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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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#54: The Best of Digital Sales Rooms
The best of our last series. Unlock the keys to enhancing buyer decision confidence in the world of modern B2B sales through the transformative power of digital sales rooms. You'll gain a deep understanding of how delivering focused, relevant content can help simplify complex software purchasing decisions, as emphasized by the wisdom of "The JOLT Effect." Discover strategies for aligning sales methodologies with the buyer's journey, leveraging frameworks like Winning by Design's SPICED to craft mutual action plans that truly resonate.
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.
Gary:Your journey to boardroom excellence starts now. Now, hello, pros, welcome back, man. We have come off an awesome run of information. We got to talk to some fantastic people. We started out this journey digging into digital sales rooms, and that expanded very quickly, as we expected it would, which is really a function of what we're seeing in the sales process, which is that decision-making has gotten so complex, and this is something we are preaching over and over is that we have have to move from selling to enabling our buyer to buy, and so that led us to. Well, how are the ways that we do that? And we look at digital sales rooms. But as we started to talk to some of these folks, we realized that they're on the same page, that it really is the beginning of the. These are some of the tools that will enable us to flip to an outside-in process where we actually structure our selling process around how the buyer buys and enabling them to do that, so that they're coming into a process and guiding them. So over the course of the last five or six weeks we had an opportunity to chat with Mark Versteen at Recapped, then we spoke with Ashley Wilson at Momentum, then we talked with Gal Agha at Aligned, ross Rich from Accord and then just wrapped up with Andy Muborn of Distribute and quite, I guess, not surprising but amazing the consistency there in terms of what they're seeing. And these are often which is really interesting.
Gary:I'm going through everybody here. In every case, honestly, with the exception of Ashley, everybody is a reformed seller. They actually lived it in the seat and Ashley comes at it from a product marketing perspective which I would say is, you know, perhaps one step removed from actually being in the trenches, but as a founder, we're all sellers. So that's the background here. But so let's uh, let's start with what got us here in the first place, and it really is around this idea that buying software today is harder than it has ever been and the only way that a buyer will buy that software is when they have confidence in their decision. And it is harder than ever to get to confidence because there are sometimes hundreds of alternatives in a particular category. The information that they have to wade through is just absolutely flooded with me, too information that makes it very difficult to parse through what's relevant for them, and the risk of making a mistake is higher than it's ever been. And so all of that flies in the face of getting the confidence.
Gary:And so, as we think about what's available to us to help drive that confidence, that's why we go look for digital sales rooms. That is the purpose, and what we wanted to go through and think through is okay, that's great, that's why we're there. Hey, that's what we're feeling and we want to go explore that. But what do you need to consider before you go down that path? What are some of the questions that you need to ask? So we're going to unpack that a little bit and pull out some quotes and the like from our from our friends.
Gary:So I think probably the the, the thing that probably leads us to the digital sales room. If we go back to, we're referencing again the jolt effect. It's a great book. If you haven't read it, you should check it out. It talks about how we get to decision confidence, and it did so by a pretty extensive research study with a selection of reps and watching them through the process. And what was interesting is that the best reps understood that more content is not better. In fact, less content is better, and the more specific that content is to their situation, the better. So one of the first objectives of the digital sales room is that it enables us to deliver customized information and actually edit or refine the amount of that content so that it's specific to their situation, knowing that you're champion, or you're basically arming your champion to go back to their organization to be able to intelligently and confidently convey why we should be doing this and why we should be doing this now, and why we should be doing it with this particular company.
Andy:Here's a quote from Mark on how big a gap that ability to sell internally is. He quoted and I'm not sure of his data source, but he said 73% of champions feel underprepared when selling internally. They need more structured tools to advocate effectively. Yeah, Yep Well and that's a big number.
Gary:Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's all part of that confidence thing. So that's as we think about. All right, as we are evaluating a tool, what are we trying to do through this tool? Ultimately? Here's every case study we have, here's every competitor comparison we have, here's it's, and now you're just forcing me to wade through all that information and it just creates more questions. If I even go through it at all, it creates more questions than it does answers.
