We engage in endless debates/discussions about our GTM strategies and how we want to sell to our customers. We argue about approaches, methodologies. We endlessly debate things like PLG, land/expand, should we use SDRs/BDRs, the roles of AEs/AMs, technologies to extend our outreach and improve our productivity, the use of AI agents, channel/partner strategies, how we grow/expand/upsell/cross sell.
We spend endless time discussing precise mathematical models, looking at bow ties, discussing metrics focused on our selling activities.
We invest 10’s of millions, theoretically to improve productivity and performance.
And when these don’t produce what we want, we double down, doing more–or throw everything out and start over.
The problem is, all of this is irrelevant to our customers and prospects! They simply don’t care about that which we care most about!
And every day, they shout it out! They don’t respond to our outreaches! They refuse to talk! They don’t want to see us–or do all they can to minimize their involvement with us. They look for alternatives to getting the work they need done. Possibly preferring talking to peers to see what they do, perhaps doing some digital research, most often, failing to do anything. Most of all they say, “We don’t trust you!”
And we see the results of this behavior! Customers are still buying, but not through us. Customers experience higher levels of regret. Our own performance is plummeting, plummeting percentages of sellers reaching goals, plummeting win rates, longer sales cycles, everything.
Yet we persist in these discussions about how we want to sell to our customers! All despite mounting evidence that we are just talking to each other about things our customers find totally irrelevant to them!
So what do we do?
What if we started focusing on what our customers care about?
Yeah, I know that’s a “novel” and controversial idea, but somehow the concept of understanding what people are interested in and responding to that interest seems to have some legs. We see similar things in our personal interactions, when we talk to people about the things they are interested in and care about, they eagerly engage.
Some might say, we know this already. They want to grow/scale, they want to manage costs, improve productivity, improve profitability (except if you are in SaaS, where profitability has seemed irrelevant until recently—OK, I needed to get that out of my system.)
Well of course, they care about those things! That’s what businesses and people do, but what how does that translate from a generic aspirations. But can we translate that to the specific things our target markets care about? What are the specific issues, challenges opportunities in occurring in those markets? How are they being disrupted, are they growing, are they declining, are they disappearing? What does success look like within the markets themselves? There is virtually no market I can think of that isn’t experiencing profound disruption and redefinition. Whether technology, financial service, healthcare, industrial products, consumer products, food/agriculture, professional services, social services, education, small business…anything. Do we understand these, do we know what they mean to people (buyers, sellers, consumers) in these markets?
Then we get to the companies in these markets. Do we understand how they are dealing with the market disruptions? What challenges do they face, how to they impact them? What opportunities do they create? What’s the competition? Do we have the right strategies and execution? How does this impact our own product/offering plans? Do we have the right resources and investments to take advantage of these things? Do we have the right talent, structures, tools? What are the risk, how do we manage them? And on and on and on. These are the things companies within these markets care about—and the answers each generates differ. Whether large/established, medium, small, start-up, high growth, mature, innovators, fast followers, laggards; each company has differing priorities, strategies, abilities to invest. Do we understand these things that they care about?
Then we get to the functional organizations within these enterprises. I won’t go through these, I think you are getting the point. For those functional parts of the organizations we work with, do we really understand what they care about?
And then, we get to the individuals in each of these organizations, do we understand what they care about? Do we know what they are held accountable for, how their performance is evaluated, how they spend their days, what their dreams, aspirations, fears are?
You get the point, I’ll stop here.
But the chasm that exists between customers, buyers and sellers is we each care about very different things! And until we understand what our customers care about, and engage them in talking about those and how we might help them, everything else is irrelevant!
And it’s not that difficult to make that shift, but somehow we are so resistant in making that shift. We tend to sit around wringing our hands expressing a collective “woe are we,” and continuing to focus only on what we care about….
We have overwhelming evidence of the success our customers and we achieve when we align what we do to the things customers care about. Customers keep telling us they need help–we just don’t provide the help they need. But when we do, the results, time to results, trust, and growth opportunities skyrocket.
We struggle to connect with and engage our customers. Yet the answer to this keeps smacking us in our collective faces. When we talk to them about what they care about they are interested and want to be heard. And once we understand that, they inevitably ask, “Can you help us?”
Afterword: Enjoy the AI generated discussion about this post. It went a little different direction than I hoped, I’m not sure I agree totally. It seems to display an interesting bias to how we want to sell…… Hmmm……
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