The Buying Experience Edge

Welcome to a special episode of Inspire Your Buyers, titled "The Buying Experience Edge." This time, hosts Bruce Scheer and Mike Wilkinson are joined by value experts Darren Fleming, Todd Snelgrove, Dean Edwards, and David Spiegel-collectively boasting over 125 years of experience in sales, procurement, pricing, and value enablement.

In this jam-packed conversation, the team confronts the troubling disconnect between B2B sellers and buyers, uncovering why so many deals stall out or end in indecision. They introduce the B2B Buying Experience Index-a practical, research-backed framework that breaks down the 10 key factors most crucial in shaping a smooth, high-value buying journey. You'll hear why buyers increasingly distrust sales reps, what top performers do to build trust, how to show up with business cases that actually help buyers buy, and why the buying experience-not just the solution-now sways the majority of big decisions.

Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or customer success, this episode will show you how to make your value clearer, your buying process smoother, and help you stand out from the competition. If you want actionable tips, fresh perspectives, and some eye-opening stats to inspire your team, you won’t want to miss this episode. Let’s dive in and discover how to become value ready at every stage of the B2B journey!

00:00 "Achieving Value Clarity"
05:22 "Mastering Value-Based Sales Negotiation"
08:45 "Improving the Broken Buying Experience"
10:06 Optimizing the Buying Experience
16:03 "Being Meeting Ready"
17:08 "Inspire: Go-to-Market Storytelling"
22:25 "Effective Customer Engagement Essential"
27:02 Value Proposition Contextualization
30:38 Mid-Funnel Financial Justification Timing
33:57 "Negotiation Readiness through Value"
36:14 "Navigating Deal Approval Processes"
39:31 Empower Approval: Equip Stakeholders
43:47 Trusted Advisor Through Passion
48:18 Enhance Buying with AI Tools
49:16 Enhancing Sales with Buyer Tools

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Value Pro show where value pros get value ready.
Hey there. My name is Bruce Shear and I'm the host of the Value Pro
Show. In this episode we're featuring a LinkedIn Live webinar
where we're talking with an incredible team of value pros including
me, Dean Edwards, Darren Fleming, David Spiegel,

(00:23):
Todd Snelgrove and Mike Wilkinson. Leaders who've
spent decades in procurement, sales, pricing and value
engine. And I actually took out my calculator and
quantified it. But collectively we bring over 125
years of expertise helping organizations sell and buy
based on real business value. So together we

(00:45):
unpack the broken B2B buying experience and introduce
to you the B2B Buying Experience Index. A
practical research backed framework with 10 causal
factors to help revenue teams influence and elevate the
value they deliver at every phase of the buying journey. So if you're in
marketing, sales or customer success and want to help your

(01:07):
buyers buy and make the value of your solution crystal clear
while standing apart from the competitive pack, this is an episode
of the Value Pro show you definitely don't want to miss. Let's dive in.
Well, welcome everybody. I am so excited for this webinar
today it's being streamed on LinkedIn as well. We are getting some mastery
over how to handle that. Three, three successful attempts

(01:30):
here. And so on this particular webinar we're Talking
about the B2B buying experience and gosh, we
have a lot to offer. You're looking right now at the the A team here
who had a hand in shaping our new B2B Buying Experience
Index. So anyways, just strap in. This is going to be a really
good one. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Bruce Scheer. I'm one of the

(01:52):
co founders, three co founders of ValuePros IO. I call
myself a value vitalizer. My mission is to work
with revenue teams to help unleash their inner
value in helping their buyers buy. So that's why I
exist. And for value pros as a whole, one of the
big problems that we're solving in the world is something we call the

(02:15):
value disconnect. So that's where sellers and
marketers show up with geek speak that doesn't
do a good job of connecting with the C suite. That's our
catchphrase here. And we see that again
and again. We've all been in industry for so long and we see
this problem persist. So that's what

(02:37):
we're trying to solve for. Typically, sellers show up
at this level, executives are coming in at this level.
Two ships passing in the night. And that's where the value
disconnect lies. So what we're really striving to solve
for is value clarity. How can we
prepare marketers and sellers and customer experience people

(03:01):
to work with their buyers to connect the value
dot so buyers can buy and stay buying over time
and retain and achieve that value? That's what
we call value clarity. And in one of our episodes that you'll
find on our website or on our YouTube channel, we interviewed a very good
guy who's not here with us today, Steve Miller. But he has a

(03:23):
catchphrase that I love, love, love when the value
is clear, the decision is easy. And so that's what
we're really trying to drive for in helping our
sellers and buyers buy. So that's a little bit
about Value Pros. I'd like to introduce themselves. David, maybe
starting with yourself. Sure. So I'm one of the co founders of

(03:45):
ValuePros IO and my role is really helping
clients understand how their product translates
into financial outcomes for their customer. So looking at their
customers status quo environment and creating a
personalized financial justification. So, you
know, clients aren't always oriented that way. So I try to, you know,

(04:07):
help them adopt the language of value selling in their
presentation and interface to the customer. Thanks for awesome, David. Yeah, you
bet, Darren. Yeah. So I'm Darren Fleming. I'm also a co founder of Value
Pros and also president of ROI Selling. And I
spent my entire most of my career evaluating business cases,
evaluating cost justifying solutions, and really

