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Practical Go-to-Market guidance specifically for B2B software and service companies between $5MM-$50MM in revenue.
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#32: Putting On Your Buyer Hat
Are your B2B sales strategies truly buyer-focused, or are you missing the mark? Join us as we explore the transformative shift towards a buyer-led growth framework tailored for lower middle market B2B software and services companies.
We discuss the critical importance of understanding buyer concerns beyond just the product, covering stakeholder impact, implementation timelines, and total deployment costs.
Learn how to hone your active listening skills during sales calls and adjust your go-to-market strategies to genuinely support the buyer's journey, making your company stand out in a crowded marketplace.
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, welcome back. We are returning from a nice little holiday on Independence Day.
Gary:Here in the US, summer is hot and today we're diving in on a topic that you're seeing more and more of, especially in sales-focused or discovery-focused conversation. It's this idea of putting on your buyer hat. I think our buddy, mark Cosiglow, recently posted about that. As we're thinking about the flow of the buyer through our system, we're going to spend some time on that. That's something near and dear to our hearts, given that one of the core components or foundations of our advisory practice is something we call the buyer-led growth framework. So obviously we are buyer obsessed, but let's talk a little bit of what that actually means and, I think, most importantly, what companies can do about it today, because it is a mindset shift that if you ask companies, marketing sales leaders, customer success leaders today in the lower middle market, if they're buyer focused, of course they'll tell you, yes, they are Right. Of course we're customer obsessed, but then when you look at the mechanics of the engine and what we're saying, and when we're saying it and how we're saying it, it's really easy to become self-serving in our own GTM engine. And so it's a. It's a, as Andy, as you said earlier, it's a real mindset shift. So I think one of the places that we have seen more than ever, and again, let's be very specific here.
Gary:So we're talking about lower middle market companies, those with less than 50 million in revenue, often private equity or self-funded, but often 10 to 30 million in revenue. They are likely competing in categories that have tons of options, a category leader, and so therefore there's a lot of noise for the buyer to try to figure out and wade through, because all 30, 50, a hundred companies are saying basically the same thing. And so how do I, how do I wade through all of that and the now we're not going to talk about, how do you create awareness? And for those that are problem unaware, we're not there at the moment. We're going to assume that people are in the open to change or open to buy period where they're actually starting to understand that they have a problem and they're looking for solutions and we happen to be on the list.
Gary:So, but a lot of times we spend so much time focused on what our product can do and how it relates to the problem, much time focused on what our product can do and how it relates to the problem, when we have found a lot of the inertia or what the questions that organizations, buyers have are really around, things that can live outside of the product.
Gary:The risks that they're trying to mitigate are things like well, how is this going to impact my stakeholders and what is the implementation timeline and what is the ultimate full cost to deploy if there is a smaller product-led component to it? There's a lot of emotion, organizational dynamics, buyer dynamics that are really can. Often that's what they're trying to understand and they do that by trying to understand the product and then most of the time, most organizations will spend a lot of time talking, trying to educate on the product, but very little of any time talking about these other questions that live outside of the product, or product agnostic. That would be true for any solution out there. So you know that to us is the most important place to start, because that's the only way that we're really gonna be able to understand. So how do we go about finding that, andy? How do we go about finding that?
Andy:Well, we gotta listen. I mean, again, there's a lot of assumptions here that we're asking reasonable questions and you know some kind of either discovery call or, in you know the demo experience, that we're getting some of that feedback from potential buyers that we could, you know, we can gain some of that understanding from. I mean, granted, a sales call is going to be a lot about the product, it's going to be a lot about features. We know that and that's something we try and change with with teams. Is even within that, the orientation around what job are you trying to solve? But it's two things. One is we need to be listening.
Andy:So, short of having an individual which we, we are proponents of, that that is their job to do that around the entire organization, to listen for all of those signals, which is, is the buyer orientation, what is the overall job I'm trying to solve? But, short of that, individuals within the organization, or probably go-to-market professionals within the organization, should be listening for those cues as well, for things within those calls and so on, where there's at least cues that you can be listening for around buyer orientation, able to say, ok, in this part of my website let's just say am I, am I giving information that is helpful to those things I'm now hearing, which may be very cringy initially. When you're listening to calls and I talk about this from a call center perspective but, like you're going to hear things you don't want to hear, you're going to hear things that are uncomfortable, you're going to be like, oh why, you know, why don't I have that? Exactly, that's a good thing to be, so you have to be listening.
