🔥 Deals don’t only fall apart because of the competition — they often fall apart because of what happens (or doesn't) inside the sales team.
In this week's episode of Making SEAMless Sales, I’m joined by Yumei Peterson, a dynamic sales leader who built and led top-performing sales teams at Palo Alto Networks, and now Cato Networks.
We dig into:
👉 Why SDR-to-Sales and Sales-to-Presales handoffs so often break down.
👉 The hidden cost of poor communication and missed context.
👉 How aligned teams create faster deal velocity and higher win rates.
➡️ In this episode, Yumei Peterson, a seasoned sales leader who built and led high-performing sales teams, shares how to fix one of the biggest hidden challenges in B2B sales — broken handoffs between SDRs, Sales, and Presales. Yumei brings her deep experience in sales leadership, enablement, and go-to-market strategy to reveal how alignment, communication, and shared accountability can transform internal friction into faster deals and stronger customer relationships.
✅ If you’ve ever watched opportunities stall because teams weren’t fully aligned, Yumei’s practical advice and proven frameworks will show you how to bridge those gaps, empower collaboration, and create seamless sales execution that drives measurable results.
www.linkedin.com/in/yumeipeterson/
📗 Making SEAMless Sales Book Info: teamsalesdevelopment.com/making-seamless-sales-book/
💻 Making SEAMless Sales Podcast Page: teamsalesdevelopment.com/12-week-podcast-series-on-talkradio-nyc/
📝 Don't forget to submit your questions for the "Dear Arty" segment, where Art addresses your sales challenges live, and to request Art's services for SKOs, Keynotes, Seminars, or Workshops! teamsalesdevelopment.com/contact-tsd/
In this episode of Making SEAMless Sales, host Art Fromm shares insights from Dreamforce and introduces guest Nikhil Sarma to explore how “value discovery” drives the entire buyer journey from awareness to expansion. Fromm emphasizes that while achieving a “technical win” through strong demos is common, true sales success requires understanding each stakeholder’s decision process and uncovering the specific business value they seek. The episode challenges sales and pre-sales professionals to move beyond product demonstrations and focus instead on aligning value, influence, and strategy across all decision makers to turn opportunities into lasting wins.
Host Art Fromm welcomes guest Nikhil Sarma (GTM Solutions Consulting), who coaches frontline sales and pre-sales teams on buyer enablement—starting with clearly articulating why a customer should change and crafting a compelling value narrative. Sarma introduces the Value Discovery Map, a framework that links the why (executive priorities), the what (department KPIs), and the how (operational changes) so teams sell business outcomes, not features. Miss the real “why” and deals stall, shrink through value erosion (e.g., a $300K scope sliding to $75K), or are lost to the status quo or competitors—so AEs, SEs, CS, and SDRs must align to quantify value and manage perceived risk at every stakeholder level.
Art Fromm and Nikhil Sarma show how a Value Discovery Map turns discovery into buyer enablement by mapping the why (executive priorities), what (department KPIs), and how (operational changes) so you sell outcomes—not features. They urge AEs and SEs to operate as one team—train together, qualify and forecast better, and equip true mobilizers with a crisp internal business case that de-risks the decision for CFOs and leadership. Q4 takeaway: if your deal isn’t explicitly tied to the CEO/board’s priorities and co-created with stakeholders, expect stalls or scope shrink in feature-parity battles—show up empathetically, manage perceived risk, and help your buyer sell internally.
Art closes with a “Dear Artie” Q&A, tackling a common pain: SEs thrown into demos without real discovery, and advises teams to pause for a quick prep call, confirm the business outcome and “why,” and—using his “help me help you” mantra—sell the importance of discovery internally so sales and pre-sales act as one team. He warns that poorly qualified opportunities and mixed messages from AEs, SEs, and CS erode buyer confidence—especially with large buying groups—and recommends a short internal alignment on the why/what/how before any customer call, noting research that coordinated teams see markedly better results. He wraps with calls to action: submit questions via TeamSalesDevelopment.com, plan SKO enablement, leverage his keynotes/workshops/CRM tools to avoid the “rush to demo,” and tune in next week at 7pm ET for guest John Kerr of Mastering Technical Sales plus a special tribute segment.
00:00:34.390 --> 00:00:46.989 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Alright, everybody, hello, and welcome to the Making Seamless Sales show. Whether you're listening live or listening to a replay of the show on any of our channels, please drop a note in the chat.
00:00:47.110 --> 00:00:50.239 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Please like, subscribe, share.
00:00:50.360 --> 00:00:59.820 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And also feel free to, go on the website and drop a question in there, if you'd like, for the Dear Artie section of our program.
00:01:00.130 --> 00:01:12.000 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: We're coming here tonight, pre-recorded from Mars, Pennsylvania, for two reasons. Number one, my guest is in Germany, so it would be 1AM for him if he was live.
00:01:12.140 --> 00:01:16.139 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And number two, because I was attending the Dreamforce
00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:27.710 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: conference in San Francisco all week, which is Salesforce's huge user and partner conference. I was attending as an independent software vendor, or ISV.
00:01:27.810 --> 00:01:32.590 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Representing my sales opportunity snapshot methodology.
00:01:32.950 --> 00:01:35.130 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, as such.
00:01:35.580 --> 00:01:48.969 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I was able to talk with a variety of different people and share with them what this enterprise-grade Salesforce app can do. And by the way, if that's of interest to you, check out the details on my website, teamsalesdevelopment.com.
00:01:49.550 --> 00:01:56.210 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In this episode 11 of the Making Seamless Sales show with special guest Nikhil Sarma.
00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:01.710 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Who specializes in helping sales teams with value discovery.
00:02:02.260 --> 00:02:13.850 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: What we're going to talk about is the importance of this as the key place to start that drives the entire buyer and sales engagement through to client success and expansion.
00:02:13.970 --> 00:02:21.609 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, we'll get to Nikhil shortly, stay tuned to that. I'm Art Fromm, founder and president of Team Sales Development.
00:02:21.720 --> 00:02:40.270 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And this is a platform for sharing actionable and proven sales transformation frameworks and systems for pre-sales and the sales community, and more so as we move along the, enablement community, the customer success community, and things like that.
00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:55.449 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: This is all based on me having been a customer of technology for about 8 years, then 10 years in pre-sales sales and sales management roles, leading to 25 years focused on sales transformation.
00:02:55.600 --> 00:03:09.709 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Helping B2B companies, and yes, I can work with other type of companies and teams as well. The sweet spot is complex B2B sales, helping them increase revenue, win rate, client satisfaction, and so forth.
00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:13.689 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, in this show, and the book of the same name.
00:03:13.870 --> 00:03:21.319 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I've curated key, interconnected concepts across the entire consultative selling platform that I offer.
00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:33.340 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Ranging from Great Demo, to Mastering Technical Sales, to sales opportunity snapshot, and I mention those three in particular because Peter, John, and Steve
00:03:33.510 --> 00:03:34.410 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: all.
00:03:34.750 --> 00:03:40.209 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Allowed me to use parts of their, you know, this in the book, and also wrote forwards.
00:03:40.610 --> 00:03:55.270 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And so much more, including selling to executives and many other parts of the portfolio. So tonight, we're going to dive deeper into team selling and the interplay between pre-sale solutions team and the sales team.
