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#34: The Real Competitive Landscape In The Mind of Your Buyer

July 29, 2024 • Gary, Andy & Tiana • Season 3 • Episode 5

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Do you really know who is your competition in the mind of the buyer?

On this episode of the GTM Pro Podcast, we promise to decode buyer behavior, examining both the emotional and logical factors that influence purchasing decisions. Discover how to build buyer confidence, convey best practices, and position your product as a comprehensive solution. 

Finally, we’ll discuss our philosophy for solving market challenges, emphasizing simplified decision-making and consistent messaging. You'll understand the critical role of marketing, customer success, and product teams in de-risking decisions for potential customers early in the process. 

Whether you're a CEO or revenue leader looking to improve your go-to-market strategies, this episode is for YOU.

Gary:

Here is the market, here's our point of view on the market and where we stand today and the why you face the challenges you face.

Gary:

And here is our philosophy. Like here is our, our vision, our mission for how we believe this should be solved. And there are alternative ways to do that, and it's there's this method, and maybe it's the DIY method, there's this method, there's the third method and then there's our way, and that's why, if you look like this, then we believe this is the best way. Now there may be 50, 60, 100 solutions in your market and then even more alternatives, but we've just put them into three buckets. Welcome to the GTM Pro Podcast, your essential audio resource for mastering go-to-market discussions in the boardroom. Here we share insights for revenue leaders at B2B software and services companies, especially those with less than $50 million in revenue. Why? Because the challenges faced by companies of this size are unique. They are too big to be small and too small to be big. This dynamic pushes revenue leaders into executive leadership without a lot of help or support. We are here to provide that support. Your journey to boardroom excellence starts now. Now, okay, let's get started, shall we? So? Obviously part of what we've been covering here over the last several weeks, and we'll get into this more as we look ahead to 2025.

Gary:

Planning which, amazingly, is around the corner is really where the buyer is today in these market conditions, and I think we would all agree that the underlying difficulty in buying today is more pervasive than ever. It's always there, but it's now even more pervasive than ever. Right, it's always there, but it's now even more pervasive than ever. And so what is that exactly? So we're fans, like many, of a book called the Jolt Effect, and we're going to read a little section here that actually describes the environment in which we live quite well, in which we live quite well, and it is errors of commission versus errors of omission.

Gary:

So in some research that found that we as humans and therefore humans serving and looking for companies or working for companies place more weight on loss that is the result of doing something wrong, which is an error of commission than we do on loss. That is the result of doing something wrong, which is an error of commission. Then we do on loss. That is, that is the result of failing to do something right, which is known as errors of omission. It's called the omission bias, and that is largely because when we do something and something doesn't work, that's very relatable, very tangible, very direct Like you took this action and this thing, this bad thing, happened, whereas error of omission, which is the loss from the result of failing to do something, is very hard to see because there's no ability to go back in time and do an A-B test on behaviors or choices back in time and do an AB test on behaviors or choices.

Gary:

And so therefore, if you think about it from the buyer's perspective, that's largely where we sit today, particularly when you think about the amount of risk there is to an individual and to a company in doing something wrong. In an environment where the C-suite is more observant than ever on metrics and milestones and performance and all those things at both a department, company and individual level, doing something wrong has probably more risk than it has in a very long time. And so that's the environment. If we think about what our buyers are doing when they come to us, they've already taken a pretty massive step forward, but we can't discount that, that they're beyond it. When they come to have their conversation with us, we can't assume that they're beyond that fear of doing something wrong and only focus on our competitors.

Andy:

Well, this, you know, it's really interesting how these topics all kind of converged to this master topic, if you will, because we were just talking about competition. Will, because we're just talking about competition right in the. We call it the triumvirate of of competition, comprised of your true competition, which is other people who, for example, sell similar software to yours. It has similar features, it may be similarly priced, um, and so on. Right, that's your true competition, but that there's these other two pieces of competition in there, one of which you just articulated a lot of the dynamic around which is not doing anything. Right, that's doing, you know, basically staying pat with what you're doing, not changing anything. So that might involve processes that you know are very manual or whatever, or you know it's just a blind spot. The other one of those is a cheap alternative, and we're hearing a lot about this with you know, generative AI and so on, and we use the old analogy of spreadsheets as another cheap alternative to you know, generative AI and so on, and we use the old analogy of spreadsheets as another cheap alternative to you know, for example, a CRM, which can actually be that.

