5 Sales Foundations for 2025

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:04

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to ‘The Sales Scoop’. This is a weekly live show for tech business founders who want to improve how they sell. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for today, a computer scientist and ex Software Engineer with two decades experience in B2B sales, and marketing. Every episode of this show, we tackle the hottest topics in sales and bring you the shiniest pearls of wisdom from experienced sellers, one of whom I'm delighted to say is our expert guest today. My co-founder, Kiran, hello mate.

Kiran Gill 0:47

Good afternoon. Alastair, hello everyone. My name is Kiran. I've got two two decades going to take two years, but it's more than that. It's two decades worth of sales operations experience. I've worked in sales enablement, frontline sales, sales management across all different types of industries, in B to B, mainly in technology and in banking.

Alastair Cole 1:09

Thank you. And along with our co-founder, Douglas, who's our CTO, we are the uplift partnership. We accelerate sales for technology businesses. We're live now on LinkedIn. You can hit us up if you've got any questions about the show as we run through our five sales foundations for 2025 you know, we're beginning in December now, my friend, you know, a month away from the end of the year, everybody is rushing to try and close those deals. And no doubt, a lot of thoughts have been had. A lot of work's been done about next year. What would you know we're going to get into the hive in a minute? What was the kind of feeling from your experience in a sales team this kind of time of the year? What are people thinking about in the short term, medium term and long term, what's happening early December in the sales world and B to B land?

Kiran Gill 2:06

Oh, it's frantic. The early December is always frantic. No matter what size of company you're at, it depends on when your year ends. Obviously the companies that I worked for tended to have a year end of 31st, of December, but didn't make it, didn't make it very festive if you were behind target. So this point could always be a bit frantic. You're trying to push those last deals over the line. However, you know, realistically in sales, you should be always playing at least one quarter ahead and not maybe even two. So your sales for December should have been done, probably in September, and now what you're really doing is getting everybody ready for that next quarter, next year. You're looking at March 31 already. You're thinking, how am I going to get away with a flyer to make sure that next year I basically just give a bonus.

Alastair Cole 3:03

Well, that's what today's show is about. It's about getting you set up, or augmenting your strategic thinking for next year in terms of, like our big five sales foundations. Very excited to get into these. We're just going to kick straight off. Time is short. We want to crack straight on the first of our five sales foundations, 2025, is to buy centric strategies. Sounds great. What? What's your definition of that? What do you come to mean by bio centric strategies?

Kiran Gill 3:40

Given. When I think about bio centric strategies, for me, it's about the buyer itself. You know, you're thinking about their needs, their challenges, their pain points. You know, what are they trying to get out of the actual process of the buyer? What do they want? And your job as a seller is to make sure that their journey, that whole strategy, this buyer centric, everything they do, is all about value, and it drives them along as they go through the sales process, just hearing all of those key phrases that they want to hear, that they know that you understand them so meaning that You are in tune with your buyer.

Alastair Cole 4:21

In tune, aligned with, you know, really putting them at the heart of everything you do. And a lot of the clients we work with, they, they've started down that track, but they, they maybe haven't gone as deep as they should. You know, for me, one of the key blockers is just not getting enough information, not enough deep understanding about the buyer, that's a research component, and also not being agile enough along the way to adapt to changes if, if you know, in order to become have a buyer centric strategy, are there any challenges that might get in the way? Any blockers that you can think of that might stop people putting the buyer right at the heart of their strategy?

Kiran Gill 5:06

Well, it's easy to forget them. I think sometimes, as a salesperson or as a company, you kind of forget the buyer at some point, at some point you're too busy, and especially if you're selling a piece of technology that isn't you can't really be adapted too much to the buyer's needs. So, you know, you sit, you find yourself trying to sell what you have, and you don't really listen to the buyer. So you're scared of what the buyer might tell you. They might tell you something about your product. That means, you know, you might have to change things, or, you know, and you don't want to hear that. So thus you go down this selling process, where you're just continuing to educate continuously, and you're not really listening for feedback. And that that is a danger. It's a massive danger. Also, I found as well, a lot of companies have done this piece of work at the start, however, a couple of years down the line, and it should be revisited regularly but some companies haven't revisited it since they started, and things have changed as you know yourself,

