The fact of the matters you've got to attach at a time like this to
business, either pain or outcomes. You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast,
the show that helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature sales
leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that helps you
fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by the team at Force Management, a leader
in B to B sales effectiveness. Let's get started. Hello, Welcome to
the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel klatt Miller. Today we are going
to be talking about selling in a new category. Our own Brian Wallace joins
me for the conversation. Hi Brian, Hi Rachel, how are you.
I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited about this topic today because it is
one that is coming up a lot, particularly with our Assender subscribers. As
senders are online subscription platform with content, curriculum and community. If you haven't
checked it out, you should. But they're coming from people who are selling
new technologies in a new category, a lot of this AI tech, right,
Yeah, everyone's like, wow, this is really cool, but they're
having trouble aligning to paying. If you're listening. You might be selling AI,
you might be selling in a different type of new category, and doing
that you meet kind of a new set of challenges that you might not have
if you're selling kind of a more established solution. So, Brian, i'd
love to get your opening thoughts about this topic, and then I'd love for
you to kind of walk through what those challenges are that salespeople that sell into
a new category aren't faced with Yeah, big topic and it's I'm glad we're
trying to at least get some light on it, right, can't tackle something
like this all in one podcast, but ten minutes ten minute limit, Brian,
Yeah, let's kick the can on this a little bit. So first
and foremost, I think the challenges are probably pretty obvious, Right, it's
the well what is this? What does it do? Why would I need
it? Challenge? I think that's the first thing. So there's the whole
it's not just name or brand recognition for who your company is, but it's
name or brand recognition for the thing that you have and or the problem you're
trying to solve, or the outcomes that it can create. So there's this
whole educational challenge that goes with something like this, Right, it's not like,
well, cybersecurity ten years ago versus cybersecurity today, Like you say cybersecurity
day, everybody knows exactly what you mean you say ten years ago. What
So I think that's the first big challenge. And I think of that because
one of the best sales managers I ever worked with, he was one of
my counterparts. Whenever he put someone new into a sales territory, the first
thing he would say to them is, now, remember the best salespeople are
great marketers first, because as a seller, one of the things you have
to do is you have to create awareness before you're ever going to get consideration.
Classic marketing one oh one, Right, Why would anybody ever consider you
if they don't know who you are, what you do, or why you're
relevant. So Brandon did a great job of helping his salespeople think about creating
awareness in their marketplace. And I think that's where you have to start here.
And look, here's the other thing, Rachel. Nobody's creating something like
AI unless it does something better, solves a problem, creates an outcome.
So I get that you might be struggling attaching to the pain. But my
bet is there's pain out there that your thing, your product, your service
is going to solve for, and there's certainly an outcome. Otherwise, why
would anybody ever back it financially with venture capital money or anything else like that.
Right, So there's something that you can definitely hold on to, and
I think to give people some something to hold on to themselves, that's the
good news here. There's no reason you'd have something to sell if it wasn't
of value. Yeah, it really good points, Brian, and I think
some of us are a custom maybe selling for a company that's not known,
but a solution that the customer understands, right. Yeah, this is a
different animal, and as with all great selling, you have to think about
and prep for and think through how you're going to manage those conversations with your
customers because your old tricks techniques might not be the best fit for this situation.
I got to jump in on this because you make me think of something,
which is there's a perspective that you're going to have to look at your
territory, your accounts, whatever you want to call them through. Someone who's
working in an established marketplace doesn't have to, and that is the concept of
early adopters versus followers and languards. And I think one of the things you
have to think about is how can we target How can I as a seller,
how can my company as an organization target early adopters, whether by vertical
or by all the way down to the account level or the persona level.
Because ten years ago, I just go to cybersecurity again, there are a
lot of people out there who could just kind of put up all kinds of
walls and barriers. I'm good. I'm good because they were more of a
follower or a laggard. There ain't any of those left. Followers and laggers
in the cybersecurity space are no longer buying. They're like they're unemployed. Right,
everybody has to buy cybersecurity now. So one of the key things for
you and your company to think about, which is how do we figure out
who the potential early adopters are and go spend as much time there because that's
where you're going to make bank early on. Yeah, that's a great way
to approach it. And you know, it's really thinking about your ideal customer
profile as it relates to that early adopter, right, because it's like one
thing to say Oh, our ideal customer profile is healthcare or finance or whatever.
