5 Sales Foundations for 2025

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:09

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a fortnightly live show for tech startup founders who want to improve how they sell. We tackle the hottest topics in startup sales and bring you the shiniest pearls of wisdom from experienced sellers. I'm Alastair Cole, your host today. I'm a computer scientist and ex Software Engineer with 2 decades experience in B2B sales and marketing, and I'm delighted to say that my friend, Kiran Gill also joins me. Good afternoon. Kiran,

Kiran Gill 0:48

Good afternoon. Alastair, hello everybody. My name is Kiran Gill. I'm co-founder of The Uplift Partnership. I have 25 years of B2B sales experience in management, operations, and I've worked in finance and in tech.

Alastair Cole 1:05

Thank you, and with our CTO Douglas, we are The Uplift Partnership — we accelerate sales for tech startups. We're different because we build and sell SaaS so we know your world . And our impact. Working with over 50 startups over the last five years has been positive in many different areas. We're proud of the impact we make, and today, we've got a fascinating topic to dive into. Our five sales foundations for 2025 I mean, a really, really exciting area, Kiran, something that we've been working on together, thinking about for several weeks now, planning, including a white paper and planning resources for founders, planning their approach to tackling competition, dealing with the changes that's going on the marketplace. Future planning is very important. What would you add to that, in terms of what you've seen, talking to our clients and other startups in the marketplace about what they should be doing, getting ready for the future and for next year.

Kiran Gill 2:23

Yeah. So one of the things you know, the advantage of working in a corporate environment for such a long time as I did is the understanding of when we used to prepare for the year ahead. And one thing that you don't try, you tend not to see in startups, is that kind of professionalism. So we started planning for our year ahead, probably in the summer, so come August, even, maybe even a little earlier than that. We are already thinking about the next 12 months, the next calendar year. So you know, this is an ample time to start for startups. I know they're in the middle of 2024 and still trying to close off all that business that they've got, but they need to start thinking by 2025 because that's what the big players do. They work ahead, and the more professional you make your sales operation, the more likely you're going to be successful going forward.

Alastair Cole 3:09

Yeah, I mean, it's the first few days of September when it feels like we're back to school, back to sales school, and obviously we're focused, for all of our clients, on trying to nail these next four huge months for sales at the same time thinking about what's around the corner. So we're going to dive into these five sales foundations right away. We're going to start with our first, which is buyer centric strategies. And you know, in my mind, that biocentric channel is about the requirement now to be a ruthless buyer first, in your thinking, in your approach to selling, your sales behaviours, and putting the buyer right at the heart of everything. Right? What's your take on that? Kiran, how important is being biocentric. I

Kiran Gill 4:02

I think it's paramount going into 2025 what we've noticed, especially with the introduction of AI into so many tools and everything else that's out there, and that comes from the buyer's point of view as well. So your buyers are changing their behaviour. So the chances of your buyers, the person. The personas you built years ago are still valid. It's very unlikely they're changing so rapidly. So potentially, the people that you're targeting have changed the way they purchase. They change how they want to see information. So you need to go back to the drawing board and reassess everything that you did when you originally started, and even if you did it last year, you probably need to do it again, because the buyer in 2025 is going to be even more complicated that we've just left in 2024

Alastair Cole 4:54

Yeah, and talking about those buying personas at the end of the day with sales is. About people, right? It's about building a connection with other people to foster that relationship, and you're going to need them to close the deal in the long run. So it's really about people being focused. And I think one of the really big areas that we've talked about is revisiting the kind of definitions, right? Some of the really critical definitions, which sometimes seem a little bit boring. You're talking about writing stuff down, creating written documents, but it's, it's really key, isn't it? And you know what would, what would be, you know, kind of key assets or documents that you want to revisit to make sure that you work properly. Buy a centric

Kiran Gill 5:44

I think you need to go into your sales playbook, and hopefully you've got one. And from that sales playbook, you need to look at what your value propositions are, who you were, your ideal customer profile, and who is your buying persona, and work through those. Now this shouldn't take too long. The major thing what you're looking to do here is to see if the market has changed in any such way. So maybe going back and revisiting those people that you've sold to in the last 12 months, and just to see whether they do fit that persona. And is that the way, you know, was everything right in there. There might not be anything for you to do, but the thing with 2025 is there's . Especially if you're selling into certain industries, the people that you're talking to are going to be getting younger, and they purchase differently from people who might be a little bit older. So, and you just gotta keep an eye on