Gary:I think the other important thing that I wrote we, we, we picked at this a little bit just to really understand is like the other important thing that I wrote we, we, we picked at this a little bit just to really understand is like think about your company and where you are. What is, what is the objective, and that goes to well, what is your? Yes, we want to arm our champions so that we can improve our win rates, reduce our cycle time, so on and so forth, and we believe that we can do that by providing more relevant, more catered information in a more timely fashion, easier to consume format. That's the digital sales room. But we have to really consider our product, the cost of that product and the buying cycle, because that will determine how you think about, frankly, which tool you select, the capabilities that are required to do that well, the the how you plan to use it in conjunction with other steps throughout the process.
Gary:That's really, really important, versus just going out and selecting digital sales rooms and lining them all up and comparing against one each other, cause they all have a different approach.
Gary:They're all coming at it from a little bit different angle. Not surprisingly, most of them are taking an approach of a slightly more complicated sale, probably more of a 90-day sales cycle, probably a little bit multi-threaded, multiple people involved in the process in order to facilitate that, some more than others in terms of deal size. But interestingly and we have seen this and agree with this completely is there's also a perspective that the need for a digital sales room or something like it in some cases actually is even more important in the lower ACV deals, where it's a more transactional sale, because you might have one shot. You have one call where you're talking to the customer and that from that point on, for the most part, you're communicating, perhaps by email, maybe you get a next steps call, but other than that, the conversations are happening without you and I think actually, nate says that a lot too, and I forgot about Nate.
Gary:We had Nate here recently, so, goodness gracious, forgive us, nate, because that was all part of it.
Andy:Great minds kind of come together. I don't think we podcasted.
Gary:Yes, yes, yes, so that was, but that was another. I think it was actually Nate that said that that's a big gap as well.
Tiana:Yeah.
Andy:I mean it's so. This doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? So buyers are doing a bunch of research on their own ahead of time, so that's a whole separate topic. Is enabling buyers to get to good information from you without having to talk to you. That's a whole separate topic. But they're doing a bunch of that ahead of time and, because of that, making sure that what you're conveying especially at the point of having something conveyed to them through a digital sales room it needs to be really specific to them and those things go very hand in hand, right?
Andy:They're kind of gathering their short list. You're on that short list. Great, Now to bring it over the top. You need to explain why it matters to them.
Gary:Yeah, but I think that's actually a great point, andy, in that back to the importance of not just the digital sales room but the process to get and stand up.
Gary:A digital sales room for a lower ACV sale actually is a powerful way to understand what you need to be doing from a marketing perspective to that point right For those size deals. It's more and more they want to review their options, see what fits, ask a few questions and then only then may I consider connecting with a salesperson versus. You know, even with more complicated sales we need to make sure we're on the day one list or at least get considered included in the consideration set. But there's an expectation for more of these complicated products and complicated sales that we're going to wade through that with a salesperson there may be a proof of concept pilot, what have you and so there's more willingness to engage into a sales process because of that. So, while the perceived benefits of a sales room on the surface can appear greater for higher ACV products, I would argue if you look at the way the buyer buys in its totality, it can be as powerful or even more powerful for lower ACV products because of that.
Andy:We talk a lot about discovery being the, you know, the, the keystone right when you, you, you know, downstream, things like onboarding really play off of that a ton and we we just talked to people today that were that were telling us that and then, upstream, really understand, you know, being able to convey information tailored to call it your ICP right that it really speaks to wow this. Call it your ICP, right that it really speaks to wow, this can really help me. I think very similarly and this is really related to a digital sales room is that notion of a mutual action plan.
Andy:That discovery and a mutual action plan really feed off of one another to help both sides of that equation.
Gary:The more tailored you can be, the better and the more tailored you can be, the better, and it actually is a really good point. In terms of, if we think about the minimum requirements right, or the business requirements necessary to get value out of a digital sales room, discovery is exactly where we would start right. One thing we heard over and over again tell us a little bit about your ideal customer. Every one of them said, well, they really have to have a process right. The idea is that, if you are trying to, your goal is to deliver, to enable the buyer to buy by delivering more specific information that helps them in their buying process. If you don't have a discovery process and a sales methodology that supports that, the digital sales room isn't going to create that out of thin air.