Andy:

So, if you take those other two pieces, you're really looking at a buyer's brain and how we like to think about things from a buyer-led perspective, right? So those are the areas of the brain, and we have a graphic we're working on which we may be able to share with this podcast, which speaks to that which is the front of your brain, is thinking about the true competition. I need to cover off on these features. These are the things that people are going to want to use in my company and so on. And you have the limbic side of the brain, if you will, which is the fear of you know, I don't want to commit an act of commission, an error of commission, and then kind of the maybe it's the balance center or so on, which is, you know, doing things with spreadsheets and so on.

Andy:

So sorry, bad analogies to the zones of the brain, but that's kind of where we're at with competition and thinking about it through the lens of the buyer that they have to do a lot more of convincing themselves that they want to go ahead and move forward with something that's gonna potentially disrupt an entire organization, potentially going to require a lot of convincing. So this person call your point of contact in a sales process is putting themselves out there. So you. So you are indeed bringing into play an emotional situation for this buyer, and I think the healthiest thing to do is acknowledge that.

Gary:

Yeah, and I think there, Andy, you bring up a good point, which is there really is a spectrum of where people lie right. There's always some form of fear of making a mistake. It's just on a spectrum we've mentioned this before that may be coming to you because the organization for which they now work doesn't have the solution that they personally used and, even better, implemented at a previous company, and they therefore have a lot of confidence. They've actually seen it in action, they've seen what it can do, they've lived through the implementation process. They're therefore very confident that they can bring this in because they know what they have to do and they've seen firsthand the benefits of that. But they don't necessarily know all the players and all the ins and outs of the current organization and if this new technology will be adopted, you know, cross-functionally and with other stakeholders, the same way that the previous one was. So there is definitely still some risk there, and that's part of what we need to think through.

Gary:

At the other end of the spectrum are those that are, excuse me, perhaps exploring a variety of ways to solve a particular problem, are really early on in the process, and the act of doing this research is actually helping them inform their definition of the problem like actually and that's, I think, any to your point leads into the the pursuing lightweight, inexpensive alternatives, right, which is, by virtue of understanding a little bit more about how these products are attacking the problem and the way that they do it, I may ultimately find, well, I don't actually need 80 percent of the stuff that they're offering, I really just need to 20 percent. Now I better understand what that is. Are there other? So I just redefine the problem again, right. So I just redefined the problem again, right.

Gary:

And now also with there's a lot of chatter, false narrative out there actually from executive teams and even boards about. I think it's mitigating a little bit, but definitely in the last several months there was almost an AI first mentality. Months there was almost an AI first mentality. Before we do anything, before we hire a body, before we buy any software, before we do anything, should we be looking at AI to solve this problem? And that just heightens the lack of comfort to make a decision because it's the Wild West. There's a lot of talk about what's possible, but there's just as much evidence that there's a lot of hype and so there's a lot of uncertainty.

Andy:

Well, you also mentioned something that reminded me of what I believe is a truism, which is fairly prevalent that businesses don't always have the soundest processes for what might be relatively straightforward for us as the purveyor of a software, for example, we're like we know how this process should run for this aspect of a business, but that business that you're selling to doesn't necessarily know that they may not have the most current, up-to-date or fundamentally sound processes there. So part of what you're doing is conveying and selling that and that, that. So that goes to you know all those things around the job to be done and not and that individual not wanting to mess up, is partly. I don't want to expose the fact that this is actually a process issue and not a software thing. So, as part of this, you know and it actually speaks to larger implementation as well which is, you want to be in front of that which we talk about problem marketing. We talk about being a subject matter expert in your industry part of what you want to do is gently convey best practices.

Andy:

As part of this as well. It also goes hand in hand, I believe, with being in front of the next thing in a go-to-market process. It may be sales, it may be marketing. Up front is anticipating what's in the mind of the buyer and what, what might be next, what might be the next question they have, and being in front of that right. So it speaks to the larger product question, which is it's not just about your feature, it's not just about what feature, it's not just about what you physically accomplish on behalf of the customer. It's a larger organizational thing and sometimes they're just not that good at what we would consider basic best practices. Yeah, happens all the time.