Alastair Cole 6:36

that, yeah. And you know, we advocate getting into the market, immersing in the market, asking questions of potential buyers. You know, you've then got to do the research and think about, have your ICP change. You've got to do that ideation. Give yourself time to think about that. I think something that's come up for us, working with startups over the last few years is that often their ideal customer profile needs to be much more niche. If you're thinking about it, am I? Am I? Am I niche enough? The answer is probably no. Right. Going abroad is very dangerous. It's a very big market to address, and actually, we're seeing great success with startups who are able to niche right down on their really, really targeted, ideal customer profiles, and then building out the buying personas from there, those, those four we've run through, ideal customer profile, buyer persona, value proposition and buying journey analysis or mapping out the buyer's journey absolutely critical for documents that need to be crafted if you're going to be a success. And we know that that works. Research from HubSpot shows that companies who've got strong definitions of their ideal customer profile, they're not on 68% they're winning accounts more than their competitors. So that definition does work, and it might. It might feel a bit dull, but actually for us and for the startups we're working with, the juices in the discussion and in the document creation, the back and forth, what's right, what's not and and that discussion often coughs up points that need to be covered, and you end up with a much stronger, tighter definition. And then those are then fed into our sales engine, aren't they? Kiran, and you know, you know, reusing ICP and and the value proposition in order to inform the rest of the sales engine,

Kiran Gill 8:41

it's critical, and that's where, you know, the rubber hits the road and and this is a critical foundation, and that's why I think it's number one on our list of the top five, because being more bias centric is going to make you more successful in 2025 and it's something that is critical for business going ahead,

Alastair Cole 8:59

yeah, and That's why we put it number one right. Sale. Sales strategy is the first of the seven areas that we focus on when we run through our 360 so buy centric strategies. You've got to immerse yourself, observe and ask questions, make time to think about the strategy, craft those four key documents we talked about, and then take that, take that thought, back to the market and ask, you know, would, would buyers pay for this? Let's move on to number two, hyper personalised prospecting, and for us, this is the practice of tailoring outreach and communication to individual prospects by leveraging data and insights about their specific needs. Really important. What are the keys? What's your view on hyper personalised prospecting? How important is that? In 2025 my friend,

Kiran Gill 9:53

As per, the bio centric side of things, I think it's going to be super critical. Are kind. Customers now expect to be wowed along the journey, and they expect things to be personalised and tailored to them no matter what they're buying. Because, tell you the truth, if you're not doing it, your competitors are probably doing it, so you're going to be behind them. And when we're talking about hyper personalization, we're not talking about just their name on the email, and their company name and the email, the email that you crafted that's, you know, that's very, very low level. We're talking about hyper personalisation. We're talking where you're actually talking to the customer in a language that they understand and they feel that this piece of content has been created just for them. It takes a bit of effort. However, it's worth it. That's why it's so important going forward.

Alastair Cole 10:46

Yeah. I mean, for me, the kind of classic, you know, hyper personalised communication is a message that I've sent to someone who is, you know, either a lead or a prospect, and I've done some research on them, on their business. I've looked into the news so quietly and time consuming, but actually a really nicely tailored message that demonstrates that you understand their business is incredibly powerful. The other kinds of things that we're personalising and that startups should be thinking about are industry benchmark reports that are tailored to the recipient product sheets, two pager product sheets that are tailored just for them, case studies, testimonials and potentially video messages. It's all sort of easy for us to talk about doing video messages after almost a year, just over a year's worth of these live shows, but actually producing video content as a personalised message for buyers is a really nice thing to do. And those different, you know, have you got a favourite of those different types, Kiran, or what's your, what's your preferred mix of those things, or others? I

Kiran Gill 11:57

I think you've got to go back to step one. You have to think about the customer. It's biocentric. Don't think about what's preferred for yourself. Think about what's preferred to your customer. Now, some people want that content in a written form, some people want in video. Some people want it in audio. Some people want it delivered by carrier pigeon, whatever it is. You should be doing it in a way for your customer that relates to the way they want to take the information. So you take that one piece of content that you've got and you turn it into four different delivery paths, and that, that alone will make the customer think, wow, you're delivering it to me in the way I want it to be delivered, instead of you making it generic and saying, everyone's going to get a blog post whether you like it or not, that's the way you're going to eat. This probably wouldn't go to that restaurant. So there we go.

