Episode 159: Buyer Enablement: How to Influence the Buying Process and Get Chosen with Andrei & Vladimir

Most B2B teams still obsess over MQLs, discovery calls, and proposal stages—yet 90% of B2B buying happens during internal meetings, not sales calls.

In this episode of Full-Funnel Live, Vlad and Andrei unpack 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂—𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺.

𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻:

• Why your deals are getting stuck—or dying—when you're not in the room
• ⁠How to enable Champions with personalized content hubs, business cases, and internal sales tools
• The key elements of a successful buyer enablement program
• ⁠How to prepare your marketing and sales teams to align around how B2B buyers really buy

We showed 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 of how we use buyer enablement to break through silos, influence the internal process, and drive revenue from enterprise accounts.

RESOURCES

On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/

Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/

Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://trenches.community/

Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog

Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the full Funnel B t B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot Io.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's stay everyone as welcome to the new episode of
Full Funnel Life. Good morning and our North American audience
again broadcasting from sunny and hot Spain. And as promised today,
we're going to dive deeper into YRO enablement. Last week
we have a chat on this flood that this is

(00:32):
actually the topic that we.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Have never.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Covered in depths on our podcast, and we repeatively received
questions about how the viro enablement program looks like, what
kind of the key pillars of the buyer enablement uh?
And obviously we'll also love to ruin the most common

(00:58):
fallacies about enablement. That's not just the big marketing deck
that you sent to your prospects, to accounts that you
are currently engaging with and a bunch of different case idis. Right,
that's not the key. So we're going to talk about

(01:18):
the buyer enablement preparation, how to align it with the
buying process, not the sales process. Will also explain the
difference between the buying process and the sales process, and
at the end we'll share with you a couple of
our own examples, So stay tuned and let us know. Meanwhile,
where you guys all join from. We see Payton from Portland,

(01:40):
got to see you. Let us know in the chat
where you all join us from. And meanwhile just to shore,
as you why we decided to talk about this topic.
Actually we were running the analysis of our ideals. It
was it was Q one this year. We were running
the deal analysis of the previous quota quo of twenty

(02:03):
twenty four and we actually realized we didn't pay that
much attention, but we realized that we increased our winery
to almost fifty percent from all qualified opportunities as I'm
referring to to the to the qualified opportunities, and we
did a couple of twigs, right, that's actually our buyers.

(02:27):
They confirmed that this these twigs helped us to accelerate
the deal and close the deal successfully. And we can
look at this process from both marketing and sales perspective,
right because at the same in our company was with
both sales and marketers. So this is this is what

(02:47):
we would love to share with you. But first maybe
let me bring you to the stage and let's kick
it off with explaining the difference between buyings and sales process.
How we traditionally think about it as bit to big companies,
and so then we can proceeds and talk about the

(03:09):
buyer enablement program development.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Hello everybody, and thank you Erin for offering assistance for
my upcoming trip.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So I think you have probably heard of the term
sales enablement. We are talking about buyer enablement. That should
already give you a hint as to the difference between
the two programs. Has to do, indeed, with the difference
between the buyer and the sales process. Right when you

(03:43):
look at the sales process marketing and sales process, we
usually define neat stages where the prospect becomes aware. They
might become an MQOL, which is then nurtured into an SQOL,
then they become an SQO and then they go through

(04:06):
different sales pipeline stages until they become a deal. And
the reason we do there are many different reasons why
we do that. It makes things more measurable. We can
focus on improving these conversion steps from one step to another.
But of course what we know is that the reality
of the buying process, especially these last two years, a

(04:33):
lot of changes have happened. Initially, first during COVID, a
lot of the steps went online, more people got involved.
But then, especially during the last two years, this is
even more drastically changed. We're hearing a lot about this.
So what is the difference between the buying process and
the sales process. We have these neat stages that we

(04:56):
try to make measurable. We use it also for the forecast,
et cetera. But they don't really match the stages that
the buyers go through. Will The buyers usually go through
first of a very long non buying process where they
are really only interested in educating themselves, consuming the content,

(05:18):
learning what's happening in the industry, where actually it is
the status quo, right, and that status quo. This is
the longest part of the process, and the reason why
I'm even talking about it a lot of companies might
not even focus on that part is because this is
actually where you where you will generate a lot of that.
You can generate a lot of awareness and increase the

(05:41):
chance of getting into the consideration set because this is
the first inside. The first inside about the buying process
is that a lot of buyers, especially enterprise buyers. According
to a recent study, eighty six percent of them actually
will shortlist, maybe even select a solution they discovered before

(06:03):
they started the buying process. So how can marketing help?
Sales can help tremendously by helping generate the awareness. That
is the first part, but let's talk about today's session
is more focused on what happens after the buying process
actually starts. Maybe they were in contact already with your