(04:28):
passionate about, you know, making sure that whatever you do is
adding value to your customers. That's what it's all about. So looking forward to the
discussion today. Awesome. Thanks, Darren. All right, excuse me,
I jump forward. Dean, you want to go next? Sure. Happy to.
Glad to be here, everybody. I'm Dean Edwards. I lead an
organization called Converge sbt and our role is to

(04:51):
support salespeople and help them deliver better results through
superior engagement with procurement. And I come from a background
of nearly 40 years worth of procurement and supply experience.
Thank you, Dean. Yeah. And gosh, everybody, Dean, you're going to see a lot of
fancy tricks on the screen today. Dean and I are in a masterclass
together. Learning how to really kind of sizzle on screen is

(05:13):
one of our goals. So you'll see a lot that we've learned together.
And I'm being a little bit happy on my slides here. Todd, you next.
Hey, Bruce. And thanks for the invite to Jo. Todd,
Snellgrove, Experts in value, 25 plus years
in industry trying to work with the sales side and the pricing side
to quantify value, differentiate and value and equip sales teams to have that

(05:37):
discussion with procurement, because procurement's not our enemy. But we need to do our
work and get the right business case with the right format, with the right methodology
behind it in front of them and then be comfortable to negotiate and get
paid based on that value. Awesome. Todd and Mike. Yeah.
Hi. Hi everybody. Thanks for having me. Bruce, I'm the UK
represent. I work.

(05:58):
Predominantly with sales leaders and sales teams, really
helping them to identify and convert more
opportunities more profitably by focusing on
value and value selling. And a large part of my journey
is just helping people to understand exactly what value
is so they can have a value conversation. Awesome. Thank you

(06:20):
so much. Well, let's go ahead and get into some
of our content here. What I wanted to do is just highlight
three key numbers that, that might keep us all up at night
a bit in terms of what's going on in the world of buying. The first
one, 75, that stands for 75%.
75% of B2B buyers prefer to have a

(06:41):
sales free experience. And this statistic is
relatively recent and came from Gartner. And that should just
pretty much horrify everyone. You know that, that you know the
highlighting, you know how the sellers and buyers
aren't connecting so much. So where buyers prefer to have a sales free experience,
just rough. Secondly, 88, 88%

(07:04):
of buyers will only buy from a seller who they deem
to be a trusted advisor. That means they show up trusted
and they bring advice. And most,
most aren't deemed to be doing that, hence why they prefer to have a sales
free experience. And then 92,
92% of B2B buyers of high

(07:25):
consideration solutions or bold solutions, they've got to build
a business case. And this is another Gartner statistic.
Meanwhile, gosh Dean on the line for
procurement leader said, you know, rare was the day he's ever seen a
seller show up with a business case to help the buyer
buy. And statistically it's probably 1 to 2

(07:48):
out of 10 reps in that neighborhood that
might make an attempt at supporting their buyers and shaping a business
case so they can buy. Meanwhile, nine out of 10 buyers
need that. So again, just some major, major
disjoints on the buying experience. And then here's
a huge, huge kicker for you. 60%,

(08:10):
60% of opportunities or deals, they end
in indecision, meaning, you know, the Status quo won
over or they just went into a drift. New priorities, new
executives, the ship sails onwards.
60% of opportunities ending in indecision. Can you
imagine all that time and energy and waste on

(08:32):
both sides, the vendor side and the buyer side that goes through an
opportunity process to end an indecision?
It's a colossal bummer and one that we're all
committed to help solve for. Can you imagine the
revenue waste on that? So all of these stats that I've talked about
really lead to this point of a broken buying

(08:54):
experience. Now, at the end of 2024,
friend of mine was acquired by SBI, Ray
McKellar and I read one of the reports that they put out after
their big huge buying survey and here's what really stuck
out for me. 59% of the
influence on a bold buying decision comes from

(09:16):
the buying experience. Only 41% of
the influence on the buying experience comes from the offering
itself. So when I saw that, I was just like going, damn, that,
that's, that's hugely impactful. And,
and given all those other stats, the BR buying experience
is broken. So this gives a huge opportunity

(09:38):
for how to up level the buying experience. So I brought
that whole logic into my Christmas
vacation of 2024 with this big question,
how can we help revenue teams improve the buying experience? And I
drugged my partners Darren and David through
the trenches with me over Christmas, our Christmas holiday,

(10:00):
literally, you know, trying to get away from our families to kind of stay
connected to this big issue here. How do we improve the buying
experience? So we had multiple dialogues on this and then
we also decided to tap some low cost associates. We went
to deep research across ChatGPT,
across Perplexity and also Gemini,

(10:23):
using all three, triangulating, trying to, you know, figure
out how do we improve the buying experience, but with the key question,
what are the causal levers or causal factors that would
influence the buying experience to help buyers buy and
help sellers sell more? So we looked at all that and then we
also went to Dean Todd and Mike here with

(10:45):
us to test all this, you know, just based on all our
collective experience, which is over 125 years, it's pretty darn
awesome of selling based value and buying based
on value, looking at all the results. And
that's what helped us set the stage for this,
what we're calling the B2B Buying Experience Index.

