect that these conversations can also fall victim,
just as the early ones do to the technical features and functions and get down
in the weeds of whatever the solution is and fail to really remind everybody of
the value that's going on. Well, I mean, when you think about
it, we should not be surprised. Look at who's typically involved on both
sides, our side and the customer side with the implementation. The people that
there are the experts on the implementation on our side, that's what they do.
They little and breathed this. They want to make sure everything's connected and
it works the right way. On the customer side, typically the operations your
technical team that is looking at making sure everything's connected right, it all works,
it's meeting the requirements of the proof of value, the proof of concept,
all those kinds of things you're going on, whether it's just before they
close or after the implementation. So why would be surprised that both sides focus
on the activity the technical aspects of the implementation. What we have to do
is always keep our mind on the idea that that's all important, good,
But we've got to track outcomes, not just activities. And I've said this
before, really really important that we do that, even if we have to
break down some of those outcomes in their illustations and implementation to what are the
milestones that get us to those outcomes. And we always have to keep that
connections. As I said a minute ago, with that executive sponsor or the
owners of the business outcomes, we're trying to cheat. We've got to send
an expectation. We're going to give them updates. We're going to track this,
we're going to help them understand where it's going well, where we might
be falling behind collectively. And this is not us to them, It's an
US with them kind of activity. And I know people are going to be
shocked to hear this. Customers don't expect that from sellers. You know,
over the decades we've taught them once we sell it, we're moving on.
Their expectations are so low that to me, it creates a wonderful differentiation opportunity
to say, not only say it, but to do it. I'm going
to keep you current and I'm going to negotiate for that upfront before I finalize
the sale. Another great example of someone that is focused on helping the customer
a cheat the outcomes versus make the sale. I'm just focused on making the
sale. I'm not negotiating for return access to an executive sponsor posts sale.
Right. It's another one of those things that you make sure everyone understands from
the beginning that this is what we're going to do, especially on the customer
side. And I need that executive sponsor to tell their implementation team I'm going
to maintain contact with this organization. I just need you to know that's normal.
I'm not checking in on you, I'm not inspecting you. I'm all
about achieving these outcomes. You're as much a part of it as they are,
and I'm going to stay connected to it. Yeah, that idea of
being multi threaded in the account doesn't stop, right. We need to be
making sure the technical demimtation goes well, but then we're also driving the value
and it's understood through various parts of the conversation before you go on reaching something's
trumportant staying multi threaded. The other aspect of this is we should expect all
of us and I need my implementation team, my success team, my account
and the entinement team to be aware that we have an expectation. When we're
in working with the customer on problem A or value A, we're going to
find other things. Right. One of the reasons why those executive sponsors want
to meet with us. It's not just here, are you doing what I
expected you to do? Are you delivering the value you said? I expect
you to maybe uncover some low events and if you see it, come to
me. And multi threaded also means multi threaded on the value we could create,
there might be more. And second, multi threaded could be other people
in the customer's organization upstream downstream from problem A or value A that actually represent
a whole new value stream, a whole new set of key influencers that we
can contacted too. So this idea of staying focused on value, I've said
it before and I really still believe it. It's the gift that keeps on
giving if we keep our eye eyes open to it and we make sure everybody
understand is work siddenly looking for the value we promise evidence of that, as
well as additional value we could provide because we're on the inside net. We
did a podcast a little bit ago, Tim on the QBR right Quarterly Business
Review, and I've linked that in the show notes, So I want to
touch on that topic here because it's highly relevant to this topic. But I
also want to encourage everybody listening to listen to the full conversation with Tim that's
linked in the show notes because you use the term quarterly value review, So
those are great touch points. There are also customer expectations I think in a
lot of places where they expect to review the business every quarter, but talk
through how you approach those meetings with this mindset. What are you doing in
those sessions? Well, you know me, I'm always before, during,
and after or right before talking in the selling process when the customers trying to
figure out how to get their problem solve, I have to be aware some
of those discovery questions. I want to give my customer facing team guidance on
is talk about how we're going to communicate once you make a decision and we're
making progress on achieving your outcomes. I'm going to set it up up front.