Gary:Yeah, and I think to take a step further, we talked about sales calls, but we have seen that as well, where the sales calls are often in service to no surprise sales, versus really being a buyer advocate. So, taking a step back even before we get there, the way that we've described it is for individuals to. Here's a very tactical way to do this, especially whether it's marketing or customer success, or even leadership. Do this, especially whether it's marketing or customer success or even leadership, that everybody on the team has to have at least one customer call a week where they're exploring the buyer dynamics of their relationship with the product as if they were writing the script for a documentary. So I want to understand all of the elements of what was the trigger event.
Gary:What's going on in your organization? When it was there, what were you worried about? How did you determine how to solve this? Who needed to be involved? As you thought about implementation, what were the things that you needed to work through? Who were the stakeholders that needed to be involved? What were the other priorities going on in the organization that were actually competing with this, completely separate from what this particular product did?
Gary:It's that level of information that your buyer is actually wrestling with as they're thinking about buying your product, and so often that goes unignored. We leave it to them to go figure that out them to go figure that out. Meanwhile, we have hundreds, potentially thousands, of customers that have already navigated that journey and can inform us and our future customers about how they did it. Am I dealing with a champion who has done this three and four and five times before and, functionally, has built their own little playbook about how they're going to roll this out for success? That is a very different sales conversation from somebody who has never done this before, thinks it's cool, saw somebody talk about it on LinkedIn and wants to bring it into their organization so that they can show that they've added value to the organization. Not knowing they're about to run into a buzzsaw of stakeholder revolt, but we can get you through that. So that's an example of the level of depth that we need.
Gary:And so, annie, to your point, some of that can be in sales calls, but only if the right questions are being asked, but only if the right questions are being asked. And so that is why this isn't the role to which Andy referred earlier. We call the investigative journalist. So go to gtmproco and look for that post. It's a juicy one.
Gary:But in the absence of actually having that role, we can and should democratize that amongst marketing customer success, there are aspects of the organization that are already in touch with customers product even that. We can need to aggregate that information so that we have that place to start, because in a world that is crowded with software that all does the same thing from the buyer's perspective, it all does the same thing. So what do we do when that's the case? We default to the safest solution, which is the category leader, and we'll look at a good, better, best set of options, and then that's it. And now all we're looking at is features, because that's the only way we have to compare it versus really understanding what's the best fit for our organization, and so we need to be able to to level the playing field with that category leader and be able to provide that level of detail.
Andy:Yeah, and just in terms of marketing, like some of marketing is not just being a better product for your ICP. You fit better for them, you're just the better solution. Some of it is just being better at assuaging a fear or showing the light on some dimension of a job to be done which doesn't, you know, only partially has to do with your product. If you do that just think of the. You know disarming nature of like. You know being helpful, like that's. You know it's a lost art but it goes beyond just serving the. You know I'm going to shove somebody down a funnel and really try to get to the next stage because that's my job and I'm thinking about it from an economic perspective as opposed to if I'm just very helpful here, you know they're going to give me the benefit of the doubt.
Gary:Tiana, what were you going to say?
Tiana:Yeah, Just that I feel like it really lives in every department of the company and it's not something that one department specifically does.
Tiana:It's not something only sales does during sales calls or only customer success does during their calls with the actual customers, something that even marketing can do with the marketing campaigns that I've seen going around, even in your own website, when they're asking, like, just random surveys about, like, what your issues are.
Tiana:That's getting to know your customer at some level and like, but if the company doesn't share that information with every in each aspects and like in every department that they should have, like it's, it's worthless because just everybody keeps the information for themselves.
Tiana:As you said, it's so self-served and it's with the goal of all of us getting to know who their ICP is and who the buyer is and just getting to know their experience. And that goes along with what we've talked about with the buyer zones and everything related. You just have to know, like, every bit of part of their experience from the beginning to the end and and, as you said, it's going deeper than who they are. It's just like what the situation is with their own company, because, you've said this before, two companies can be, can look alike from the outside, but their dynamics within are completely different and but they might be able to use your solution in different aspects of the company. So just getting to know exactly like how they work within, so that you can identify this pattern and then maybe apply some of the information you have in new customers or new prospects.
Gary:You brought up buyer zones, so that is a great segue to okay, now that we have this level of information, now we know what a buyer is thinking, when they're thinking it, why they're thinking it and how to, andy, as you said, assuage those fears. And that's probably the biggest role that we can play is if we take off our seller hat and for those not watching the video, I'll turn it around and put on my rally cap. My hat, which is putting on now our buyer hat or maybe I should put the other way around is what information can we help you to become more confident in your decision? And that is our primary role at every step. So, when we first come into that ecosystem, there's content that we put out in the world, but for the most part, your website is your storefront and there are some key areas that we can think about in terms of what content are we providing? Obviously, the homepage. It has a very specific purpose and there's only so much we can do, but that is the starting place and the starting place, the ultimate goal of the homepage. Yes, if somebody is there and they feel like it's a perfect fit, jump on, request a demo and we're off and running, but the likelihood is.