(06:24):
sales team, right, A lot of things happen. They will
first initially have a lot of internal discussions to understand
and define the problem because a lot of times there
are a lot of times they are always competing priorities
within the organization. So you're champion or the person who

(06:48):
is trying to maybe implement a new solution, a solution
like yours are trying to solve a specific problem. We'll
have to compete not necessarily know to get the budget,
but also the budget itself with other priorities. Organizations will
always have other priorities. So initially even just deciding is

(07:10):
this something that is priority that we should be looking
at versus other priorities. Is this something that yes it's
a priority, but is this something that we can solve ourselves?
Is this something that we can solve using our own
solutions that we already have in house. Is this something

(07:33):
that maybe we can use an existing solution that has
been already approved by the procurement department. These are all
the steps that the buyers will go through in the
buying process. So the question becomes then, okay, so how
can you then influence that from the marketing and sales

(07:54):
perspective is you will need also to address the priority,
show the cost of doing nothing, et cetera, et cetera,
which we will dive into a bit later. The most
important point that I wanted to make about the differences
between the sales and the buying process is that a
lot of these things that have happened that need to

(08:16):
happen are not even modeled in the sales process. Like
I said, this all long part of status quo. Then
discussing whether that's even a priority, whether that's something that
we can solve ourselves or not, is usually we all
assume that no, they are looking for a solution, they're
evaluating our solution, and that's where our process starts. So

(08:37):
I think this is the first most important thing to
take away. The second one is that there is the
process is not linear, that there are a lot of
people that are involved, and that a lot of the
steps in that process happened behind closed doors or they
have and at least behind the view of our analytics

(08:59):
attributions of sware.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
So there are a lot of internal discussions, back and forth, messages, meetings.
You know, there are many things that can happen that
influence your deal that you're not aware of. You know,
maybe you're champion. The person who is presenting a solution
to their colleagues or their supervisors gets a critical question

(09:21):
they don't know how to answer, like this is a
very important part of the salesporce is very important for you.
And the point is they will try to get that
answer themselves. They will try to, you know, go on
your website, read the information, get that answer. We don't
always make this easy. That's another story. But the point

(09:44):
here is that there are a lot of these steps
that are very important that impact your deal that happened
and you're not even aware of them. There are a
lot of questions that their colleagues might have. There's a
lot of back and forth. They may even at the
end come to a conclude that they want that solution
almost come all the way to the end, and then

(10:04):
the priorities may shift again. So all of these things
are happening behind the closed doors that we might not
be aware of.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I think what is really important also to think
about your own buy an experience. Right, it's if we'll
try to summarize everything what blood have said, what will
make sense for you As the first step, remember the
last time you on board that a new vendor could
be whatever software development company, marketing agency, consultant company, right,

(10:38):
or when was the last time when you have purchased
an expensive software? Right, you can feel think holistically about
your buying process. There were a lot of discussions where
the vendor wasn't involved, right. There were a lot of
critical questions and obviously there were a lot of factors

(10:59):
that influenced your decision. We spoke that there are factors
that influence how you select the vendors. Right, But that
happens before the sales or the buying process starts. Right,
And we covered this during the previous episodes about awareness
and demand generation creation.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Then the actual conversation happens with the different vendors. Right,
And even if you had a prioritized vendor, but that
vendor can't provide you clear information, can give you good
arguments that you can present to the decision makers at

(11:40):
your company, right. Or if you have decision maker but
you look at this let's say arguments, and they are
not credible for you, they don't influence. Let's say they
leave you doubts in the investment. Right, you don't have
kind of clear idea that this would be a high

(12:01):
ri investment, then the deal is likely to get stalled.
This is what we're often here from. Whenever we're discussing
the sales teams, they're saying, hey, my deals store, for example,
how can I reactivate stolen pipeline?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Right?

Speaker 2 (12:17):
And when we start asking the question how can we
reactivate stoleent pipeline, it means that we are too late
to the process, right, because there are challenges already happening,
and somehow we caused these challenges. Obviously not all of them, right,
but somehow so. And that could mean, for example, there

(12:39):
are all flat Once we kind of mapped out the
four critical areas that are for critical pillars that influence
that deal stagnation. Right. One of them is when you
put in front of your target accounts sales reps without
the main knowledge, or you put them into an unnecessary

(13:01):
qualification process before they actually have time to talk to
subject matter experts at your company. This becomes even more
complicated if you are selling to it audiences health care,
cyber security, et cetera. Right, where these people love to
talk to solution architects to their appears basically right, and

(13:24):
not sales reps without any domain knowledge that don't understand
jobs to be done. This is one of the things.
The second one is usually lack of clear information right,
and this is basically the marketing part unclear wag messaging,
which means that they are going to a website, they

(13:46):
are going through some critical pages and they can't understand
anything right. There's tons of flyffe information and you have
still you doubt what this product does. And actually even
if you'll get it right, you still don't understand kind
of does this product functions as needed? Cannot help you

