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Driving Sales Execution with Compelling Messaging
The document discusses effective sales execution through compelling messaging and positioning, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and segmenting markets. It highlights the necessity of differentiating offerings, creating actionable messaging, and leveraging the right channels to drive revenue. The focus is on aligning sales and marketing efforts to optimize engagement and maximize revenue potential.
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Driving Sales Execution with Compelling Messaging
- 1. Success’ Dark Secret DrivingSales Execution with Compelling Messaging Russell Scherwin rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin
- 2. 2 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Themes • Keyquestions sales needs answered • World-class messaging and positioning • Build your influence by driving revenue (rather than being driven by it)
- 3. 3 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin It’s notwhat you sell, it’s how you sell The Corporate Executive Board Company. All Rights Reserved. PercentageofContributiontoCustomerLoyalty 53% 9% 19% 19% Key Differentiators in the Sale • Offers unique, valuable perspectives on the market • Helps me navigate alternatives • Helps me avoid potential land mines • Educates me on new issues and outcomes n=5,000+ Insight Survey: Why do B2B Customers Buy?
- 4. 4 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 5. 5 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive) – Revenue Support • What role do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 6. 6 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive) – Revenue Support – Revenue Enablement • What role do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 7. 7 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive) – Revenue Support – Revenue Enablement – Revenue Protection • What role do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 8. 8 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive) – Revenue Support – Revenue Enablement – Revenue Protection – Direct Sales • What role do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 9. 9 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Introductions • Whatrole do you play? (in the eyes of a revenue focused executive) – Revenue Support – Revenue Enablement – Revenue Protection – Direct Sales – Dead Weight • What role do you play? – Product Development? – Product Management? – Product Marketing? – Sales?
- 10. 10 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin What doesthe CEO think? If you don’t sell, you don’t understand our business
- 11. 11 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin What didhe pick up on? Nothing in business is more important than audience congruence
- 12. 12 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Messaging =Bridging Two Truths Bridge your capabilities to your audience’s hot buttons
- 13. 13 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Which pitchis more effective We provide multi-channel selling technology that helps our customers drive value by increasing revenues, while decreasing cost, through integrated data semantics, within a multi-channel multi-dimensional database model.
- 14. 14 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Which pitchis more effective Our software improves cross-channel customer experiences. For example, Best Buy has improved average revenue per transaction, and customer loyalty, using our software to drive consistency in order and inventory operations across all selling and fulfillment channels.
- 15. 15 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Which pitchis more effective We seamlessly manage the secure flow of information across organizational, departmental, legislative, and system boundaries
- 16. 16 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Which pitchis more effective We provide secure data movement technology. For example, we partnered with the Federal Reserve to secure payments across our financial system.
- 17. 17 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Which pitchis more effective Would the Federal Reserve pitch work if delivered to Coca-Cola?
- 18. 18 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin What ifI don’t have a reference customer? Get one.
- 19. 19 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Before youdo traditional marketing tasks, know where you are in your product’s life-cycle PM/PMk’s job is scaling out the revenue process. If you’re too early, you have nothing to scale. Scale base Build base Find a new job
- 20. World-class Messaging andPositioning
- 21.
- 22. 22 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Message Foundation Sales Customers Partners Press Analysts Website Messaging drivesaudience action Does your message have an audience bias? • A Message Foundation is a necessary organizational catalyst, governance mechanism, and scale lever for all outbound communication • Always tailor delivered messages must to targeted audiences– each audience starts with different cares and biases
- 23. 23 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Messaging andpositioning How do you breathe action into your message? • Position is the space the message occupies in the mind of the audience, relative to other messages (don’t become noise!) • A world-class message drives action and business outcomes • Messaging is the start of the revenue process. It’s measurable! • You control the message. Its delivery determines the position. • Your selling channels typically communicates the message, YOU DON’T. • A world-class message maximizes revenue, while minimizing sales cycles and sellers’ time spent creating messaging
- 24. Messaging to yourmarket through (and to) Sales
- 25. 25 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging • Relevant • Differentiated • Defensible Marketing software is easier than building software because PowerPoint has no compile button Effectively marketing software is harder than building software because PowerPoint has no compile button
- 26. 26 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Relevance • Relevant to the audience • Industry Segment Specific • Product Ownership Specific (customer or prospect) • Title Specific • Psychographic Specific • Differentiated • Defensible Sales needs to know why a specific title in a specific segment would agree to spend a specific dollar amount on this offering
- 27. 27 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Relevance • Relevant to the audience • Align with your audience’s KPIs • Better yet, align with what they’re thinking about at 3AM • Group by Segments – Industry – Title /Function – Product Ownership (customer or prospect) – Psychographic – Region • Differentiated • Defensible
- 28. 28 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Differentiation • Relevant • Differentiated from the competition – What is unique about your offering – What makes you or your offering stand out – Feature/Function arrows for sales to throw in the heat of battle – The ideal decision criteria that identifies the competitive land-mines they should set early in the sales cycle • Defensible Sales needs the ability to articulate why their offering is unique, relative to others vying for the target’s attention
- 29. 29 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Differentiation • Relevant • Differentiated from the competition – Your INCREMENTAL value proposition, relative to the competition – Setting unfair market-wide decision criteria's – What is unique about your offering – Informix, and row-level locking – Competitive arrows and land-mines • Defensible
- 30. 30 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Defensibility • Relevant • Differentiated • Defensible – Assume you start with little credibility – Credibility comes from references with similar business models/challenges – Or – Credibility comes through tedious cycle proof steps Sales needs credibility. Up-front credibility reduces cycle time and competitive threats.