Gary:I now am leading you to the next, logical next step, which is what are the other components that you need to know and do I make it easy for you to get there?
Gary:It could be a solutions page, it could be use cases. It may honestly be pricing, which, despite a lot, despite what a lot of lead scoring models will have you to believe, isn't necessarily an indication of will you know, of ready to purchase or open to buy. That's an early screening criterion to see. Is this even in the ballpark? For me, which is a whole other topic of discussion. But these are some key pages that come together and I think a lot of times those are developed in isolation and we don't think about the natural next question that's going to get asked and how I can make it easy for you to answer those questions, to get you to a point where you're getting the information that you need, so that, if the natural next step is to request a demo, you're doing it in a way knowing in advance that I actually was educated here. I feel good about this, and now I want to go deeper and specific to me.
Andy:I go back to. We often look at things in a funnel manner, in a next thing manner, but that's not how buyers work. Buyers come in from whatever channel organic content, whatever it may be and they land somewhere and they want to be able to see something that helps orient them around. What is this? What you know, like who are people like me that have engaged with this product and used it, and so on, and like how? So what is this and how does it help me? How does it help people like me, companies like me? And then to be able to get to okay, now I can piece together you know those, those aspects that help me. And then what would be a next obvious thing for me to learn from there? They need to be able to get all that you know, you know in a fairly concise way, without having you know. Ideally, they don't have to piece all that together themselves.
Gary:And that's. You brought up a good point. You mentioned that you know people that look like me. I think one of the fallacies that we see is obviously recognizable logos. I think it was Pep at Winter who said that having logos doesn't help you. Not having logos hurts you. It's kind of a price of admission, right.
Gary:But many times we use logos and we use case studies as a crutch when we say I need you to find, especially for horizontal solutions, where I need you to find a company that looks like you, and assume that, oh, since that's a company that's in my industry or with which I'm familiar and they had success with it, well, that'll be me. Well, the reality is, we all have seen these case studies. They're not helpful at all because they're not focused on the use case. And so what are the dynamics of the organization, the specifics of the problem that they're trying to solve? That are really the underlying factors that are driving the issue in the first place, and I actually resonate more with that than I do. Then I can provide a whole bunch of logos underneath that that actually had that same situation in a bunch of different industries, and that's that is the more powerful way to open up and back to point of what I look like. It's less about logos and more about I know, when you describe my problem back to me, or the situation or the dynamics, that's what I immediately resonate with and that's what we're trying to work through is to then that's ultimately what they want to see is, yes, that's me, that's my situation, that's my problem. I do have obstinate stakeholders. I do have, you know, a complex organization that's in multiple geographies and multiple time zones, whatever the, whatever the applicable situation is. Now that's more helpful to me. Now, show me how that this product solved those problems, and that's what I want to. That's the vein I want to go down. Then, so that's a lot to take in, but that's why this is. And then, so that's a lot to take in, but that's why this is.
Gary:This takes work and, tiana, as you pointed out, unless you have, unless you've taken the bold step to create that voice of make it a requirement of the teams and then find a way to make it systematic so you can extract all those insights out of across the organization, so that it feeds all of the go-to-market, so we've got that now in the website. One of the biggest places that we see for opportunity is the chasm between request a demo and the first call experience. I can't tell you how many times we have seen where everybody feels good about. We created this plumbing. We've got Chili, piper, calendly or whatever it is to schedule it. We've got emails that are going out and confirming it's all about our process to make sure that they get to the first call, but we haven't even considered now what is that buyer, now that they've made the very bold step to move forward and sacrifice their time to spend time with you to learn more about it?
Gary:Where are they? What do they need to know? What do they need to expect? We think of it so often as a qualification call because, like well, we need to make sure that you know you're warranted for us to spend time with. We should be able to figure out before they get there that that's the case. That's part of that pre-experience. But what information can we actually be providing them to help answer those questions or get a better idea of where they fit in some of those use cases, so that when they come to the call, we're not asking that stuff or we're not? We have the opportunity to unpack that further and use that call more intelligently. That is a giant opportunity.