00:03:55.600 --> 00:04:09.450 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Before we get into tonight's show with Nikhil, a big thanks to last week's guest on episode 10, which was October 9th, Yumi Peterson. It was great to get Yumi's insights based on her experience in developing
00:04:09.450 --> 00:04:28.579 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: in managing SDR, BDR, as well as field sales roles. So, a couple highlights, if you want to go back and watch that show, Why Deals Stall Before They Even Start, Yumi revealed how misalignment between SDRs and sales and pre-sales quietly kills momentum.
00:04:28.770 --> 00:04:35.989 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: long before the customer says no. And what are the signs for that? We also talked about reducing internal friction.
00:04:36.090 --> 00:04:50.400 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And instead, driving sales velocity. So, rather than pointing fingers, Yumi walked through how to build and empower every role, from SDRs driving discovery to pre-sales, connecting technical value to the business value.
00:04:50.610 --> 00:05:05.360 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And then third thing, the major thing was, the leadership mindset behind the seamless sales execution. What great sales leaders do differently to create accountability, communication, and trust across the teams.
00:05:05.910 --> 00:05:20.420 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, her presentation and our discussion was a masterclass in leading through alignment, not through hierarchy, and that's a very important distinction as far as the reasons why what she does is so successful.
00:05:21.410 --> 00:05:38.569 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, you can access last week's show and information about all the episodes, as well as many more resources, at teamsalesdevelopment.com. If you take a look under the Events and Articles tab, there's many resources there. In fact, quick update.
00:05:38.570 --> 00:05:51.740 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The photos and video of the NASDAQ billboard event have been posted, so if you want to take a look at that, it's there. Also, information about the Pre-Sales Collective podcast that I was on, September 24th is when that was released.
00:05:51.740 --> 00:06:00.639 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: It was with Jack Cochran and Matthew James. I've received dozens of connection requests and many, many comments about that interview.
00:06:00.640 --> 00:06:15.050 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Many commented that it's a must-listen, so go to the webpage, Teamsalesdevelopment.com, check out the events page, and find the Pre-Sales Collective Podcast. I know that you'll get a lot out of it, but I'd love to hear what you think.
00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:21.060 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And then finally, one other thing, if you would please, on the page, is the pre-registration for the upcoming
00:06:21.090 --> 00:06:34.289 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Blue Talks compilation book that I'll be in. I'll be… I have a chapter in there called The Art of Persuasion, and it's gonna feature John Gray, who's the author of Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus.
00:06:34.290 --> 00:06:41.699 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, please check that out, and pre-order the book, so that you can be one of the first to get it, and
00:06:41.910 --> 00:06:43.190 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Benefit from that.
00:06:44.890 --> 00:06:54.679 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Alright, so, on to tonight's show. One of the main things that we're going to be discussing with Nikkill is the concept of a value discovery map.
00:06:55.060 --> 00:07:08.860 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And this is what documents the engagement with stakeholders through the entire buying process. So whenever I say stakeholder, I think y'all know this, I mean somebody that has a stake in the decision process.
00:07:08.950 --> 00:07:15.709 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And that can range from high-level executives to people that are implementing, or even in IT.
00:07:15.870 --> 00:07:22.880 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And Nikhil covers the entire buying process journey from awareness all the way through to expansion.
00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:31.079 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: As well as different stakeholder needs, such as functional pains, all the way to key business results for the high-level executives.
00:07:31.270 --> 00:07:39.879 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The thing that is significant here is the importance of uncovering specific value for each stakeholder in the decision process.
00:07:40.330 --> 00:07:44.089 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, to help set the stage for our discussion.
00:07:44.370 --> 00:07:53.709 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I've got some good news and some bad news. So listen up, sales reps, who are trying to help the buyer through their buying journey.
00:07:53.890 --> 00:08:05.739 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And listen up pre-sales who are working to persuade technical and business decision makers. This is going to apply to everybody, and management and sales enablement as well.
00:08:06.340 --> 00:08:09.490 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, first, we'll start with the somewhat good news.
00:08:10.370 --> 00:08:17.379 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Doing discovery, To find out what solution to provide, and allow us to offer a quote?
00:08:17.510 --> 00:08:19.140 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Is the easy part.
00:08:19.610 --> 00:08:22.059 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Let's just call it low-hanging fruit.
00:08:22.420 --> 00:08:25.789 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: When it comes to all the things that we're doing in a sales role.
00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:35.210 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: That's fairly easy. Now, I'm not saying that it's trivial. It still takes the right amount of discovery to determine the correct solution.
00:08:35.330 --> 00:08:46.650 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: We know the drill, you've heard it many times before, no selling or demoing before discovery, right? We've previously discussed this with Jerry Timmis in Episode 8.
00:08:46.710 --> 00:08:56.899 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: with Peter Cohan in Episode 9, and it's a central theme of this show and the book of the same name, Making Seamless Sales.
00:08:57.550 --> 00:09:01.959 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In fact, here's the sad reality. We may…
00:09:02.090 --> 00:09:08.020 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: 100% have the right solution, and the client might even like it. They may love it.
00:09:09.450 --> 00:09:14.960 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: This is often referred to as the much-bandied-about technical win.
00:09:16.100 --> 00:09:20.729 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, I remember many times as a young SE, we'd deliver a well-prepared
00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:34.119 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: kick-butt demo, where the audience was just gasping in awe. And we showed, without a doubt, that we can address the client's requirements for a technology solution that meets their needs.
00:09:34.370 --> 00:09:43.699 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: During the demo, they'd say they'd love it, this is amazing, and all the rest of the wonderful things that were happily ringing in our ears. We'd high-five
00:09:43.920 --> 00:09:46.870 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Because we nailed the demo. And then…
00:09:51.230 --> 00:09:52.630 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Nothing happened.
00:09:54.140 --> 00:09:56.120 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: While the technical win.
00:09:56.330 --> 00:10:05.449 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: May have been achieved, and it's a wonderful step, it's only part of the outcome we need to generate as a seamless sales team.
00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:07.950 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So here's the bad news.
00:10:08.930 --> 00:10:11.880 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The technical win might seem like
00:10:12.050 --> 00:10:15.109 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: We can easily capture low-hanging fruit.
00:10:15.340 --> 00:10:22.799 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And frankly, if you think about it, this is why sales all too often pushes pre-sales to just show a demo.
00:10:23.050 --> 00:10:28.600 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The idea is, is that, you know, they're gonna see the solution, they're gonna like it, they're gonna buy it.
00:10:28.910 --> 00:10:30.510 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: That is not the case.
00:10:30.790 --> 00:10:38.589 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In order to have a bountiful harvest, especially for complex B2B sales, we need to start
00:10:38.730 --> 00:10:52.819 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: by navigating the tree to which it's attached, or the vine, or, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use. But that low-hanging fruit might not be the fruit that's the best for us and for them.
00:10:52.820 --> 00:11:02.079 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And in fact, even if we think we have it nailed, it may not come to fruition. Oh, I just thought of that. That's pretty bad. That's a bad dad joke right there.
00:11:03.640 --> 00:11:20.740 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So the decision process, and uncovering the stakeholders, and all the nuances of the branches and vines that make up them holding onto that supposedly low-hanging fruit is really what we need to focus on. And that's the hard part.
