From a product engineering background selling is hard. From a customer's perspective buying is hard. It starts with a decision maker noticing a problem ("our CRM sucks!") and then tasking someone who's never bought your type of software before to try to figure out the landscape of software that solves their problem.
What purchase decision makers find is a confusing landscape of similar products with conflicting information.
40% of B2B sales purchases end in 'no decision.' Customers cant figure out what to do so they don't do anything and keep their broken Excel system.
What do customers actually want?
- perspectives on the market
- navigating alternatives and trade-offs
- help avoiding potential landmines
- education on issues and outcomes
None of this stuff is about your product, it's about the outcome for your customer.
You're the expert in your market and your buyer is a novice. What they want is education so give it to them!
Case Study: April Buys a Toilet
Toronto is full of old crappy houses with terrible bathrooms. When April went to the toilet store to shop she was faced with hundreds of identical looking toilets. When a salesman came up to help her he asked "is there a particular kind of toilet you're looking for?" which isn't a helpful question for someone who doesn't know anything about toilets.
Single or dual flush? Flapless or flapper? Toilet customers need to be educated on the tradeoffs and features.
Skilled customers will become experts before making a purchase decision. You could also find an expert like Terry Love's but they might be too much of an expert to be able to
The best toilet salesman started his conversation with April with empathy: "It's terrible buying a toilet isn't it! There are so many toilets!"
Next he made sense of the endless landscape of toilets with a simple three-question decision tree:
- Is this toilet for a place where it's going to get used frequently?
- Do you care about the fashion of your toilet?
- Does your bathroom have enough space for the bowl being outside the wall?
This narrowed down the choices to two and the salesman made a recommendation from there.
Instead of selling your software focus on being your customer's guide. They know you're biased but you can still educate them with authenticity.
Case Study: Leveljump
Here's a software example of the customer buying process: Leveljump is a tool to help onboard sales reps.
Before working with April, LevelJump's script for sales calls looked like a technical tutorial of how to use the software. After, the point of view pitch focused on why Leveljump was built.
This point of view pitch can feel spooky because it disqualifies people by showing them which tradeoffs your solution makes.
Case Study: Help Scout
- Critical Insight: online businesses can see support as a growth driver rather than a cost center
- Alternatives: Traditional help desk software treats customers like a ticket
- The Gap: customer experience is an afterthought, which is a wasted opportunity for growth
- Help Scout delivers the value of optimizing your support experience for customer happiness and loyalty to ultimately drive revenue
How much better is that than going through a detailed list of features? Don't tell customers about a feature without tying it back to why it's important for them.
The Point of View Pitch
Here's a rough outline you can use for structuring your ponit of view pitch:
- An overview of the market
- The alternatives: pros and cons of different approaches
- The gap: what's missing and why it matters
- Your product's value and why you do provide it that way
Takeaways
- Selling is hard but buying is harder
- Instead of selling, be a guide
- Guide customers with a Point of View story
Contact April at april@aprildunford.com @aprildunford aprildunford.com
Questions
Your toilet salesman sounds like an affiliate marketer. Should we be working with them?
Software venders have an opportunity to be their own affiliate marketers. You don't have to rely on third parties. Don't be too chicken to disqualifying buyers that aren't a good fit because that makes you more authentic.
If you're nervous about comparing yourself to other people in the landscape, you don't have to mention your competitors by name.
Come at the conversation with the position that you're not a good fit for everyone.
How do you address working with customers that have to use you and don't think you can provide any extra value?
You can try positioning yourself in a different market: "those guys are that which sucks. We're this other thing."
If you can't, lean into proof that you actually deliver on your promises.
Shouldn't we start with asking about people's pain?
Your software doesn't solve all of a customer's pain. Look for customers who have the pain that you solve for. You're not a consulting business! You have the thing and it only does five things.
How do you do this if you don't have salespeople?
Try telling your story through content. Buyers Guides work well because they solve the problem of what to buy.