Alastair Cole 6:07

yeah, I think that's a great shout. You know, buyers are constantly evolving, right? The people who are going to buy your product are the ones who are going to or your buyers. Buyer. These things are changing rapidly, the demographics and dynamics of B to B buyers is changing, and you make a great point if you haven't revisited your core definitions in the last year, the last couple of years, your value propositions, your ideal customer profile, buying personas, Buying journeys. If these bodies of work haven't been revisited and updated, then you are potentially at a disadvantage, because BIAs are changing. The world is moving very fast, and we know that these kinds of definitions help. HubSpot reported 12 months ago that companies that had a strong ideal customer profile definition, right? They've really spent time honing in on it. They were closing 68% more accounts than those with just an average ICP. So those definitions are absolutely critical to success. What tips would you give to people watching or listening about how they can go and get closer to buyers? What should they do? Kiran,

Kiran Gill 7:30

Okay, so firstly, you must have a sales playbook. And that sales playbook should have your ICP and your buyer personas in there so you can actually see, then what you should do is, realistically have a look at the last few clients. You've won probably the last year's worth of clients, and to see, are they still matching up? Are you seeing anything different if you're the front line sales person yourself, or you're the founder seller, whichever way you look at it, are you still feeling that same thing, or is it attune? Because we know that the next generation of sales managers are coming in, the millennials are slowly pushing out the baby boomers. And these people buy differently. So your ICP a few years ago was perfect. It worked. Baby Boomers bought in a certain way. They liked getting on the phone. They like doing all of this. However, if you've got millennials that you're selling to, or even Gen Z, it might be that your selling process is slowly but surely turning into its coming out. It's out of favor now,

Alastair Cole 8:34

yeah, yeah, yeah, no, all valid points. You know, the sales have a killer sales playbook. You talked about, talked about spending time immersing, observing and asking questions of them. I think making time to think about how you should engage with them is critical. And then you mentioned, as well, about getting feedback from buyers once you've got those initial definitions. So really important. Let's skip on to foundation number two. This is hyper personalized prospecting. And what we the way that we like to think about this is about in when we were in prospecting mode, in lead generation mode, that we're bringing something highly personalized, but also, you know, delightful, delicious, something that the buyer is going to be very excited about receiving because it's not just personalized, but it's high value as well. What do you think of or what's your experience in the last 12 months around hyper personalized prospecting? What's best in class care and what should people be doing next year?

Kiran Gill 9:35

I think best in class is that you should be concentrating on your ICPs your buyers, and really understanding when you when you say hyper personalized, there's a lot of different version of what people think hyper personalized is just using the name of the client and their company name and the country they come from, doesn't make your email hyper personalized. All it is. You've used a couple of points, and you've tried to make it resonate with them by using their name in the subject line header or something like this. And this is where I think people are getting lost with hyper personalized what hyper personalized means is that you've really thought about this client, and you've done something that is going to hit home with them, because you've really researched them, and you've got down to the bare bones of what they really want. So you're thinking about them that's hyper personalized. Personalized, or, you know, some of those personalizations, that's not hyper personalized. So don't get the two confused. Hyper personalized is coming, my friends, because that's what the buyer expects and with technology now, realistically, your your your websites, your your outreach can be maybe not hyper personalized, but definitely personalized to them in the way that they already know that least you know who I am, at least you know what I want and and that's What's expected out there, really,