Alastair Cole 12:41

I'm spot on. And we know how important this is, because it's pretty much table stakes now hyper personalization, 87% of B to B buyers say forest expect to be delighted. You know, before and after purchase. I mean, the pressure is on. It's incredibly tough. Expectations are incredibly high. So for hyper personalised prospecting, you've got to collect the high quality data on your customers. You've got to research and ideate what you're going to make. Then you have to create this great content. And there are tools that can be used to create hyper personalised content at scale. You've then got to distribute it dynamically using the tools of your sales armoury, and then make sure that you're enabling outcomes. Everything has got a very clear CTA, there's one action to do that that people can follow through on. Let's move on to number three, our third foundation for next year, stellar self service. You know, obviously the world is so digital now, and so many people, so many buyers, are demanding that they're able to make, you know, the lion's share of the purchase online and through digital tools that self services are really important. What would be, what would be your advice? Kiran, for for startups right at the beginning of their journey, the first kind of step they might make on their creating B to B self service capability,

Kiran Gill 14:11

I think you just hit the nail on the head there. You said the word B to B self service. A few years ago, B to B, and the word self service, or purchasing B to B over the internet was not even on the radar for most companies. It was seen as too complex, too difficult to do. We need a sales person. We have to go out there and exactly where you've been saying that. You know, everybody expects to do some, some part of the purchase decision themselves, and also be able to configure what they want to buy. Have an understanding, even if what you're selling is very, very expensive, they're still part of that journey that the customer wants to do themselves before they're ready to speak to a salesperson. So that means your self service. Now, whether it's something you're selling something very, very. Complex, and it's consultancy based, and there's never in a million years that anyone's going to be purchasing it straight from your website. That doesn't mean that can't be self service involved in there, in on your website, and what the digital communication and the digital purchasing process that the client needs to go through to purchase that so every B to B Company going forward, or every startup B to B needs to have that as a part of their model going forward. Because even though you're going to be purely self service or purely consultancy based selling, there's a chance you're going to probably end up somewhere in the middle. And it depends where you want to start. You know, you could be far left. You could be on the far inside, on the right, however, you're probably aiming somewhere in the middle. And that's what you need to be ready and thinking about, especially in 2025 as the buyer gets more complex and once they want you to understand that this is the way they want to purchase. And again, it goes back to those first two, first two foundations, where once you understand your buyer, you'll understand where they fit on the Self Service score as well.

Alastair Cole 16:04

Yeah, completely. And all those self service tools and features, you know, whether they are live, interactive videos, demos, ROI calculators, you know, free and premium access, all all those self service things you know need to be built, right if you're going down the route of being a kind of pure SaaS B to B tech startup, it's a question of how mature are your current features, and what is the roadmap to get you there? And I'm talking about roadmaps. One of the things we like to cover is self service versus sales teams. And we've got here on the left hand side, you're moving from zero to 100% self service. So obviously, if you're at an early stage, like you just talked about Kiran, you're down in the bottom left hand corner, you'll have, you know, a set person responsible for sales often. That is the founder seller that we work with a lot, and you're always going to need a human being to oversee the self service. You're always going to have at least one seller. The question is, at what stage do you grow and build your human sales teams? And how quickly do you develop self service so you can move to being a kind of fully technology led business. You know, if there were startups that were keen to build their self service care and were more in that kind of more traditional box in the bottom right hand corner, maybe they are a startup with a sales team of three, and they've got a few pieces of self service functionality. What would be your recommendations? My friend of what they should be doing next to move from more traditional in towards more of a technology led.

Kiran Gill 17:56

I think what you've got to look at is your primary business model and your kind of cost of sales, to give you an indication of which way you should be moving. So if you are selling something that is very high cost in sales, however, the markup in your product is very, very low, you're probably going to be pushing yourself towards technology led, and you need to be doing that rapidly, because, having paid staff selling things at a low a low price point is not going to be sustainable unless you're selling large quantities. So that's like if you're selling into enterprise businesses and they're buying 1000 you know, users, or 10,000 users, that's fine. You can have one salesperson, even when the price point is low, if you're only selling one or two units and the price point is low, and you've got a salesperson involved, you need to get technology led, and you need to get there quicker as possible, as quick as possible. And your sales team probably needs to adapt as well into that sense, because maybe they're going to be more customer service oriented. Maybe they'll be a bit more marketing, more social media orientated. That doesn't mean they're not sales. It just means their skill sets are slightly different from a traditional, complex seller, who is going to be a little bit more customer oriented. Typical salesperson that you and I would probably say, describe a salesperson to me, and you'll describe that person that's your complex salesperson. The New Technology Lead tales person is going to be a little bit more customer orientated and probably very heavily involved in social, social media.