(14:08):
as your jobs to be done? Right, So unclear messaging next,
not provided the critical information. For example, if critical information
is about inte creations, so data security or my creation
or whatever, and you don't have this information, that's another reason, right,
because quite often if we speak especially about mid market

(14:29):
or enterprise deals, that would be several departments involved. Right,
So they would anyhow present this let's say your product
to these departments and they will hear these critical questions,
which means that they would need to come back to you,
right and ask these critical questions.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Next.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
For example, there is we have seen this a couple
of times. Actually in ABM space, there are there were
lots of ABM vendors. Some of them I believe probably
don't exist, at least I don't hear about them. But
a few years ago, when ABM started to kind of

(15:09):
become popular marketing topic, these companies they invested a lot
into hype. But then when you go to the website,
you have no idea what's like all this marketing slank means,
and there is no product overview and there is no
way to test the product. So the only way is

(15:30):
booking a dema and then obviously praying when they will
actually show you how that product works, which is a
huge waste of time right for everybody, so and obviously
not providing enough qualification information. Often this is the price.
And in enterprise we often here that it's not possible

(15:53):
to provide pricing because of complications, which is fair enough,
but at least is you can give estimates, right, what
like what is the estimated project a price and calculators
if that's not the case, because sometimes that could be
also not the case. Fair enough, then you can provide

(16:16):
enough information about your ideal account and basically your ideal
customer profile and ideal buyer personas for whom this product
is a service and for whom it's not given clear
qualification and disqualification criteria. So people could just disqualify themselves

(16:36):
if they feel that they are not the right feed.
And you save time also for your sales team, right,
and you avoid all unnecessary conversations about low quality marketing pipeline.
So these are the keys that kind of influence that
deal stolen, right, And obviously, like let's say maybe you
don't have half of them, but then you have the

(16:58):
first conversation, your prospects start, they start asking these questions
and you don't have this information. So what is the
best case scenario? The best case scenario in this case
is that you have a knowledgeable sales rep who could
reply these questions, right, because that person has tons of

(17:18):
the main knowledge. The second scenario, the sales rep would say, hey,
let's book another call with whoever from my team who
might be able to help with this, right, But actually,
quite often we're not hearing these questions, right, So for example,
they might they might end up the call. Ever since

(17:41):
sounds good, they come to whatever, to IT department or
to CFO, to somebody else, and they start getting new questions, right,
And if they don't have you replies, and like flat said,
they have tons of other priorities, the deal priority immediately
goes down.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Okay, so we don't have enough information, but I need,
for example, to prepare for the event of the kickoff
call of whatever. Right, So that could be multiple things.
So your deal priority is going down right. Now, what's interesting,
We'll just discussed the complexities of the buying process. And

(18:21):
again I highly recommend to think about your experience as
a buyer, right because I believe all of us were
for and our buyers at some uh some stages right
at sometimes, and then think about your sales process. Just
look at your CRM, how your CRM is orchestrated.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Quite often it's very simple. It's just okay, they discovery
call right then or them a call, then proof of
concept and then let's say proposal and then closed one
close lost right, and let sales have the discussions about
the pipeline. They say, ah, yeah, that still see its
on the proof of concept or whatever, procurement legal or

(19:06):
proposals sent.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
The problem is that nobody has an idea of what's
happening internally and at what actual buying stage your deal
is currently is right? That's the key. So these are
the missing points and when what mentioned the complexity of
that buying process. The first step actually holistically think about it,

(19:32):
and if you don't have enough insights, start talking to
your customers. Right, at least pick up the rea isn't
closed one deals the new customers and in treew them
about all the touch points combined with the sales insights,
about the questions that these people ask. Right, what are
the most common questions? And this would be your basic outline.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
The first step is understanding how historically that works because
the good buyer enablement basically facilitates the buying process. Right,
these buyers they get answers before the questions occur in
the pop up. Right, that's the key So the second
one is looking at all the friction points that you

(20:16):
have in the process and think about is there anything
else that I could remove? Right? Or I can make
it aligned with the buyer needs? Right? Am I providing
all the necessary information? Am I not hiding the critical information?
Is my message up to day? Is that clear enough?
Do I give at least a good product in some

(20:39):
And there are multiple ways?

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:41):
How you can present your product?

