Recently we have been helping a client whose CEO and CRO were looking to scale their “new logo” sales faster but were concerned about about a particular problem that their product differentiation is as not strong against the competition.
One of the key insights in such a situation is that a good CRO or a Sales Leader has the direct influence to differentiate via your Sales Team’s actual selling.
This is not something that is discussed often enough in the context of differentiation but just adjusting how your team sells will make a real difference.
Here are some simple examples:
- Offer real expertise and add value at every sales meeting/interaction with your potential buyer – according to Corporate Visions: 74% of buyers chose the first salesperson who adds value and insight.
- Differentiate through offering prospective buyers an experience with your sales team that is better than what they get from your competition
- When asked, many buyers of B2B SaaS are disappointed by what they experience from sales teams (from SDRs to AEs) during their buying journey so you can differentiate and create an exceptional experience – just start on focusing more on the buyer and not on yourself (or forcing your selling process on the buyer that becomes like plugging a square peg into a round hole)
- Focus on helping buyers solve their business challenges and achieve their goals (not on “interrogating” buyers during a forced “discovery call” – note that it’s clearly important to do qualification & discovery but it’s just typically done in a completely wrong way and that’s the issue we are pointing out here)
- Reduce the friction for the buyer – make their buying journey frictionless
- Random example: many B2B SaaS sales teams will force potential buyers through a “discovery call” after the buyer requests a demo/trial – this is a bad experience for the buyer who doesn’t want the roadblocks and friction
- Come truly prepared to the meeting
- Do a 3×3 (3 key things in 3 minutes) or 3C (company, context, contact)
- Note – believe it or not, it is increasingly more rare to see SDRs/AEs get come prepared and it’s obvious in the first few minutes of the conversation
- Make your primary contact (your internal champion as well as the decision maker) look good to others inside their company
- A lot of deals get derailed because buyers are afraid for their reputation hit in case your solution doesn’t work out (the old adage “Nobody got fired for buying IBM” is still meaningful even if you replace IBM with Salesforce.com, Hubspot or Workday, etc. – pick any key leader that is a safe decision in your own vertical/space)
- Make your negotiations and agreement/contract process much simpler for the buyer
What else? What have you done as the CEO/CRO to differentiate with your Sales Team and its actual selling approach?