00:11:21.510 --> 00:11:28.169 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: It takes a lot more discovery to determine the buyer's decision process and how to impact it.
00:11:30.310 --> 00:11:35.010 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And we need to do that in order for the buyer to give us the win.
00:11:35.250 --> 00:11:53.039 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Somebody recently just said, we don't generate the win in sales, it's the buyer that gives us the win. So, write it down, and put it somewhere to memorize it, and keep going over it. It takes a lot more discovery to determine the buyer's decision process, and how to impact it for us to give them the win.
00:11:53.460 --> 00:12:00.500 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And it needs to be an opportunity team effort, pre-sales, sales, even customer success working together.
00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:17.979 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, I get into this a lot more in my Seamless Sales book, and in the Sales Opportunity Snapshot methodology. Nikhil's gonna help us today with the value discovery map, as I mentioned. Here's a few things to dig into deeper for complex sales, just to set the stage.
00:12:18.230 --> 00:12:26.550 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, for example, Beyond the technical win, what is the competitive landscape, including do-nothing?
00:12:27.010 --> 00:12:29.919 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And what is our strategy to counteract it?
00:12:30.160 --> 00:12:34.640 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: We are not the only ones shaking the branches to see what falls out.
00:12:35.390 --> 00:12:43.750 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Who are the key decision makers and influencers with the myriad perceptions regarding total cost of ownership, risk of moving forward?
00:12:43.910 --> 00:12:47.000 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Weighing that against the value that they perceive.
00:12:48.380 --> 00:12:55.880 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: How about development of a financially sound value proposition, which means we need to qualify and quantify the value
00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:02.010 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: in order to pass muster with the financial analysts, including potentially the CFO.
00:13:02.770 --> 00:13:06.620 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Understanding the impact of the flow of influence.
00:13:06.810 --> 00:13:16.679 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Nominally, the decision maker not only says they like what they saw, but that they have selected us at the exclusion of the alternatives.
00:13:16.700 --> 00:13:25.840 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: By the way, this is in the book, it's called Technical Close. It goes beyond technical win. They've selected us at the exclusion of the alternatives, including do nothing.
00:13:25.840 --> 00:13:37.900 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: and they're recommending us to the business decision maker, and they both agree on how it will help with the business decision maker's outcomes and goals. That's what I call technical close leading to business close.
00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:49.820 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So these are the factors that make or break the deal, that reduce friction in the buying process, and allow us to turn the sales funnel into a sales pipeline, increasing win rate.
00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:51.340 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: and revenues.
00:13:51.550 --> 00:13:56.159 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Showing the solution is merely… Hope as a strategy.
00:13:56.510 --> 00:14:05.880 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: This is so important that 3 of the 9 criteria in the Sales Opportunity Snapshot, one whole segment, is dedicated to the client's decision process.
00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:08.170 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Criteria number 7 is.
00:14:08.950 --> 00:14:24.370 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: the ability for us to impact the decision process. Number 8 is finding and leveraging an executive with credibility and support. And number 9, which we talked about on episode 2 with Steve Bistreitz, was about the relevant executive.
00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:31.930 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, just before we come up to the break here, I just want to say many methodologies give lip service to the buying process.
00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:51.969 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Some have a simple checkbox, such as economic buyer, but if you ask 5 different people, they'll have 5 different definitions of that, because it wraps up too many attributes in one. What's their paper process? What's their decision process? Some of you might even be creating a chart of key stakeholders and assigning things like champion or mobilizer.
00:14:52.690 --> 00:15:04.289 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In the methodology, we discover, document, and track the criteria for making sure we know the decision process. And that's what you're gonna see right after the break, as we explore Nikhil's
00:15:04.420 --> 00:15:16.830 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Value discovery map, which does an excellent job of determining what stakeholders perceive as value. The bottom line? Discovery that only undercovers the technical solution is not going to win.
00:15:17.350 --> 00:15:26.159 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: we want to make sure that we understand the decision process as well. So we're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll dig into this with Nikhil. See you back in a couple minutes.
00:17:38.950 --> 00:17:42.179 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I'd like to introduce to you Nikhil Sarma.
00:17:42.470 --> 00:17:45.410 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, Nikhil, welcome to the show.
00:17:46.040 --> 00:17:56.450 Nikhil Sarma: Thank you, Art. Hello. It's an honor to be here. I've had such wonderful conversations with you over the past several months, and I loved reading your book.
00:17:56.780 --> 00:18:13.990 Nikhil Sarma: This is… and everything that you said in the introduction, that holds so true. I, you know, I was kind of behind the scenes over here, but cheering on with every word that you said. So, yeah, definitely of the same mind over here.
00:18:14.110 --> 00:18:32.199 Nikhil Sarma: Hello to everyone who's listening. My name's Nikhail Sarma. I run a company called GTM Solutions Consulting. I primarily work with pre-sales and sales teams, frontline teams, and I coach them on the fundamentals of buyer enablement.
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:43.789 Nikhil Sarma: So, what does that mean? That means really taking the buyer's perspective, really understanding why do they need to change, why do they need to do anything different from what they're doing today.
00:18:43.970 --> 00:19:02.209 Nikhil Sarma: How do they build a business narrative, a value narrative, and how do they take that and help drive decisions internally? And that is the job of everyone who's in sales, whether your title is an AE, or an SE, or CS, or even an SDR.
00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:22.439 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Absolutely, and by the way, so just a little bit more background, too, because Nikhil has 20 years building and selling cutting-edge technology, so he's been around the block a few times, from billion-dollar companies like Dolby, to scale-ups and startups like Optimizely, Lofelt, which was acquired by Meta, which is really cool, and Contentful.
00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:35.190 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, there's, there's experience here in terms of what you're doing. What, just briefly describe then, in terms of… let's, let's talk about the value discovery map that you've implemented.
00:19:35.190 --> 00:19:50.470 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And the key thing to the Value Discover map is the why, the what, and the how. So, tell us, you know, how did you land on that, and give us a quick introduction to those three elements, which we're going to dig into deeper here in the next… this section, the next segment.
00:19:50.470 --> 00:19:51.130 Nikhil Sarma: Sure.
00:19:51.350 --> 00:20:00.860 Nikhil Sarma: So, as Simon Sinek says, let's start with the why, right? And here's a simple exercise for anyone who's listening, right? I'll ask you 3 questions.
00:20:01.380 --> 00:20:03.010 Nikhil Sarma: One, if…
00:20:03.170 --> 00:20:12.479 Nikhil Sarma: You know, do you… do you sometimes struggle to articulate why your customer needs to do anything differently from what they're doing today?
00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:16.439 Nikhil Sarma: Let alone why they need to buy your software.
00:20:16.740 --> 00:20:17.450 Nikhil Sarma: Right?
00:20:17.760 --> 00:20:22.420 Nikhil Sarma: The second question is, do you sometimes, or do you or your team
00:20:23.010 --> 00:20:34.260 Nikhil Sarma: do demo after demo, spend 6 to 12 months selling software, running POCs, you know, working through an RFP, only to have the deal stall.
00:20:35.110 --> 00:20:44.579 Nikhil Sarma: And the third question is, as a leader, do you… do you skip forecast after forecast? I mean, do you find that really difficult?
