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Revenue Builders
Preparing for the EB Meeting with Anne Gary
00:10:08
In this curated episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast, John McMahon and John Kaplan go on a deep dive with industry expert Anne Gary as they explore the essential steps in preparing for the Economic Buyer meeting. Ann shares valuable insights on how salespeople can differentiate themselves, become true business partners, and align their solutions with both corporate and individual objectives. KEY TAKEAWAYS [00:00:49] Research is Key: 8 out of 10 executives feel sales meetings are wasted time. Research company objectives, risks, and competition beforehand. [00:01:46] Be a Partner: Differentiate by helping run their business. Provide insights into unconsidered business issues. [00:02:56] Align for Success: Link solutions to corporate and individual performance, focusing on revenue growth, cost reduction, and risk mitigation. [00:04:55] Articulate the Pain: Quantify the current situation, showcasing the full ramifications of the customer's process and connecting it to positive bus...
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- [00:00]
Ann Gary
Foreign.
- [00:06]
John McMahon
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.
- [00:38]
John Kaplan
Okay, so Ann, let's discuss some general but critical items that salespeople need to do prior to the meeting.
- [00:47]
Ann Gary
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.
- [01:14]
John Kaplan
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?
- [02:22]
Ann Gary
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.
- [02:34]
John Kaplan
Yes.
- [02:35]
Ann Gary
Boy, I think we miss that often. So if you think about the first instance, link your solution to revenue growth, reduction in cost, reduction in risk at the corporate level. And I see all too often we get excited about the technology and we aren't making that connection back to those corporate objectives. But the other thing that's really important is if you think about we're selling to individuals and they have KPIs key performance indicators, they have things that they're measured on. So we need to link the solution and what we're doing also to the business outcomes that they're looking to achieve that will help them actually achieve their personal job measures.
- [03:15]
John Kaplan
Yeah. Like you talked about. And most people try to put it in terms with the economic buyer as far as like revenue and costs. And you talk about risks, but it could be things like time to market, it could be number of leads, it could be a whole bunch of different things on how they're measured. So understanding that and putting your solution in those terms really helps to align and help you help you get the deal. I think the other thing and is Tom, especially when you get to the economic buyer, you got to speak on their business terms, which is we're kind of covering that now. But the terms that you discussed and resonated with your champion, they may not be the same terms that resonate with the economic buyer. The typical economic buyer may be on the executive team reporting to, let's say, maybe the CEO. And they may have a slightly different view of the world than your champion because they may be held accountable to different company measures. For instance, I remember one time we went and sold a big deal and the VP of engineering was measured on engineering costs, but the economic buyer was measured on production costs. And the amount of scrap that we would save with our product helped him turn more of his production back on. And that was more important to him than whereas engineering costs were more important to the champion. So trying to understand how the economic buyer is measured and putting in their business terms, that's really critical.
- [04:48]
Ann Gary
Yeah. So let's go a little deeper on. I went through a bunch of different lines in terms of what we should prepare for, but let's go a little deeper in that. I think that would be helpful. We could talk about some examples. So if you think about the as is to be state, you know, here the salesperson really needs to discuss the customer's current situation, the before situation, and then talk about how good things can be. And that what you might call that a pain or quantified pain statement. But here's an example. So if you look at large manufacturers today, many of them are having to think about how are they going to incorporate software into their products. And it's a requirement now to Be agile in a way that they haven't had to really think about it, you know, in years past. So if you think about the pain statement for some of these, these large manufacturers, it might be, you know, we understand that it currently takes you 26 weeks and a cost of X dollars. And it took, you know, that, you know, X number or Y number of people to get this done, to get the software portion of the electric vehicle incorporated.
- [05:55]
John Kaplan
Yeah. But a lot of times you got to even take it further. You know, if you really think about what happens down process, doesn't that also mean what you just said, that there's also probably an increase in the company's time to market, which in turn most likely increase their product costs. So that's why salespeople really need to understand the full ramifications of the pains in a customer's process.
- [06:19]
Ann Gary
Yeah. And take that even a step further. Right. The delayed time to market that we're talking about, it's caused a potential loss in the market share of the competition as well. So that's where you're really up leveling. Right. The issue that someone's running into. And if the current pains aren't resolved, the business is going to have to go back and hire highly paid engineers. If you think about what software engineers are making these days, that's a lot of money going into having to hire these engineers to decrease their time to market. So what's actually going to happen is they're late to market, so they may be losing to the competition, but also their product costs are soaring because they haven't been able to hire these highly paid engineers along with. Then the company is just priced less competitively because of all those products.
- [07:10]
John Kaplan
Absolutely.
- [07:11]
Ann Gary
Solving those issues would create a positive business outcome that could take care of it. Yeah.
- [07:17]
John Kaplan
Like once again, let's say the productivity increase of let's call it X percent would drastically reduce costs by, you know, X millions of dollars and then decrease the time to market by a number of weeks or months. And that would also allow the company to be more price competitive and potentially gain, you know, a certain percentage of market share. That that's really how these statements need to be made. And you need to. That's another reason why you need to understand how are these people measured and which one of these am I going to really highlight the most?
- [07:55]
Ann Gary
Love it. And then if you think about the, you know, we talked about having the required capabilities in this meeting identified and the differentiation, you know, after you've worked with the, the champion and the team and based on Those interactions. Right. We believe that the solution is going to be able to help you attain those positive business outcomes that we've quantified. But in order to do that, there's these minimum required capabilities to get there. And again, that's where we go in and start talking about, you know, how we're differentiated, you know, not in terms of specific product talk, but more in terms of how we would differentiate the ability for them to be able to accomplish, you know, those, you know, the decreased time to market, etc.
- [08:34]
John Kaplan
Yeah. Your unique differentiators that aligns to their specific pain points. These are the items that have to be in the decision criteria for the validation event. This is where you win the pov. Right here.
- [08:49]
Ann Gary
Exactly. And I really want to add this in because I see this is something that we don't do or a lot of the folks that I've worked with have not been doing, is that you're really putting together a preliminary roi. Because if you think about it, if your roi, your preliminary ROI is not going to be substantial enough for them to actually make that decision to reallocate budget. Why would you go into any of these POCs or POVs. It's just wasting their time with all these people that are on it as long and as well as wasting your own time, time in your own company resources. So you have to be quite confident in the roi. Since many customers really are, they're going to go back and ask for what does the ROI look like. And you mentioned it before, these proof points, right, with regards to these success stories.
- [09:33]
John Kaplan
Exactly. You got to give them some confidence that you've done this a number of times. They're not the only company that this you've seen these issues with. They're not going to be the only company that you know where you're going to do the pov. And it's going to highlight that you can actually solve these problems. And that's what goes into your preliminary roi. But it's also where you can highlight customer success stories.
- [09:58]
John McMahon
Be sure to listen to the whole episode for more on selling to the eb. It's a good one to share with your teams. Make it a great week.