Gary:So, before you get started with the tool, we really need to back up and consider okay, is our discovery process built for us to listen to trigger words that allow us to sell our unique value proposition, or are we actually seeking to understand what's going on on the other side? And are they, you know, do they have the experience? Are they prepared, or have we connected it to pain and impact? You know all of those pieces and in many cases, I think that's where we have a loose sales methodology. Right, we may say MediX, bin, whatever, but when you look at it in practice, it's really not that well followed, and so the information that you're extracting from it is spotty, and therefore what you put into the digital sales room is only as good as the information you can extract. So starting with a process is a big one. We heard that over and over again, and I'm sure you have some quotes in there too.
Andy:Yeah, I'm trying to find the right one. I think Ashley said something really important about the value of tailored content around that, which is buyers respond better when sellers focus on business outcomes rather than product features. That's something we've preached quite a bit as well, but that kind of really sums it up, I think, on that.
Tiana:And to your point right.
Gary:Knowing how to get to that as a process is facilitated perhaps by some of these tools, but these tools are not going to conjure that for you Right, right, and then actually probably the other side of that coin is, once you have a process and you feel good about it in terms of the questions that we're asking and how we're interrogating and what we're looking for, and a good discovery guide and a deck that matches the guide so that you can you know it supports a conversation like that, all those things.
Gary:Now we need to think about where is this data going to live, how are we going to use it, how are we going to pass it from one stage to the next, how are we going to make it available all the way down to activation? And the other thing that we heard over and over and over again was we really have to have, if not strong RevOps not necessarily a strong RevOps team but a pretty good line of sight on how we want to use this data, where we're going to put it and how we're going to activate it. And again, this is more of a plan. So when people come in and they're looking at it from either a pure sales perspective or sales and marketing perspective, the plumbing here is really important.
Andy:Yeah, we just again.
Andy:we just heard about that with with onboarding as well, right Like what can, what can I get when it's time to onboard a customer that's going to really level? Set me in terms of where they're at, so that I know what a good starting point would be, so that I can get them on the right path and you know, knowing where there might be hurdles or hiccups with internal teams, and you know technical issues, for example, so that, to your point, having a good place for that to reside that not just the salesperson on the deal but others can look at and make sense of it, is really important.
Gary:And as we kind of described that to me I don't know that this was overtly communicated, but implied by the group is that a willingness in that process, like the beginning of a probably the in the best case of discovery process, that actually starts to morph the sales stages to reflect how the buyer buys versus how we sell, and that that in that was really the place where the digital sales room started to sing. Let me give you an example. Right In a discovery call, we are big fans of winning by design's spice framework. It can sit alongside medic or spin or what have you but we want to understand the situation. The situation conditions create the pain. Then we can connect that pain to the impact of solving that pain. We understand a critical event that's causing them to do something now, and then their decision process. All of that can feed into a mutual action plan or a evaluation guide or a buyer packet or whatever. We decide to call it digital sales room.
Gary:But if we put that together and then we send it over to them and our next stage in the process is sent digital sales room, like great, but that doesn't tell us where the buyer is. Are they experienced or not experienced? Have they connected the pieces? Do they themselves have a business case? Where are they in their process? So, as the stages start to reflect what we know is required for the buyer to buy, it takes, frankly, more work because every situation is different we hear that all the time but ultimately there are some common themes. There are some hurdles that we need to cross that tell us. Once we cross those hurdles, we're that much closer to a deal. Sometimes those hurdles take 60 days and sometimes they take a day and a half, and we're used to days where it's like, well, we spend 14 days in this stage and 32 days in this stage. And then the conversion rates between these things, because it's our process.
Andy:Yeah, Gail talked a lot about that actually. I mean, I think he had some stories about himself and others being top performers, but he specifically said top performers don't sell. They create a process to facilitate the buyer's stages and he talked about a lot of things around that and stories, and we can dig out the quote for the written piece associated with this. He talked about that around the stages. He talked about the internal stakeholders. He talked about not selling features enabling next steps. So he's really oriented toward that, I would say.