00:20:44.910 --> 00:20:51.009 Nikhil Sarma: Now, if you've answered yes to any of these three questions, maybe one or more of them.
00:20:51.300 --> 00:20:55.690 Nikhil Sarma: Then you or your team are having a really hard time figuring out the why.
00:20:56.110 --> 00:21:15.719 Nikhil Sarma: Why should this company change? Why should this company invest time, effort, money in handling, in managing a change management project, ultimately? That's what any change is, right? And why would you… you know, so…
00:21:16.030 --> 00:21:21.030 Nikhil Sarma: why would they… why should they do anything about that now, right? So…
00:21:21.380 --> 00:21:30.500 Nikhil Sarma: These are fundamental questions that any company, needs to answer, right? And if we don't understand the why.
00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:36.070 Nikhil Sarma: then we are going to be in trouble. This is kind of… this is where we see deals stall.
00:21:36.420 --> 00:21:42.469 Nikhil Sarma: So, the value discovery map Basically, it provides 3 insights.
00:21:42.590 --> 00:21:49.480 Nikhil Sarma: Right? Why does something, you know, what is the strategic reason to change? That is the why.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:22:05.519 Nikhil Sarma: what is the next level? So, for the affected departments, what does that actually mean in terms of the metrics that they are responsible to deliver to the business? So these typically take the form of KPIs.
00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:13.519 Nikhil Sarma: And then, at the operational level, how is the new world going to operationally look different from what they do today?
00:22:14.250 --> 00:22:14.800 Nikhil Sarma: Right.
00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:27.319 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Yeah, and I was just gonna say, just to go back to what you initially said, if we can't even articulate that, how can we even expect them to understand that? So it sounds like what the value map is doing is.
00:22:27.320 --> 00:22:40.490 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Allowing us to explore what we think that they should know, and then allows us to do that for them. I just wanted to get that in, because I was like, yeah, if I don't even know why, how can I get them to feel compelled to do something different?
00:22:40.930 --> 00:22:48.920 Nikhil Sarma: Yes, and that's exactly the reason. A lot of people… a lot of people that we speak to, especially the initial stage of the deal.
00:22:49.350 --> 00:22:58.500 Nikhil Sarma: They have a burning problem. They may have a burning problem in their department, and they have an idea of what they would like to see
00:22:58.700 --> 00:22:59.920 Nikhil Sarma: be different.
00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:07.539 Nikhil Sarma: But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be able to articulate that to their CEO, or to their CFO.
00:23:07.810 --> 00:23:11.100 Nikhil Sarma: And ultimately, for a purchasing decision to happen.
00:23:12.910 --> 00:23:16.470 Nikhil Sarma: When a company decides to spend money on something.
00:23:16.870 --> 00:23:22.689 Nikhil Sarma: They are going to have to ensure that it aligns to their business priorities for the year, or for the short term.
00:23:22.860 --> 00:23:28.699 Nikhil Sarma: Right? So, every company has a thousand problems at any given point of time.
00:23:28.850 --> 00:23:36.490 Nikhil Sarma: There are a lot of competing interests. So, it's essential for us when we spend our time, effort, and money
00:23:36.790 --> 00:23:46.790 Nikhil Sarma: working with prospects. We help… help them understand how they are going to benefit, and that is where that term business outcome
00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:53.090 Nikhil Sarma: comes from. And that is why we say, focus on the business outcomes and not on the features.
00:23:53.090 --> 00:24:00.969 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Right. Because, I mean, businesses are having, you know, putting up with problems all the time. There's things that aren't…
00:24:01.030 --> 00:24:20.310 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: the way that they'd like it to be, but they work around it. They throw people at it, or they just put up with it, or they don't even know that there's a possibility that something else could be done. And one of the things we've talked about a lot, you know, on the show, and you and I have talked about, is the idea of a compelling reason for change. Well, that's the why. That's the…
00:24:20.940 --> 00:24:39.440 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: what are they going to do in the absence of that? So, what happens when SDRs, AEs, AMs think they've done discovery? And again, I think, you know, now we're into the deep discovery, right? Not the surface level, like I was talking about before. That's needed for the solution, but the deeper level.
00:24:39.650 --> 00:24:45.750 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: what happens when they think they've done discovery using a framework like BANT or Med-Medic.
00:24:46.030 --> 00:24:50.029 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: But they've missed the true why. How does that impact the opportunity?
00:24:50.280 --> 00:24:50.970 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah.
00:24:51.410 --> 00:24:54.769 Nikhil Sarma: Let me backtrack a little bit over here. So…
00:24:55.240 --> 00:25:01.569 Nikhil Sarma: The why, what, and the how, they map really nicely to how most companies are actually structured.
00:25:01.900 --> 00:25:05.300 Nikhil Sarma: So, the Y maps very well to
00:25:05.450 --> 00:25:11.619 Nikhil Sarma: C-levels and senior executives in a company. That is where the decision-making power lies.
00:25:12.220 --> 00:25:21.309 Nikhil Sarma: The what, which is really the KPIs, you know, what is each department? So take a marketing department, or a logistics department, an operations department.
00:25:21.570 --> 00:25:39.770 Nikhil Sarma: what are they responsible for delivering? That typically tends to be a managerial level. So, managers could be anyone carrying a title from a manager all the way to maybe a VP in a large organization, or even in an SVP, you know, large, very global organization.
00:25:40.790 --> 00:25:49.369 Nikhil Sarma: And then you have the operational people who are really focused on the how. So when you map these three things, when you map the why.
00:25:49.560 --> 00:25:55.460 Nikhil Sarma: the what and the how to these three levels, then you have a strong understanding of
00:25:55.660 --> 00:26:00.990 Nikhil Sarma: You know, of how a decision that affects the operational level
00:26:01.930 --> 00:26:09.139 Nikhil Sarma: You know, it cascades up into what, how… into a business outcome for the company.
00:26:09.330 --> 00:26:11.960 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, when you don't understand the why.
00:26:12.380 --> 00:26:21.859 Nikhil Sarma: then a few things happen. So basically, what you're unable to connect is why should a C-level executive
00:26:22.150 --> 00:26:24.219 Nikhil Sarma: Greenlight a particular project.
00:26:24.630 --> 00:26:30.670 Nikhil Sarma: So, now, you've been working, let's say, for 6 to 8 months, or 9 months on a specific opportunity.
00:26:31.060 --> 00:26:38.039 Nikhil Sarma: There are three possible outcomes. One is your deal stalls. You don't know where it's going, so you've been doing…
00:26:38.430 --> 00:26:52.069 Nikhil Sarma: you know, you've been doing demo after demo, you think, you know, you're hearing really good things from a person that you have anointed your champion, right? But nothing is actually happening, you're up isn't moving forward.
00:26:52.440 --> 00:26:56.259 Nikhil Sarma: Option number two, There is value erosion.
00:26:56.410 --> 00:27:06.980 Nikhil Sarma: So this is where I see 300K opportunities. So, you know, you talk to your champion, you say, this is the scope of my opportunities, 300K, and then…
00:27:07.180 --> 00:27:23.700 Nikhil Sarma: you know, there is… there is risk. There is a perception of risk. People don't know exactly what to do, you know, if something were to go wrong, they don't know how to handle the change. So now that $300K opportunity becomes a $100K opportunity, because
00:27:23.700 --> 00:27:31.679 Nikhil Sarma: your so-called champion says, you know what, let's start small. Let's make this, instead of a global rollout, let's make this a regional pilot.