(11:07):
So the 10 causal factors actually
fit very nicely into the progressions of the
buying experience. Now we know no buying experience is the
same, you know, and things can go all over the place. But you know,
in general, this, these are the progressions, the
phases of that buying journey. And here's the 10 causal

(11:29):
factors nestled under each phase that if you, if you
master these and you influence these key levers, the 10 key levers,
you're going to elevate the buying experience. You're going to bring more value to that
buying experience in helping your buyers buy and to retain
those buyers so they can buy more and more often. So those 10
key factors you can see here under the whole framing of

(11:52):
gain trust, we got to do that. That's job one. You got to be
trusted, you know, between that seller and buyer. Then we need to move to
clarifying the requirements, you know, what are we buying and why are we
buying it? Then we need to frame the value and have a concerted
approach for doing that. Then finally we needed to accelerate impact.
So this is all built from a buying perspective based on

(12:15):
all this deep research. And the deep research compiled
all the maging major buying surveys over the last couple of
years and we were looking at those surve findings
to net out what are these causal factors. So that's what
we're looking at. So the beauty in all this is it makes it
simple. There's 10 key things we need to influence to elevate

(12:37):
the buying experience so customers can buy more and more often from
us. So what I'd like to do next is, you know, talk about
how we can help in influencing the buying experience and how you
can excel assess yourself in influencing that buying
experience. So the team here, we created what we call a
value ready assessment. And it's also got 10 different

(12:59):
levers that you can get good at to be value ready
across each one of those buying phases. So
I'll go ahead and highlight where you can find that this is free for
everybody to use. You'll go to the ValuePros IO
website, click on the Resources tab, then head down to
the value ready assessment. And here's what you're going to find

(13:20):
once you're in there. And this also shows some
beauty of what David Spiegel helped create here
for us in this value ready assessment. So you'll come in, you'll, you'll
see a greeting like this, you'll click start and kind
of get into it. So for each one of these dimensions, these
readiness division dimensions, and right now I'm just showing one,

(13:43):
the justification ready dimension, we've got a rating scale.
You know, where would you rate yourself in terms of being novice and being
justification ready or being a master? And you'll learn a lot
just by reading these rating dimensions.
The scale, really, really powerful. So you'll do
this 10 times. So it's not a lot of energy, but

(14:05):
you'll figure out, you know, where you're good, where you're not. You'll have a
radar graph that shows that. And then you'll see, you
know, where your weakest links are in improving the buying experience
and some recommendations. But if you click on the report
tab here, then it generates a PowerPoint presentation for
you that has a really meaty, meaty report. So

(14:28):
within that report, what you'll do is look at the priority
recommendations. But then, you know, when you're in presentation
mode, you can click on these YouTube links and you'll go
into some really rich information. Here's Todd and
I talking about how to be impact ready. And if
there's anybody I've ever met that knows how to be impact ready,

(14:50):
it's Todd. So you've got this, you know, global guru
talking about best practices, some science based, some, you
know, based on what he's witnessed. But you're going to have some real,
real pithy, good content to start working on
that dimension and improving your impact readiness.
So it's powerful. And then if you go to the, you know, value pros website,

(15:13):
you can see all that content all in one spot. If
you click on, you know, where it says show one of the top
tabs, you'll have all the episodes that relate to
these value readiness dimensions that are featured in
that assessment. So just a rich, rich resource
for how to improve your value readiness to influence

(15:35):
that buying experience across that full journey. So from here,
what I wanted to do is just talk about each one of the phases of
the buying journey here and how we can influence that experience
across each phase. You'll get some high points from
the team here on how you can do that and do that well.
So I'll go ahead and lead off and just talking about how your

(15:58):
buyers gain trust. There's three key dimensions for
being able to do that and do that well. That's showing up credibility
ready, customer ready, and narrative ready. So
credibility ready. That's where, you know, gosh, you know, how do I show up
online? If it's an online meeting, how do I show up in person?
How do I Show up on LinkedIn, my profile, so that buyer can say, hey,

(16:19):
is it worth meeting with this guy? You know, and what have I published?
Am I relevant? What's the messages I've sent to them? You know, am
I making that powerful first Impression that drives
credibility and trust. That's kind of job one second.
Customer ready. Have I studied that their, their organization?
Have I used my AI tools to. To spider, you know, their

(16:42):
10K, their annual report, you know, their quarterly earnings
call, you know, what's the CEO think is most important? Have I
loaded up? Am I ready to add value in terms of being
customer ready and then narrative? That that's something that's
incredibly close and passionate to my heart. How do I
have my first meetings with these guys? So in terms of being

(17:04):
narrative ready, I'll just double click there just for a second.
A lot of the wisdom that we bring to our, our clients comes from a
bestselling book that I wrote called Inspire your Buyers go to go to
market with a story that sizzles. I'm super proud to say it's been on
Amazon's top four list for sales and selling management
books four times over the last two years. It

(17:26):
really works and it delights me that people get a lot of value from that.
But within that book, it lays out a very simple
framework for being narrative ready. First, we need
to design our narratives for the buyers we're speaking to. So thinking about the
targeting the right buyers, then are we doing a good job of
spotlighting the problem in their world in a way that they appreciate it,

(17:49):
they see the cost of that problem. Then are we doing a good job of
envisioning the desired outcome and all those associated
benefits and the business value associated with that? And then are we doing a
good job of showcasing the big solution? What's the the
buyer need to do? And then how do we fit into that big solution?
What, what's our solution piece to that puzzle in

(18:10):
helping that buyer being successful and overcoming their problem and
achieving their desired outcomes? And then does our narrative really
prescribe next steps? It doesn't leave it to chance. And, and helping
that buyer buy. So that's all part of that first phase
of gaining trust. And does anybody have anything
they want to say about being, you know, gaining trust before

(18:33):
we move on? Anybody have a point of view on the team? Well, you certainly
have a point of view on it. If you don't have it, if you don't
have trust and credibility, you're never going to have the quality of conversation with your
customer that's going to allow you to understand the things that are important
because they simply won't share it with you. So trust and credibility
is your entry point. It's the key. Absolutely.