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:44):
So interactive them as product videos, whatever use cases. That
could be plenty of things. So this would be the
critical steps when you outline this. The next step is
just think about what would be the good how the
good vi enablement program will look like. Again, traditionally companies

(21:05):
think about that vi enablement is just collection of different
case status and a big market and deck where will
explain why our product is the best in the category,
all the potential features, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right,
which in reality not the most important information for your bias.
So I think what I would love to print you

(21:28):
back and just ask you to share your experience and
developing this vienablement program. So what are the key pillars
and what are the key documents? That you need to have.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Thank you. I think that.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Again, the first step is, like you just mentioned, is
understanding running that analysis, understanding the process that your customers
go through, and understanding the questions that I have as
they go through that process, the most critical questions that
I have, the questions that I get from their colleagues,

(22:06):
because they will give You need to.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Be answering those questions. You need to be proactively working
with those customers.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
I think another key important piece of another key element
here is that to understand is that you are not
really selling your deal, your product. It's actually the champion,
so somebody internally who is selling to their colleagues, selling

(22:36):
to the quote unquote buying center of the buying committee,
and that you are helping that person build the necessary
business case internally to show why solving this problem is
a priority right now, How your solution, why your solution

(22:57):
is actually going to be the best fit solution for
their specific situation that they're in. How quickly they will
have a return of that. Well, first of all, how
quickly will they be able to implement that. Who needs
to be involved in the implementation. Like a lot of
companies are very much focused on the product itself, but

(23:19):
the users or the customers, the future users and the
customers also want to know. Okay, but what will I
need to be able to actually implement it? How long
will it take? Who do you need from my people internally?
Do we have the capacity to do that and the knowledge?
Will there be some migration that will need to happen?

(23:41):
And if yes, is this something that you will help
with or this is something that we have to do?
And then how soon will all of that be implemented
so that I can see and hopefully start getting the
value out of your product? Or will I also have
to onboard and train people? How will this impact my
ternal processes? Will have to run change management? I think

(24:03):
like change management is another thing that is very much underestimated.
You will need to change the status quo, but you
might also need to change or impact some processes, which
is very difficult. If the person, if the team there
has just gone through a big change management, big implementation,

(24:25):
they might just just not have the capacity or the
willingness to go through another let's say change management.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
So you also have to show and.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Let's say there is a I don't know if there
is aquivalent in English, but there is a very nice
saying in my native tang, which is Serbian. The one
who was bitten by a snake is also afraid of
the lizards.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Right, So, if you.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Had the bad experience in the past where you had
to go through this difficult let's say, change management implementation process,
you just had that bad experience. You're talking to a
no vendor. You might assume that. So if I, as
a vendor, don't reassure you and explain, Hey, by the way,
you know, we take care of everything, We take care
of migration. This is what this is exactly the steps

(25:20):
that we will need to take. It takes this long,
we will need these people will take care of that,
et cetera, et cetera. They might just assume that this
is another snake or another difficult process that they need
to go through. So as you can see, like I
give it basically examples of the most frequent questions that
your buyers might have. But you understanding the exact questions

(25:44):
that they will have is really important because this is
going to drive your buyer enablement. So in our case,
to give our example, a lot of times people will
be thinking do I have because we are a consulting company.
We are not an agency. We don't do it for you.
We do it with your team. A lot of our
customers will have Okay, what are the skills that will

(26:05):
have the question? What are the skills that I need
to have internally to be able to implement ABM? What
is the data that I need to have about my customers?
What is the data that I need to have about
my prospects and my customers to be able to run
a successful ABM program?

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:23):
How soon can I see the results? Are you going
to help me involve my sales because I have tried
in the past to involve my sales and that wasn't
so successful. Is this something that you will also help
me with? So I'm now kind of translating these generic
questions that I just shared with you about implementation, etc.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
To our concrete example. And your job is to.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Figure out very specific information that your customers are interested
in and then and then you need to proactively answer
those questions. How do you answer those questions? It can
be depending on the question, It can be content. For example,
let's say we're talking about a question about implementation as

(27:08):
long does it take or is involved, etc. This could
be let's say a kind of a process or a
typical implementation plan or a process map or whatever form
it to do, which might be like a visual document
that outlines the steps that you go through the timeline,
the people that need to involve at each step, what

(27:31):
you help with, what they help with, and with those milestones. Also,
for example, when we present milestones like that, we also
share at each milestone what are the results or the
outcomes that they can expect. Okay, so initially we need
to do some analysis. Then we might need to we
will let's say, start define and start a pilot. After

(27:54):
the first one, you can expect to have some engagement
with your accounts. After the second one you can start
having some course sessions, initial discovery calls, etc.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
We are going to need a team of we define
exactly what team roles we want to have. You need
to have one person from AMBM team, one person from
sales team. It's not a lot, it's this much of time,
but they need to be dedicated to the process. Right,
this is going to be their role so that our
buyers can evaluate. Okay, do I have people that have

(28:25):
these skills? Oh and by the way, these are the
skills that we can help train and this is what
we would need right, So again proactively answering those with
for example, content, it doesn't have to be only content.
Let's sayesthetic documents that you might share with them when

