Smarter, not harder.
Article #4: Smarter, not harder.
Don't miss the article after this one (or the one before it!) Follow?#buyerenablement?here on LinkedIn.
The steps buyers must go through are clear, and in no-way locked to antiquated sales-stages. Buyers are the only ones that can move to the next stage, and each participant, or 'stakeholder' will remain in their own specific place along that journey until they're confident to move on. Don't forget there are 4.8 stakeholders on average per deal, and you could have up to 16 different people to coach through these stages. (data from the 2022 Sales Engineering Compensation & Workload report)
What's rather scary, is that seldom do you get to meet all these stakeholders; some have massive hidden influence and addressing their needs is hard. Really hard.
These stakeholders could be investors, CXO, the board, Directors, managers or individuals, working in sales, sales ops, marketing, presales, sales enablement, IT/Security, corporate strategy team or your own colleagues. Uncovering these using viral stakeholder discovery is made far easier by using Intelligent Demo Automation, and Consensus' Buyer Matrix.
Graphic from The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top by Kevin F. Davis.
This is hard for buyers because they do it so in-frequently. It's your job to help them - after all, you do this all the time, right? So as they move through? these stages, how can we help them?
Well, I've faced this challenge numerous times, so let's take a look at where I've seen Intelligent Demo Automation help:
As a finite resource, presales individuals can only meet a certain part of the buying journey. Usually this is once buyers have understood what they want to change and want to see which vendor can provide these things - the 'Comparison' stage as seen in section 4 of the graphic above. Buyers do want a demo in the 'Research' stage as well, but do you want presales consultants spending every waking hour demoing generalistic overviews? Not at that cost...
As a massively authentic source of knowledge, presales can help buyers earlier in the buying journey (Change & Discontent), and later too by helping close deals (Fear & Commitment).
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But there's not enough people - hence the gap in what you need, and what you can provide. Intelligent Demo Automation helps by letting presales consultants record their demos, tuned to the exact stage each buyer is experiencing in their change journey.
What's more, now presales have time for additional valuable activities they can demo not just the main software, but also 3rd party products, professional services, upsell functionality, go through documents, quotes, customer references and a multitude of other activities - all which can be recorded and served up instantly.
"In a recent trip to London, I met a presales consultant recently who demo'd the same thing, 6 times a day, 5 days a week. He was not happy - he knew the buyers wanted something more useful, but there was no time to spend going off-piste."
By recording the overview demo and have sales serve it up before the meeting, the champion was able to judge the engagement and qualification of the deal, and the stakeholders could learn the basics before arriving at the live meeting. The presales rep was then able to offer a more customized service to the buyers when they had specific questions. They got to watch the demo multiple times, and whenever suited them. Plus, with multiple stakeholders involved with different requirements, they were able to pick what mattered most to them. How pleasant!
Now buyers get that demo instantly - unlike when they ask your old-school competitors:
"If you were buying software and a vendor provided all the info you needed, instantly, plus a more engaging meeting when you did get together, and the other vendors didn't, which would you prefer?"
Getting everyone 'on the same page' is massively difficult, especially with the buying group growing; some buying groups have as many as 16 people in, so no-wonder purchases take ages to complete - each day adds to the cost of not changing too. So discovering your champion, all the other stakeholders for change, uncovering their needs, equipping them with personalized content really helps make creating change a fast activity for any buyer.
By using #IntelligentDemoAutomation, discovery of these stakeholders becomes a viral activity kicked-off by your champion. Tracking the activities of these stakeholders across your buyer's business in a Stakeholder Matrix is a huge source of valuable insight for helping them through their buying journey.?
Increasing close rates might be a vital task for winning at selling, but remember, the game's changed. So how do we help buyers do so with conviction? That assured confidence and a full understanding of the risks involved - knowing they will succeed in their change mission?
Well imagine you'd seen 7 different vendor's proposals, 4 different days of demos, 2 final demos and 1 selected vendor meeting to discuss next steps. Apart from being absolutely exhausted, how confident would you be that something you saw 5 weeks ago was actually part of the final choice? Your ability to serve up that authentic demo from the experienced, industry-hardened presales rep at a moments notice is absolutely invaluable here.
Have you ever been to a restaurant with beautiful menu photos only to find what arrives at your table is somewhat a disappointment? Sometimes buying software is just the same. Making sure your carefully crafted marketing messaging rings true all the way through to go-live and beyond is essential to maintain buyer confidence, thus creating happy onwards journey with your company. So keep that thread of your unique 'why' proposition echoing through each step of the buyer journey. By having presales record both early-stage, and late-stage demos in the buying journey this becomes far easier.
The only person that can ring your success bell, is your buyer.
But how can we help?
Find out in the next article after this one! Follow?#buyerenablement?here on LinkedIn.
Software Executive | Women in Technology Advocate | Public Speaker
2 年Great article. What resonates is one of your last comments about keeping the messaging of the 'why' throughout the entire process for the buyer. And adding to that, being able to deliver the 'why' without needing to be present to deliver it each time.
Enabling enterprise organizations with estate-wide IT visibility to empower data-driven IT decisions.
2 年Thanks Mark! I love the idea of demo automation and the value it brings through metrics. What I've found thus far is that is isn't being brought to the prospect with a sense of value. Often times these are sent by the SDR or account manager without direction. Do you feel this should be pre or post initial discovery? Would this be better sent by the SE with a notion that this will allow future demos to focus on granular needs?
Director of Presales and Buyer Enablement > I love your customers
2 年To my new connections from today, Lori Payne, Robert Key and Karen M. I'd love to hear what you think about my article. I'm writing this series of articles because I spent so many years doing working with people doing wrong thing, and finally now feel released into a world of buyer enablement and it's thoroughly refreshing. How are people adopting buying stages into their organisations? (or aren't they?)
Founder @ Boxxstep | The Multi-Threading Sales Platform | Relationship Mapping | Mutual Action Plans | Win Loss Feedback
2 年Your raise a very important point Mark, members of the customer buying committee will generally be at different stages of the decision/buying process. Sellers need to understand where each of them are and have a plan to help them move forward. Inaction by individual buyers is a major contributor to a no-decision outcome. I’m not sure that intelligent demo software is the full answer though, but then again I’m not a buyer. In my opinion Buyer Enablement should not be about helping the customer to decide to buy from you, that just normal selling. It should be about facilitating them to make a business change decision and to move from the status quo. Not enough sellers do this, which is a missed opportunity to differentiate and reduce the number of no-decisions and lost deals. The software demo contributes to the Why Us, but first you’ve got to get past the Why Change and Why Now.