Gary:Yeah, yeah, I think Gal and the team at Aligned have really, you know, been very forward in providing that structure and thinking about it. But, frankly, what was interesting is that was definitely another common theme among everybody is that you know that if you really looked at their ICP, it was companies who had had this strong process in place and were already beginning to switch to that outside-in approach, and that this was going to help facilitate that.
Andy:Yeah, ross had a story about it as well, I believe.
Gary:Yeah, and so what's interesting here, too, is that, you know, we intentionally brought momentum into the mix because, while they don't have a maybe yet I don't know if it's on your roadmap, ashley but a digital sales room product they are, their tool is functionally providing all the information that would go there and could populate one, and that's why the RevOps thing came in as well, like where is this information going to live? And that was what I think was interesting, and you can really begin to see how AI has stepped into this piece of the job to be done and really made a difference very, very quickly, and I think it's going to be. Probably we'll look back and say that was actually the catalyst that caused this whole buyer process after probably a century of being seller led to being buyer led, and that is that we can now extract and put structure to unstructured conversations right, which is all the more reason that in the past, as we thought about a discovery process, a lot of it was for replicability, right, we wanted to be able to replicate across the sales team, like everybody's asking the same questions in the same process, and therefore helped us understand what was working and not working. But now the value of that, of that structure, is. It allows us to create effectively a prompt to extract what we need to know from this unstructured information and feed the engine, the feedback loop, right To bring what was the situation, what was the pain, what is the impact, what is the critical event? Now, not only can we cause, that was another thing. That that, I think, thing that I think Recapped has really taken that approach, which is imagine the entire sales team operating as your best seller. Every one of them are doing this because you now have the tools and the ability necessary to be able to see almost instantaneously this unstructured data that's coming out of it and every one of every one of the digital sales rooms in this.
Gary:This you know. Look, we had this conversation. They've been around a long time. It started with this, the, the sales enablement tools, way back when the seismics and the high spots and things like that, that, that where you put all your marketing content, made it easy for the salespeople to find, and we sent out this page and we could track things and what have you. But what was missing in that is what's specific to the customer and what is. Did we extract the appropriate information? That helps us. I am your buyer advisor. Therefore, for me to advise you, I need to know this information and then I turn it around and then advise you. That, to me, is the big gunlock here.
Andy:Let them know you know them and present what will be helpful to them in a way that they understand it and is specific to them and that's incredibly powerful.
Andy:And yes, these tools and specifically Momentum right, allow you to extract that. It's kind of on a higher level. It's even more reason to both have the right questions discovery questions and prompts to get that customer talking in those ways not just talking in general but talking about those specific things and not just having the salesperson do all the talking. That's mentioned in a number of those books, like the Jolt Effect and so on, but for a very specific reason here because you are going to take that information and use it and reflect that back to them so that they're like this is exactly what I need Yep, yep, totally, andy.
Gary:maybe, with that in mind, go back to some of the conversations that we have and maybe we unpack you know an approach there, cause it is, it is that. That, to me, is the I guess we went in knowing this, but kind of the aha moment about how this, this AI era, has really been the unlock to take a more buyer centered approach and maybe maybe unpack that a little bit.
Andy:Like a process for that.
Gary:Well, just what we're what we heard. What we heard from you, know like how?
Andy:people are thinking about it. Well, from Ashley specifically right is, you know, and this is this is kind of blocking and tackling, but just in terms of like medic and spiced, if you have that process in place, you can actually use these tools to pre-populate, like to actually go into those conversations and pull out that information that then puts you in the position to know those things, those specific things. Again, it is a sales centric process MedX, spiced and so on. But assuming you orient that toward the buyer's processes, assuming it's tailored to your ICP, you're then able to kind of pre-populate those key components of information so that you know the wider group can utilize them and so on to create a more tailored experience, and you know a wider group can utilize them and so on to create a more tailored experience, and you know, populate the digital sales room and so on with that information.