Alastair Cole 11:01

yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you talk about expectations. You know, 87% of buyers expect to be delighted before and after purchase, so that the pressure is absolutely on. And the truth is that if you can do that research in that biocentric strategy alignment piece, you can get enough information about targets that you can you can, in your prospecting, go out with assets and sales toolkits and marketing materials that are have been heavily personalized for the prospect and their company And what they've said in social media. So there are cues and data out there that can be used and pulled in automatically. We use a lot of these to create our assets, and the icing on the cake does need to be the human touch, the intro that's written by a human but a lot of that personalization can be done by tools and automation. So, you know, we talked about collecting quality data to create high personalized prospecting. It's about researching, making that content content, and then, you know, distributing it dynamically. And then the last bit is about, you know, enabling outcomes when you do send something fantastic to a buyer that is tailored for them, and what they've said online recently, then you've got to make sure that there is a clear call to action so they can go and follow up immediately, and you see some some positive results on that. The third foundation for today is stellar self service. You know, increasingly buyers want to self-serve. They want to go and do their research. It was exacerbated by the pandemic. What's best in class? Self Service from your point of view, Karen, or if you're talking about a kind of B to B, SaaS platform,

Kiran Gill 12:56

if you're talking b to b, realistically, your website, it hasn't changed, but I just think your website now is probably more important than it's ever been. And tell you the truth, a lot of the websites I look at, they don't seem to be the most important thing, because self service is where, that's where the customer is going to get their information about your product from. So realistically, best in class you're looking at, you're going to have a chat bot on there that you know is straight away interacting with the person that's pretty much your sales assistant, who is at that shop front. When somebody comes in and wants to buy a new pair of shoes, that's what your chat is not supposed to be doing. It's there to assist. It's not there to sell. It's there to help and guide the sale. And that's what when people are coming to a website, they don't want to be hit with things by now, by now, by now, they're there to investigate and get their own information so they feel comfortable in purchasing from you. Now, that's Stella, Stella self service. Now, does your website actually do that? And are you supporting that, or is your website just basically, you know what websites used to be 10 years ago or five years ago, tell you the truth. Now, websites need to adapt, and it's also bringing it back into hyper personalization, because when somebody lands onto your website, they want to feel like that website was created for them and with the tools out there. Now, realistically, that's how your website should be,

Alastair Cole 14:25

yeah, completely everything from, you know, buyer persona, designed landing pages that are kind of generic, but then can be tailored with a bit of technology, a little bit of magic, from an email or DM and those tools that sit, you know, on your website or in your you know, in your social media platforms, their access to those tools has to be ubiquitous. You know, we're seeing a real a real rise or a real success with ROI calculators, with some of our clients, those are a fantastic way to let people play and see how much benefit, how much value they could get. It from your solution. So you know, self service absolutely critical, right? And you know, if you're an early stage technology business, you're probably down here in the bottom left hand corner. You really want to be moving up to the top left left with a technology led self service because that's a lower cost of sale. If you are more traditional technology business selling, you know, professional service, then you're going to have a larger sales team over on the right hand side. And depending on where you were, the kind of business that you're running, will determine where you will be on this chart, and also a way you'd want to where you want to move to next. And if, if you're thinking about what kinds of self service capability you should be building, then you know, we're talking about the product UI and, like Kevin said, website and landing pages to start with, but you quickly moving on to, you know, guided onboarding, tours, sales, purchase automation and beyond. There's lots of different areas of self service that you should be, should be adding to your website and your digital footprint so that it's absolutely stellar, because enabling those high quality qualified inbound leads, they are gold dust, right? My friend, those are the Glengarry leads that come in. And the better your self service, the better qualified, and the further along those those leads have progressed. So, yes, identifying the right approach for you, depending on what kind of business you're running and how far along your self service capability is, benchmarking the maturity of your digital tools and then creating a roadmap is what's next on the Self Service journey. Our fourth foundation for sales for next year is about dynamic deal closing. Obviously, we're talking more about the larger end, you know, complex sales. What do you think of my phone? When you think of companies being dynamic in their deal closing current,

Kiran Gill 17:13

I think dynamic deal closing comes down to understanding the customer and understanding where they are actually in their process of purchasing. So when it comes to that dynamic, part of doing your deal closing is, do you understand the stakeholder analysis, where people are and what they need to help them facilitate that sale. So that's what they're doing. The buyers are looking at the seller. To help me purchase your product. Let me make sure that this is the right thing to do. And that's what deal qualification is there for. And dynamic meaning is that you're able to change the customer's understanding, and if they require a piece of you know, and remember, we're talking about heavy selling here, so we're talking about something that's probably going to take a few months. We're talking you'll have an understanding of a stakeholder of analysis. You've got multiple players in the game. Each one of those people are individuals on their own personal journey to understand how to purchase your product. And being dynamic means that you know exactly where everybody is, not that you're just sending the one PDF that you paid for the main stakeholder to everybody, and you're just hoping they are, you all get it?