(28:45):
it comes to, for example, creating a business case to
help your champion defend this internally. Usually the best form
of content is actually a simple document that you will create.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Together with you're champion.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
So this is not going to be something that is
generic that you just share the same business case with
every prospect. It's something that you will based on the
discovery that yourself has with your prospect.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
You will start understanding.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
What the what their priorities are, what are the competing priorities,
what is the.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
What is the problem.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
You will want to ask questions to help you understand
what is the problem costing you today and what happens
if you don't solve that, so that it can show
the so called cost of doing nothing. And obviously at
the kind of the flip side of that ROI that
you can create for them by one etcetera, etcetera. So
this is another example where you want to work together
with your customer. You will also want to understand who

(29:46):
else is involved in the sales process. So in our case,
we might be speaking to the VP of marketing or
the CMO or the head of let's say ABM and
demand generation, but there will be other people who are involved,
maybe people from the content team, sales, people from sales,
the VP of sales, or other types of buyers from

(30:08):
the other roles in the buying committee structure, and they
will have different questions, they will have different concerns. They
will also have different goals. So the value of our product,
our service in this case is going to be different
for the head of marketing is going to be different

(30:29):
for the person who is working at sales. If we
know that their sales team is struggling to get responses
from their audience from their buyers because they lack awareness,
well we can show them that we you know, the
ABM program that we can set up together can help
increase awareness and help increase response rates and engage these

(30:56):
high value or target accounts as an example. Right, so
this is going to be very different than for the
marketing team, where we can help show them how this
program is going to help drive more marketing source revenue,
how this is going to help them support their sales team.
How is this going to help them move from let's
say just engaged mqls to actual pipeline things that we

(31:19):
know frequently our marketers our marketing buyers. As a challenge, obviously,
you will want to also show relevant social proof as
part of your buyering enablement. So ideally you will show
examples of similar customers sharing the case studies. We like

(31:44):
to always show two levels. We like to show real buyers.
We always prefer to have a video interview, whether that's
through our podcast. As you know, we frequently host our
buyers on our podcast, and then we always extract video
that highlights kind of the problem, the solution and the

(32:04):
results there in the words of our buyer themselves, so
it's not like self serving, nicely copyrighted message, but an
actual conversation where the buyer is sharing those things. But
then we always link to the deeper case study, a
more detailed case study where our prospect can really dive

(32:25):
deeper and see all the different steps and the people
who were involved and how did it actually look like
and find other answers to the questions, etc. Even if
they don't always check and read all the details and
go through all the videos. Knowing that there is this
information that is transparent even just that is very much helping.

(32:49):
Another thing that makes a big difference between just having
a testimonial or case study and having that one that
is going to have a big impact is openly sharing
the contact information of those customers. So if you include
like a case study, you will frequently also say, have
an agreement already with the customer that they can serve
let's say, as a kind of a reference customer, that

(33:11):
people can contact them.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Again, not a.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Lot of prospects do that, but knowing that makes a
big difference, and sometimes they do. And sometimes, by the way,
even if you don't proactively provide that information, they may
actually go not behind your back because it's okay if
they do that, and oh I might know this person,
let me reach out to them and ask them what

(33:36):
their experience was with you. I mean, they will trust
their peers much much, much, much more than any marketing
material that you may present to them. Other examples, I
think there was a lot of talk these days on
LinkedIn about self serving comparison pages on website. When you

(34:02):
show your product, you show the competitor product, and then
you choose the exact rows in the table where you're
comparing them. That makes you look the best where you
have check checks on all the on your column where
your product is and all the axes on your excuse me,

(34:25):
your competitors products. So that's obviously Again, buyers are very smart,
they don't buy this kind of so an honest breakdown
of who we are not and who we are for
and having this kind of comparison where, for example, we
can openly say that if you need, for example, in

(34:45):
our case, a lot of prospects make comparison an ab
AN agency and that's a totally fair situation. When the
prospect doesn't have internal capacity, they are not necessarily interested
in implementing ABM as part of their process, but they're
interested in, let's say, agency services to help with an

(35:06):
existing programmer to run specific campaigns, et cetera. We are
not a good fit for that. I mean, we are
happily going to even refer our prospects to a competitor
like that. We are for a specific type of clients.
So being open and respondent about it is also very helpful.
Is there anything that of the types of documents or

(35:27):
the types of buyer enablement andreid that I maybe have
forgotten to mention here or.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
No, I thank you perfectly nailted down. I would try
to summarize erath and that you have said. And meanwhile, guys,
we tried to cover the questions that you have asked
us before this podcast, the questions about the different types
of content that you can use. That was a question

(35:54):
about why deals as talled and is it happening on
the contact level, on the opportunity level. So I feel
that we have incorporated this now if I will try
to summarize everything, right, we spoke about the first preps.
Understanding that the buying process is different from the sales process, right,

(36:15):
so as you need to adapt to it.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Obviously we're not going to touch the sales the sales
part of this process. But let's say from the marketing perspective,
for you, it's crucial to understand what is the information
required from buyers at these different stages, right, that's the key.
And then removing friction, improving your message and providing all
necessary critical information, right, that's the key. So if I