(18:55):
Absolutely. Thanks so much for mentioning that, Mike
Dean. I know I'M spotlighting you. Did you have a point of view? I know
you've seen so much. It's an area that is
skipped over. And I see a lot of salespeople have
one, maybe two meetings and they have an assumption of trust,
and trust is built over a much longer period. And it's a much

(19:17):
softer process than they might think. Absolutely. Well,
thank you, Dean. Well, let's move forward here just a little
bit. So clarifying your
buyers, you know, requirements, that's kind of the second phase in
the buying experience. And there's two, you know, major
things that you can be doing to do a great job of that.

(19:39):
It's showing up, being buyer ready and then discovery ready.
So in the buyer readiness dimension, you know, are, are you
really, you know, putting yourself into the context of the buyer
you're meeting with, you know, based on the role they play in their organization,
based on the key metrics that they're trying to hit, how they're going to be
promoted, the problems they're trying to solve? Are you

(20:01):
really honing in to have conversations with those
key stakeholders? Especially as you're multi threading across some
of these bigger deals, making sure you're resonating with
each one of the buyers that you're meeting with? Are you buyer
ready? And have you studied not only their Persona,
but literally them, you know, going off to their profile and

(20:24):
what they care about, talking to others about that and just showing up
buyer ready, discovery ready, that's something that
Mike will speak to us about, you know, who's just absolutely a
master in that dimension. So, Mike, you know, I was
looking at some research. You know, buyers do want personalization.
72% want communication that respects their

(20:46):
specific needs. And I saw, you know, another stat,
56% have walked away from deals that felt irrelevant.
So. So, you know, I would contend discovery done right
isn't optional. It's very, very intentional.
So question to you is, what's the biggest opportunity most sellers miss
when trying to understand, you know, the buyer? And how do you connect

(21:08):
great discovery to relevant high impact demo? It's
a very interesting question. I go as far as to say that it is in
the discovery stage that we actually make the sale. And we make the
sale then because, you know, the quality of our questions
will help the buyer articulate what it is exactly that they're looking for.
So for me, that sales pro, the discovery process is key.

(21:31):
But the stats that you quoted, Bruce, I
find horrifying. And you will remember that I have one stat
that I absolutely love and which
comes from some Forrester research some years ago. And it was a verbatim
quote within the report. And the report was all about senior buyers
perceptions of the salespeople that came to see them.

(21:53):
And for those salespeople who are watching this, I have to tell you
that they weren't good. But it was the verbatim quote that got
me. And the quote was, only 12% of the
meetings I have with salespeople has any value.
And I just find that I really like to feel
that the buyer was having a particularly bad day when

(22:16):
he came up with that stat. But unfortunately, I suspect
it's not uncommon. Does he demons nodding his head?
Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that absolutely terrifying? That
means 88% of the meetings that buyers have are of
little value to them. And we talk about the need to be
credible, to build trust, to show interest. And I think

(22:39):
much of it, it comes down, I think, really to a failure
to really engage with customers and really
get to grips with both discovery and recognizing
how important is. We still have
salespeople going in and talking about how wonderful
their products are before they had any idea about what the customer

(23:00):
is looking for. And I think when it comes to
great discovery, great discovery conversations are
exactly that. They're a conversation. They are not an
interrogation. And I say to people, try to think
about it as having a chat with your customer
and showing genuine interest and

(23:22):
genuine curiosity in learning more about what
they do and how they do it. And I think that is a great way
of building trust and credibility. And obviously, the one
skill that a lot of sellers really need to work on
is listening. That's critical because that then
leads you or allows you to do the other thing.

(23:45):
I think sellers are in too much of a rush. They are so keen to
get to what they see as they end. They don't dig deep
enough. So they never really understand what the problems are. They get a
sort of surface level perception of what might be wrong and what
the business goals are, but they don't really understand and they don't listen.
And I think actually that is probably the biggest opportunity

(24:07):
sellers have. I think because so few sellers
do it, those that do are going to stand head and
shoulders above the vast majority of
salespeople. I saw a great quote
fairly recently and that was a great
demo. Isn't just a tour, it's a response.

(24:29):
So it's not a tour of all the things you can do. It's your really
good, tailored response to the things that, you know,
are an issue or challenges. For the customer. So that's
it. So for me, I just sum it all up, Bruce, by saying I think
weak discovery equals wasted
damage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

(24:51):
Such wisdom there, Mike. Thank you so much, folks.
One, one quote that Mike's given me that just stuck in my
head. It's in his books as well on Amazon. But his
definition of value is value is a mystery and a great
mystery. And I love your notion Mike about, you know, really
showing up with curiosity and, and collaborating with your

(25:13):
to find and define that value. And the
listening skills are certainly critical to that.
So thank you, Mike. That's awesome. I just know we could talk about
all these things for so long. But I'll move on
here. I want to next talk about how do you help your
buyers frame value? Because they've got to do that in order to