But then inside of there there's going to be a subset who were and
it ain't a third, a third and a third. Right, your early
adopters are, if you're lucky, you're ten to fifteen percent of the target
account market. So just the thought, great first step as you look at
as you look at your accounts and assess where you might be struggling, and
why let's jump a little bit, Brian into like the actual convoys that I'm
maneuvering in these accounts. Yeah, we talked about pain. If the customer
doesn't understand how this new solution would solve pain, or they don't really feel
the pain because they have a solution now, right, the successful path,
as you mentioned, might be to sell on the outcomes that you can drive.
Yeah, walk us through kind of that mindset and how that would work.
Yeah. So look, I'm a big believer that you give me pain
that I can attach to or outcomes that I can help drive that are valuable
for a customer. I'm good. I mean I'd love to have both.
As long as I got one, I'm good. I can go attached to
that and I can help pain a vision around what does it mean to solve
for this pain? What does it mean to not effectively solve for this pain
not just for you personally, but for the rest of your organization, for
your customers, for the business, etc. I can do the same thing
if I understand the types of business outcomes that we can drive. But look,
we talk about technical versus business pain and technical versus business outcomes all the
time. This may be when it's even more important because nobody's going to buy
your new thing just because it's cool yep, unless they see it as a
potential science experiment. And if that's the case, it's not going to be
a big deal. You might end up with something further down the road.
But the fact of the matter is you've got to attach at a time like
this to business, either pain or outcomes. It's okay if you don't,
if you don't know the pain. If I can paint a vision of the
future that is better than today, where this AI solution is helping organizations onboard
x number of percentage higher customers over six months than they were before, it's
driving x percentage of increase in revenue, or it's lowering card abandon rate on
websites. You know, those are outcomes. Now, here's the interesting thing
about outcomes. If I can and show you a potential outcome, I can
then back to train up and show you the pain associate without getting there.
Yeah, So that's the funny thing about it. In the end, if
there's a business outcome to be had, you can then attach it back to
potential business pain if not dealt with effectively. Right, that's great. So
maybe in your prep or as you're considering how your conversations have gone to this
part to this time, one way to shift might be to shift the conversation
towards the outcome first. Yeah, then work it back into the pain.
And you mentioned at the top, Brian, You're like, there is pain.
There's pain associated with your solution. Here's the thing when we say outcomes,
I think we should just state for the record, Rachel, we're not
talking some cool thing. You know. I see all this stuff about AI.
You know, you can create your own illustrations and blah blah blah.
That's all cool stuff, But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking
about because you can do something, what does it drive for the businessess Right,
Because especially as a new technology, people are going to be skeptical,
if not cynical, of why should wait, why would we do this?
Like why isn't the way we do it today? Fine? Or like we
don't even do anything like that today? Why do we even need to do
it? So you have to have business outcomes, because remember you're competing against
all kinds of other things that are already budgeted. Your thing is probably not
budgeted if it's brand new. So you have to have a business case,
and it's got to be hard dollars. It can't just be soft dollars.
I mean, we talked about this recently, and I still remember the first
time it happened. I still can I can name the account, I can
name the people, and we were having a conversation with them about cost savings
from a productivity standpoint, and it was the CFO who kind of got a
wry smile on his face and he looked at me and the sales rep and
he says, you know that's good. I get it, and I'll believe
it when you give me the employee numbers of the people I'm going to fire.
And if we went out of a really good relationship with Rick and that
was his name, and I remember we talked about it a few times after
that in the future and he would just say, look, soft dollar savings
are great, but the reality is unless it hits the P and L,
it's not meaningful, right. I mean, it's nice, but it's not
meaningful, and it won't get especially an unbudgeted line item done. It just
won't get it done. Yeah, So there's the cost savings, thinking through
the business outcomes, digging deeper to find the pain, right and the hard
costs the help that it's going to go through. There is there any other
insight you would you mentioned kind of walking back for the pain. How do
I do that? Well, there's another thing I want to add to the
list too, and it kind of goes back to the early adopt thing.
