Driving Sales Execution with Compelling Messaging

Success’ Dark SecretDriving Sales Execution with Compelling Messaging

Russell Scherwin [email protected]@rscherwin

2 [email protected]@rscherwin

Themes

• Key questions sales needs answered

• World-class messaging and positioning

• Build your influence by driving revenue (rather than being driven by it)


It’s not what you sell, it’s how you sell

The Corporate Executive Board Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Key Differentiators in the Sale

• Offers unique, valuable perspectives on the market

• Helps me navigate

alternatives

• Helps me avoid potential land mines

• Educates me on new issues and outcomes

n=5,000+

Insight

Survey: Why do B2B Customers Buy?


Introductions

• What role do you play?

– Product Development?– Product Management?– Product Marketing?– Sales?


Introductions

• What role do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive)

– Revenue Support




Introductions


– Revenue Support– Revenue Enablement




Introductions


– Revenue Support– Revenue Enablement– Revenue Protection




Introductions


– Revenue Support– Revenue Enablement– Revenue Protection– Direct Sales




Introductions


– Revenue Support– Revenue Enablement– Revenue Protection– Direct Sales– Dead Weight




What does the CEO think?If you don’t sell, you don’t understand our business


What did he pick up on?Nothing in business is more important than audience congruence


Messaging = Bridging Two TruthsBridge your capabilities to your audience’s hot buttons


Which pitch is more effective

We provide multi-channel selling technology that helps our customers drive value by increasing revenues,

while decreasing cost, through integrated data semantics, within a

multi-channel multi-dimensional database model.



Our software improves cross-channel customer experiences.

For example, Best Buy has improved average revenue per transaction, and

customer loyalty, using our software to drive consistency in order and

inventory operations across all selling and fulfillment channels.



We seamlessly manage the secure flow of information

across organizational, departmental, legislative, and

system boundaries



We provide secure data movement technology.

For example, we partnered with the Federal Reserve to secure

payments across our financial system.



Would the Federal Reserve pitch work if delivered to Coca-Cola?


What if I don’t have a reference customer?

Get one.


Before you do traditional marketing tasks,know where you are in your product’s life-cycle

PM/PMk’s job is scaling out the revenue process.

If you’re too early, you have nothing to scale.

Scalebase

Build base

Find a new job

World-class Messaging and Positioning


Message and Position


Revenue Generating Offerings

Message Foundation

Sales

Customers

Partners

Press

Analysts

Website

Messaging drives audience actionDoes your message have an audience bias?

• A Message Foundation is a necessary organizational catalyst, governance mechanism, and scale lever for all outbound communication

• Always tailor delivered messages must to targeted audiences– each audience starts with different cares and biases


Messaging and positioningHow do you breathe action into your message?

• Position is the space the message occupies in the mind of the audience, relative to other messages (don’t become noise!)

• A world-class message drives action and business outcomes

• Messaging is the start of the revenue process. It’s measurable!

• You control the message. Its delivery determines the position.

• Your selling channels typically communicates the message, YOU DON’T.

• A world-class message maximizes revenue, while minimizing sales cycles and sellers’ time spent creating messaging

Messaging to your marketthrough (and to) Sales


Elements of world-class actionable messaging

• Relevant• Differentiated• Defensible

Marketing software is easier than building software

because PowerPoint has no compile button

Effectively marketing software is harder

than building software because PowerPoint has no

compile button


Elements of world-class actionable messagingRelevance

• Relevant to the audience• Industry Segment Specific• Product Ownership Specific (customer or prospect)• Title Specific• Psychographic Specific

• Differentiated• Defensible

Sales needs to know why a specific title in a specific

segment would agree to spend a specific dollar amount on

this offering


Elements of world-class actionable messagingRelevance

• Relevant to the audience• Align with your audience’s KPIs• Better yet, align with what they’re thinking about at 3AM• Group by Segments

– Industry – Title /Function– Product Ownership (customer or prospect)– Psychographic– Region

• Differentiated• Defensible


Elements of world-class actionable messagingDifferentiation

• Relevant• Differentiated from the competition

– What is unique about your offering– What makes you or your offering stand out– Feature/Function arrows for sales to throw in the heat of battle– The ideal decision criteria that identifies the competitive land-mines

they should set early in the sales cycle

• Defensible

Sales needs the ability to articulate why their offering is

unique, relative to others vying for the target’s attention


Elements of world-class actionable messagingDifferentiation

• Relevant• Differentiated from the competition

– Your INCREMENTAL value proposition, relative to the competition– Setting unfair market-wide decision criteria's– What is unique about your offering– Informix, and row-level locking– Competitive arrows and land-mines

• Defensible


Elements of world-class actionable messagingDefensibility


– Assume you start with little credibility– Credibility comes from references with similar business

models/challenges– Or – Credibility comes through tedious cycle proof steps

Sales needs credibility.

Up-front credibility reduces cycle time and

competitive threats.


Elements of world-class actionable messagingDefensibility


– Assume you start with little credibility– Credibility comes from references with similar business

models/challengesOr – Credibility comes through tedious, expensive cycle proof steps


Your customer is your value chain’s next step

In a multi product-line organization, you are selling to

and competing for the attention of the sales force.


The sales force is its own market!

“A” Reps “B” and “C” reps


Mistakes commonly made by product marketers• Task orientation, rather than results/outcome orientation

– Releasing approved collateral is not a business outcome– Having 50 people hear your thought leadership pitch is not an outcome– Having 300 people at a conference is not an outcome.– Advice: Align your activities with meaningful KPI’s.