- 31. 31 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Elements ofworld-class actionable messaging Defensibility • Relevant • Differentiated • Defensible – Assume you start with little credibility – Credibility comes from references with similar business models/challenges Or – Credibility comes through tedious, expensive cycle proof steps
- 32. 32 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Your customeris your value chain’s next step In a multi product-line organization, you are selling to and competing for the attention of the sales force.
- 33. 33 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin The salesforce is its own market! “A” Reps “B” and “C” reps
- 34. 34 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Mistakes commonlymade by product marketers • Task orientation, rather than results/outcome orientation – Releasing approved collateral is not a business outcome – Having 50 people hear your thought leadership pitch is not an outcome – Having 300 people at a conference is not an outcome. – Advice: Align your activities with meaningful KPI’s. • Allowing executives and their opinions to play pinball with you. – Push back. – But know the market better – be the expert. – Advice: Team with the A reps. Leaders trust them as they directly represent $$$. • Not identifying and prioritizing segments that drive revenue – Advice: If you can’t logically model where the money’s coming from and why, evaluate what you’re doing. • Not identifying and prioritizing channels that drive revenue – Advice: Focus your time on the channels that will drive personal sustainable success
- 35. 35 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Field EnablementPre-Requisites What does PM and PMk need to understand • Identify and prioritize buying segments, and the process, roles, skills, and gaps that exist for selling into them. – Outline sales process activities for each segment • (identify, qualify, prove, reach agreement, close) – Link activities to roles and resource requirements • (AE, SE, PS, Mgmt, Channels, Demo Team, Support, Contracts, etc) – Identify skills and artifacts required by role – Identify and fill gaps for effectively selling into prioritized segments – Deliver sales kits for prioritized segments, containing #3 and #4 – Create measurement metrics and goals by buying segment
- 36. 36 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Sales playsfocus the field on execution Sales should execute, not recreate messaging wheels • For each prioritized segment: – Identify titles to target and reasons why key capabilities benefit them – Describe the Challenges / Opportunities / Compelling Events / Trends that your capabilities address that trigger opportunities – Key quantifiable value components with a concept of how to derive an as-is state that your product capabilities improve • Most important are the capabilities that differentiate versus the competitive landscape, and their relative value – Qualifying Questions with tree showing probable answers and follow ups – Product launch details (special offers, contracts / LOI’s, potential hurdles and gotchas, etc) – Call scripts, VITO notes, and – “Macro-Attack plans are created at a macro-level and account level • Who do you target • Hypothesis of – The Pains / Challenges / Opportunities they have that we address – How we have address them – Anecdotes telling the story of how we address them
- 37. Market Readiness Execution 6M’s Go To Market and Market Readiness Methodology
- 38. 38 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Marketing issales in the aggregate don’t forget that the aggregate doesn’t have a checkbook • PMk starts with the product. Sales starts with the audience. • Sales sells to people. Marketing sells to markets. – A market is an abstraction lacking a checkbook. • Segmentation & focus is the secret to influencing B2B markets. – The trick is finding the balance between scale and granularity Means & Market •Identify and prioritize product/market segments Message •Define expected segment behaviors •Define message by segment •Create enablement and assets Math & Medium •Create Models •Define metrics by segment •Cascade metrics to channel mediums Management •Manage and execute ruthlessly •Continually hone model •Provide backwards feedback
- 39. 39 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Understand theart of the possible Means Market Math Message Medium Management Understand what can be delivered, today and in the future • What are our revenue generating assets and offerings? – Roadmap: product and R&D – Market Readiness: Releasing market ready offerings that demonstrate market use cases, versus product that passes functional QA • Current Investment and Future Investment Framework • Delivery and GTM Organization, Structure, and Capabilities
- 40. 40 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Optimize thefield’s time spend Means Market Math Message Medium Management Segmentation and Focus: • Identify Meaningful Buying Segments – What characteristics define a high-probability suspect? – What are the primary and secondary dimensions? • Prioritize Buying Segments – Existing bandwidth to manage segments? – How granular do we define segments? • Where is segmentation defined? – Category Level? – Product Level? – Geo Level ? • Market Position – Category’s position within the market space? – Our position within the category space? • How are we helping sales and marketing maximize yields?
