The potential that solutions will pop up and displace incumbents within their market arena is higher than before development with AI was as prevalent as it is today.

I’m curious how others are building the case that they are both innovative and reliable enough to be someone’s partner of choice in their eco-system.

I know by the end of my M1, I’ve usually rewritten a few emails 2-3 times to try to fit the needs of personas better, tweaked my pitch to keep it relevant to industry trends, and tried to leverage competitive intel in a few different ways.

I’m interested in hearing what’s worked for others so far this year, so the entire community can benefit from their success.

Happy hunting, Ascenders!

Can anyone help me with an Account Planning Template for targeting a certain set of customers to achieve the quota?

Thanks in advance.

I have a big focus this year for my team on making sure we are spending a full call showing how we solve customer pain points. And it feels like we’re over explaining sometimes, but I don’t want to leave it luck for the customer to connect the dots.

I'm trying to get better, but sometimes it's difficult when things are tight.

Our solutions require changes to the procurement process at the target customers. However, as the current procurement processes of large customers are often not so easy to adapt, one of the purchasing department's decision criteria is very often that the purchasing process must not change. However, this is more or less an exclusion criterion for our solution.

In my opinion, there are cases where it is actually very difficult to adapt a globally implemented process and the effort involved is not insignificant. Sometimes it also seems to me to be a gladly used opportunity to prevent a decision in our favor.

Do you also have similar cases where stakeholders pick out something that precludes a decision in favor of your product and how do you deal with such tactical moves?

Thanks so much for the details. We will regroup internally to discuss our approach and I will let you know how we would like to move forward.

I am realizing that I need to atleast understand what is out there and potentially selectively leverage some things if they can help with optimization.

Curious what others are using and having success with?

One area that I think would be helpful to learn about the best tools in is around account research. I still do this by literally researching on my own and reading through public documents, annual reports etc.

Is anyone using anything that helps with this?

Been a fan of Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) for years and use them in all applicable deals. Curious what best practices others are seeing using them in today's environment and would also love to hear any success stories or pointers you have?

Generally for me they work best when:

1. I clearly set the expectation and understanding for why I am using them with my prospect
2. They are presented as a tool early so that the foundation work is done from the beginning
3. I ask what tool, platform, format etc they want to use - if it is something they know and understand it makes the lift lower

Please share your thoughts!

Thanks,

Jacob

I think it’s because with these early adopter salespeople all their emails are in the same robotic voice or tone, and if you’re good can you can tweak it and make it work, but I haven’t too many that thought broke the barrier into “good”

Decision Makers,I think, have historically relied on filtering out bad decisions by bad prospecting. They give companies a chance that catch their eye

So the poll question is, has overuse of AI muddied the waters for decision makers in filtering out good salespeople and what they may consider good organizations to send down the chain for examination

Or, don’t vote and just leave your experience

I have a long standing customer that uses all of my companies products/capabilities except for Cyber Security.

When I took the account over last year, I spoke with the CISO who gave me the 2 main reasons why we havent been considered as a security partner. The 1st being cost, the 2nd being that at the time of their last evaluation, we were unable to deploy our service in the cloud.

On the deployment side, we can now offer a SaaS service, so I know we have that concern covered.

On the cost side, it looks like my predecessor didnt do much qualification/business case/justification of their security requirements and just shared a list price based on a guestimating the size of the customers environment. To be fair, this pricing was astronomical.

The customer has come back to the table as part of their Security tooling cycle andI'm due to have a call with the customer next week where I am going to walk the customer through "whats changed" in our security offering since they last evaluated us, and run some discovery to understand some more about their current tooling/challenges/reason for change etc.

My question to you guys is, around the pricing element. I know enough about their environment (they shared this with me) to do some maths on my end, and put together pretty much a BAFO from day one. My thought process is to run the initial call and offer up a cost range so that from call 1, the customer has a clear understanding of the low/high end cost of my solution.

Usually, I wouldn't offer up pricing so early, but with cost being a touchy subject for the customer, and in the interest of not spending a tonne of time on demo's/PoV's/architectural meetings, i'm thinking of using pricing to qualify in/out on call 1.

What are your thoughts on this?

George

I have consistently been a top producer at whatever sales function is asked of me.

I’ve had a lot of great training but still try to humble myself and learn at each opportunity. If I know something will work when what we are doing hasn’t , I start using my training and it causes friction with management frequently and has happened at 2 places I can think of. This doesn’t even include the consulting jobs I’ve done. Sometimes managers need wins.

I’m also a somewhat high strung person in the area of winning which, I think, makes people feel like I’m slightly abrasive when really I just want to win and for everyone to jive. If I’m growing this also satiates that need for me because I can see the wins coming.

I don’t want to end up in that spot again so I’m considering a switch to ops or just never working for a corporation again. It feels like a shame to invest 9+ years and tons of effort into sales training and just walk away from it though.

Can anyone from the community give me some tips on how they are assessing fit during the interview process so I can make sure my next move is long term?

I’ve always found that, any way you must do it for your specific role, it’s important to make sure all accounts receive some attention (you never where there is gold hiding or whose idea will be big tomorrow).