00:27:32.050 --> 00:27:42.179 Nikhil Sarma: So that's become 300 to 100K. And then you speak to procurement, and no one is able to defend the value of this project to procurement, so that $100K becomes 75K.
00:27:42.500 --> 00:27:51.759 Nikhil Sarma: So you've taken a $300K opportunity in your forecast, it's closed at 75K. Now, you might say, I've got a foot in the door.
00:27:51.760 --> 00:27:52.630 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: But…
00:27:52.810 --> 00:28:02.599 Nikhil Sarma: Could you… could you have got a much larger, you know, gap over there? Could you have… could you have had a larger footprint in that organization? Possibly, yes.
00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:16.080 Nikhil Sarma: So we've talked about potentially losing the op, or stalling, or closing at a much smaller value. The third opportunity, or the third option over here, sorry, is that you just lose the deal.
00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:21.279 Nikhil Sarma: And you'll lose the deal to two potential options. One, you lose the deal to…
00:28:21.620 --> 00:28:23.209 Nikhil Sarma: You know, the status quo.
00:28:23.360 --> 00:28:30.619 Nikhil Sarma: Right? What John Kelly calls do-nothing Incorporated, right? That is a… that's a very,
00:28:30.750 --> 00:28:40.019 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah, important thing. And the other option is that you are not a… you've lost it to a competitor who's bending over backwards.
00:28:40.430 --> 00:28:42.789 Nikhil Sarma: Or, you know, to do to get that logo.
00:28:42.990 --> 00:28:57.620 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Right, exactly. Yeah, and you mentioned a bunch of key things there, just before we go to the break, and then when we come back, we'll talk about what to do about it, but the perception of risk and the fact that, this can tip the scale the wrong direction.
00:28:57.620 --> 00:29:13.719 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: You know, as I showed in the book, you know, that is huge, and then the risk is different at each level, too. Sometimes it's personal risk, sometimes it's business risk, risk of picking the right solution. There's a lot to be said there. And those deeper levels of discovery and the value map
00:29:13.770 --> 00:29:28.649 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The value discovery map can help us uncover the things that would say, here's some risk, let's manage the perception of risk, so the scale tips in our favor. We're lightening the load of the risk that would tend to tip it against us. Excellent.
00:29:28.650 --> 00:29:34.069 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: When we come back, we'll talk more about, okay, so what is the solution? How does the map help?
00:29:34.190 --> 00:29:37.529 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Beyond just what the customer wants. We'll be right back.
00:31:41.490 --> 00:31:53.460 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Welcome back, everybody, and again, we're talking with Nikhil Sarma, and we were discussing before the break the, concerns about… well, first of all, what is the…
00:31:53.590 --> 00:31:58.010 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The what… The how and the Why?
00:31:58.280 --> 00:32:13.319 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And then the concerns if we don't know that. So what I want to talk about right now is, Nikhil, is how does the value discovery map help sales and pre-sales move beyond just what the customer needs to also uncover the why?
00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:16.929 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And then how they'll use the solution to generate business value.
00:32:17.530 --> 00:32:25.480 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah. So I think the fundamental thing is a buyer enablement mindset is… is…
00:32:25.630 --> 00:32:34.879 Nikhil Sarma: is primarily an empathetic approach, right? What… we have stakeholders at these three levels. What do we need to give them to
00:32:35.110 --> 00:32:38.300 Nikhil Sarma: To move forward, to drive action.
00:32:38.620 --> 00:32:42.880 Nikhil Sarma: Okay, so, we know operational people
00:32:43.190 --> 00:32:47.450 Nikhil Sarma: They are focused on getting things done more efficiently.
00:32:47.630 --> 00:32:56.280 Nikhil Sarma: Managers care about efficiency of resources, right? The team, the money that they have at their disposal, and
00:32:56.670 --> 00:33:06.850 Nikhil Sarma: at the C-levels are really thinking about efficiency at a company level. So, how are they competing better? How are they operating better? How are they managing costs better?
00:33:07.170 --> 00:33:08.110 Nikhil Sarma: So…
00:33:08.230 --> 00:33:15.559 Nikhil Sarma: Discovery… this process of discovery is, as you said in the intro, it is not only about, you know.
00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:28.499 Nikhil Sarma: What features do they require? And, you know, how can we get a little bit of rudimentary information so that we can say, this is going to help you do something a little bit faster or a little bit better?
00:33:28.840 --> 00:33:35.370 Nikhil Sarma: Discovery is really about what each of these stakeholders discovers about their own organization.
00:33:36.750 --> 00:33:41.170 Nikhil Sarma: There, again, there are competing interests at any given point of time.
00:33:41.320 --> 00:33:49.759 Nikhil Sarma: And… We live in a very, very volatile time at the moment. Economically, there is a lot of uncertainty.
00:33:50.350 --> 00:33:54.160 Nikhil Sarma: There's… So… so…
00:33:54.460 --> 00:34:02.779 Nikhil Sarma: At a time when, you know, when there is so much uncertainty in the markets and in the employment space.
00:34:02.890 --> 00:34:12.419 Nikhil Sarma: Let's spare a little bit of thought for our buyers, you know? It's very hard today to stick your hand up and say, look, I think we should be doing something differently.
00:34:13.420 --> 00:34:30.039 Nikhil Sarma: And Gartner has some really good research on this. So, 74% of buying committees exhibit an unhealthy level of conflict in… when they're making a decision. What does this mean? This has nothing to do with a specific vendor.
00:34:31.150 --> 00:34:35.369 Nikhil Sarma: This conflict is about, are they even… are they even solving the right…
00:34:35.750 --> 00:34:42.059 Nikhil Sarma: problem. Is this the time to be solving that problem? So the value discovery map basically
00:34:42.179 --> 00:34:51.789 Nikhil Sarma: helps AEs and SEs figure out, okay, I'm speaking to someone in, say, the marketing department.
00:34:52.040 --> 00:34:54.440 Nikhil Sarma: What is going on in the technical team?
00:34:54.590 --> 00:34:59.520 Nikhil Sarma: What is going on at a level about the person that we are speaking with?
00:34:59.670 --> 00:35:16.119 Nikhil Sarma: And how do we connect to their… to… to their interests? And these… these interests are expressed, values expressed for them in different ways. Values expressed at the operational level in terms of time, at the managerial level in terms of
00:35:16.240 --> 00:35:22.689 Nikhil Sarma: resources, that is, the teams that are involved, and at a C-level in terms of money.
00:35:22.820 --> 00:35:30.090 Nikhil Sarma: So, when you start to build this map out, you have an understanding of where the risk lies.
00:35:30.280 --> 00:35:39.969 Nikhil Sarma: And where the opportunity lies for this company. And that helps us, when we connect these three levels, build a value narrative.
00:35:41.570 --> 00:35:42.290 Nikhil Sarma: Yep.
00:35:42.590 --> 00:35:54.750 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, you, and this is… this is why I wanted to have you on here, is that you coach sales and pre-sales together, rather than in silos, and you just mentioned about the confusion about the buyer committee alone.