It's understanding the cultural aspects of this too, because maybe this attaches to your
question now that I think about it even more so. So, there were
a couple of times in my career where when something new specifically would happen,
and I worked for a big company that had but they created a few new
markets, which they really did create, all of a sudden, the people
we had to talk to changed, ye, So the pain didn't live with
the people that we had traditionally sold to. However, they were going to
feel some pain. They were going to feel the pain of change, whether
they liked it or not. Something in the market was changing that was going
to impact them and their traditional role or how they did things, either personally
or for their entire company. And all of a sudden, for example,
there was a time where we had to get in front of the CFO.
Had to Now, in a lot of our previous deals, we might get
to the CFO because of the size of the deal, but now we had
to get to the CFO because of the pain and the outcomes associated with the
deal. So before it was like, CFO is an approver, Well,
you know, if we're lucky, we get to meet him or her or
somebody's presenting our proposal to them. But now in this moment in time,
it was no, No, it's the CFO. Who's going to own this
thing? And to your point about understanding the pain, it's understanding who is
it really going to get to? Who really owns it. So we were
all of a sudden finding ourselves trying to navigate. Hey, there's four or
five six people we used to talk to who were one, two, three,
four levels removed from the CFO. How are we going to navigate this
whole thing. So we were doing like, we were having conversations with people
about, look, this is where this is going, positive business outcomes,
you know, future stay outcome driven conversations, and here's the pain associated with
that for you today and in the future if you don't solve for it.
And we were having it at the more traditional levels we had called upon because
we didn't have in some access to the CFO. So what we were doing
was we were having those conversations with our more traditional contacts, doing so purposefully
to look for the person who could see the bigger picture. Because if we
could get either individual or collective conversations with those four or five six people,
we can start to pick out, Oh, it's that personal over there that
sees this and realizes that somebody's going to take us to the CFO, so
might as well be me, right. So I think that's the big part
of it. It's having the bravery right, having the bravery to go do
the discovery that might be a little uncomfortable. Now, if I'm going to
replace somebody's job, I'm not suggesting that I'm going to go to them for
the discovery, right. I mean I got to like there's some thought that
has to go behind this. I had a client call the other day and
say, hey, we got a bunch of sales reps now calling people saying,
hey, our leadership wants me to get a meeting with your economic buyer.
I'm like, no, that's not how that's worked. It's like it's
like, no, no, no, no, it's you and I,
Rachel should go meet with insert title, not economic buyer. Right, You
and I should go meet with your CFO. And here's why they should see
me, and here's why you should take me to them. Yeah. Right,
So it's the same kind of thing. Does that makes sense? Yes?
And right. So if you're selling in a new category, you have
to make sure that you're talking to the right people and considering all those factors
that you mentioned, Brian. It's the people who understand the pain and own
it, own it, right, Yeah, who care about the outcomes you
have identified. And I'll bring us back to the point you made it at
the top. When you think about that ideal customer profile and the early adopters
you could lay it onto that map onto an account because your early adopter maybe
somebody a specific role, right, the person who's going to feel the benefit
or understand the benefit of taking you to the CFO. I guess what I'm
saying is you want to look at that from a political level, a list
of accounts, but you also can layer that into a specific organization and think
about who are the ideal people right the landscape in this account we are going
to get those early adopters. And by the way, I'm not suggesting you
turned down science experiments, right if you've got somebody to lower in the organization
who's willing to say yes, I'm okay with that. But there's some things
that go around that, whether it's a small deal or somebody who's wanting to
take it out as a big deal, which is rare. Like most of
the time, you're going to have to land in a situation like this,
you're gonna have to land and then expand. So let's talk about that,
Brian. There is opportunity here to do some test cases and really prove out
that you can new technology can do what you say it can do. Some
sort of trial period as you call science experiments. How do you set those
up for success. Yeah, So first and foremost, if possible, go
get a couple of elephants and do it for free. Now that's easy for
me to sit here and say from the comfort of my own desk because I'm
not holding the P and L and responsible to investors, et cetera. But
the reality is you're going to have to do some things to get some proof
points and get some street credit in the marketplace. So, whether those are
paid trials or free trials or whatever you want to call them, they still,
to your question, have got to have some parameters around them, right.