Andy:Yeah, starting Well. The starting point there even is we built this process and we see so many times we've built that process, that discrete sub-assembly that you just described. We built it once and therefore it's our, it's our standard, it's our control and we don't we don't scrutinize like, does that, does it even make sense? Do people even open those emails that we send in the interim? Are we? And, to your point, are we doing any kind of enrichment on that data to understand anything more like all the way to the types of roles that interact with our product most frequently? How many of those are in the company and what are the dynamics around revenue? What are their customer types? What industries do they? Some of those things are highly informative to say they will get benefit from my product because they look very similar to these other customers that have had great success with our product.
Andy:But it's beyond just pure firmographics and the basics. It's more about dynamics, to your point. But even just that is like that's a revelation to say like we built this for us and it's our standard and it works, and we send all this stuff out and we feel good about it, but we're not measuring it, we're not really digging into? Is there a feedback loop in there that we can create to say, ok, they're not. They're not even opening these emails, so they're not getting the information?
Andy:It's like it never happened that we're trying to convey to say this is the next step, this is what you can expect. This is more about the use case that fits your scenario, or so on about the use case that fits your scenario or so on. And so it just stalls all there when there's that huge opportunity to open that up and have it be a jumping off point for the demo, as opposed to you're trying to solve everything there and, oh, by the way, you're puking features in that demo, as opposed to really tailoring a story around. Hey, this is somebody just like you and we know that it's just like you that did this with this, and it only covers a couple of the features, but that's the right story to tell there. Yep, yeah.
Gary:And so, yes, exactly. So that way, when you get into that first call, experience as a salesperson that convince you to buy, but as a buyer guide, a buyer advocate, to help you feel confident that you're making the right decision, which is very bold, because it may very well be that you're actually not in the right place, mm, hmm, right, and if, when we think about activation and retention and expansion opportunities down the road, getting and this is more of a company decision as we think about how we structure the organization and incentive structures and the like, getting somebody who isn't a good fit to buy isn't a win, because that's going to come back and cost us down the road. And so that's when we, when we put on that hat, now, what we need to do is seek to understand. Seek to understand the business, the person, the dynamics of the organization. Where are they really in the buying cycle? Are they very early? Are they new?
Gary:And now I'm going to help you. This is the sense making aspect. I'm going to help you make sense of this unbelievably polluted landscape of alternatives, which includes not only direct competitors but more and more likely stuff to the left or to the right of us that could also solve this problem and helping you understand where we fit in this. See these sets of solutions, and that then becomes the unbelievable source of information that Andy referenced earlier. When you approach those early calls in that manner, then I'm actually serving as a buyer to say, okay, now I better understand your organization, I understand what you're trying to do. Here are some things that are going to be important about our product for your need. Here's why I think we are a really good fit for you and here's what makes sense for you. And you actually have then a conversation that isn't feature vomit, but it's presenting the sets of features together that solve the problem. As we move forward in that conversation of features, together that solve the problem.
Andy:As we move forward in that conversation, you know, and more and more, people are savvy, people are smart, they know what happens next. They know there's contracts involved, but more importantly and more and more, they know they have a job to do after all of this.
Andy:They know this doesn't just happen. They know implementation is required, like you're giving them a job in a way. So the more you can figure out what makes them tick as an organization and again create those use cases around somebody, just like you did this they can then at least see what that job looks like and ideally they would know how they would solve for that job early on, because they know this doesn't just happen.
Gary:Right, and that's actually a great segue then to the next stage of this, which is and this is going to be a little bit different depending upon the product that you're selling the ACV, the number of constituents involved, but at some point in time we're going to be getting to a point where we are relying on our champion to go into the organization and present the business case for this Right. And if we haven't been thoughtful about trying to understand well, what are the other solutions that you're looking at, how do those other solutions make the list? What are the priorities? How are you going to assess those other solutions as an alternative? Who's all involved in the process? And the committee? What is your timeline to do these things?
Gary:These are all perfectly acceptable questions to ask. That aren't sales oriented questions when you put on the role of the buyer advocate. And then, as they leave Andy to your point, we want to make sure that that champion is armed to be able to present the business case in the best manner possible. That will include all these things that aren't likely that from other organizations which include things like here's a rollout plan based on where we are.
Gary:Here's the here's the timing of it. Here's here's how we would compare to other competitors. You know, are key components and many times today it's okay. Here's the one hour Zoom recording and here's a summary email. Good luck.
Andy:Yeah, here you go. Well, you say this all the time. Your biggest competitor almost always is inertia, and so you have to overcome that, which is like. Everybody who this touches has their own process. This is part of giving them a job as well. Right, they have the thing they're already doing, and you're asking them to do something differently, and so you better have a good reason for them. See, this is so. You've got the buyer orientation, and then the buyer of the buyer orientation, which is like those constituents within the company who need to do something differently. Once this product is rolled out within the organization, they need to feel good that this is going to help them too. So, as much as you can present there to say this is a situation exactly like yours, this is what they did. This is why those people are very satisfied with their decision and how they're using it Absolutely.