Gary:

Well, and I think where the rubber meets the road here and I'll give props to April Dunford and her work with sales pitch, which is an outcome of her positioning product is to say that if we think of ourselves as having an approach in terms of how we solve a problem, then we don't compete with other companies. We compete with other philosophies or approaches on how to solve the problem. And so if we again it's on a spectrum but if we assume that buyers ultimately are coming to us as part of a process to make sense of A, have I thoroughly defined the problem appropriately? And B, if so, what solutions do I have available to me and what's really important? And they don't necessarily know what features they need. Don't necessarily know what features they need.

Gary:

Again, at one extreme you've had somebody that's done it before. They know exactly what they need, or close to exactly what they need, and they have a really good, high degree of confidence. That happens, but that's probably much less probability that we're going to run into those people than everybody else, and so they're ultimately trying to make sense of that. So if we consider the fact that we immediately start with us questioning and trying to understand where they are so that we can see if our product is a fit. We actually can get more information and do the buyer more service if we think instead about helping them make sense of the various ways that they can solve the problem.

Gary:

There might be two, there might be four, it's probably no more than five, but to your point, andy, this is where product and GTM come together in this symbiotic relationship, is we have a product strategy point of view that is, here is our approach on how we believe, for all of these reasons, why this is the right way to solve this problem, and then we need to explain that and help the buyer make sense of that, because then they, then now they're starting to build this confidence of okay, you're actually teaching me on what I should know to be able to do. The questions to ask.

Andy:

Well, we'll go back to. If your product requires an organization to change anything about what they do, it's part of the product. There's no way around that. That is a fact.

Gary:

Give us an example, Andy.

Andy:

Well, I mean, you know if we'll use our friends in HR tech, right? If it requires hiring managers to log into a different system to use this piece of HR tech, it's changing the way the organization behaves. It may be very similar to stuff they've done before.

Andy:

It may be very intuitive, but you have to get adoption, and in order to get adoption, you have to show the way. You have to show them the light why this is good for them, why this helps. So this is giving people a job. It's not just selling a piece of software and saying you're going to get benefit out of this, so hold that thought.

Gary:

So take back to what I said about the understanding of where the buyer is in their level of comfort in making the decision. Go back to the example where you have somebody who's been through that before. They've been there, they've done that, they've probably stumbled, made some mistakes and now they know. Okay, I know what worked and I know it didn't work and therefore I'm very confident on how I'm going to get that adoption right.

Gary:

Versus somebody who hasn't been through it before, we may present to them a product that has all the right features, all the bells and whistles and whatever, but what they're really concerned about is look, I'm sold on the fact that this is the best product. I just have very low confidence that my organization will adopt this. It may not have anything to do with the product. The product is usable, it's easy to learn, logins are simple, it may even whatever. The UI could actually be part of a different thing, but we don't understand the. You know the operating rhythms of that company the way the insider does, and need to have empathy for that need to have empathy for that.

Andy:

Well, that that it's exactly where I was going, which is, let's just take the extreme example of of conducting a sales call and just literally going through features which we affectionately refer to as feature vomit, versus doing. I think the starting point is beautiful, which is try and understand where they are as quickly and thoroughly as possible, like, have they done this before? Similar product, same product, or is this really kind of new to them? That's a very effective way to kind of know where you are on that front and then, as opposed to going through features which you know, people can start to make connections and say, okay, I can see how this would impact this versus actually showing them a functional organization and how they use it.

Andy:

Organization may only use one or two features out of the 10 that the product actually offers extensively.

Andy:

They only use a small piece of the product and you're showing them the you know and call it the mundane to the ridiculous, which is the mundane being just subtle process things that occur in, you know, in this case, getting getting this counterparty to to utilize the tool regularly and effectively. Well, you set these reminders, you set these email things. You're integrated with Slack. You have this alert that comes up and you talk about that and you and you go through a scenario that gets you all the way from point A to point B in a use case which is very similar to theirs. It doesn't have to be the same, but it's enough to really make those connections where I can say this is very similar to my organization or I see how my organization could get this use out of it. Again, just trying to paint that picture, which is that's the buyer saying I need to know how my whole organization is going to use this thing, that is required to use it, and how that can happen and how that does happen in real life versus features.

Gary:

Yeah, and you. So you brought up a couple of things. One is speaking of features. Let's start there.