(36:40):
will summarize all of this, that means that bire enablement
exists on three levels. Level Number one, before the conversation starts.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
What flood have said already that they might be visiting
your website. They might be reading the use cases, is
integrations whatever, right, different pages on your website. So the
key the buyer enablement at this stage, right, making sure
that all the necessary information exists and this information is

(37:13):
clear right, no wag definitions, et cetera. Next information, let's
say the second level of buyer enablement information before the
discovery call. This is crucial and this is why you
do the first set of customization. And that customization happens

(37:36):
either on use case level or vertical level, depending on
whom you sell to. Right, depending on the ideal customer profile.
What do I mean by this? That I mean that
before your customers will have a call the sales rep,
it's essential to pre address some typical questions they might have,
which gives sales more time to have more meanionful conversation

(38:01):
and ask these critical questions that Blood have mentioned alredio
that will help to create this internal business case. Understand
better the requirements, understand better who is involved, understand beat
at the competent priorities, et cetera. Right, and not answering
the typical questions. So from this perspective, if you know
that this account belongs to this account has this specific

(38:23):
use case or is coming from this vertical, you can
immediately put the vertical or use case based information case studius. Again,
maybe share at this stage before the call, because now
you have official relationships, some information that you don't want
to put on your website. Right, that's critical. So the
key is to prenurchre this account and just focus on

(38:47):
the value added conversation or maybe in some rare cases
you just qualify them beforehands so nobody is going to
waste time, so they will see that, for example, they
are not good feed and from that you start working
on the full customization. This is the short step of
the buyer enablement, right, and unfortunately there are no there

(39:11):
are no shortcuts on all templates.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
This is from this stage sales, they have the first
conversation and then you need to have this. Obviously, you
don't need to do this for tier three accounts, right.
We're referring to tier one to tier two accounts with
the highest revenue potential. This is where you all sit
together and start discussing and obviously if you have big
teams then you need to set up workflows for this.

(39:36):
But let's say for the smaller teams, you can have
a call. We'll always recommend to have weekly meetings where
you discuss the deal status, the conversation that has happened,
and the actual content that might help buyer to facilitate
this deal internally. Right, that would be the short level
of buyer enablement. So sometimes it might be preparing some

(39:59):
use case as for a specific bland commity member, sometimes
helping with collecting some facts from the product marketing, et cetera.
So could be multiple things, right, and in nutshell, this
is how that looks like from the sales perspective. Then
instead of your historical sales process, you need a traditional

(40:20):
conventional sales process. You need to make the necessary adjustments
to how your buyers buy right and understand these stages.
And next step is thinking how can you influence these
steps or how can you help right? That means that
if you know that historically, you need to create business
case because let's say, imagine in other case, let's pick

(40:44):
up our case that would be easier, right, these buyers
would come and talk to VP of sales. This is inevitable. Right,
Hence we need to have sales reference, sales case stadius,
enough proof that the ABM impacts pipeline generation and etcetera, Right,
something that they could easily use and present to their

(41:05):
sales teams. Right. And then one specific questions. For example,
last time, when we spoke last time, a couple of
our new customers mentioned that sales wanted to see clear
sales playbook. So was what were sat down and designed
sales playbooks for these accounts, showing obviously simulative journeys, but

(41:26):
explaining what would be the role of sales on practical examples,
not just theoretical ones.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
But Sharon has done practical examples, so they could see
how the activities might look like. So that's the key.
And also we wanted a couple of questions. So we're
going to move to your questions right now. Before we'll move,
I will very briefly show you. Also I mentioned this
kind of typical case, sorry, typical scenario for creating pre

(41:57):
Let's say pre call were call vierl enablement. Right, So
for us we used Microsoft. I'm just used another second,
the confidential information. So I just created a simulative content
happ example which we use which we create for the
buyers before the call. Right on our end, we try

(42:19):
to keep it simple and practical on our website so
they have enough information about our services and how we
can help. Right, so I'm showing the level too. Unfortunately
the levels won't be possible to show. So let's say
the level too right. Uh, Microsoft books a call with
us and they would love to talk to us. So

(42:42):
in this case, we're now again coming from the customer interviews,
we nail down our process, how we work together, how
will work with the team, and how our support looks like,
how much help and they get, and what areas will
be focused on, what data we need to kick off
our and their responsibilities, price and involvement from the team

(43:06):
stack case statius right, so you can see the decks
for example, how and where should we start the challenges
will help et cetera? Will started with the Sabien strategy
s print, how will work with your team? How our
support looks like? So well, when again, and as you
can say, we put some this is screenshot from the
WhatsApp chat was our customers, so we tried to put

(43:29):
because as what said, they trust peers much more right
than the vendor collateral, So we tried to make it
practical and share these examples and show these things that
we are going to work on together, price and responsibilities,
alternative formats, the team that they need to secure, right
and the responsibilities of the team, and the time involvement,

(43:51):
the technologies stack, how we're going to measure the success
of our program, the case studies and references and estimonials.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
The key point is again making sure that before they
have call with us, they nurture it on all of
these things. They understand this and then they can ask
us practical questions so we don't need to explain from
scratch what let's said that were another agency in a
sense that we don't do all the work instead of
the client, right, but we do this work with them.