Skip Miller recently passed, but I was a big fan of his breakdown into categories based on potential, then further delineating it from there.

I’m curious how others are approaching TAM segmentation this year.

What are you guys finding is working best for pipe gen at the moment.

I always prefer phone, but for some prospects I dont have details so relying on email/LinkedIn.

Just keen to hear how you guys are going about things in terms of sequences, touch points, general messagings thats landing etc.

Thanks!

Thank you in advance!

At times in my career, before widespread CRM use, I’d plan out my entire plan of attack for each month on notebook paper (these are back in the BANT days).

MEDDICC allows us to make much more calculated decisions about where to spend our time and how to execute.

I am curious, as we head into EOY, how people are using MEDDICC training for their own EOY plan of attack and where they feel like they need to be in their deals at this juncture to convert business by EOY (indicating your industry, revenue band/department and general sales cycle duration would likely be helpful as well)

Working on a deal with an existing customer. They have purchased from us before at a similar $ value.

Deal is for software that replaces existing due to incumbent being no longer compliant with industry regs. Timeline was to have my software purchased in October to give team time to migrate from incumbent and run side by side until incumbent contract expires.

Half way through project - My customer merges with another. The merging party have an in house procurement team where as my customer had an outsourced team, so they are now using the new procurement guys.

New guys have stepped in and asked for multiple quotes from partners etc and revised legals (which we wont do due to contract value) - This has delayed the purchase…

Since i last spoke with procurement (2 weeks ago) its been radio silence. My tech and deal champion have guaranteed that my solution is the chosen solution and no other solution is in the picture, but as this procurement process is new to everybody, they are struggling to pin down what happens next internally.

I hold them that my discount will not apply if the deal runs past Nivember - still nothing from Procurment.

Is this the right time to call out the procurment guy for his poor comms? Everybody, inc champion and tech team are getting increasingly frustrated (as well as my manager because this was a forecasted deal that slipped) - but procurement just don't seem to have any urgency at all or care that they are stretching timelines set by their own team!! and even going to incur a large increase in cost by losing discount!

Im stumped!

I’m talking to them about the correct high level initiatives, hitting the right personas with the right messaging, but the corporate structure within them space I sell in has been acquisition heavy leaving former business owners now with bosses and the possibility of losing credibility or worse so they don’t want to touch it.

I’ve been good at getting them to send me in the right direction with endorsement, but I am trying to get them back into the sales process a step earlier than they ever want to be and I think my strategy hinges on positioning value at this unique time.

What are some tips/tricks to lure them into a demo 2 in a discovery > demo 1 > demo 2 (which I want to do discovery/demo 2 with EB) > negotiation > close type of structure (I tried to keep that brief so cut out some stuff after the demo 2 spot I’m looking to pull them into)

I get a ton of messages in my inbox around MEDDICC so I wanted to share the biggest questions I get asked and my answers as a follow-up.

Where do I start with MEDDICC?

While MEDDICC is the acronym, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be addressed in that order in a cycle. As you begin a cycle, instead focus on Identifying Pain and a Champion as the two major things you should be looking for early. You always want to be understanding if the pain is deep enough and needs to be solved for and if so, who is your potential champion who will be advocating for this to be solved using your solution. Once you have pain and a champion identified, you can set further meetings to continue to expand on the different components of MEDDICC in your discovery. Start with Identify Pain and a Champion and build from there. 

What is the difference between a champion and a coach?

Champions are people who possess the big 3:

1) power and influence inside an organization who can get you to the EB

2) is actively selling on your behalf when you are not in the room and

3)  invested in the long term success of the project. 

A coach will differentiate from a champion in that they don’t possess the 3 major areas we just mentioned, though they may check the box on 1 or 2. That said, coaches are still very important and valuable in a sales process as they can help provide you with inside information that you might not have access to, connect you with others who need to be involved in the buying process and also guide throughout your sales process.

What is the difference between decision process and decision criteria?

Because of the naming of these two, I find that many people get confused across them. Let's clear that up:

Decision Process: The process by which the customer will evaluate, select and purchase a solution. This includes things like:

Who will be involved? What is the timeline? What is the actual step-by-step process of the evaluation? Who is on the buying committee and how deeply do we need to align with each of them? What paper process needs to be followed and what documents need to be signed off on? Who ultimately signs off on this?

Decision Criteria: The formal solution requirements against which each person in the decision process will evaluate. This sometimes coincides with the “required capabilities”, as these are the actual things that will be evaluated in the process and are essential to make a decision for those evaluating. In this area you should be looking to not only fully understand their "shopping list", build in your unique differentiators against your competition and also prepare your champion to influence and defend for these.

How do I get to the EB?

Early on, come into the opportunity with an idea or hypothesis of who the EB might be. As you progress in the opportunity, work with your champion to continue to validate who the EB is and also what their priorities are. As you build your relationship with your champion and continue to present value that is mapped to the EB’s priorities, you earn the right to ask for access to the EB. A strong champion who has been properly built and enabled should provide you with access to the EB when the time is right.

What other questions do you have?

Jacob #ascenderpartner