Gary:

In the sales conversation is um is putting together a series of features that come together to solve a problem, and these features on an individual basis could actually be pretty mundane. Right, they're nothing fancy, but the way that we've designed them in such a way maps perfectly to your use case, and I can show you how. When these four or five features come together, that's how we activate your stakeholders. This is why this is so important and you're telling a story, you're driving an outcome. That's a big part of it. The other is we also know, if we take that approach and we have that conversation and we're setting the stage for the buyer at the front end about here is the market, here's our point of view on the market and where we stand today and why you face the challenges you face. And here is our philosophy, here is our vision, our mission for how we believe this should be solved, and there are alternative ways to do that, and there's this method, and maybe it's the DIY method. There's this method, there's the third method and then there's our way, and that's why, if you look like this, then we believe this is the best way. Now there may be 50, 60, 100 solutions in your market and then even more alternatives, but we've just put them into three buckets. Even more alternatives, but we've just put them into three buckets. We've made it now way easier for the organization to omit a whole swath of options and help them along the way. Then we can get into. Okay, now let me understand where you are in the organization and not just to your point what, what does the product need to do to drive the? What we've perceived the problems to be? Because the reality is, if you just go feature for feature, the category leader is always going to be the safest bet. But I can convey that we have put together these set of features that help solve your specific problem better than the mass right, the mass alternative. Then now I've cemented that to the outcome.

Gary:

Lastly, is that can't all stay inside of a sales conversation. That is a unscaled, very cost, unscaled, very cost, prohibitively costly, inefficient way to communicate. And so now this is where the mindset comes in. This isn't just a sales conversation, this is a go to market, which means marketing and even CS need to be and product need to be involved in, how do we extract the themes that we're seeing and make them consumable further up the consideration process? Right, because if I can begin to de-risk this decision for you and you begin to trust the information that you're getting, and I'm to your point about anticipating questions not only in the sales conversation but even before you get there questions not only in the sales conversation but even before you get there yeah, and that's that, starting from that middle and working our way out slowly in concentric circles to okay, how can we, especially as we think about new customer acquisition, how can we take what we know people are feeling, thinking concerned about, and de-risk that for them earlier in the process?

Tiana:

Yeah, that's something that I actually wanted to pitch in is that, before you even talk about it in the sales conversation, it has to be reflected in all your marketing materials, because people need to be able, well, first of all, for people to find you in the first place, this needs to be communicated all around. And, second of all, just they have to go into that conversation already knowing kind of what they're looking for in order for them to be well, a good for you, to be a good solution for them. So it's kind of, how do you position? It starts even before with positioning how do you position your solution as a better alternative than frictionless or cheaper alternatives in the market. And that's a lot about what Gary was talking about is just defining what you're incredible at and just communicating that all around in your sales conversations and your content and your website. And that's also part of your differentiation, even if it's just a very similar product to others in the market, part of your differentiation is knowing which solution you're exactly good at solving all around.

Tiana:

I was actually watching, well, looking at a post from Robert Kaminsky this morning and what a day in the life of a B2B marketer looked like, and around 8 am. It was something like time to check emails, like 30 newsletters and an urgent message from our development team that a last minute change to the product that needs to be reflected in all of our marketing materials immediately. A last minute change to the product that needs to be reflected in all of our marketing materials immediately. That's just.

Tiana:

This is something that cannot be a part of your day. It has to be something that is so well structured from the message and from what you are and from what you're selling and from who you're selling it. To that it should all be connected and it shouldn't be happening on a daily basis. It's actually something that you should be ready for. If there's any changes to the product, it's for a reason, right. It's not to attack this huge new market that we just discovered new opportunities on. It's basically just the speech should be already there. It should be something that the whole organization knows.

Gary:

Well, you bring up a good point there, which is this is what makes this a challenge, particularly in this environment where teams are very lean, is what we call the tyranny of the now right.

Gary:

It's that the the. It's very difficult to take a step back and think about, think about your buyer's experience through your engine without because you're jumping from one fire to the next right and it's really easy to get on the hamster wheel of action versus really thinking about driving impact. And that's where I think that's probably the core theme of this is that we say it a lot buyer-led growth, and there's a reason for that is that you're really building everything from the buyer's perspective, like reverse engineering everything that we're doing from the buyer's perspective. And again, you, as a revenue leader and, more importantly, as as a CEO, need to consider how do we create an environment, a space, allocated resources in such a way that give our team the ability to do that, because if we're just focused on shipping, the next thing, then we very, very quickly fall into random acts of insert revenue department here marketing, sales, rev ops, customer success, product whatever. Yeah.