Gary:So we talked a little bit about that. The buyer package. Then, as we get into the contract stage this is an important thing that I've said many times over the years which is the contract. While it's extremely important to the salesperson, it's also important to the buyer, but it's one of many steps on the journey to the ultimate goal for the customer, which is that they get to the moment of value. And so we as sellers, as go-to-market professionals, have to be thinking in the same manner, which is beyond the contract what happens after that?
Gary:I know I need to get to that point, but we get so obsessed with getting to the contract sign that we make that the thing, when the thing from the buyer's perspective perspective is what you pointed out, which is, how confident am I that that, as I is the champion, I'm gonna bring this organization to the moment of value that we all expect through this purchase and that is my job as a salesperson is to give you that comfort and confidence that you're going to get there, and so that then becomes a vehicle to be able to say you said that you wanted to get this implemented by X date and in order to do that, based on all that's required the contract in your own timeline needs to be in this position, or we're going to have to be thoughtful about how we're going to, what impact that's going to have to your, to your own goals.
Gary:And now again, you're serving as the buyer advocate versus the salesperson who's just trying to get to a signed contract in that certain date.
Gary:So that's, and then, also importantly, is then what is that transition onto the next stage, which, the ultimate goal being, that moment of value, is the activation process. And if we've gone back all the way to the beginning, we understand that I have a brand new champion who's never done this before, who's terrified of making a mistake and has a very complicated organization. They should have a different onboarding process and experience than somebody who's been through it a hundred times, and everybody in the organization should know that. And that's part of that experience, because, ultimately, when a buyer comes to us, what they really want to do is see through all the sales and marketing shenanigans and see themselves on the other side of that, successfully implemented like their other customers who look like them not necessarily logos, but dynamics, problems, people, organizational structure, all those things and see themselves there. That's what they want and they want to see that with confidence, so our job is to get them there.
Andy:It's that easy. It's that easy, it's that easy, it's that easy. And but just if you, if you think about that, like really objectively, and just say, okay, where's a like a starting point? Um, where what is, what is? Something I can do today is just to think about if that is my objective in what I am presenting out to the world from whatever touch point, starting with the website and so on. Does it put people in a position to feel that way, like this organization is going to help me do that? Just thinking about it through that lens will allow you to better orient your outward facing whatever projection of yourself. It will better orient it.
Gary:That way, yep. So second quarter just ended, we're in the third quarter, which means very quickly we're going to start talking about 2025, because there's only so much we can change between now and then. So a lot of what we're going to be working on is going to have the most profound impact next year and set us up. So we just walked through shifting the GTM mindset from one of selling to one of being a buyer's advocate, and walking through this and there are some pretty profound things or pretty impactful things that an organization can do right now, today, which will outline in an upcoming short on this. So go to GTM pro Co. Check out GTM shorts if it's not there. But we just walk through this step, but quickly getting to those use case insights. That can't happen fast enough and if you think you're doing it, I guarantee you you're not, or if you are, it's in silos and so you just there cannot. I stress this, there cannot be enough conversations about that because every organization is different. But you very quickly start to see themes and patterns around what you can build. Then go through every touch point in your buyer's journey, in your sales process that is the buyer's journey that you push them through and ask yourself the questions Do we give them what they need at the time that they need it, and start to look for those leakages and where you can begin to do that. We're not suggesting that you tackle all of it at once. Pick one, pick one area, make that change, move on to the next one, and you will very quickly see your organization become much more buyer empathetic if you do that. So we'll outline that here shortly, and it's something that we do frequently with clients and advise them from a coaching perspective all the time. So it is time well spent as we get into that.
Gary:All right, awesome. Well, once again, appreciate everybody being here. Thanks for listening and stay tuned as we get that GTM short out here in the next couple of days. And always, if any questions, send us a note to hello at gtmproco. We'd love to hear from you If there's anything you'd love to see us cover or dive into in more detail.
Gary:We do have a couple of ideas. One is speaking of producing great content. We had our series in May spilled into June on Outbound. We're contemplating doing another series, and when we say content and all that means it's another polluted term, and so we want to unpack that, especially for lower middle market. So stay tuned for that. If you have any people that you'd love to see on the podcast to discuss that very topic, send us a note. We'd love to see it. You can follow us on LinkedIn as well gtm pro on linkedin and just comment out there as well. All right, until then next week. 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.