Transcript
Ann Gary (0:00)
Foreign.
John McMahon (0:05)
Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. This podcast is brought to you by Force Management. Force's solutions help companies, small teams and individuals accelerate sales performance. Be sure to check out their new online platform, Accender. Today we're talking about the economic buyer meeting. John McMahon and Ann Gary break down prepping for that meeting. Anne was at PTC when they launched and created Medic. She knows her stuff. This is a great discussion.
John Kaplan (0:37)
Okay, so Ann, let's discuss some general but critical items that salespeople need to do prior to the meeting.
Ann Gary (0:46)
Well, I tell you, first, do your homework. I mean, we talk about this a lot, but eight out of 10 executives say that in a lot of sales meetings, they just feel like they're wasting their time because salespeople come in, they're unprepared. You know, they're, they're hammering them with discovery and scoping questions that they should have been asking. You have other people within the organization, and quite frankly, they lose patience because, you know, you should be doing the job of getting that information, not they're.
John Kaplan (1:13)
Not there to help you do your job. Right. You need to have done your homework before you enter their office. Right, Exactly. I think that's where you can. You talked about differentiating yourself as a salesperson. I think the second thing that people need to do is they need to be a business partner, not a salesperson. When you think of yourself as a business partner, that's how you can differentiate yourself. So be someone that helps them run their business. Don't explain business issues they already know. Instead, inform them about, you know, a business issue that they didn't consider, explain the things they haven't thought of that'll directly affect their business. And you can do a lot of that, not only by being very knowledgeable about the use case that your product fits into, but you can also research the company's website, their annual report, the 10K report, shareholder letters, analyst presentations, where you get to understand the company's business objectives, strategic initiatives, business risks, and their competition. And that's, that's critical also, Ann, to understand who's their competition, what are they doing?
Ann Gary (2:21)
Yeah, I think the next thing is to make sure you position your solution to align with the company's performance, but also the job performance of the person who's actually going to make the decision.