Hi friends - We’re in the home stretch of 2024 with only 6 full weeks left to sell; when you write off the 3 weeks we will lose to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. 

Wowie. 😬 

I want to spend our last weeks together reviewing a few key sales concepts that have been prevalent in many of my client conversations lately. 

For more complex sales, let’s say anything north of $30k ACV, there are often multiple very distinct phases of your buyers’ decision-making journey. 

The better you understand, identify, and adapt to them during your sales process, the more successful you’ll be.

Let’s unpack them. 

Understanding the B2B buying journey

Here is Gartner’s version of this - 

Yep - a big ole’ loopty loop spiderweb mess to navigate. 🥴 

Here is my trimmed-down, startup-friendly version - 

Sadly, their process won’t always be perfectly linear like my outline, either. They may start talking to vendors…and then decide to explore building, for example.

The reality is - most buyers don’t know how to buy.

So the better you can identify where they are in their buying journey (knowing it will change), the better you can guide and support them in their evaluation and decision-making. 

By the way…guiding and supporting them is what you should be doing! Stop trying to only ‘sell’ and start trying to truly understand and advise your prospects. 

The more prospects feel advised and consulted (as unbiased as you can be), the more they trust you. The more they trust you, the more likely they are to buy from you.   

For example, if they are still trying to figure out whether to buy or build and you’re jabbering on about how you’re different from your competitors…you’re missing the mark. They don’t care about that (yet). They still need to understand how to make the decision about whether or not to build FIRST. 

So, how can you do this? 

Present and discuss their options for solving their problem as early and as often as possible. Don’t avoid the elephant in the room—address it as an expert as soon as your first discovery call. 

I love April Dunford’s sales pitch framework for this. See #2 Alternatives. Buy her book or listen to this podcast on it.

Solution Approach Selection 

If they are still on the fence about whether to build or buy…

The reality is you’re going to encounter many prospects in this phase, so better yet, write a blog outlining your view on all of those items above so you can point to it over and over again. Helpful and efficient.

Vendor Selection 

If they are already confident in their decision to buy* a turnkey solution, skip all that buy vs build discussion and…

• Focus on why your product and your onboarding process is the best option among your peers

• Focus on your superior time to value (speed to onboard + speed to realize measurable outcomes) 

• Focus on your industry expertise (e.g., your industry focus on healthcare-specific accounting, not just accounting broadly)

• Focus on your security measures (if applicable) 

• Focus on your customer service model differentiation 

Point them to evidence of your successful support of their peers —> customer reviews, case studies, and customer reference calls.

Hope that helps! See ya next week.

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With love and gratitude,