00:35:54.790 --> 00:36:10.349 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And then if they've got different things coming from different people. So, how does that joint approach help with teams identifying the gaps, and then making sure that when they walk into a critical meeting, they are helping with buyer enablement and moving that forward?
00:36:10.900 --> 00:36:20.720 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah, I think one of the most frustrating experiences that I ever had was sitting at SKO, knowing that the AEs were all in the room next door.
00:36:20.990 --> 00:36:24.820 Nikhil Sarma: And, you know, they were being trained on discovery, and all of our…
00:36:24.820 --> 00:36:27.449 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: If you're even at SKL.
00:36:27.450 --> 00:36:27.970 Nikhil Sarma: Yes, exactly.
00:36:27.970 --> 00:36:39.290 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I mean, at least, apparently, with that company, you as an SE were there, but yes, now the sales are in the other room. What are they doing, or why are we here? Please. Exactly. I'm… yeah, I'm reliving…
00:36:39.290 --> 00:36:40.610 Nikhil Sarma: this with you.
00:36:40.610 --> 00:37:03.160 Nikhil Sarma: And I see that a lot in trainings as well, so it's AEs being trained separately from SEs. And I think what happens is that we don't… we're unable to strategize together, and this is what leads to a lot of finger-pointing, because we all… we are made to live in silos, even if the corporate messaging is that we want to break these silos down.
00:37:03.160 --> 00:37:12.050 Nikhil Sarma: the way training is done is in silos. So, when I speak to CROs and VPs of enablement, for example.
00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:24.940 Nikhil Sarma: I always encourage them to train their AEs and SEs together. It helps them strategize better, it helps them communicate better, it helps them lead with the customer's best interest at heart.
00:37:24.940 --> 00:37:38.600 Nikhil Sarma: Right? And that is the fundamental shift that we see. It's very hard for A's and SEs, many of whom have actually never sold or never worked with the technologies that they sell.
00:37:38.970 --> 00:37:43.319 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Yeah. To then put themselves in the shoes of their customers.
00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:53.099 Nikhil Sarma: And understand, you know, what is going on. And you don't have to do all the hard work. I think the most important thing is the curiosity.
00:37:53.410 --> 00:37:55.029 Nikhil Sarma: To really understand
00:37:55.290 --> 00:38:03.870 Nikhil Sarma: you put yourself in their shoes, and say, okay, what do I… what do I, as the buyer, need
00:38:04.080 --> 00:38:08.900 Nikhil Sarma: To have the confidence to go to my CFO and ask for money.
00:38:09.170 --> 00:38:10.880 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Right.
00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:18.679 Nikhil Sarma: And… yeah. And it's not yet another feature, it's not a slick demo, that's not… none of that is going to help you.
00:38:18.870 --> 00:38:23.509 Nikhil Sarma: All those things are important, they're necessary, but they're not a sufficient condition.
00:38:23.710 --> 00:38:26.220 Nikhil Sarma: For you to move your deal forward.
00:38:26.500 --> 00:38:33.489 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Yeah, they're part of the means to the end, but the end is client success, and it's about what it does for them.
00:38:33.630 --> 00:38:35.540 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And…
00:38:35.540 --> 00:38:41.609 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah, and so the evidence I see is that I see AEs and SEs qualifying better.
00:38:41.790 --> 00:38:57.440 Nikhil Sarma: They're executing better, and they're able to forecast better. I think that is the key thing. So, I, you know, I recently ran a Q4 forecast for one of the clients that I'm working with. I joined one of their Q4 forecasts, and they were…
00:38:57.660 --> 00:39:01.900 Nikhil Sarma: They're speaking this language, so they have a good sense now of
00:39:02.130 --> 00:39:07.780 Nikhil Sarma: how, you know, what they need to do to close their opportunities in Q4.
00:39:07.900 --> 00:39:18.340 Nikhil Sarma: Because they're… they understand what the executive priorities of this company, of the prospects they're selling to, what that executive priority is.
00:39:18.670 --> 00:39:24.119 Nikhil Sarma: Where previously, they were just focused on, what does the head of technology need from me?
00:39:25.230 --> 00:39:34.799 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Yeah, and that can only go so far, because now we're… we're relying on that person to try to sell it internally, and we're also relying on… you went… you talked earlier about Champion.
00:39:34.850 --> 00:39:45.909 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Sometimes we get hooked into somebody that thinks that they're championing our cause, when it turns out they're really just the person that happens to be most involved, and there might not even be a project there.
00:39:46.060 --> 00:39:48.509 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, I like the idea about
00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:56.110 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: As sales and pre-sales working together, In a… as a team, on an opportunity.
00:39:56.250 --> 00:40:02.280 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: and the ability to traverse the entire, what I would call the needs pyramid, that's how I showed in the book.
00:40:02.360 --> 00:40:21.680 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: of from high level down to the lower levels. And yes, you know, is the SE always calling on C-level? No, not necessarily. Should they know what the C-level wants? Absolutely. Same thing for sales. Is the salesperson doing the demo and putting together the features and functions and how it…
00:40:21.900 --> 00:40:40.480 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: provides business outcomes, not necessarily. They don't need that level, but they should know how to connect it up to the higher level. So what you're saying, and, you know, studies prove this out, is that working together like that allows us to see things even the client can't see themselves. I think there's tremendous value in that.
00:40:40.560 --> 00:40:44.769 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, when… when you've seen, you know, the…
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:54.650 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Specific internal and customer-facing outcomes that you've experienced when teams are focused on the buyer's needs.
00:40:54.650 --> 00:41:13.199 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: You know, what are those outcomes… what does that look like? What does it do for them? You know, we're talking about us as far as increasing win rate and all that, totally makes sense. How about for them, and maybe even go back to the idea of the perception of risk and being afraid of raising their hand? How can that help them through that?
00:41:14.610 --> 00:41:31.050 Nikhil Sarma: I think… so what this does for them is, first of all, you're going to identify one or two people who could be potential champions. I love the term mobilizer from the challenger sale, that is really who I would want to see, but even if you have someone who really…
00:41:31.220 --> 00:41:34.080 Nikhil Sarma: You know, who's championing your cause over there?
00:41:34.310 --> 00:41:38.970 Nikhil Sarma: How are you equipping them to go and sell when you're not in the room?
00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:41.790 Nikhil Sarma: That is 80% of the sale today.
00:41:41.960 --> 00:41:49.920 Nikhil Sarma: Right? And how are you de-risking this for them? How are you allowing… how are you enabling them to see the potential
00:41:50.300 --> 00:41:53.379 Nikhil Sarma: Risk. There is always risk in every single project.
00:41:54.060 --> 00:42:07.729 Nikhil Sarma: And so, this is also where we bring in our professional services teams, or a partner, for example, to talk to them about, you know, here is how… here is your path to success.
00:42:08.060 --> 00:42:19.650 Nikhil Sarma: So, from the recordings that I see of customers, when AEs and SEs approach it, you know, in this value discovery method.
00:42:20.250 --> 00:42:32.569 Nikhil Sarma: I see their prospects leaning in. I see them co-creating these value discovery maps. I see them co-creating a narrative that they feel confident to take to their bosses, right?