Alastair Cole 19:27

That's an absolute great shout, mate. It's that is that, if so, if you're in that more traditional box, that's where your salespeople are, they need to be upskilled, you know, reskilled, given more skills to support that self service thing, and then the new, new more powerful sales people were expecting. So to wrap up foundation three, stellar self service, you've got to identify the right approach for you based on cost of sale and what you're selling and your approach. Then you've got to benchmark the maturity of your self service digital tools and create a development roadmap. And then obviously you could. Go and implement that roadmap, build those features one at a time in short sprints, and start to make it easier for buyers to get to you. Let's move on to number four, dynamic deal closing. So you know these five foundations kind of work in order chronologically as well. You know, you've done your strategy, your biocentric strategy, and your hyper personalised prospecting. You've provided stellar self service opportunities that have arrived at your door, and you've picked them up. And we're talking about, you know, dynamic deal closing is about getting that deal across, across the line, which is no easy thing. It's been no easy thing this year, has it, my friend, it

Kiran Gill 20:50

hasn't been easy. For the last few years. There've been so many startups who have gone to the garbage heap that haven't been able to survive through the very, very difficult financial, economic situation that we have out there. However, the kind of feeling that I've spoken to people and the kind of feeling that you get from the market at the moment is that things are going to improve 2025 could be really big years for business to come bouncing back, and that means potentially the deals that you were not able to close in 2324 maybe even first in 22 back in line, because suddenly you can see that companies are going to start reinvesting. They're going to start growing again. Suddenly, inflation is going down. Interest rates are going to come down. That means companies will be put in a position where they're going to have to grow. And this is, this is a great situation for those startups who have survived this complicated period now to suddenly go back to those deals that they didn't have before and say, You know what? Let's get back in there. Let's requalify these deals. Let's think about the customer. Why did they push back last time? Let's make sure we don't come back and knock on the door and say, Hey, we're back here. We've got the same offer. Go back, reinvent yourself, dust yourself off, put a new suit on, go back to the customer and say, Look, we're still here, and we still want to make you successful.

Alastair Cole 22:18

You talked about re qualifying there. How? How? How important is it going to be next year that startups are able to qualify their deals properly?

Kiran Gill 22:29

Qualification is one of those bugbears that I've always had with a lot of customers, with, if not clients, customers, salespeople that I've worked with, people don't qualify enough. So qualifying in general, you just need to do it. And on top of that, you need to use technology to help you qualify your deals, because it's there, it's out there, and it will help you make sure that you don't miss a gap in the market, or miss a gap in the actual deal itself. So it's super important.

Alastair Cole 23:00

Yeah, and right on cue, we've got something that might be able to help. One of our products is a revenue coach. Revenue coach.ai, is a personalised sales coach dedicated to qualification and helping you close so that might be of use if you if your qualification is under par at the moment, the next thing I want to focus on, in terms of dynamic deal closing, is about value affirmation. Right? We see time and time again that school deals happen because the value of the solution or service hasn't been properly articulated by sellers. And if you can affirm the value, demonstrate the value better. You have a 30% chance of a higher quality deal, according to the Harvard Business Review. So qualification is really important, really important and demonstrates value. And then our last sub point on this is about being human right in closing the deal. What are your thoughts on that? What? Tell me what you think about, about that kind of human interaction, Kiran, and what people should do next year.