(25:35):
justify the solution that you're bringing to them.
How do they frame value and get that in front of the, you know, the
decision makers who, who need to, you know, check off on that
value. So there's, there's two key things, two key levers that
you can pull that are part of that value ready assessment that we showed showing
up, demonstration ready and then justification ready

(25:56):
and so on these two questions. I've got some
questions that I'll probably start. Let's see here. Darren, I'll start with you.
So in terms of framing value, you know, how do you help sellers
move from talking about features to fram financial
impact in a way that resonates with the C suite? What do you have to
offer us there? Darren? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I'm going to, you

(26:18):
know, go back to kind of almost reiterate what some of what Mike said.
You know, I like to think about that journey of discovery as you're
becoming a student of the customer. You're trying to understand their business,
understand how they make decisions, understand how they make money, understand
their trade offs and then translate that a really good
value pro. And that's why we call the company Value Pros. A really good

(26:40):
value pro is able to then say, okay, based on what our
solution does, what offer our offering does, how will it create
value based on how our customers will use it? And that's, that's the key thing
is translating it not generically to, you know, that it's going to,
I'll just use an example. It's going to improve productivity of your knowledge workers.
Okay, well fine, you know, that's, that's all fine and good. You know, it's very

(27:03):
Generic. Well, is this company a hospital
and your knowledge workers are doctors and nurses? Well, that's a very different type
of value proposition. If you're talking about doctors and nurses and what they're going to
do with that time versus if you're talking about an R and D facility
in a manufacturing company where they're going to be more
productive on maybe accelerating time to market with new products with that

(27:26):
additional time or in a, you know, some,
a professional services environment, it may be that they're able to do, to learn more
and to, you know, gain more knowledge. So translating the fact that
you're going to save time into what does that mean in their
context, specifically in their business? And that's, that's not an easy task.
It sounds easy, but it's not an easy task. And that's part of the reason.

(27:48):
And we'll talk, talk some more. And actually we'll be doing
a live demo tomorrow of a tool that actually helps to
make that translation. You know, we call it Value Navigator to help make that
translation to say, okay, well, our, whatever you're offer, offering is, it has
these features. Customer doesn't care about features. Customer doesn't want to buy
your product. And Dean can probably resonate with this. No one wants to buy your

(28:10):
product and no one cares what your features are. They want the impact that your
product's going to give them. Well, if you don't understand how they make money, how
they do business, what they're going to do with your offering, you can't translate that
into how it's going to create impact for them. And what you have to do
is kind of, kind of intersect what you're going to
help them do with how it's going to impact their business. And

(28:32):
it's that discovery process of saying you're going to save time in
this category of people, which means you're going to be able to increase your sales
revenue. If you're talking about a sales team, you can spend more time talking to
customers, less time doing other things, and you can increase your sales again.
Another way of achieving that value, a hospital, a doctor or nurse can focus
on more patients or spend more time with more patients, or get better outcomes from

(28:54):
patients, all ways of, of using that time that they're going to get.
Each one is unique to their own circumstance and
situation, all based on the same basic value driver of saving
time. But that's not enough. You have to take it, to put it in their
terms, in their context, in their business. So
that's, that's kind of how I think about it and I think it starts with

(29:15):
as Dean said, that that whole or Mike said, you
know, the whole discovery process, you got to understand what their problems are, how you're
going to help them, how they're going to do things before you can translate it
into how it's going to create value for them. Yep, perfect. Darren, you know, you
nailed it. You know, that is so important what you're talking about. Yeah,
I'm sure you know, from geek speak to C Suite, you might find other geeks

(29:35):
on, on the buying side but very often they won't be
the decision makers. Sometimes they are, but very unlikely you need
to translate to C Suite, you know, where is that impact and
how do you even quantify that? And I hope everybody can attend
the webinar tomorrow that features this new AI powered tool called
Value Navigator. Does a brilliant job of helping people,

(29:58):
you know, look at that value, connect the value dots and showing where that impact
lies. All AI powered. It's phenomenal.
So switching horses here. David, got a question for
you. So buyers don't just need to understand the value, they need
to, you know, really share that internally with, with all
the key stakeholders. So you know, big question

(30:21):
that I get a lot and I'll ask you is when's the right time to
introduce ROI tools, right. Or justification assets, some of that,
you know, ROI studies or case studies that based on business value
and how do you make sure they actually get used inside that
buying group? Do you have point of view to offer the team here? Yeah, sure
thing. So you know, the, the right time to do it is right in the

(30:42):
middle of the sales funnel. So you know, as a seller you want to go
through your discovery process, start to understand
your customers status quo environment, you know, what are their
challenges, what are their pain points and start to take that a
little further to understand, you know, what your customer
measures, what outcomes are they looking for, what

(31:03):
KPIs need to improve for them to consider
your solution a success. So you need to get all of
those, you know, building blocks done first because it's
essentially impossible to build the financial justification
without having that information. But you also want to make sure that
you get your business case, the financial justification built, built before

(31:26):
finance or procurement gets involved, before, you know,
you create your proposal. So you want to establish the value of your
solution as it's meaningful to the customer. Before you submit
a proposal, some of the trigger points to listen for are, you know, if
your customer starts asking about payback period or they're
asking about price or they're asking for a proposal,

(31:48):
that's the time to get the financial justification
ready. Or if the deal just seems stalled out, you can use,
use the financial justification to reinvigorate
it. As far as your the part of the question Bruce around you know how
to help buyers use the financial justification.
Sellers, I think, you know, sometimes fall into the trap of