00:42:32.710 --> 00:42:35.290 Nikhil Sarma: And… If you…
00:42:35.300 --> 00:42:55.290 Nikhil Sarma: you're very likely going to have two or three competitors towards the end of any opportunity. How are you going to stick… how are you going to stick out in the sales process when there's feature parity? And one of the ways you do this is by showing up in a different way, showing up in a way that is empathetic.
00:42:55.350 --> 00:43:07.910 Nikhil Sarma: And also allows them to identify the risks, and you do this really beautifully in your book. You know, I would highly recommend people read your book, and specifically Chapter 7,
00:43:07.950 --> 00:43:17.839 Nikhil Sarma: Where you talk about how risk and TCO can sometimes, you know, tip the scales away from you, even if you show
00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:28.400 Nikhil Sarma: when you've been successful in showing value through your demos or through your stories, right? So, that is the fundamental way, I would say.
00:43:29.180 --> 00:43:38.050 Nikhil Sarma: AEs and SEs, you know, can, by using this approach, help help your…
00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:44.049 Nikhil Sarma: Contacts and your champions at your, at the company sell internally?
00:43:44.050 --> 00:44:03.180 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Yeah, and then they look like a hero, and then they can often get resources that they weren't able to get, because they're selling internally, and at a highest level, they're not thinking about you versus your competitors, they're thinking about other projects entirely, and so internal stakeholders oftentimes have troubles selling upward.
00:44:03.240 --> 00:44:20.129 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: This has been excellent. Just in concluding here, final remark, and then how is the best way to contact you? And by the way, everybody, all this is going to be in the show notes and everything as well, so you can check that out. But, final remarks before I say thank you and we sign off on this segment.
00:44:20.450 --> 00:44:24.189 Nikhil Sarma: Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity, Art, and yeah.
00:44:25.500 --> 00:44:43.110 Nikhil Sarma: please… here's… you know, if you're listening to this before the end of Q4, and you've got your opportunities, keep this one thing in mind. You know, do you know how you're connecting to the CEO's priorities, or the board's priorities, at the prospect that you're selling to?
00:44:43.130 --> 00:44:50.210 Nikhil Sarma: If you don't have a clear view on that, if you don't have a clear understanding, then your deal is at risk.
00:44:50.210 --> 00:45:05.719 Nikhil Sarma: Thank you so much, my name is Nikhil. The best way to contact me is via LinkedIn, it's Nikhil Sarma, and you can also check out my website, it's gtmsolutions.co, not .com.co.
00:45:05.730 --> 00:45:06.820 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: C-O-R.
00:45:06.820 --> 00:45:07.650 Nikhil Sarma: Thank you so much.
00:45:07.650 --> 00:45:24.830 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Thank you so much, appreciate it, and everybody check it out, and this is another aspect of how you can improve, as Nikhil said, you versus your other people that, you know, other competitors. You will stand out when you use these methods. Thank you so much.
00:46:34.630 --> 00:46:44.079 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Alright, everybody, welcome back, and again, thanks so much to Nikhil for sharing his insights about the Discovery Value Map.
00:46:44.470 --> 00:47:03.700 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In this final segment, I do something that I call Dear Artie, which is patterned after the Dear Abby column, where Dear Abby would do advice for people's life solution, you know, life situations and challenges, and so I'm offering this up as a segment.
00:47:04.050 --> 00:47:18.159 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: that can address sales challenges and situations. You are welcome to, input into the chat any of your ideas, and then also go to Teamsalesdevelopment.com on the contact page.
00:47:18.180 --> 00:47:37.059 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: There's a form that you can fill out and submit your questions. I've pulled some questions from previous that are pertaining to this particular show, and I want to share those with you over the next few minutes and see if you can see yourself in these questions. So, the first question is, hi Art, I'm a pre-sales engineer.
00:47:37.140 --> 00:47:51.530 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: I'm getting thrown into demos where the AE says they've done discovery, but when I start presenting, it's clear we don't really understand what the customer cares about. Now, by the way, as an aside here, everybody, this is sort of a broken record over and over again.
00:47:51.530 --> 00:48:08.779 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: However, I think it's worth revisiting, because every time we talk about this, it all goes back to discovery. It's got to go back to discovery. So anyway, they go on to say, the customer seems confused or disengaged. How do you hand… how do I handle this without throwing my AE under the bus?
00:48:09.290 --> 00:48:26.369 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, this is definitely one of the most common challenges I hear about. It's why I wrote the book. That's a big part of it. Jerry and I talked about this back on episode 8, where, you know, he wanted to do this, and I was the SE manager at the time, and we pushed back.
00:48:26.500 --> 00:48:31.739 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So… What I believe is going on here is that the AE…
00:48:32.010 --> 00:48:37.009 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: or maybe the SDR, BDR, whoever was involved prior to you getting involved.
00:48:37.160 --> 00:48:40.690 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Likely did what they thought was qualification.
00:48:40.900 --> 00:48:53.509 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: They checked the box of Bant, Medic, or whatever it was that they're using, but they didn't do the true discovery that we've been talking about today. They didn't discover the why, the next level.
00:48:53.650 --> 00:48:58.560 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The deeper things about the decision process.
00:48:58.730 --> 00:49:02.729 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, before your next demo, I would just recommend
00:49:02.870 --> 00:49:16.969 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: once again, ask your AE very simply, and you're not double-checking them, you're not questioning them in terms of, did they do their job, but for your own sake, to understand what's going on, what business outcome is the customer trying to achieve?
00:49:17.260 --> 00:49:22.369 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And what happens if they don't solve this problem? That's the why that Nikhil was talking about.
00:49:22.480 --> 00:49:24.909 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Why should they do anything?
00:49:25.060 --> 00:49:35.330 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And the salesperson should be able to articulate that. Even if it's only a theory, even if it's, well, it's probably because of this, but for me, that's insufficient.
00:49:35.590 --> 00:49:42.350 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: At least if you could have a discussion with your salesperson about what is the reason, and then we can clarify that
00:49:42.990 --> 00:49:45.370 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Confirm that, quantify that.
00:49:45.510 --> 00:49:52.800 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, my team… what we used to do is, if the salesperson can't answer you clearly.
00:49:53.210 --> 00:49:55.799 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Then, we need to do more discovery.
00:49:56.200 --> 00:50:12.829 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And what my team and I used to do was we would do, if we didn't have enough information, we would just ask… and these are on some bigger deals, so if you're… if you're doing, you know, every half hour you're trying to do a demo, you're gonna need to refine this a little bit and see if you can turn it around quicker.
00:50:12.980 --> 00:50:14.659 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: In the course of a call.
00:50:14.780 --> 00:50:19.169 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: What we used to do was, we did it under the guise of a prep call.
00:50:19.480 --> 00:50:30.010 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And what we did was we just said, well, do you mind if we just talk to the customer to go over some logistics for the demo? And what we really did was turn that into discovery. So we were doing some discovery.
00:50:30.340 --> 00:50:38.610 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And I also want you, everybody, to remember my mantra, which is, help me to help you. So why would the salesperson let you do that?
00:50:38.840 --> 00:50:43.749 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Or why would the salesperson feel like they should dig deeper? It's because
00:50:44.110 --> 00:50:52.760 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: If you're in pre-sales, the job is to help sales. Sales, pre-sales is there to help you. This is a team sport. That's why
00:50:52.970 --> 00:50:57.990 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Five years ago, I renamed my company from Technical Sales Development.
