The Future of Tech Sales: Solution and Value Selling Straight Talk
This article is based on a speed cast of the straight talk by Edward Golod from Revenue Accelerators with Colin Kleine, an Australian growth leader for tech startups, as a guest. It focuses on Colin’s responses and quotes Edward’s deeper and debatable questions.
In this article they both debate, if technology is changing the way sales, are done today and what’s necessary to, as a startup company, be heard. In a sea of thousands of startups, companies are being launched every month. How can founders stand out from the noise and be able to deliver impactful pitches?
This is a straight talk on how to achieve that.
Is There a New Futuristic Way of Doing Sales?
Times change, and new technologies come and go, which means a lot of processes change to give steps to the new way of doing things. Just like the paper money was replaced by credit and debit cards. And just as there are new prospects for a digital coin nowadays.
Edward Golod from Revenue Accelerators ponders the question even more in a business aspect, but for startup companies trying to sell nowadays by saying:
“Is sales really a new thing now? And is there a futuristic way to it? Are we just doing the same old thing? like fighting with another million startups to get a voice, audience, and clients. Are we really just repurposing the same old stuff?”
Sales are never going to change at its core. It’s always going to be one of the most dominant professions in the world. Sales is about salespeople, founders, and businesspeople being smarter about sales and how they do sales.
Anyone can jump onto a sales tool and start pumping out automated emails. But the fact is, when there’s so much noise with all these tech companies going for the same stakeholders, founders need to be able to differentiate themselves to stand out. And the companies that do stand out are the ones people consider the cream of the top.
To its core sales haven’t changed but founders need to get smarter and change how they do things.
The Hardships of the New Digital Ecosystem
Edward Golod makes an important remark of the digital era and how it has represented new hardships for startups:
“That’s all true, but I don’t agree with you. Because what’s changed is the digital ecosystem portfolio. Covid is massive. And by that, I mean, it’s hard to get anybody to talk to us [founders]. Talking to someone face to face has become a hardship. It’s hard to get through the noise. So, my question is: why are sales still the same instead of saying that there’s a technological front to sales that we’ve never seen before?”
Colin Klein’s answer is simple, yet meaningful: “by improving your messaging and adapting” founders don’t need to necessarily reinvent the wheel. Regardless of what technology is there, it just continues to come down to messaging, it’s going to come down to the company’s touch points and it’s going to come down to the value a startup is actually providing.
Companies need to be able to stand out, they can use various technologies, but it all comes down to using them intelligently. There’s never been a better opportunity for salespeople to be successful as long as they’re doing it in a more intelligent way.
How to Influence the VCs With Effective Sales Messaging?
At the end of the day, investors and CEOs want founders to be concise. It all comes down to the content and the value of what they’re selling. Edward Golod takes a stance about the future of startup sales and makes deeper questions about how it is to pitch a VC (Venture Capital investor) when time is clearly not on a founder’s side:
“I think the future of startup sales is learning how to what they’re doing better, faster, and cheaper. But at the same time, I think it’s really hard for them because you have to be able to net it out. You deal with VCs all the time. You’re all over the place helping companies get from the US to Australia and vice versa. And all these VCs look at you, give you 60 seconds, and want to hear the whole business plan from you”
To this argument, Colin Klein responds by saying “this is what companies get wrong”. The biggest struggle that startups have is they can’t articulate why their technology is and why now. And this could result in a byproduct (secondary result) of an amazing idea the founder has.
But it’s been launched by a CTO, as opposed to somebody who’s embedded with revenue, someone who understands the company’s DNA, and that’s someone who knows exactly how to position a solution. Being able to tell the CEO within 60 seconds, why they need a solution, why now, and how it’s going to be able to change an organization.
The thing is, all that comes down to skill, it comes down to being able to have the messaging to first of all gauge the prospect’s interest, but then having the market knowledge, and an understanding around their business. An understanding of why this technology or this solution is going to create a positive impact and it needs to be heard.
How Can a Salesperson Get a Clear Messaging?
Going back 30, 40, or even 50 years into the past the same problem remains. How can startups deliver short and concise messaging to prospects? The future of sales has to be done with no time on the clock, little eyeball interest, and extremely busy people. The future of sales is getting the articulation and messaging done.
The problem is there are about 1000 new startups coming to the globe almost every month. “you have to become a star of messaging and articulation instead of someone that says ‘let’s try to figure out if we can help you’” observes Edward Golod.
But one way to avoid being a startup that’s lost in the crowd is, as a salesperson, to have hyper-targeted and personalized messaging to the prospect they’re approaching. Rather than the traditional way of spray and pray and hoping for leads to pile up.
It’s important to take the additional time to understand who are the prospects that could really benefit from a startup’s solution. And of course, understanding the stakeholders. This isn’t revolutionary. It’s just something that needs to be done now, more than ever before. But still be able to clearly articulate, from conducting research on a company, that that’s exactly where the added value is going to be.
How Is Clear Messaging Making Startups Relevant and Competitive?
Nowadays startups don’t need to give prospects a long speech about being in business for five or ten years. Nobody cares about that. When a salesperson wants to speak to a prospect on a collaboration opportunity, they should focus on what they can achieve for this organization. Explain exactly how to get results X, Y, and Z. That’s where the industry has moved to.
If companies do that, they’re going to thrive. If not, companies like that won’t stay relevant or competitive. And as many startups are coming up, if they don’t have sales DNA embedded into the organization. They can have the best product in the world, but they simply won’t succeed. They’re not going to sell and they’re not going to get mindshare.
Business Selling On Value: Helping People Before Selling
Edward Golod shares an anecdote as a doorway to talk about how to make pitches effective today:
“30 years ago, when I was selling around Wall Street. I lived in New York City, and I was in buildings of 90 stories. Every time I would get in an elevator, I thought about the possibility of a CEO walking in. At that time, you could pitch him with 20 floors of enough time to say your thing. Today, we don’t have that luxury. We can’t leave our houses because of covid. Now, you’re on a Zoom call and you have one minute to lay down your offering to that CEO”
Colin Klein explains that his methodology to make sure CEOs or prospects hear him out about his offering is to stop trying to sell but to add value to people. If a founder or a salesperson is speaking to a CEO rather than selling to a person, it’s better to have a conversation with them.
People hate being sold to, but they enjoy buying. By having a conversation with them and identifying how to collaborate or add value, it immediately turns the person’s defenses down. When they sense that’s a genuine person, who knows what they’re talking about and understands the business and the market it may open the door to your elevator pitch. And that’s not selling, it’s helping people.
The future of sales isn’t technology. The future of sales is learning how to communicate in a hyper-speed-based world.