(32:10):
assuming the buyer knows, knows what to do next and that's often
not the case. You need to be able to help them
understand the financial justification, be participants
in building it so that if they get questions on it, they
understand the assumptions, the logic behind it, how it
was built, is it meaningful to their organization. There's

(32:32):
answers to those kinds of questions that they can provide. And then
you want to help them shape the conversation. You realizing, you know, buying
committees typically have, you know, five, six, seven people. So tell them, you
know, your colleague from this department is going to care about these metrics. So
you need to shape your response and your discussions with that person
around those metrics. So that's really how to do

(32:54):
it is involve your buyer. Aim for the middle of the sales process
once you've established, you know, your discovery,
the outcomes that are being looked. But then before you get into the financial
discussions around price payback period roi. So I, I
hope that really helps the audience here. I think so. David, I'm going to
just show a mic drop. Really well, well done on that man.

(33:19):
Really well stated. Well, I'll move forward for us here just
onto the, the 4 4th phase of this accelerate impact
so you can see what the buyer's trying to do there and, and how you
need to help them. But there's a, you know, three key things, three
key levers in terms of being value ready that, that you can pull here.
So and, and to think about, premeditate about and influence.

(33:41):
Are you showing up approval ready? You know, are you helping, you know,
the, the buyer connect all those internal dots stakeholders
and who needs to say yes or at least, least you know, not say no
to move through the, that, that approval process
negotiation ready. You know, taken Darren and David's
advice and, and Mike's advice so far to

(34:02):
frame up the pro the right value proposition based on real
business value to prepare you to have that negotiation. I'll tell
you, I was just talking to one of my old clients
who had mentioned that a seller came to the executive team
and said hey, you know, would you guys be willing to give my client a
80% discount? And you know, my client

(34:26):
was, you know, my stakeholder was Saying hey, you know, could you explain to us,
you know, what, what the problem they're trying to solve is and you know, what
that might be worth to him. And he's like, you know, the seller was kind
of, you know, flat footed, didn't know. So went back and did some of the
discovery work that Mike advocates for and was
curious and hunted around and came back to the executive team, said hey,

(34:47):
I think we should be charging them more, you know, and, and you know, no,
no 80% discount and just got the whole value train set
properly. So you know that that's what I mean by showing up
negotiation ready. When you get, you know, some crazy requests, you're really
working the value part of that equation versus zero sum gain
then 10 impact ready. Now this is, you

(35:08):
know, only the few do this but you know, have you
set up emotion for, even for what we call first impact,
but have you defined the metrics that you're going to influence
the business value associated with that and, and, and some
critical few measurements that can be captured that
you can look at with your buyer and, and hopefully have a

(35:31):
celebration and, or identify some areas for improvement
to achieve that promise and the value associated with that promise.
That's what we talk about being impact ready. So I
want to ask, my guru's on the line here.
Just one sec here, Dean, I, I had this hooked up for,
for your good looks so much here. But

(35:54):
Dean, we'll start with you and what can
sellers do earlier to ensure their approval ready?
I know you and I have talked about that quite a bit and don't get
stuck in procurement finance, legal or
infosec. How can sellers help influence that?
Based on your, your experience from procurement. There'S a lot they

(36:15):
can do and the guys have already touched on some of it about building the
trust, asking the questions. First thing is, is diagnose the
approval landscape at the outset. Map out who are the approvers.
It's not just the stakeholder, the economic buyer, but also the
functional gatekeepers, whether it's procurement, finance, legal,
infosec. And you need to be asking questions of

(36:36):
procurement or other stakeholders. What are the groups that are in the
company that typically need to review a deal like this
and even ask them where do they see deals like this usually getting started
stuck because that's where you can help concentrate your efforts to support them.
Then you need to preempt the internal objections and this is going
to be a bit alien to a lot of salespeople, but you need to think

(36:58):
like a procurement person. You need to shift from being close,
ready to approve already. And sellers are often coming
in, trying to prep for a close and then neglecting to
prepare the internal stakeholders and
ready the internal approval gates. So you need to
anticipate pushback thinking like procurement or legal

(37:20):
and saying, what would this contract pricing model or this risk
profile pass? My own sniff test, my own scrutiny.
And what you're trying to do is simplify their job, make it easier for those
teams to say yes and move the deal faster. The third thing is
come with approval assets. And it's the type of stuff that Todd does
so well, not just sales decks. So bring procurement ready

(37:41):
materials, a standard MSA or redlined contract
template that the customer have the security and compliance
documentation ready. That becomes an interminable delay
because there's too much to and fro. Get it out of the way early.
And for your pricing, have a breakdown with justification
logic. What David was saying about having the value in

(38:03):
mind as you come in and emphasizing that, and this is something
I really emphasize, come with case studies where you've
addressed similar concerns for procurement or legal around
risk, risk performance and so forth. So you need to frame the risk as
being managed, not implied. And you need to offer frameworks that
quantify risk mitigation. They don't just assert it.

