Selling to Businesses

In 2003, Mark Leslie, founding chairman and CEO of Fortune 1000 company Veritas Software, coined the term renaissance sales rep to describe the individual “able to develop [her] own sales model and collateral materials as needed.” In other words, without marketing’s help, this rep is able to learn how to sell a new product. In contrast, the coin-operated sales rep is to be hired only once the sales process is known; “when the formula for success has been developed (a repeatable sales model) and all of the support requirements for sales reps are in place.”³

Steve Blank describes what happens to startups that do it wrong—scaling marketing and coin-operated sales reps before the sales process is known, before the market is known—as the startup death spiral: Sales starts missing its numbers. The board gets concerned. The VP of sales comes to a board meeting, still optimistic, and provides a set of reasonable explanations. The board raises a collective eyebrow. The VP goes back to the field and exhorts the troops to work harder.⁴

What follows is increased opportunistic sales, reps going off the reservation. You see sales staff turnover, lots of finger-pointing at marketing and product developers. A quarter or two later, the vice president of sales is gone, followed by the VP of marketing, and, finally, the CEO. Often the board brings in a more experienced CEO, but their experience is with running a large organization. Still no learning is accomplished, only more failed execution. Renaissance sales reps operate differently. They can sell product without brochures, even without demos. They do consultative sales, meaning that, from the customer’s perspective, they provide value. They are trusted. They understand the needs of the customer and work to address the need, rather than simply sell product.

Paul O’Dea calls this rep a “sales specialist.” A sales specialist has the following traits:

• Deep domain expertise in customer’s industry.

• Integrity; ability to gain trusted advisor status.

• A complete communicator, able to listen, question, and listen again.

• Engaged in continuous self-improvement and education.⁵

In many early-stage startups, the CEO is the sales specialist or renaissance sales rep. The founder should be developing these relationships, building an empathic understanding of the customer, not the least of which is understanding what their needs are.

Like their SaaS and even consumer-oriented business counterparts, founders often concentrate too quickly on demand creation and filling the pipeline, without first understanding the two fundamental principles necessary to scale the business:

1. Are you addressing a real and deeply felt need?

2. Do you know how to sell this product to this buyer?

The only way to find out is to engage the market. Yes, lean startup is about developing product iteratively, releasing quickly and often in order to gauge market acceptance, but it is also about learning how to sell and thereby how to market.

The larger or older the enterprise, the more complex and sophisticated will be their purchasing process. There will likely be numerous players:

• The end user of the product

• The head of the department where the end user works

• The IT department

• Compliance

• Security

• Finance

• Purchasing

Even in smaller companies, you will have to find an internal product champion to help you navigate the process, including overcoming politics and executives opposed to the project. Some companies will only purchase from preferred vendors. Others require working with specific resellers or systems integrators. You might face requests for proposals (RFPs) heavily influenced by your competition!

Yes, you may even have to wine and dine your potential customers.

As a salesperson, when interacting with customers, your objective is twofold:

1. What is the buying process according to the buyer?

2. What activities will move the buyer into and through the funnel?

You are seeking out objections. Some are predictable; some are not. The best way to learn is to do it.

As Chris Guillebeau says: “You won’t always get it right at first—sometimes you’ll discover additional objections as you go through the initial sales process with real-time customers.”⁶

You step through your educated-guess process—a process that should be somewhat vetted through early customer development—until you encounter an objection and learn what must be done to overcome the objection. You do this through each stage of the funnel. The next time through, you hope to find a similar pattern, only this time you are prepared for the objection.

After several iterations, you might include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your website or in the sales representative’s toolkit, which proactively addresses the objections up front.

Pro tip: Marketing activities are designed to overcome implicit and explicit sales objections.

The objections might be simple to understand but hard to overcome: Are you FIPS 140-2 compliant? Are you on our preferred vendors list?

This process is valid whether selling online or offline. It’s hard to discover online objectives. Go through the process offline first in order to learn what objections you must overcome.

In the B2B world, regardless of whether an online product or offline, regardless of whether using the Internet to market or sell, customers care about increasing their revenue, market share, and customer loyalty, while decreasing costs and business risk. But remember that decisions are made by human beings, so all the less obvious and subconscious decision influences must be considered, as well: the desire for career advancement, job security, peer assessment, budget protection, and personal risk.

While interacting with multiple people inside an organization, you will want to consider:

• Who is the buyer versus the decision maker versus the financial approver?

• Where does the budget for purchase come from?

• Who else influences the decision?

• What compliance regulations come into play?

• What is the purchasing process?

• Is a pilot or proof-of-concept required?

• What is the length of the purchase process?

• Are there specific channel requirements?

• Who is the internal champion?

• Who might be motivated to obstruct the deal?

In the business-to-consumer (B2C) world, regardless of whether an online product or offline, regardless of whether using the Internet to market or sell, customers care about money, time, health, the elimination of specific problems, the fulfillment or exercise of particular passions, and personal values. These are predominately conscious needs that, given the right circumstances, people are willing to talk about.

There are also things people care about that are more difficult to articulate and are even subconscious. These include the full range of human emotion, fear, social status, sunken costs, self-perception, and instinct.

While interacting with customers you want to learn⁷:

• Who has the pain or passion?

• Who decides on the purchase?

• Who are they trying to impress?

• Who influences the decision maker?

• What are adjacent pains or passions?

• Do they hire products currently that address the need to some degree?

• What makes them feel secure?

• What makes them feel sexy?

• What do they think is cool?

• What do they dream about?

• What keeps them up at night?

• What characteristics do they share with others that have need?

• Where do they hang out offline and online?

• How do they become trustful when purchasing?

• How do they decide a product is a good fit?