Aligned’s Post

How to find out who is who? Contact person, decision makers, gatekeepers and time wasters! The greatest challenge B2B sales persons facing in the early stage is, identifying the people involved in and their roles effecting the sales process. If you're good enough to identify the different characters involved in sales process, and handle them accordingly to close a sale. The human factor in B2B decision making is often neglected by many, not everything decided upon on the result of technical evaluation or the price. #b2bsales #businessdevelopment

It's okay to work with people who have zero decision making authority As long as you check these three boxes: - Is there a pain/problem that has a sizeable enough impact that a business case can be made for your solution that will get others bought in? - Are they politically capable of building the deal internally to involve other people? (if not now, once they have validated your solution is a fit) - Are they willing to "play ball" and be forthcoming with information about their status quo and buying process? If “yes” then it might be time to open a deal room and begin building a business case If “no” then use the information gathered to prospect into the true champions and execs

Leader: “Do I need a ValuePrompter on every deal? And every key player in the deal?…” …“A rep has 16 deals - they all have 2 decision-makers - that's 32 ValuePrompters. Is this right?! Are you saying do this with every key player?” Me: “No, instead only do it for any deals you want to win.” Leader: “That seems like a lot to keep track of.” Me: “How else do they keep it straight for all the key players and their unique nuances? It's only 6 elements per person.” Leader: “You're right, if reps aren’t doing this they are using one size fits all value prop and hoping everyone gets on board.” Me: “There are no shortcuts.” You need every element of the ValuePrompter for each key player. If you have a gap, you have risk. It's simple, actually. The buyer wants you to be relevant and truly understand them, in order to invest in you. For every buyer, you should understand their: - Business issues and goals - Problems/challenges faced - Solutions - how you can uniquely solve the problems - Value (Business and Personal) - Power - all decision-makers involved - Plan - a set of action points and paper process Without any one of these, your deal isn’t qualified and could fail at any time. This framework works, but only when it’s followed for each and every deal. Put the work in. Reap the rewards. P.S - Get some value? Please reshare this.

They taught you that "TIME KILLS DEALS". What actually kills deals is the fear of a CHANGE. Change means risks. Personal risks. Career risks. Business risks. They only way to motivate a prospect to change their status quo is by educating them on something they don't know. Something they might have missed in their decision making process. Something they did not know about their own business. Something they forgot to investigate about their competitors. Something new. Something worth spending more time exploring before they go silent on you. Every supplier claims to be the leader of its own space. They've heard this before. Your prospect WILL NOT trust you unless you show them the cost of NO CHANGE. Park aside the BS fluffy stuff and stand out with your messaging - it's either "Status Quo" or "Status NEW". Where do you see yourself X months from today? #salesenablement #salesintelligence #revenueintelligence #revenueoperations #projectMoneyball

PARTNERSHIP MOVING TARGETS Long-term partner relationships are dynamic and fluent environments where vital fundamentals can be easily overlooked. Sometimes it's like trying to hit a bullet fired from a gun with another bullet.... in space... blindfolded... while juggling fish... while on fire. (please hold the comments that space is a vacuum, making that impossible) So you have to be ready - for anything. You have to be ready : ♦ to lead with purpose ♦ to be a master of attribution ♦ to have plan A, B, C and D in place ♦ to let data-driven metrics be your North Star ♦ to be a partner-lifecycle Jedi Knight ♦ to be an account-mapping guru ♦ to be an internal enabler using relevant M.A.P's ♦ to create a partnership pipeline ♦ to be able to uncover gated results ♦ to keep in front of your processes ♦ to understand your teams finance and operations ♦ to understand your teams sales and marketing And, most importantly, - to know the differences between insight and hindsight, and how best to run contextual orchestration. Play chess, not checkers. Anticipate, don't force yourself into improvising. You and your internal and external stakeholders will thank you for it. Forever. #strategicplanning #strategicpartnerships #strategicexecution

Happy Q4 folks...let's talk about a massive setback when getting blindsided in deals. Our champion being a coach vs. a true champion. A champion must meet the following characteristics: 1. Someone who actively sells on your behalf 2. Someone who has a vested interest in the success of the deal 3. Someone who has power and INFLUENCE within their company Looking at an org chart doesn't necessarily indicate power and influence! So, how do we help reps determine if our main POC is actually a champion? 1. The champion must deliver risks/bad news and provide guidance for how to overcome the risk. Every deal in today's market has risk. 2. Ask leading questions that help you identify if this person is truly responsible and measured on critical business initiatives. "Can you give me an example of how you got something done like this before?" 3. Asking about the DM process. If they can't quickly articulate the DM process, they likely don't have power and influence.

If you want to keep your competitors in the rearview, you have to keep accelerating with new products. Otherwise, you are just stagnating at a higher level. Meanwhile competitors are "closer than they appear" and doing what they can to close the distance. And you have two key levers to increase your lead. Pipeline & Execution - or as I like to say "Doing Better Projects & Doing Projects Better" https://lnkd.in/gEP3kQSs #competitiveadvantage #innovationmanagement #newproductdevelopment

REAL lesson I learned as a young AE. Be 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐓 with management. Here’s what I mean: When I first became an AE. I was afraid to forecast the truth. In my mind, a challenging quarter. Meant management would get angry. So this lead to me: ✦ Embellishing. ✦ An inflated forecast. ✦ Keeping deals that had no legs. Not a good look. So here’s the lesson… Be honest with management. If a deal isn’t coming, you lost it, etc… Let them know. They won’t be angry if you tell them the truth. It’s in their best interest to help. You can collaborate to: ✦ Correct your forecast. ✦ Prevent it from happening again. ✦ Find deals to replace the lost ones. There’s time to salvage the quarter. However…. If you don’t say anything. Wait until the last minute. They WILL be angry. Especially if you have a massive change to your forecast a week out of the end of quarter… Like, follow, and comment below 👇

Want to gain more respect from your manager? Next pipeline review: Talk about the risk in your opps, and what could potentially derail the deal Instead of sharing all the reasons you think the deal will close. The latter is giving happy ears. The former shows you’re proactive, pragmatic and attentive to detail. (Side note: if you didn’t think the deal could close, it wouldn’t be in pipeline to begin with) In my experience, the highest performing reps are optimistic at the top of funnel, and skeptical at the bottom of the funnel. Even though it may sound counterintuitive to some, give it a shot.

A surprising theme emerged from two recent win calls Sales pros - you may not like this, but you can't ignore it... In talking with our champions on two recent deals (both CIOs), they relayed a similar sentiment: 👨💻 CIO 1: "You have to understand that, while important, this is just 2% of my day to day responsibilities" 👨💻 CIO 2: "Don't get me wrong, this is a big project that we need to do, but it's 1 of 200 that I'm working on right now" We've all lived how lean organizations are these days While we experience it in our own companies do we offer the same empathy to our champions? You can make a massive difference by doing these simple things: 👉 Show up prepared. Good preparation means you waste no time getting to the heart of what matters most for them. 👉 Make their lives easy. Offload work from them by finding ways to move the deal forward with less of their time. 👉 Be patient. Even if you're addressing a pain point, as only 2% you need to give them space to keep everything else moving in parallel. Demonstrate you care while still helping them address their problems? You'll have a champion for life. How does this compare with you've experienced?