(44:23):
Explain the formats, explain the areas, explain the responsibilities. So
again this call where we can dive deeper into their
needs and they have an opportunity to ask some critical
questions to clarify right if we are the right fit
for them. So that's the key and hope that helps
and we can move to Q and a blog.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Let's speak. I wanted to share Excuse me?

Speaker 1 (44:48):
I wanted to share this question because it's very much
related to what you have just shared. So Linden asked,
what does a full customization document look like? Have we
got something to us not just for describing it. I
think what Andres shared was not yet completely customized, that
was customized to a prospect where we might not have

(45:09):
enough information. There is an example that I can share
with you. Let me just share this out here quickly.
We have recently published this article. Maybe I also dropped
a link about ABM content and you will be able

(45:30):
to find this example there, but let me navigate you
to it. So where we share different types of content
for different kinds of stages and levels of demand and
different things. But here you can see an example of
a fully customized document that we have created. Of course
it has been changed to anonymize and to protect our

(45:53):
customers a prospect in this case, but just wanting to
share you how it might look like. In this case,
we have spoken to have the discovery call with the prospect.
They mentioned that they have specific targets for the next
year and that they have a gap they don't know

(46:15):
how to close that they need to generate sixty million
new pipeline with the new account based marketing program. So
that was kind of like what we learned during the program.
So you can see that even the headline here, the title,
and the subject here have been completely customized to the
specific situation that is.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Companies.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Remember what I said. I said, we want to show
the executives, the decision makers, the people who our champion
is going to share our solution with, how our solution
is going to help deal with a high business priority objective, right,

(47:00):
a threat to a high problem that is a threat
to high priority business objective. This is exactly what this
document does. We know that they have this specific revenue goal,
they didn't meet the goal this year, and they're looking
for solutions to that, right. So that's how we are

(47:22):
positioning this. We are sharing the problems or the challenges
that they shared with us.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Okay, I didn't show here.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
The whole complete document, but basically, we share the solutions,
we share the target outcomes, and start answering the questions,
et cetera, et cetera. So this is an example. Hopefully
that is what you're mentaled in Then when you asked
for an example of how a completely customized document might
look like, it's actually the example that I share was

(47:55):
completely customized for our prospect based on this previous conversation. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
So a question from paytent what metrics should we check
to measure the effectiveness of our bar and emblement efforts.
I think there are only two, maybe three, but two
critical metrics. So first of all, first of all is
your win rate, and the second one is the cell
cycle length. Right, that's the key. Basically, if the win

(48:25):
rate increases and the sale cycle decreases, then the other
and the good job. Right, That's that's the key. Apparently
it also impacts the average contract value, but I would
say this is more as a consequence, right, more as
a legon indicator, while.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
I mean cell cycle with also.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
The legan indicator in this case. But anyhow, I would
say that it would be the secondary metric, not the
first one to judge, but cell cycle length sense, the
win rates would be the key, and uh the next
one again with you, So maybe let's share oursel's what

(49:07):
we have invested heaviling creating customer champions, but struggle to
leverage them effectively during competitive evaluations. How can we empower
our champions to influence the buying committee more effectively without
making them feel exploited over years. Before you'll start replying,
I would just drop five cents, please give yourself and

(49:28):
your team of favor and buy a book called Seal
and With by Nate Nasralla. He was a speaker at
our full final Sigmate last year. He is probably uh
the let's have we call him the our go to
guy when it comes to viron ablement and maybe not

(49:49):
the buyer an ablement itself, but let's say building and
uh selling with the champions. So if if you want
to help your sales team, that would be a go
to resource. And he has linked on content the block
of his company of fluent would be the best resource.
But given you of what Mike that answer this question

(50:11):
as well.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, I had a chat in the chat with Peyton
about this question because I think you can understand this
question in two ways. You can understand this question as
internal champion of your deal, right, which is what we
spoke about. What you mentioned as well, and refer to
Nthan Sreia's book Selling With. I dropped also the name

(50:35):
and the author and the book in the comment. I
think there is probably the best best material you can
get about it, and you can understand this question also
as kind of your advocates.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
So maybe your.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Existing customers, like our reference customers, customers that you had
success with, who can also help you in a deal. Okay,
so I will answer quickly both of these. So when
it comes to your deal champions. So this is a prospect,
you're trying to develop and win a deal with the
target account, and you have somebody who is your main contact.