Andy:

The tide is definitely you don't get lost in anticipation.

Tiana:

Right, because Andy already talked about that you should anticipate what your buyer is going to need from it. But not because you're trying to anticipate what your buyer is needing, it's just to create new features and start putting them all around so that they get attracted to you. You have to have a clear definition of who you are, even like let's just take it as an example of real life if you don't know who you are as a person, like how you're, how are you going to meet other people if you're, if you're just trying to please them with whatever, whatever you think they like, yeah, you have to be sure about what you are and sell that as your own personal product person.

Andy:

The tide's going that way, like overall, you have to be more clear about presenting the bigger picture as opposed to like we just do these things, like we've got these features and do these things, you're already giving them a job, which is they're going to have to implement it. The goal there is to make that as straightforward and simple as possible, to get to a moment of value right, like create a process for companies just like them that gets them to that. For that situation, the worst thing you can do on top of that is at the point of them approaching you. So the marketing, you know all this content we just talked about, which is articulating your value to them. The worst thing you can do is make them figure it all out Just from the standpoint of how do all these teachers work together with what I do? So you're, you already gave them, you're already giving them a job over here. Don't give them that job too.

Gary:

Yep, yep, yeah, and that's that more holistic view, the, the, the totality of the brain, from the buyer's perspective, in terms of all the things that they're processing through, from alternatives and I think this is really another topic for discussion. Outside of the alternatives is also you've said this before, andy which is that we tend to think of product as, inside of our quote, four walls of our product, right when you log in all the features, things like that. But from the buyer's perspective, the product is the entire job map and the process of getting people, stakeholders, bought in, the process of getting others who aren't in it every day to use it. That, whatever is required to get to that moment of value or the success, the business outcome that you hope to drive, is product with a capital P, and that therefore means we're thinking about what does the support system look like, what does the help system look like, what does the onboarding support look like? What about customer success? That, from the buyer's perspective, is product with a capital P. That's what I'm buying, not just the software.

Andy:

Unequivocally, and I think it's just only going to become more important to be in front of that and, as you mentioned, gary, knowing where that customer is, have they implemented your product before, have they implemented a similar product before, or are they kind of new to this solution? Those are all really important to understand because that tells you essentially the jumping off point. But it's not about the features. I mean, we say this a million times. It's about the solution, and that solution has to exist in an environment. So the better you're able to frankly take a stand and say I think this is you. Based on everything I know about you, I think this is what you look like and I think this is the solution. This is the product with a capital P that will help you as a company.

Gary:

Yep, yes, excellent, okay. Well, there'll be more on this topic, especially around that product as a solution piece and what we can do about it, but I think we outlined that it's as we go into especially the second half of the year and we're taking a look at everything. Really, let's start with where the rubber meets the road, which is typically in that first sales call, and how do we assess what is our process to assess where the buyer is in relation to the risk of indecision? Where are they? Because then that helps us map that out and really take a hard look at what our sales pitch process looks like. Do we ask a few discovery qualifying questions so we can figure out how to go jump straight into the demo and start showing features, or are we painting? Are we actually a guide to our buyer? Because we know that if they're talking to us, they are talking to other alternatives. They're thinking about other alternatives. They're thinking about can I just live with what I have? Whatever that is, which is a decision. They're thinking about some of our direct competitors, alternatives what have you? They're talking to friends, colleagues, those that they trust, communities what have you? And so we need to serve as a guide to present our point of view and then walk them through that and then, once we have that inside of our sales discovery process, let's not do that in a vacuum. We should have product marketing involved. We should have content marketing involved, because we need to extract those core themes and begin to make them more consumable upstream, if you will. So those two things alone will really start to unstick your engine in the second half of the year.

Gary:

Then talk to customers. Talk to customers when in doubt. Indeed, all right, well, have a great week. Thanks everybody for being here. Um, check out. If you've got questions. Send us a note to hello at gtmproco. If you haven't already subscribed to the gtm shorts, we send those out every week. Um, it's well worth it. So check that out, check out gtmproco, and until next week we'll be back with more. Until then, bye. Thank you for tuning in to GTM Pro, where you become the pro. We're here to foster your growth as a revenue leader, offering the insights you need to thrive. For further guidance, visit gtmproco and continue your path to becoming board ready with us. Share this journey, subscribe, engage and elevate your go-to-market skills. Until next time, go be a pro.