Alastair Cole 18:24

Yeah, no, that's it. That's a great shout, because it is about collecting all the right people, the key stakeholders, you know, the buying personas, whether they're a champion, a blocker and an internal influence. So there's, you know, larger complex groups that have lots of different stakeholders. They all need to be satisfied and looked after you talked about deal qualification there, and our flagship SaaS platform is revenue coach. It is a personalized sales coach for the price of a coffee that plugs into your CRM and provides personalized sales coaching. You can use it for free at the moment. Revenue coach.ai, you know, ultimately, when being I think, when people think about sales, they think about, you know, a deal being done, which is, you know, the icing on the cake after weeks or often months worth of work. What would you do if you had a piece of advice for Watchers or listeners of Coronavirus? What one thing should founder sellers be bringing to the table in order to close that deal? What is the one thing most likely to help close a deal?

Kiran Gill 19:39

Don't be afraid that if you are actually patient, that's the one thing I would always say. I think what happens with a lot of newer sellers, and also people who are founder sellers, because there's a lot of pressure financially, sometimes, sometimes you need to be brave to just be able to stay the course. Because what you're finding out there, currently in the economics department, working with larger customers, who are taking longer to actually purchase your actual goods, is that people are getting quite scared and trying to pull out the actual deal quicker than they should. So actually, to start the sales process, I think you need more deals in there, and the other thing to do is be patient and help the customer qualify themselves and also understand who you are, because trust comes into this all the way through. So thinking about dynamics, think about all those assets that you need to help you to sell, but don't just because they don't close in your schedule and you're saying they need to close by Q1 that doesn't mean that deals are over. It just means that you need to probably use a different tactic to move into the next phase. And that's where a playbook comes into place, because your playbook can have different tactics in there to help you move to the next phase.

Alastair Cole 21:04

Yeah, great shout. I mean, going the distance, right, trying to stick around is absolutely key, you know, because these things take a long time. You talked about knowing yourself, and I think being human is a really key bit of closing deals. They've got to be qualified more thoroughly, you know, a revenue coach can help with that. And demonstrating value is also really important. HBr published something 12 months ago that showed that when clear value was demonstrated, that those businesses were closing, you know, or there was a 30% higher likelihood of a good quality deal. So value affirmation, right, reminding buyers of the value and demonstrating the value is a huge, huge driver of new revenue. Number four is a dynamic deal closing the fifth and final foundation for next year, from a sales point of view, is having progressive sales processes, right thinking about what you can do differently, how you can adapt. And you know, this is a team sport, really, isn't it? This is about having the kind of culture inside your business that you're able to look at new things, new approaches, new practices. Any guidance Kiran about where, where should, where should somebody start if they're thinking about, have I got the right, the right sales process in place?

Kiran Gill 22:39

Yeah. So again, I think it basically number five is a combination of all of the ones that we've had before. Realistically, your sales process is constantly adapting. It is dynamic. It is constantly changing, depending on the bio that comes in. Try not to have one sales process for everybody. Think about every buyer as their own journey. And yes, you might have phases in there, but different ICPs or different buying personas will take a different journey at different points, and you need to make sure that you have thought about all those touch points along the way. And depending on where somebody is, you need to get to them now, a lot of that can be automated now, especially with AI and the technologies out there. So you need to make sure that your technology stack is up to, up to what your customers want. So that comes from your website, that comes from your deal, qualification method, or the content you're creating, is everything in the right place, and are the customers getting it at the right time, at the right point? Because if they're not, you're missing a trick, and the chances are that your competition is doing that, and that's probably one of the reasons why your deals aren't closing.