- 41. 41 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Align spend& activity with needed outcomes Means Market Math Message Medium Management Financial Discipline in GTM activity: • Revenue – For each offering, what is the market size and expected CAGR? – For each offering, what are our revenue targets by key segment? • Pipeline – Expected stage conversion ratios? duration? – Win rates/Market Share? – Average Sales Prices? • Managed at the category or product level? – Level of granularity you will manage to – today? tomorrow?
- 42. 42 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Generate demandwe can uniquely fulfill Means Market Math Message Medium Management Create and progress pipeline: • Who cares about our offering? – Identify targeted audiences and why key capabilities benefit them • Why do they care about our offering? – Describe the challenges / opportunities / compelling events that your capabilities address that will trigger opportunities – Identify key value components, and the logic / data points that drives their value relative to the as-is state • Why do they care about our offering over competing offerings? – Identify differentiators, and their relative differentiators • Why should someone believe us? – Reference Stories formal / informal – Data proof points – 3rd Party Credibility Statements – Economic Value Proof – Offering Proof / Demo assets and capabilities
- 43. 43 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Create, progress,and close pipeline Means Market Math Message Medium Management Model all revenue channels • Engagement Model – Which sales groups engage at each sales stage • Have we laid out each role’s expected contribution, the skills needed by each role, and the enablement assets required to achieve required skill levels? • How is sales leadership defining this? – Which assets are necessary at each stage? – Which assets are nice to haves? • How do we create, progress, close pipeline – Discovery Questions with tree showing probable answers, follow ups, and how to qualify and act on responses – Offering details, mechanics and promotions special offers, contracts, potential hurdles and gotchas – Call scripts, VITO notes, and Presentations, etc • Compensation Model – Existing overlap? Plan to build consistency?
- 44. 44 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Execute Means Market Math Message Medium Management Field OperationsManagement: • Sales owned cadence – Pipeline coverage against necessary conversion rates – For active opportunities – are we confident with: • Why Buy? • Why Buy from us? • Why Buy from us now / within committed timeline? • Buyer committed evaluation plan? • Marketing / PLM engages to – Hone the message and assets – Support where appropriate – Collaborate in tuning the math model • Management must: – Deliver against plan – Feedback loop for market adaptation
- 45. 45 rscherwin@gmail.com @rscherwin Diamond Sponsor: PlatinumSponsors: Gold Sponsors: Silver Sponsors: Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- #2 This session is for you if Messaging and positioning is key to your success Revenue is your goal, yet something you don’t directly touch You’ll get out of it: Energizing and winning over the sales force by making them successful with the right message, for the right targeted segments Increasing your influence and ability to scale the revenue process – which is what PM and PMk’ reason for being is My background – leading the global messaging for IBM’s key ‘12 launch; presentation derived from 4 years going undercover as a field leader at Sterling Commerce, where we were recently acquired. Accelerating Top Line Growth: Win by Selling to Sales This session explores proven secrets that energize the sales force in selling more of your product, at higher price points, with faster sales cycles. We'll focus not only on creating a compelling market position, but on ensuring that sales channels are messaging effectively to the right audiences. The content will be especially useful for product leaders operating in organizations with multiple product lines, who compete for the attention of sellers. Some of the interactive topics addressed include: * key questions sales needs answered (hint: they're simple questions) * top mistakes product marketers make (hint: the sales force is a market of its own) * putting segmentation to use in the field (hint: marketing is sales in the aggregate with a longer horizon)
- #4 Notes for the Moderator Key Points While this is a “good news” page, it will likely be a surprise to most of the participants. Use this graph to establish the relationship between a sales person, customer loyalty, and customer experience. This will help solidify in the minds of sales professionals that they hold the key to unlocking customer loyalty. The graph demonstrates the impact that sales experience has on customer loyalty. While things like company & brand, product & service delivery and price still matter, the seller’s ability to deliver a differentiated sales experience is what most significantly drives customer loyalty. Make sure to emphasize that it’s not any sales experience that matters, but a very specific kind. A differentiated sales experience (explained in the call out box) hinges on