Tiana:So there's a very practical application to that.
Tiana:Do you think so, if you really consider everything that, like we've been talking about in the digital sales room, like how, how would you just what do you think gave all of these people like the ability to actually focus on these things? Like, how do you think they realized that these, these are like these metrics that they post for themselves and like these structures that they have built and these processes that they have built, how do you think they got to that point? Like, what do you think is the point where you realize, okay, this is how we do things?
Gary:You mean the comments from the, from the team, from each of like Mark and Ross and Gal.
Tiana:Yeah. What do you?
Gary:think Well, I think.
Tiana:Because of course, they they're all talking about the same thing at like from very, very different perspectives. So what do you think like they have in common to actually have gotten there?
Gary:I think, if you, if you go back to every episode and listen, it's it's like it's the reverse engineering of what the best reps were doing, naturally, sometimes accidentally, right. It's like when you go back and look at some of these best deals, it's like, how did you have your success? I'm like, well, I finally stopped selling and just decided I was going to help them buy, and in every one they had their very discrete situations that that was functionally what they heard and that was the aha moment. That and this is all fairly recent, right, but even five years ago that was a thing. But now more than ever, I think and it's really a confluence of events, right, I mean, this has always been a thing, but now, this is why we believe that this is such a tipping point and will be the way that people have to start thinking about selling is because, even pre you know 1918, right, we're getting there, but we weren't quite yet. At peak software Today, in every category, I mean, we have put software against every conceivable workflow out there, right, and so now and I have a lot of different ways to solve that problem.
Gary:The other thing that we see is because of that, because growth is now harder. I'm not moving an analog process to a digital process, but I'm replacing probably another tool someplace. The gains aren't, as they just aren't as big right, and that's going to create a lot of pricing pressure. The other thing because of all of that, what we're seeing is now, I mean, in every category, there is a handful of category leaders who have decided they may have taken one part of the ecosystem, but now they realize, in order for us to continue to grow, we need the wallet share of our existing customers and we need to be able to offer them a solution in every single thing that's connected to this, like every job map, every system outside Think about the Salesforce ecosystem and many others.
Gary:Hr tech, sales tech, like we see it everywhere. They're all gobbling up each other's little spaces and that makes it even that much more complex to think about how we do that. And so then you throw on the era of efficiency and people like we can no longer just buy software for the sake of buying software, and everything's under a microscope. And then you throw in AI and this confusion of where does it work, where does it not? How does it work? And all of a sudden it's like the perfect storm of. It is ridiculously hard to buy today.
Andy:And.
Andy:I think that that is the catalyst. Right To your question, tiana that's the catalyst and that's the aha moment that a lot of these companies are having, when they realize, first of all, they need to have their process in order to be able to understand the buyer and the buyer's journey better and there's a lot that goes with that right but then to do something about it and to be in front of that, both from a methodology for extracting that content, if you will, or the ability to create content that maps to common use cases, and then to be able to figure out vis-a-vis those early indications and those conversations and using tools to indicate that, or to be very good at discovery to then map the right information to the customers at the right time in their buying process. And these tools are only going to facilitate that. If you aren't in front of that, from just being aware for starters and then getting those ducks in a row from a discovery process, content and so on, perspective, if you're not in front of that, none of this matters.
Gary:Right, and it's actually a really interesting point If you even take it up a step farther. What we're talking about in terms of a good process is the only way that you have a good process is that you know what you. You know through experience and through research and and you know your own domain expertise on how your customer buys. But the only way that you can know that is to have a very clear definition of your ideal customer profile, because if you don't, then I have to know two and three and five and seven and 10 different ways that people are thinking about this and evaluating alternatives. So it requires it is forcing, it's a forcing function around those that are have identified their ideal customer profile and are very close to that customer and are driven to solve those problems with the product and then also driven to help them buy, help them ascertain what are. What is the solution landscape? How do I think about this? How do I think about implementation? What are the solution landscape? How do I think about this? How do I think about implementation?