Alastair Cole 23:48

Yeah, right time, right place, kind of right messages is really important. And you know, in terms of being progressive, it's about, you know, rewriting or reconsidering the funnel mix for 2025. What is the right funnel mix for each of your buying personas next year? One of the key metrics that you hold me to is the number of sales actions that we need to execute each month, which is a whopping 618 although a lot of that is is automated, which is great, but what's your number right for people watching and listening, you know, what calculations have you done to work out how many sales actions do you need to be taking a month to push your bias through that funnel and result in hitting the target that you need to hit to grow your business next year. If you're looking at thinking about how you might get started about assessing whether you've got the right sales process and the right approach, you could take our 360 degree sales diagnostic product, which we use with all of. Our clients, big or small, and that's a great way to see what kind of level of sales practice you've got, everything from ad hoc all the way through to, you know, super dynamic. So in terms of that fifth Foundation, progressive sales processes, it's about analyzing your end to end process, performing a gap analysis, and then, you know, boldly implementing changes, no point coming up with the ideas you can implement quickly and boldly and observing and reflecting on the results. So that's it. Those are our five sales foundations for 2025, biocentric strategies, going to buyers. First, hyper personalized prospecting data fuels a stellar self service, allowing buyers to educate and inform themselves and engage with your sales team. Dynamic deal closing so you're adaptable, landing those bigger fish, and then progressive sales processes, thinking about how you should be different in 2025 than you were last year. All of these five foundations we expand upon and provide more context about why we've chosen them in a new white paper that will be published this afternoon, people who've registered for this event will get exclusive early password protected access that we'll share with you via LinkedIn a DM later today. The bad news for the sales group is that this is the last show of this year. The good news is that we are back online, back live on Tuesday the 14th of January next year for a big show on how AI is changing B to B sales. What you need to know today and that on that will be sharing our research over the last two months into the state of AI and how it's enabling B to B selling. We have a map of the latest and greatest tools and technologies that we've used and others that we are experimenting with. So we'll be able to share all of that with you on Tuesday the 14th of January. If you're interested in any of our other live shows, you can head over to the sales scoop.com and watch back on repeat any of the last 30 plus shows that Kiran and I have put on together and a couple where we've, um, interviewed, interviewed a couple of guests. Well, Kiran, my friend, we're a couple of minutes out before we wrap up for the day. What are you excited about in terms of the world of sales next year, obviously, we've got our five sales foundations. We're going to be following those, helping our clouds for those, anything else out there that you're excited about for next year, my friend,

Kiran Gill 28:06

I think the, I think next year realistically, the the the next dimension of selling is going to be realistically these, these video avatars that are now getting to the point that that's where this is going to be Going, that you're going to be sending out cold call video made by avatar that is speaking directly to your key clients. It won't be dynamic at this moment in time, but there's a lot of companies out there that are going to be bringing this to be dynamic. So for smaller companies who haven't got large sales teams, suddenly they'll be able to scale, because they'll have the expertise, or the sales team then behind them to do all this personalized outreach at volume. So that's going to be the most exciting thing. I can't wait to start getting into that. And, you know, figuring out how to use all this great new technology that's coming out that way.

Alastair Cole 28:59

Yeah, that's really exciting, isn't it? You know, I think there's a moment in culture when people start to accept that they're okay receiving that kind of, that kind of content. And until that happens, people are always a little bit cagey about it. But we've seen with things like Notepad, LM and other kinds of automated ways, that new, high quality personalized content is being produced that, you know, avatars, video sales, messages are going to be really big, you know, whether that's us being cloned or somebody separate. And at the same time, I think as we bring in more and more of that technology, there's an even, you know, an even greater place, or even more, high value place for, you know, human one on one connections, you know, in real life, balancing the technology so, yeah, lots of exciting staff will be covering a lot of it on the show next year. That's 1230 all there is for us to do is, well for me, is to say, thank you very much for. Uh, being our expert today, Kiran, and for all your amazing contributions over the entirety of 2024 it's been an absolute pleasure, my friend. Thank

Kiran Gill 30:08

you very much. Alastair, thank you very much everybody for listening and watching us this year and have a great end of the year. Close loads of business, and we'll see you early in the new year.

Alastair Cole 30:20

See you in the New Year. Bye, everybody. Bye.