00:50:58.250 --> 00:51:03.870 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Which is still true, because it's a technical sale, but I wanted to specifically focus on the team.
00:51:04.640 --> 00:51:06.190 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Team sales development.
00:51:06.370 --> 00:51:19.069 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, sales, you could benefit from pre-sales. Pre-sales, you can sell sales on how you help them. So, it's a help me to help you. We are all trying to help the client. We're trying to achieve client satisfaction.
00:51:19.200 --> 00:51:21.169 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And it has to start at hello.
00:51:21.220 --> 00:51:33.850 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, sometimes we need to sell our sales counterpart on the need for proper discovery. And again, I think some of you heard this before, maybe this is the first time you're tuning in. I have an article about what I call selling discovery.
00:51:33.850 --> 00:51:44.710 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And that means selling to your salesperson why discovery's important. For sales, it's for you to help sell the customer on why discovery's important, because they will often try and shortcut you.
00:51:45.060 --> 00:51:53.100 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: best to do discovery properly, and if it's not a fit, eliminate it at the beginning of the process. Now you can all move on to more productive things.
00:51:54.330 --> 00:51:58.529 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, why is this important? Because this disconnect is what's killing deals.
00:51:58.680 --> 00:52:14.510 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: It's almost so simple, I can't believe that it isn't being addressed. As the consensus SE survey shows year after year after year, when pre-sales engineers inherit poorly qualified opportunities, which was at least 50% is what the survey showed.
00:52:14.820 --> 00:52:19.500 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: They're forced to guess at what matters to the buyer. They're forced to guess at the why.
00:52:19.820 --> 00:52:30.089 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And we may have our own opinion of the why. Like Nikhil said, if you don't even know what the why is, how can we possibly help convey that to the client, or get them to understand their why?
00:52:30.200 --> 00:52:35.930 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, these studies show that when teams communicate and work together, compared to those who don't.
00:52:36.070 --> 00:52:41.229 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: There's a 30%… 37% difference in the sales results.
00:52:41.770 --> 00:53:01.170 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And that's just left on the table for the taking. Otherwise, we wind up with generic demos that don't resonate, longer sales cycles, and frustrated customers, and that's the last thing we want. It's bad enough if we've got friction in our process, but what we really don't want is for the client to feel the effect of that.
00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:08.869 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So those are a few ideas, again, reinforcing this concept of don't show or sell before discovery.
00:53:09.070 --> 00:53:12.240 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Don't prescribe before doing diagnosis.
00:53:13.470 --> 00:53:29.139 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, a similar question came in regarding the competing messages confusing buyers, and this is what Nikhil and I were talking about in terms of the team working together up and down that hierarchy, and across the entire buying process.
00:53:29.500 --> 00:53:32.430 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So we have a unified amount of information.
00:53:32.470 --> 00:53:47.660 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: This is coming from an account manager, account executive. He says, or she says, I'm not sure which, honestly. I'm an account executive, I'm seeing buyers get confused because they're hearing different things from me, my SE, and even the customer success team.
00:53:47.660 --> 00:54:01.009 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: The buyer mentioned that they're getting mixed signals, which is pretty amazing that they brought that up. It's a good sign that they did. Apparently, they really wanted to work with you. That doesn't always happen. Usually, they just quietly disappear, or they make you do a bunch of work.
00:54:01.010 --> 00:54:08.570 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: That you can't address, and now, you know, you've wasted all this time. So, how do we fix this when we're all trying to help?
00:54:09.820 --> 00:54:26.000 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, you've hit on what I would refer to as an anamorphic art problem. Is everybody familiar with anamorphic art? This is where, when you look at it one direction, and actually, Garen Hess mentioned this in one of his, discussions about buyer enablement.
00:54:26.090 --> 00:54:45.910 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: It's where you look at a piece of artwork from one perspective, and maybe it looks like an elephant, but when you turn it the other direction, it might look like a sunset. So literally, it's the same physical thing, but depending on which angle you look at it, it looks different. You could think of it as facets of a diamond, or any other analogy that you'd like.
00:54:46.030 --> 00:54:52.080 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Different stakeholders in your organization are seeing the same deal from different perspectives.
00:54:52.330 --> 00:54:56.640 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: And we do have a unique perspective, because we are seeing the big picture.
00:54:56.960 --> 00:55:05.010 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Oftentimes, the stakeholders are only seeing part of it. To them, they only see an elephant, or to other stakeholders, they only see the sunset.
00:55:05.010 --> 00:55:22.209 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: we can see the whole work of art and realize that there's a lot more moving parts there than just what they're seeing. So the solution is what I teach in my buyer enablement framework, which is aligning on the customer's needs, and that's what Nikhil talked about with the why, what, and how.
00:55:22.470 --> 00:55:34.260 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Before anybody talks to the customer. So hold a 15-minute, a 5-minute alignment call. In the old days, back 5 years ago, we used to do this in the parking lot before we went into a customer call.
00:55:34.300 --> 00:55:43.429 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Now, with Zoom and virtual, we need to make that more explicit. Why is it important to them? What are they trying to achieve? How will they measure success?
00:55:43.910 --> 00:55:58.130 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Inconsistent messaging destroys buyer confidence. And remember, our goal is to increase confidence. The buying group now has over 11 people, and in a lot of cases it's more. And it makes their internal consensus building harder, as we talked about.
00:55:58.210 --> 00:56:16.209 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So, our part is to provide consistent, aligned messaging that helps them move forward faster. So, those are a couple dear arties for the day, for today. Please send in your ideas. I love to hear your different ideas, your challenges, and even solutions if you want to offer them up, what you've seen is successful.
00:56:16.510 --> 00:56:34.669 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: So let's wrap up for today. That's gonna do it for today's show. Again, thanks to Nikhil Sarma for sharing all of your ideas. Please check out the references on the show page. Before you go, check out the team sales development website, including the events page, for details about previous and upcoming events.
00:56:34.750 --> 00:56:53.780 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Contact me to discuss your plans for sales kickoff. This is the time to be doing the planning, or if you have seminars or other events that you want to improve sales results for your teams, I do offer keynotes, seminars, workshops, and CRM integrated tools. And here's the key, that helps sales sell.
00:56:54.030 --> 00:57:00.219 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: and to help avoid the rush to the demo. This isn't about a bunch of stuff, it's about helping you sell.
00:57:00.380 --> 00:57:16.969 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Please like, subscribe, share, and comment on the show. Listen to the replays on your favorite channel or any of the podcast streaming services that are out there. Join me next week, 7pm Eastern, for our final show in the season. I'll be talking with John Kerr of Mastering Technical Sales.
00:57:16.970 --> 00:57:21.560 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: As I mentioned, he's a big part of the book as well, and wrote a forward for it.
00:57:21.560 --> 00:57:29.729 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: He'll share his experiences with pre-sales and sales working together. And then I'm also gonna have, at the very end of this show, a very special
00:57:29.750 --> 00:57:34.049 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: tribute segment, so please tune in for that. Thanks, everybody.
00:57:34.240 --> 00:57:39.789 Art Fromm - Team Sales Development: Have a great week, and put it in action, and let us know how it goes. Take care, thank you so much.
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