My High-Level Sales Process

Over the past 11 years at LinkedIn, I've been fortunate enough to learn from some of the smartest people in SaaS. I recently set myself the challenge of sitting down to document the B2B sales process I've learned and refined over the years. Here's what it looks like...

Start with Customer Value:

1. Begin with a strong empathy for your customer combined with a passion for driving revenue growth.
2. Develop a clear understanding of customer value. Start by examining your existing customers. Who is achieving success with your offerings? Establish Growth and Churn indicators. Identify 2-3 high-value workflows. Utilize these insights to segment your territory.
3. Prioritize your time and resources toward acquiring and growing customers who are “likely to succeed.” Pre-allocate time in your calendar for customer related activities. Immerse yourself in their environments: understand where they work, who are their customers, the tools they use, their language, their inspirations, their competitors, and more.

For More Details:

• For insights on Growth and Churn indicators, visit: LinkedIn Post - SaaS Growth and Churn Indicators .
• For information on Territory Planning and Segmentation, visit: LinkedIn Post - B2B Sales Planning .
• For more detail on the importance of starting engagements with a focus on Customer Value, visit this post by Nate Nasralla : LinkedIn Post - Aligning Business Value

Build Meeting Pipeline:

1. Identify "hidden allies" in the accounts you're prioritising to gain an entry point. The goal here is not to sell your solution, but to deepen your understand of their business. Who do you know inside the company? Who has prior experience with your solution? Who are former employees of your company that now work with this company? What connections do your executives have? Who has recently been promoted?
2. Collaborate with marketing to attract the right customers inbound. Share relevant content on LinkedIn. Monitor those who engage with your content, attend your webinars, or view your profile. Embrace the customers who already love you and go with them as them move companies and roles.
3. Before each client meeting, research their company, industry, business unit, competitors, and personal career trajectory. Formulate a hypothesis about their likely challenges, objectives, and external pressures. Initiate the conversation with an overview of what you’ve learned about their business and actively listen. Introduce a non-obvious insight that affects their business. Recap what you hear and follow up with an email summarising your understanding.

For More Details:

• For strategies to generate more meetings, visit: LinkedIn Post - Building Sales Pipeline .
• For tips on effectively starting a meeting, visit: LinkedIn Post - How To Start a Sales Meeting
• For guidance on following up after a meeting, visit: LinkedIn Post - Mastering Follow-Up Emails .

Turn Meeting Pipeline into Sales Pipeline:

1. Identify authentic “sparks of value” or enthusiasm for what you offer. Unite your customer champions and transform these sparks into “spot fires” by helping them, and their direct peers, use your solution to save time, reduce risks, increase revenue, or advance their careers. Identify a compelling event or reason for change.
2. Map out all the stakeholders potentially involved in the deal on a visual relationship map. This includes decision-makers, influencers, champions, evaluators, and procurement personnel. Utilize this information to determine which business functions, user groups, and divisions derive the most value from your solution. Position yourself as a valuable resource for your client by understanding their business better than most people within their company.
3. Collaborate with your champions to develop a compelling business case. Crafting the business case is the sales cycle. Include a succinct executive summary that outlines the situation, the opportunity, and your recommendation. Identify the gaps in your business case and use those gaps as a guide for who you should speak with next. Nothing is more important than clearly articulating the value for the customer in their words.

For More Details:

• For an example of how to visualise a relationship map, visit this post by James Dixon : LinkedIn Post - How to Use Relationship Maps
• For advice on how to use business case development to sharpen your discovery, visit this post by Nate Nasralla : LinkedIn Post - the power of the business case
• For strategies on how to effectively research your customer, visit this post by Krysten Conner : LinkedIn Post - How to make your 1st meeting 5X better

Progressing the Deal Towards Signature:

1. Link every aspect of the sales proposal to the customer's priorities and challenges. Engage leadership consistently and proactively. Incorporate both qualitative and quantitative ROI data. Aim to triangulate data from three sources: your own data, your customer's data, and third-party data. For example, at LinkedIn, we triangulate data from the customer’s CRM, end users stories, our usage reporting, and industry benchmarks. Demonstrating value from multiple sources strengthens your business case. Bring the proposal to life with real stories and anecdotes from their team.
2. Engage with three organizational levels—executives, mid-level managers, and end users—through multi-threading. It's crucial to connect with more people than you think you need. Ask the tough questions to gain diverse perspectives: What does success look like for your head of procurement? What does your CFO need to see? Where does this solution rank on your current priority list? When appropriate, make specific requests of each group.
3. Focus on a compelling date that matters to your customer, such as the start of a new financial year, their product launch, a major internal event, or the renewal of an existing contract. Develop a mutually agreed-upon plan for closing the deal, ensuring both parties are committed to its success. Verify strategic, business case, and commercial alignment. Outline the documentation process thoroughly. Continue to ask critical questions frequently: Are there any teams or individuals we haven't consulted? Who could be affected by this proposal? What are the potential risks we haven't yet identified?

For More Details:

• For insights on how to deliver a compelling proposal, visit this post by Mike Fiascone : LinkedIn Post - How to deliver a proposal to the C-Suite
• For tactics on how to problem hypothesis, visit this post by Jen Allen-Knuth : LinkedIn Post - How to create a good problem hypothesis

Hope this helps!

Happy selling.

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