Andy:What are the alternatives? That's the path we're on and it's not like. It's funny, like I think, in a couple places just very recently the bowling alley concept, and we won't get into all that here, but basically it's the premises. The first bowling pin is what you should focus on today is what you're focused on today as your ICP. It's the market segment and it's the use case together, right, that's bubbled up a bunch again. I think you know it's becoming in vogue. Although that's a fairly old concept, I think people are starting to really think about that a lot more like hey, every more crossing the chasm for those that need to know.
Andy:Indeed. But yeah, that's really. I'm hearing that more that very concept in fact, and even in that vernacular.
Gary:So yeah, so let's see anything we're missing. I mean, I think that to me, is the rest of it. Really, the idea here is that, instead of going in buying a piece of software, call the digital sales room and then we've got an idea of all this stuff we're going to throw into it, throw it over the wall and make it be the place that our buyer gets all their information and, ideally, it does. The work is, quite frankly, a false assumption unless it's designed around how the buyer buys. And so to do that, well, icp, fantastic discovery process that gets you to the information that you need to enable the buyer to buy, followed by a data systems process roadmap that helps you understand how you're going to aggregate that information and then activate that information. Do those things and the rest of it will take care of itself. Right, it's less about well, where is marketing put its content and where, like? If you don't have those previous three things, all those other questions are not going to help you, because we're, you know, we're, we're, and I see you can just see in the questions a lot of people thinking about that like, oh, oh, I'm going to add this into my process.
Gary:I'm like, well, but you don't know your icp and you don't. You haven't thought through these things, and a lot of companies, especially in the lower middle market, the probably the two biggest challenges you. A lot of the domain expertise from the buyer perspective is trapped in the head of the founder or head of product or what have you Right. It's not democratized across the organization. We get you know multiple versions of the truth and the other, largely, is lack of depth or capability or expertise across the RevOps function and that's more of a resource allocation consideration. But that's, as you think about, the missing link. The keystone, if you will, of making this all work is going to be the ability to take structured and unstructured data and do something with it for the benefit of your customer, and you can't do that if you don't have a solid data. You know map structure process, which largely is owned by RevOps.
Andy:Yeah, and I think an indicator and there's some metrics here I can talk about real quickly that I think are interesting to talk about but an indicator is if you're being reactionary in your sales process, if you're objection handling a lot, right, that's an opportunity because if you're focused correctly on your ICP, you're focused on the problem. Those then are things you can be much more in front of from the content you project out in the world. And certainly from the moment you start to speak to a prospect. You have much more opportunity to be in front of those things than to be reactive. You have much more opportunity to be in front of those things than to be reactive.
Andy:And then on the metric side, just real quick, okay, we put all this stuff in place. How do I know it's working right? Well, you can figure out pretty quickly how often your material is being leveraged by your prospects. Right, are they using? And these tools all have the ability to measure that right, they have the ability oftentimes to measure how many different people are engaging, not necessarily the people it doesn't get creepy about who specifically accessed it, but that different individuals access. And then, kind of on the longer term, how quick can you get to a time to value, which is different from your sales cycle. This is getting to the moment of value. This is, you know, they've onboarded and they're actually getting value out of the tool measuring that. And then, of course, customer sat, which there's a number of different ways to get at, but that should improve as a result of this.
Gary:Yeah, yep, yeah, no, that's great, exactly the point, okay. Well, there you have it. Not necessarily a buyer's guide to digital sales room, but, from our perspective, far more valuable Because, as we always say, if I have a challenge that I need solved, I will spend 55 minutes on the problem, making sure I understand the problem, and five minutes on the solution. Thank you, einstein. But that's the approach here is really being very thoughtful about what is it you're trying to accomplish, what's required, given the customer background and what you're trying to do, and what's your capabilities and set and before you set out to implement a tool like this, be thinking about those key inputs in order to make it successful. So we learned a ton. Thank you to everyone for their time.
Gary:If you haven't listened to these episodes, they are episodes, I think, 49, 50, 51, 52, and 53. 50 some episodes. How about that? Thanks for hanging with us pros. It's been fun. We're going to keep on keeping on All right Until next week. Go be a pro. 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.