(51:14):
Usually is the main contact and the person who is
bringing you in and showing your solution and discussing internally,
they should actually be quite motivated to help you out.
In fact, you are. You are helping them out because
if they're not motivated to implement a solution, and yours

(51:40):
could be one of the solutions that they're implementing, they will,
you know that not necessarily could sign So I think
obviously the way that you're interacting in then the conversations
they having, the kind of questions that you're sharing, whether
you're doing this proactively like Andre shared, from the very beginning,

(52:00):
when you are actually even before they appear on the call,
you're already educating them and preparing materials so that they
can review that before the call, offering offering them to
ask any questions before the call. So being proactive about it,
I think already is going to help them understand that

(52:21):
you're somebody who wants to work with them to help
them both understand your product but also help them sell internally. Right,
So how you do that discovery process before discovery, during
the discovery, immediately after the discovery is going to already
put them in a different mindset. We also explicitly explain

(52:45):
to them, like will ask them you're in the discovery
about their process, So who else is involved in that
and what their questions are and what are the next
steps and who might be also internally have a different
opinioninion about the problem, the priorities and the solution. In
order to again help uncover their pains. As a champion

(53:10):
internal pains and their jobs to be done quote unquote internally,
they need to present the solution so that we can
effectively arm them with the insight, knowledge, examples, tools.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Whatever they need to defend it.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
So very frequently, you know, when you start behaving in
that way, you will get more information and then we
will like frequently also add specific insights based on these
questions that we know they get from their colleagues. So
I think like this is kind of like how you

(53:48):
set yourself up as success for good collaboration with your champion,
being collaborative, being proactive, asking their question, providing the right material,
and just like helping them out. And then if you're
talking about let's say you're more reference customers, so existing customers,
I mean, I just also want to say that in

(54:11):
some cases these customers actually might want to help you
more than you think. I'm always stumbled and surprised by
how much satisfied customers willing to help you out. We
have rarely heard like when somebody's happened and give us
stemonial appear on They decide to appear on our podcast

(54:35):
and to tell the story about their project. Usually they're
also going to say that there's no problem. People can
contact me if they want to learn more about you,
they can contact me, I can share my contact information.
They're happy to help. I've even experienced not in our business,
but one of my first clients they were selling into manufacturing.

(54:58):
I'ven experienced like happy customers being willing to open their
door and show around the implementations, spend two hours with
the prospect, not only because of the relationship and wanting
to help my client, but also because for them it's
also an opportunity to meet others from the industry. In

(55:19):
some cases it can be a big deal. So I
just want to kind of like share the stories, just
to share with you that you shouldn't just assume that
this is something.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
That they have to.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
How do they say, get out of their way to
help you, and that this is something that is not
appropriate to ask and it's not appropriate to have the
conversation that they're doing you a huge favor and that
they might not be willing to do that. I wouldn't
assume that. I would assume that if you have a
good relationship, that they're likely willing to help you and
you can.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Have an open conversation.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
But I just wanted to say that what's also helpful is,
as I said, is, for example, we make sure we
invite them on our podcast, we feature them. Of course,
they're the champion of the story. It's not us who
are the champion of that story, right, who are the
hero of the story?

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Let's put it like that, right, It is always them.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
They actually did the most difficult work in making sure
that for example, in our case, this ABM implementation whatever
it was worked out well, so we let them share
their story.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Obviously, also.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
It is featuring that person, it is it can be
very rewarding for the person themselves, help them kind of
in their career as well in a way. Right, So
I think like a lot of people might be willing
to do that. But of course as in return, we
get this unfiltered case study and testimony. So it's a
big difference when you prepare a very nice self serving

(56:52):
case study document of one page where.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
You say, ah, this was a challenge.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
But by the way, these are all the results that
all the features we have implemented customers. Versus having just
like a person come there live and just share their
story and you without any editing, like just allowing your
prospects to see that and then even like clouding and
connect behind you, not knowing what they're going to talk about.
It's like a very different effect also as much more valuable, right,

(57:22):
But like also through that experience of being on your
podcast or running a webinar together with you and doing
this case study, and you know you kind of like
promoting them as a hero, they're more likely to also
maybe later promote you or well or support you. When
you need support.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
I just wanted to drop this.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
I wasn't sure the whether you were thinking about, let's
say more the advocates as we might sometimes call them,
reference customers or the internal little champions, but just in case,
I hope I provided an answer to both.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Well, it seems we have covered every soon and thank
you so much guys for the fantastic questions and happy
to heal so that it was helpful. Again, what what
have said about the customers and our podcast? You know
they are the most popular episodes, so we'll make a

(58:23):
quick Easter slash May holiday Spouse next week. We'll have
one more episode before that pause, so stay tuned. Will
announce it on Monday, but then we'll make two weeks
Pouse and then again come back with the last three
summer season Enlighten our customers was home doing ABM programs
in Q four and the Q one, so stay tuned.

(58:45):
That would be lots of interesting use cases where you
can again join and ask your peers life version. You
all the best and see you in one week. Cheers,
Take care, everybody, take