You got to stay involved. Now we own some of keeping it interesting
for you staying involved. And if you remember that podcast you did, Rachel
I said, you know, sometimes you called qbrs quarterly business reviews, but
a lot of cases they turn into qa rs quarterly activity reports. There is
no business owner, no executive, no executive sponsor, whoever owns the outcomes.
Now listen, hear about the activities They got people that do that.
What we have to do from the beginning to say, I'm going to share
with you every quarter our progress towards the outcomes that are being made, activities,
outcomes, even to some of these milestones. We're going to have that
all laid out before you sign them before you make a commitment. Then derry
you. Guess what number one is. If I've said from the beginning,
I've anchored on the idea, it's about these four measurable aspects of value we're
going to work together to create. I set an expectation, I'm going to
update you on those, maybe even some milestones to achieve those. And then
guess what the first thing I do in the quarterly value reviews were reviewable value
delivered right, So there's a big part of that. Now I need them
to be involved. If there's activities that have to be reported, we'll do
that. At the end, I've got a document that I could share with
your team. We'll cover it offline. This is what it's all about.
By the way, it's got to be an executive level of meeting. This
can't be a two hour q BR. It's got to be thirty minutes.
Here's what we said we were targeting. Here's our progress towards it, milestones,
measurements, and by the way, the third thing is here's what we're
seeing. I think that's the last piece that people missed. But when I
work with C level folks inside of organizations that talk about their low expectations.
On qbrs, they say one of the things that I'll just call them average
or common selling organizations provide them just an update on what they did. They're
staying in their own swim line and they're saying, this is all we're talking
about, and that's all they report. Executives find value and people that can
help them see things going on in their business that they can't see themselves,
that their team can't see a report on We need to be that objective's third
party that says, oh, by the way, I was in you're working
on value problem A, but I'm seeing some of these other things. It
might not be time to work on it, but I need you to know
what's going on, and you we signed Rachel. When you do that during
QVR, they will frequently say that's interesting you're seeing that. How are we
going to track that? I'd like to know more about it, or they
say it's interesting you notice that I've been noticing it too. We got to
get this on the rate. We need to get you connected with these three
other groups because they're the ones that really impacted by this. And then of
course afterwards, we got to communicate the results. We talked about. You
know, this is where I say there's a big belief that we have.
It's called getting credit for value delivery. Getting credits are down delivered. And
sometimes when we focus on those positive business outcomes, that's great, but we
put that a lot of times those are measurements of lagging indicators. Did your
revenue go up, did your costs go down? Did your risk get lowered?
Those are great, but sometimes you're going to break those down to the
sub metrics that are there, and we got to get credit for making progress
on those and whatever barriers we're seeing at this point that we articulated and shared
and socialized in the QUBR, we've got to follow that up. And then
what a great time to say, and here's the expectations for all we need
to talk about next time, maybe including some of those other people that you
said we needed to bring into this process, maybe they can come to the
meeting as well. So before, during, and after, if we've set
the right expectations in the sales process, then we got to stick to it
in the actual TVR itself, and then the follow up becomes critical. That's
how we get credit for value delivered. We're documenting it we're sharing it all
along the way, and that whole sequence I just described is differentiating. As
our colleague John Kaplan says, that's how you now only need sound uncommon,
you act absolutely. And so you've given us some great tips here to make
sure you're staying tethered to the account, setting expectations early and in some ways,
Timmy said, you know, if you're just asking these questions, it
helps you stay tethered to the account. It helps you multi thread yourself within
the customer account. But I'd love to hear just I'm sure you have some
others ways you advise sellers to stay tethered to the account after that initial sale.
What advice do you have? Yeah, you used an interesting word.
