Sellers vs. Buyers
A look at what salespeople can do to make the buying process easier
Selling the buyers…or buying from sellers?
Straight to the point - sellers sell and buyers buy. How can we strengthen our sales team? How do we get better at overcoming objections? And what can we learn from putting ourselves in the buyers shoes?
In this week’s edition of Stretch Weekly -
Harvard Business Review (Steve Martin) outlines what top sales teams have in common
The ultimate objection handling guide from Gong, Hubspot and Mixmax.
Todd Caponi pens a thoughtful post on why we need to make it easier for buyers to buy.
And lastly - as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- consider sharing it with someone who might as well 👊.
STRETCH SHARES
What Top Sales Teams Have in Common
What separates high-performing sales organizations from average and underperforming sales organizations?
Harvard Business Review (Steve Martin) conducted an extensive 42-part survey with 786 sales professionals. Participants were asked to share their opinions on their sales organization and personal details about their own quota performance.
Highly encourage you all to read the study yourself, but here are the top 5 commonalities in bulleted form:
High-performing sales organizations rated the quality of their sales organization higher than average and underperforming organizations.
High-performing Sales Organizations Followed a Structured Sales Process
High-performing sales organizations hold their team members to a higher level of accountability.
High-performing sales organizations are not afraid to aggressively raise year-over-year annual quotas.
High-performing sales organizations are quicker to terminate underperforming salespeople.
Prospecting and Objection Handling Guide
Dealing with objections is a core part of a salesperson’s everyday life. Whether it’s timing, perceived needs, or budget concerns, prospects can always find a reason to push back on what you’re offering. The good news? Sellers who successfully defend their product against buyers’ objections can have a close rate as high as 64%.
Really well done guide with templates and best practices from the folks at Gong, MixMax and Hubspot to help train your team on overcoming objections and move the deal forward.
Who has it harder - the seller or the buyer?
Loved this post from Todd Caponi on the role of a seller vs. buyer. If you’ve purchased tools for your team, you can relate to the frustrations he lists out. I’ve always said that sales people are the EASIEST people to sell to (come knock on my door and I’m sure I’m buying something from you) - but Todd makes some great points on how we as sellers can take the pain out of the buying process to close more deals.
Quick summary:
Positioning: How are you positioning your solution? Provide both the pros AND THE CONS of a potential purchase with you
Process: Remove unnecessary hurdles in the sales process. The faster the brain is able to predict, the more comfortable it becomes with the journey, and the more likely a decision gets made.
Negotiations: Put your cards on the table. Lay out your pricing levers for the client, and let them negotiate their own deal.
Contracts: Simplify contracts and make them easy to understand for the buyer. Remove 1-way language from contracts.
STRETCH SNIPPETS
👉Dave Kennett talks to us about his ideal Discovery Best Practice: - Take 20 seconds to summarize what you heard and confirm you have it right.
📹Join Morgan Ingram, Reva Pellerin and Ellie Twigger for tips and insights into driving more meetings with video prospecting (Webinar tomorrow - Thursday 9/24)
🚀When Elon Musk sold Paypal (and cashed $165M), one of the first things he did was cold call a rocket expert. TRANSCRIPT HERE of his amazing outreach (via Trung Phan). What can we as sellers learn from this?
✋Per Jason Bay - Most prospects don’t enjoy rejecting salespeople. So give them an out.
🧠Emotionally intelligent leaders have these 5 traits - per Pluralsight
🔥Fascinating thread (see comments) that show competitors vying for a deal on LinkedIn with Casey Graham (Gravy). Word of mouth, referrals, speed to lead... all showcased here. It’ll be interested to see which software is chosen. And another reason why SDRs and AES and leaders should be on LinkedIn.
❄️With the success of Snowflake’s IPO - Trung Phan shares another amazing cold outreach example - this time 4 emails from Snowflake’s enterprise sales team. Good stuff.
🎧Liking another newer podcast - Tenbound’s Beyond Sales Development with Justin Michael - Check out this episode with Aaron Ross on restoring humanity to the XDR (SDR) function…
🧠 Mindset Matters
The Harder you work, the more the Universe will believe how serious you are about your goals and will then show up to help. - Sara Blakely “Genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration” - Thomas Edison
Thanks for reading!
My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).
— Grant 👋
About stretch vp: confessions, learnings and insights from sales leaders in SaaS
Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.
Are you a VP, Director, thought leader or content producer in the SaaS space? We’d love to have you contribute. Contact Me HERE.
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