• Allowing executives and their opinions to play pinball with you.– Push back.– But know the market better – be the expert.– Advice: Team with the A reps. Leaders trust them as they directly represent $$$.

• Not identifying and prioritizing segments that drive revenue– Advice: If you can’t logically model where the money’s coming from and why, evaluate what you’re

doing.

• Not identifying and prioritizing channels that drive revenue– Advice: Focus your time on the channels that will drive personal sustainable success


Field Enablement Pre-RequisitesWhat does PM and PMk need to understand• Identify and prioritize buying segments, and the process, roles,

skills, and gaps that exist for selling into them. – Outline sales process activities for each segment

• (identify, qualify, prove, reach agreement, close)– Link activities to roles and resource requirements

• (AE, SE, PS, Mgmt, Channels, Demo Team, Support, Contracts, etc) – Identify skills and artifacts required by role– Identify and fill gaps for effectively selling into prioritized segments– Deliver sales kits for prioritized segments, containing #3 and #4– Create measurement metrics and goals by buying segment


Sales plays focus the field on executionSales should execute, not recreate messaging wheels

• For each prioritized segment:– Identify titles to target and reasons why key capabilities benefit them– Describe the Challenges / Opportunities / Compelling Events / Trends that your

capabilities address that trigger opportunities – Key quantifiable value components with a concept of how to derive an as-is state that

your product capabilities improve• Most important are the capabilities that differentiate versus the competitive landscape, and

their relative value– Qualifying Questions with tree showing probable answers and follow ups– Product launch details (special offers, contracts / LOI’s, potential hurdles and gotchas, etc) – Call scripts, VITO notes, and – “Macro-Attack plans are created at a macro-level and account level

• Who do you target• Hypothesis of

– The Pains / Challenges / Opportunities they have that we address– How we have address them – Anecdotes telling the story of how we address them

Market Readiness Execution

6 M’s Go To Market and Market Readiness Methodology


Marketing is sales in the aggregatedon’t forget that the aggregate doesn’t have a checkbook

• PMk starts with the product. Sales starts with the audience.• Sales sells to people. Marketing sells to markets.

– A market is an abstraction lacking a checkbook.• Segmentation & focus is the secret to influencing B2B markets.

– The trick is finding the balance between scale and granularity

Means & Market • Identify and

prioritize product/market segments

Message• Define expected

segment behaviors

• Define message by segment

• Create enablement and assets

Math & Medium• Create Models• Define metrics by

segment• Cascade metrics

to channel mediums

Management • Manage and

execute ruthlessly

• Continually hone model

• Provide backwards feedback


Understand the art of the possible

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Understand what can be delivered, today and in the future

• What are our revenue generating assets and offerings?

– Roadmap: product and R&D– Market Readiness: Releasing market ready offerings

that demonstrate market use cases, versus product that passes functional QA

• Current Investment and Future Investment Framework

• Delivery and GTM Organization, Structure, and Capabilities


Optimize the field’s time spend

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Segmentation and Focus:

• Identify Meaningful Buying Segments– What characteristics define a high-probability suspect?– What are the primary and secondary dimensions?

• Prioritize Buying Segments– Existing bandwidth to manage segments?– How granular do we define segments?

• Where is segmentation defined?– Category Level?– Product Level?– Geo Level ?

• Market Position– Category’s position within the market space?– Our position within the category space?

• How are we helping sales and marketing maximize yields?


Align spend & activity with needed outcomes

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Financial Discipline in GTM activity:

• Revenue– For each offering, what is the market size and

expected CAGR?– For each offering, what are our revenue targets by key

segment?

• Pipeline– Expected stage conversion ratios? duration?– Win rates/Market Share? – Average Sales Prices?

• Managed at the category or product level?– Level of granularity you will manage to– today? tomorrow?


Generate demand we can uniquely fulfill

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Create and progress pipeline:

• Who cares about our offering?– Identify targeted audiences and why key capabilities

benefit them• Why do they care about our offering?

– Describe the challenges / opportunities / compelling events that your capabilities address that will trigger opportunities

– Identify key value components, and the logic / data points that drives their value relative to the as-is state

• Why do they care about our offering over competing offerings?

– Identify differentiators, and their relative differentiators• Why should someone believe us?

– Reference Stories formal / informal– Data proof points– 3rd Party Credibility Statements– Economic Value Proof– Offering Proof / Demo assets and capabilities


Create, progress, and close pipeline

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Model all revenue channels

• Engagement Model– Which sales groups engage at each sales stage

• Have we laid out each role’s expected contribution, the skills needed by each role, and the enablement assets required to achieve required skill levels?

• How is sales leadership defining this?– Which assets are necessary at each stage? – Which assets are nice to haves?

• How do we create, progress, close pipeline– Discovery Questions with tree showing probable

answers, follow ups, and how to qualify and act on responses

– Offering details, mechanics and promotions special offers, contracts, potential hurdles and gotchas

– Call scripts, VITO notes, and Presentations, etc

• Compensation Model– Existing overlap? Plan to build consistency?


Execute

Means

Market

Math

Message

Medium

Management

Field Operations Management:

• Sales owned cadence– Pipeline coverage against necessary conversion rates– For active opportunities – are we confident with:

• Why Buy?• Why Buy from us?• Why Buy from us now / within committed timeline?• Buyer committed evaluation plan?

• Marketing / PLM engages to– Hone the message and assets– Support where appropriate– Collaborate in tuning the math model

• Management must:– Deliver against plan– Feedback loop for market adaptation


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Driving Sales Execution with Compelling Messaging