They're tethered, right, Because when you get to this topic, the reality,
Rachel, is that selling organizations have different models in terms of coverage of
the account. Once the initial sale is completely right. In some organizations,
the seller, or use that term, the person that was needing the charge
to close the deal remains connected. You know, that's part of their job
to manage an ongoing basis. They receive ongoing revenue for services delivered for expansion
cross up other organizations we're seeing more of this. Had a very formalized different
business model that says, once the seller, quote unquote, the seller closes
the deal, it gets handed over other people and the seller goes on to
other things. We're not here to challenge the value the track record, or
they'll be to one of those models. That's up to up to the organizations
themselves to work it out. Odds aren't there. Like many, they've tried
it a couple of times and they've made adjustments and they're locked in. But
I'm not talking about coverage right now. I love the ear of your ward
heathered because here's the thing, regardless of the model, I think the sellers
number one job once the deal gets closed is to be able to manage the
executive sponsors' expectations of the value we're delivering, and then to be able to
provide updates. It doesn't matter what our structure is, we've got an obligation
to be able to communicate with that seller or with that executive sponsor. What's
the going on now? Does that mean the seller is the one giving those
updates? I kind of think that's valuable. Most customers I know sea level,
they're looking for one person that's responsible for achieving this. On the selling
organization side, I might need to make sure that I'm orchestrating my team that's
going to keep that executive sponsor up to date. But it's my job to
figure out the how is it me? Is it my team? How do
we go about doing that? Now that's external with the customer. The other
way to say tethered Rachel. In the previous podcast we did on this,
I used the phrase called he in shapes internally, not just handoffs. You
know, sales gives it, the implementation give it, and services gives it
to Acount management gives it to CS and it's a series hand offs like a
baton being passed. We don't want the customer to feel that, you know,
a handshake. We're collectively going to make sure this customers are successful.
So even if you've got a formal structure that says somebody else takes over,
I think the sellers that were part of the initial committed by the customer,
internally, they need to track what's going on. We got to have a
mechanism that says at some point posts sale, maybe just before a q VR,
we get the team together and we talk about what's been going on,
what are some of the measures, the metrics we've been achieving, how are
we going to communicate that? And the sellers involved in that discussion? Doesn't
take a lot ex money, right, but that's how we stayed tethered to
the account because, unfortunately, on this topic, it's usually the mindset of
coverage that dominates as posed to the mindset of making sure we get credit for
the value we're creating and figure out who's the right person to say it,
who's the right person to say it to, and how do we deliver that
whether I'm customer facing as a seller or not. After that, I need
to be connected to it because I was the one that guided the conversation early,
and I think the people on the customer side have an expectation I'm going
to say, great perspective. There tim a lot of stuff for us to
think about as we wrap up. Is that the bottom line you would leave
with, like having the right mindset, what do you want people to make
sure they walk away with from this conversation today? If we start from the
very beginning, Rachel from Hello, it's a new account, yo, or
I'm assuming responsibility for an account that's been around forever in my career, I've
done both. I will tell you the ones where this is really hard is
when I'm taking over an account we maybe the companies had a relationship with many
years, right and to help shift the customer's mindset and expectation about what they
should expect from us. But from the very beginning, if your mindset is
this, get credit for value delivered. Is it upfront, I'm getting credit
for value delivered in the past from other things we've done with this account.
Is it a brand new customer and I'm focused on not just getting the deal.
I want to make sure you achieve and success you're looking for. I
need to have that mindset. If I'm all about getting credit for value delivered,
it actually causes me to be able to think differently and put some of
the best practices we've talked about here in place. That's my job, get
credit for value delivered, not just sale made. And why this makes it
really tough. Almost every solid organization in the world rachel measures you, reward
you, reinforces you at your performance about sale made versus value delivered. So
this is something that's got to be on us. But it is a huge
differentiator in the eyes of the customers as they don't see very well remember the
value delivered. Thank you so much, Tim, Hey, Rachel. This
is a topic I care a lot about, like so many of these,
right, but I think it's one that everyone can agree is important. Just
got to figure out how operation is it. Absolutely well. Appreciate you joining
me for the podcast today, Tim, My pleasure, Rachel. Let's do
another one. Yes, hey, And for those of you listening, don't
miss the show notes. I have a Timcato masterclass pretty much linked there,
so be sure to check it out. There's more conversations where we talk about
delivering value, capturing the value in your negotiations and your conversations and throughout the
customer engagement process. Don't miss it, and thank you for listening to the
Audible Ready Sales podcast. At Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations
into elite teams. Our proven methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel
repeatable revenue growth. Give your teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at
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