(38:25):
And too often it's, yeah, we have a risk management now. What is it? How
does it work? How does it come together? The fourth, and I know you do
this with Value Navigator, and I know Todd's on top of this is
quantifying the cost of delay. Approval teams are wired to
avoid risk and many cases avoid a decision, which is why you get
your stat on the number of efforts in

(38:46):
indecision. But that's partly because they're not aware of what the risk
of inaction is. So come armed with impact
projections every month of delay cost x comparative
benchmarks. Others in your space have seen these results in 60 days.
This is what it's costing you by delay. And then fifth, involve procurement as a
strategic ally, not an obstacle. Reframe their role

(39:08):
and look at it as your goal is to support them in
helping their internal teams achieve their goals, which is an internal
alignment that procurement's really driving for, whether it's compliance, savings, delivery,
performance. So position your offer as enabling procurement's
goals. Use their language, total cost of ownership, supplier resilience,
service levels, and use that language to align your solution with

(39:30):
their success. Matrix 6. Build a
proactive approval narrative. You're not in the room
when procurement or legal is presenting their
perspective on the Offer, offer. You need to give them the tools
and equipment to be able to go in because a bit like from,
from the musical Hamilton where the character wants to be in the

(39:52):
room where when it happens, you're not in the room when it happens. If you're
in sales, typically you've got to equip procurement, finance,
legal to be able to represent your case clearly,
articulately and be able to defend positions.
Lastly, set expectations early. Early, let the buyer know
that you're going to support the internal approval journey and

(40:13):
really partner with them. So you see often
legal or infosecures where there's delays, come up with resources,
checklists that you can share with procurement so they can review the stuff in
parallel, not sequentially. And I'm a big proponent of
sales engaging with procurement early on to get the contract
in front of them. That's probably along with infosec,

(40:37):
the biggest cause of delay in a sale actually
happening. Extending the cycle time. If you
get it out the way the start, it makes it so much easier and it
makes it more comfortable for the organization to approve the sale because
they're confident that you've agreed to their terms and conditions. Wow,
Dean, there's so much there. I won't unpack

(40:58):
it. That's just huge, huge Todd, I, I, I dare you. How
do you build upon that? So I've got a question for you, Todd.
You know Todd, you pioneered value guarantees
which I've just been blown away, especially your Harvard Business Review case
study on that. Oh my goodness, really powerful

(41:18):
work that you've done. So how do you know guarantees
change the dynamic for risk averse buyers and
how should sellers set them up without over promising?
What would you. Best thing I can do is give you a story which that
article was based on and maybe it'll tie into
some of the comments we've had as we've gone along here. I did about

(41:41):
200 and something of these agreements with Fortune 1000
companies, B2B companies around the world. So it's not industry
specific. But why did we do it? A lot of customers were
pushing back saying everybody's in here saying that they bring value.
You're all the same, you're close enough stuff, why bother? So
that was the market we were in and we believed we were better. So

(42:03):
came back and said look, we'll guarantee value. This goes back to the
discovery conversation. But once we agree on what is a value,
for example, do you care about energy? We don't care about labor cost.
I'm making these up. But what do you care about what's the priority, let's
do these things and then if we agree on what's the value, I will guarantee
you that I will find you a 10% percent annual improvement

(42:25):
totally dollar wise in that area. Then we had to do a little bit of
the education, getting the customer to say, well wait, 10% price
reduction is easy. I can scream and threaten and
leverage. And I said, but 10% value every year is better. And
we won't go through the math. But real quickly, a 10% price reduction
is a one time, hold on a five year contract. So let's say you're

(42:47):
selling a million dollars worth of software or product. Product. 10%
of a million is $100,000. So five years in a million would be
a 10% reduction would be $4,500,000. And the
customer said yes. And there was the functional buyer, there was procurement in the room.
And I said, but we're willing to give 10% value per year that we've
agreed on, that you care about. So the first year you're right, it's

(43:09):
$100,000. So price and value aren't any better off. But it might
be able to exceed 10%. And if I don't, I'll write you a check. Check.
I think that's probably where we started to get some interest. Okay, so my risk
aversion's gone down and there's a chance I could do better than 10%. But the
next year I'm going to do another 10%, another $100,000, the next year another
$100,000. So inventory, downtime, energy,

(43:30):
people, whatever was agreed to. It turns out, and we drew this on a board
that a 10% price cut on a million dollar contract over five
years is $500,000. A 10% per year value value
is 1.5 million. It's worth three times as much. And
I remember them going, wow. And this is where some of the credibility come
in. I had some procurement expert relationships, some of these

(43:53):
professors, and I keep saying that's right. So it wasn't just a
salesperson with a, you know, really magic numbers.
I think that's where the trusted advisor stuff might have come in. And a
tie into that, which I think leads to the trusted advisor was the passion because
the customer said afterwards, words, you actually believe this. You
truly are in here saying this is a better way for us to partner and

(44:14):
work together. It's not just a PowerPoint slide that says, you
know, our company brings value or whatever
then, which I've gotten better at over the years was a process to implement
because maybe the first time was we'll find value. Well, wait,
we define what value is, we prioritize what it is.
Here are my four ways to find value. This, I need access to these

(44:37):
people. We'll do an interview or a survey. You need to share
certain KPIs with us. You need to give us your top. I
mean, because in the early days sometimes the customer would say, you go. And
my team would go. Nobody will talk to me. They won't give me information. I
don't have access. I can walk the plant. And you ask somebody, do you have
any problems, everything's fine. It turns out the term fine is relative if

(44:59):
we're used to our pumps lasting two years. So if we don't have data, we
don't have switch. We put a structure in place for that and then we said,
okay, we're going to have ongoing meetings. What's in the pipeline, what's working,
where are we when there's a win, we're going to have it signed off, maybe
a case, then we're going to replicate. And out of 200 of those that
were signed, we never wrote a check. And the best part of it is when

(45:19):
a chief procurement officer would leave one industry or company and go somewhere else and
I get an email, it didn't mean anything to me. It's like,
hey, we met once here. You did this for this company? Company. I'm
at this industry. Do you have the ability to do it here? Because procurement wants
to bring value, but they want it measured real, not
warm, fuzzy. Relationship. I'm nice, I'll take you for dinner.