Kiran Gill 24:09

I think again, it's going back to our foundational steps that we were talking about before. But you know, going back to step one, where we're talking about being biocentric, is that it's been a while since people have been selling. Effectively, it's been a few hard years for people out there in the market, and now you need to go back into the market. Be confident, but also be authentic. You know, talk to the customer about problems they have. Think about their customers. Customer. So the one thing about B to B technology is that your customer is also a business, but they're servicing probably another business, but they might be even who are their customers? How will your technology help them serve their customers? And if you start thinking about their business, suddenly you're being human. You're not just thinking about your customer, you're thinking about their customers. So it's just you're more. It's more about making a holistic business together, where you're not doing it just for the profit, but you're doing it because it's the right thing for the client to do, and it's the right thing for them to do for their

Alastair Cole 25:13

fantastic so, yeah, you know, in terms of dynamic deal closing, got to qualify deals properly. Revenue coach.ai can help qualify them thoroughly, go back and requalify ones that you haven't progressed. You've got to demonstrate the value. And then, you know, it's about being human and closing that deal in person. So many startups we work with are seeing that when they meet in person, the quicker those deals are closing. So you know, absolutely critical, our fifth and final foundation is progressive sales processes. And this is about how you sit down and think about your sales operation, how often you try and improve it through collaboration and communication. Really, really important, given the markets moving fast and things are changing, I know this is a particular area of interest for yours in continuous improvement, Kiera, and the only bits that you pick out, or what's the how for somebody looking to deliver on this foundation next year?

Kiran Gill 26:30

First of all, you should have your sales process written down somewhere where you can see what's happening. And you have all the stages, multiple ways of doing this. You know, whether you've got post its whether you've got a Miro board, whatever it is, you've got your sales process, the chances are, and again, your sales process in 2025 is going to be slightly different from the one that you've been using in 2024 and 2023 so it needs to be adapted. So as you're going down your buyer's journey, and you're looking at your sales process, making sure that your buyer's journey and also your sales process are aligned, so both things are happening at the same time and that everything is going there might be new stages that you've got to interject, because maybe the client is self qualifying on their website. So what does that mean? What does that mean in your sales process? Are there extra pieces, extra layers that you now have to add, where you know somebody from your team has to send out relevant information or invite the client to a you know, I don't know, so whatever it is, but think about it in that stage that you've gotta reinvent yourself every year. Unfortunately, that's how it works in business. If you think the same sales process that you had last year or the year before, or the one you even started with three or four years ago is still working. The chances are you need to go back, look at it and make those changes to make sure that you're still going to be performing at top level.

Alastair Cole 27:55

Yeah, revisiting and looking at what you've done in the past, but also looking at what's out there in the future. You know, new paradigms that are used to measure the maturity and quality of your sales function, contemporary funnel mixes that are going to deliver the fastest closing deals and technology and tools that can help you hit the magic number, which for us is 618, sales actions per seller per month. So that you know it's important to keep abreast of what's out there and be progressive. So our three steps here are to analyse your end to end process like you've just outlined here, and perform that gap analysis on where you're short and then boldly implement changes, right? It's your business, your startup. You've got to be bold and make changes quickly that you think are going to work, and back them and give them time so that you can observe the effects of those changes, and then hopefully, when they're successful, repeat. That's our five foundations for 2025. Covered those through at quite a high level. But not to worry, because actually, these five are part of the new white paper that we're publishing next week. We've got your contact details. We'll be sharing that with you, you have exclusive early access to the Empowered founder, seller. We're right at the end of our time perfectly in terms of what's next. Well, you know, like I said, it's back to sales school now, say September. Kiran and I are out and about at various events, summits, networking opportunities. So you know, if you want to make contact with us, reach out . It's Alastair or Kiran at the partnership com, or reach us. Reach us on LinkedIn and come for a coffee.

Kiran Gill 29:58

Virtual or physical. You. Either way I do,

Alastair Cole 30:02

Yes, we'll be at the summit in October, and a slew of events between now and then, and then. The last thing, really, is just to leave you with our next event, which is two weeks from today, Tuesday, the 17th of September. Will you introduce this one? Kiran, yeah,

Kiran Gill 30:19

it's from seed to series, funding your startup. So next time, we're going to be looking at what you can do at your startup to get that investment, what do you need to do? What? What do you need to do in 2025 to make sure you get that cash injection you've always wanted?

Alastair Cole 30:39

Fantastic. I'm really looking forward to getting into that and working through some of the key elements that are needed in both product and technology, but sales and marketing, everything that's needed to wow investors in what feels like a slightly warmer climate next year than it will be this year. So come on, tune in for that. If getting ‘From Seed to Series A’ is important to you. That's it. That's us for now. Thanks very much, my friend. Thanks for joining

Kiran Gill 31:08

me. Pleasure. Alastair, as always. Absolute

Alastair Cole 31:11

pleasure. Okay, everybody. Well, thanks, and that's it for now. So bye, bye, see you soon. Bye,