rep’s ability to teach customers something new about their business, something they did not appreciate or know previously to challenge the customers thinking. The key is to lead the audience to the conclusion that what customers really care about is insight about their business, not the supplier’s. Regarding the other bars, what this data tells us is that, while important, customers are increasingly having a difficult time differentiating between vendor A and vendor B’s products, brand, service and value. The sales experience, particularly one based on sharing insight and challenging customer thinking, does differentiate vendors from one another. As a result, in order to differentiate in the marketplace, it is critical for sales professionals to focus on delivering insight about customer’s business. A good litmus test is—would the customer have paid for the sales call itself without buying anything? Group Discussion Take some time to explore the concept of insight to drive this point home. Ask the participants to provide their own examples of insight. For instance, think about the time when the customer said, “Hmm, I never thought about my challenge that way…” Transition to the Next Page Next, acknowledge that selling on insight has implications for the skills sales professionals need. To highlight those skills, we’ll start by looking at sales professional profiles.
- #5 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #6 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #7 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #8 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #9 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #10 … want to understand the audience Your actions must correlate to revenue; if you can’t make the correlation to revenue today or tomorrow, this will help – or you’d better ask some serious Q’s
- #11 Learned 2 things from the Gary Trust=Selling=Revenue – look someone in the eyes, win their trust in sharing risk, working towards a mutually beneficial outcome --- business (good business) is finding non-zero sum games
- #12 2) You can really sell technology to a CEO --- if you place it in the context of his agenda
- #13 Messaging is about building a bridge between your product specific gibberish, and the metrics that business executives are measured by
- #18 DEPENDS ON SPECIFICALLY WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO!!!! No, Coke doesn’t believe their information across their value chain is as important as the Fed’s Depends upon who!!!! Perhaps the VP of Marketing cares about brand risk, and knows that a data breach would have an 8-9 dollar digit impact on the brand! More likely, they’d care about what Pepsi is doing.
- #19 If your doing busy work in favor of securing a customer, you’re wasting time. You’ll lose credibility with sales and the market. Know your segments, know how pipe is (1) created, (2) progressed, (3) closed. Why focus on progression activity if you can’t build credible pipe? Nothing is more important than a reference customer. Reference selling is EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Why……. Credibility. A sales person babbling about product features to a prospect, is about as credible as marketing often is pitching a new product to the field
- #20 If you’re early in a market segment – the best (and often only effective PMk) is the reference story – hypothetical is a hypothetical solution The only way to scale out the revenue process is to provide real success stories, that the sales force can communicate in a relevant way to key DM’s and influencers.
- #23 Msg = 3 parts The audience The content The deliverer
- #26 If your audience doesn’t care,,,, and care about you over others,,,,, and believe what you’re saying – you’re wasting time. Do your messages inspire? Relevant Segmentation Differentation Competitive Positioning Defensibility COGS / Cycle Times
- #27 Need to identify what happens if they don’t Focus on the wrong industries and wrong titles Waste countless hours doing YOUR job What if they do succeed mis-met expectations Mis-aligned support The question is what level of granularity you will support to And the mgmt decision is how much should come from sales and marketing
- #28 Need to identify what happens if they don’t Focus on the wrong industries and wrong titles Waste countless hours doing YOUR job What if they do succeed mis-met expectations Mis-aligned support The question is what level of granularity you will support to And the mgmt decision is how much should come from sales and marketing
- #29 1 – in a cycleCA example - performance
- #30 1 – in a cycleCA example - performance
- #31 There’s always risk – if someone’s done it before
- #32 There’s always risk – if someone’s done it before
- #34 If your company is sales heavy (or even if it is channels heavy) --- you need to win over the key influential minds in the field Target the early adopters Make them successful Make them your reference story to take to the mass market and laggards Caterpilar as an example for EI Budget for this – don’t expect the sales force to do pioneer selling – unless you reward them for the risk
- #39 Thought process is a roadmap for creating world class marketing and controlling sales! Segmentation and Focus