(45:41):
Doesn't quite cut it. Relationship's important. I won't buy from somebody
I hate unless I have to. But at the same time, you have to bring
more than a few funny jokes. So hopefully that ties some of the stuff the
team pulled together. Funny jokes help, but I mean, you need
a little bit more. Yeah, no, good, good point. Sorry to cut you off visually
there, Todd here. But yeah,

(46:04):
that, that was wonderful in terms of quantifying with them, you know,
what, what's the, you know, instead of discounting, what's the
value that you could gain and how do you again, talk about
being negotiation ready and impact ready, you know,
you know, all in one swoop in order
to help that buyer accelerate their impact. So, so perfect play.

(46:27):
I'll just review real fast. So we covered, you know, our B2B buying experience
index. We went pH, mapping together those value
ready dimensions that you're going to find in that value ready assessment off our website
and all the resources behind that. If you go to ValuePros IO
the show, you'll see all, all this rich content where we
go, you know, way deeper into these dimensions. And it's

(46:51):
interesting, you know, the, the accumulation of all this is what Darren
David and I have coined as a total value experience.
And you can see the B2B sales isn't easy. There's so
many disciplines and that you need to be really good
at, you know, combined with, you know, telling good jokes Todd and
being likable. But you know, you, you know, there's just so much that

(47:13):
goes into driving a better B2B
buying experience. But again, back to that point that SBI had
59 of the influence is based on the experience. That's
where we can stand apart and gain the edge, you know, and
win more and win more often. Know, gosh, right now in the
market, a stat I saw across software firms,

(47:36):
their win rate is 15% to 22%.
And I've talked to organizations that are way worse than that. You know, winning less
than 1 out of 10 deals. This is really a way
to, you know, get the ship sailing straight and, and,
and win more and more often by, by thinking about the
disciplines across this. So I want to thank

(47:58):
the guys here for showing up and just
creating you in this webinar. This has been so fun for me.
Everybody just see seeing us all come together at once to,
to lay this out for, for the world. It's so powerful
and just three things that I'd love to leave you with. Three, three
ideas. Take advantage of the resources that we've got. If you hit our website

(48:19):
under resources, there's, there's so much there that are going to
help you to improve your buying experience for, for your
organization. I'd say double down on building business cases and
just another, you know, call to action. There's a webinar tomorrow on that with
our new AI powered, you know, value business case
building tool. You'll also have a link to it off of our

(48:42):
website. If you go to Solutions Value Navigator, you can get
into that world. If you can't make the, the webinar
tomorrow. And then third, you know, we, the team here, we're here
to help help. So you know, if you need any help on business
value content and messaging, you know, getting your narrative straight, getting your story
straight and get everything heading down the, the tracks the right

(49:05):
way, we can help you with the content or like what Dean was saying, do
you have those case studies value stories that are going to help
substantiate reduce risk and build confidence on that
approval side. So we'll help you with your, your content and
messaging. Secondly, we've got the tools that are
there to help you and tools for that are buyer friendly, buyer

(49:26):
facing that that you can use assessment tools like what you know, you
saw with the value ready assessment or value calculators, et cetera. We build
tools that support those buying journeys and help that buyer
buy. And then thirdly enablement
so we can help you, you know, if you're trying to do this at scale
across your revenue team, we can help with the, the training and big

(49:48):
deal support and, and coaching and, and, and really help
them them have these disciplines that are going to influence that buying
experience and help help you guys grow your revenue. So that's what
we're all about. And I just want to, you know, thank everybody for, for being
here. You know, as part of this whole, whole thing.
It's, it's been really, really rich for, for all of us.

(50:11):
So thanks for your time and attention and helping us with this mission and
helping everybody be value ready and you know, influencing that body
experience. On that note, we'll go ahead and end the webinar here.
Thanks so much. What a rich conversation that was.
A few key takeaways stand out for me. First,
trust isn't earned in one meeting. It's built through relevance,

(50:33):
preparation and presence. Second, discovery
isn't optional. As Mike Wilkinson put it, weak
discovery equals wasted demo, bad value
justification, bad negotiations. Just all the way down the line line.
So think of it this way. As coined from Mike,
value is a great mystery that you must cover, uncover together

(50:55):
with your buyers. And finally, buyers
don't just need to see the value. They need to justify it, approve it and
realize it. That means showing up value ready at every step,
giving them the information they need and the tools and
just making sure they are equipped to have that
internal battle for you. So for me, the biggest insight was the reminder

(51:17):
that 59% of the influence on a bold buying decision
comes from the experience itself, not the offering. That's both
sobering for many vendors and incredibly empowering
for those who want to stand apart and deliver a better total value
experience. So if you enjoyed this episode, please like and
subscribe to the Value Pro show. And if you're feeling kind, leave

(51:40):
a review so others can find and enjoy it too. Thanks.