They have to have parameters around the people who are involved. It can't
just be low level people in the organization who don't have any cred inside of
the rest of the organization. You've got to have an executive sponsor who's got
street cred inside of their company, who doesn't have just the ability to formally
say yes, but also has the ability to informally influence others and get them
in the boat. Right. You have to have some really solid logistics around
how are we going to run this engagement for X period of time with the
following not just to achieve the following outcomes, over ninety days or whatever it
is, or six months or six days, whatever the timeframe is. But
what are the milestones to ensure that we're on track and what are we going
to do when we hit those milestones if we're out of sync? Right?
Who's involved? Step by step from both organizations? What are you going to
do for us on the other side, Like, what's the agreement I'm doing
X for you at reduced rate Y, whether it's lower rate, free,
whatever. What do I get in return on the other side when we show
you an X improvement in top line revenue or manufacturing cost or whatever it is.
All of those things have got to be really well thought out. Oh,
by the way, you're not only going to buy for the company or
this part of the enterprise, but you're going to speak, You're going to
be a branded proof point, you know, those kinds of things. All
of that's the kind of stuff that you have to have on the front end,
and it goes all the way back to That's why you have to have
multiple layers of sponsorship inside of the customers organization, because somebody at the lower
level who might have fifty thousand dollars to spend on a trial doesn't have the
authority to do any of the other things I'm talking about. Yeah, align
on those things as you're setting it up, right, not just by yourself
by the way, right five six, eight, people involved in the account
making this decision. Shouldn't there be people supporting you? Like A lot of
this that I'm talking about falls back on your company right to support you in
in terms of the messaging and the content and how we on these types of
these earlier stage engagements, et cetera. So I'm not suggesting any of this
is a one man band kind of conversation, right, These are the tyes
of things. Thinking through these things as it relates to your solution is the
prep or the step that will make these conversations easier. And we can't underestimate
the power of having a great proof point, particularly when you're selling something that
customer can't get their head around. Right it's new Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
All goes back to wait, what does this thing? What does it
do? Why do I need it? Right? Right? Well, I
know that we barely scratch the surface, and all of this selling isn't easy,
but often we come back to some of these constant truths. Preps for
your conversation finding pain, digging deep because there is pain, aligning to outcomes
and then getting the lay of the land right in these accounts. And I
always use the word maneuver, and I sometimes don't mean that because I feel
like it sounds manipulative, but like, no, it's not in your way,
Yeah, navigating whatever you want to call it. Yeah, So you're
setting yourself up for the great success. As we wrap here, Brian,
I know that you have sold in a new category plenty of times in your
career. Leave us with some parting words of motivation and some final thoughts.
All right, So first and foremost, I think I kind of already mentioned
it, don't try to do this alone. This needs to be a company
effort, to the point that if your company isn't behind it, you may
not want to hear this on the podcast, but you might not want to
work with that company, right, I mean yeah, because this is a
totally different go to market conversation than if you're in an established industry, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that you've got to
understand this is a company effort and the company should want you to push back
on the messaging that you're being given, and the messaging has got to speak
to what problems are we solving, if at all possible, what outcomes are
we able to drive here? And why are we able to drive different outcomes
that other people can't right or can't get to without us? And those out
comes in even the problems they have got to live at the business level.
They've got to be revenue cost risk to the business or your customers, because
that's the thing that's going to get people's attention. And then last one,
at least, as I said it, be really quick. I think maybe
that's not the quite the right word, but be willing to be quick on
judging whether or not is this organization up for this conversation. Are they an
early adopter type of organization or at least person because if they're not, they
probably got to go into your B and C category. Yeah, qualify in
and qualify out. Yeah that's right. All right, Thank you for jumping
on and talking through this with me today, Brian, My pleasure longer than
ten minutes. Sorry about that, No, that's okay, that's okay.
Hey, if you have questions, if you're finding yourself in this situation and
you have questions about this topic what Brian brought up today, go ahead and
visit our center community. You can ask them there. You can reach out
to either of us on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. Thank
you so much for listening to the Audible Ready Sales pot. 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 the point of sale. Our strength is
our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit
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