In B2B sales, hitting a wall with leadership turnover, rigid procurement negotiations, or declining email response rates can derail even the most promising deals, and navigating these complex hurdles requires a shift from transactional tactics to a robust strategy of strategic selling. In this episode, co-hosts Dave Hanley and Mark Cox of In The Funnel dive into the mailbag to answer real-world questions from high-performing sellers, exploring how to manage account transitions when key decision-makers move on while sharing insights on leveraging tools like a key account plan to check in on client value. They also break down how to loop procurement into the deal-making process early on to minimize disruption and how to stand out on social media with value-driven outreach, referencing classic sales resources like The New Strategic Selling by Miller Hyman and Social Selling and Influence by Timothy Hughes and Adam Gray to help you humanize your sales approach and protect your pipeline.
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Office Hours - Episode 5 - Mastering Strategic Selling To Bypass Procurement Roadblocks
Dave, welcome back to the show. Looking forward to this conversation.
Mark, how are you?
I'm great, thanks. How are you doing?
Pretty good. We're in the tail end of summer here, and it's still hot where I am, but I'm sure it's just glorious up there in Toronto.
It's actually beautiful. We've stolen a ride this morning. This is a midweek recording. We never do this, but I got a 40K bike ride with a couple of buddies, and we got up. We were on the road at 6:30. It was just amazing. Just beautiful weather right down by the lakeshore. It couldn't have been nicer.
I had to get up and get at it pretty early. I took a run on the beach this morning at about 6:30, and it was nice. By the time I was done, it was getting pretty toasty.
Boy, it sounds like we're both living the life of Riley here. Everybody else is out there pounding it. We're talking about runs on the beach and nice bike rides by the water.
Everyone else is thinking about their Q3 targets here. Trying to get them in under the wire before the end of the quarter.
Planning And Pipeline: Why Q3 Is The New Q4
It's almost on my mind a little bit these days, team. I start to think about the year being almost three periods because you start to think of these quarters, and everybody goes, “Q4 is going to be huge.” Certainly in technology, we taught the whole universe to buy in Q4 because of this kind of thing. One of the things you start to think about is if you start just in Q4, meaning the beginning of October, then you've got your sales kickoff for the quarter, then you've got some planning. Before you know it, it's mid to late October, and the quarter ends the second week in December, functionally.
Realistically, with people on vacation and so forth. With a lot of our clients these days, Dave, what we're doing is saying, hey, forget it. Q3 is the new Q4. There was this theme with one client where they were going, it's September and July. Everybody rallied around so that when we hit September, we still have four months to get these deals done that we need before the end of the year. We use July and August to really get that planning and the baseline done. It was invigorating, by the way. It's something I think we might start to apply moving forward.
It's true. Especially now, I feel like right now there are a lot more people who are just completely taking August off. Especially if you're selling to, God forbid, Europe. People just do not work in August. It's a good time to actually get your ducks in a row and do some planning and sharpen your game before everybody comes flooding back in September. That seems to be more the norm nowadays.
September is so busy for everybody personally, right? Depending upon your stage of life, you've got kids, you've got school, the whole world turns back on socially. If you get all of that planning done, so you're in execution mode, and you have this crystal clear idea of what really needs to take place in September and October so that I'm actually going to hit my goals in November and December and be happy on December 31st.
A hundred percent.
What have we got in the mailbag?
Navigating Leadership Turnover In Long B2B Sales Cycles
We got some good stuff, Mark. We've got a couple from, seemingly, your more big game hunters on the sales side. We've got one that's more on the outreach side. Why don't we kick this off? Our first question is from Dawn. Dawn says, “Mark, I work in sales for a government contractor, and we have a unique challenge. By nature, our sales cycles are very long, I can only imagine, but to make things worse, the decision makers in our target organizations turn over every few years. How do I smooth the transition and keep my deals warm while leadership changes?” That's a tough one.
That is a great question, Don, and thank you for that. First of all, churn in lots of industries, some more than others. It sounds like Don's in one where it's more than others. You can Google the stats on how long people last in roles. In challenging economic times, the churn actually increases. When macroeconomic factors are tough, companies make decisions and make changes with people. It does lead to some of those account management fundamentals. Number one, do not be single-threaded. We've got to have the org chart of all the buyers who have influence.
We've got to have the org chart of all the buyers who have influence. We've got to make sure on a regular basis that we are expanding the breadth and depth of our relationships.
We've got to make sure on a regular basis, we're expanding the breadth and depth of our relationships. We're leveraging our executive team too. Certain organizations, title matters. Hierarchy matters. The CEO of a certain type of company wants to be approached by your CEO or your chief revenue officer. You've got to make sure that we're navigating the org chart. Particularly leading with business owners, business leaders, not just procurement folks or IT folks.
If any one or two players leave, you still have relationships that you can leverage. First of all, that's the strategy. We like this idea of a formal key account plan, renewed, refreshed, at least quarterly, if not more often, but to say, “What's my strategy for building a better relationship with this account, helping them more?” One of the tools, by the way, Dave, we love for that is, once you've got the relationship with the client, these days, leverage a health check meeting, whether it's on a quarterly basis, whether it's a couple of times a year.
Make sure that whatever value or return on investment you promised as part of the deal, you should take ownership as the salesperson, the company, the provider, the partner, take the ownership to track the value. This is what people often do not do. They sell and abandon. Two years later, they try to sell again. They're getting squeezed on price because they haven't gone through the process of trying to work with the client. Say, “Listen, are we achieving those business objectives that we set out? How do we track the value?”
Whatever value or return on investment you promised as part of the deal, you should take the ownership as the salesperson, the company, the provider, or the partner to track the value.
You cannot assume that they're doing that math internally and going, “Look how great this partner is.”
You absolutely cannot assume that. You're darn right. The other thing is, even if they had the tendency to want to track it, they're so future-focused on the next problem or issue. It's not going to be front of mind. It's definitely not going to be front of mind when your contract expires, and they look at options in the marketplace. Setting up that health check cadence, not like a QBR where we're just measuring service levels and that stuff. That's tactical. The results of the QBR should be summarized and presented in a health check meeting where, at a very high level, we assess how we're doing. More strategically, we find out where the client is going.
How do we share where we're going as a provider, aligned on the future focus? Continue to track those metrics of value provision because they'll be surprised that you want to do that. One of the main reasons, Dave, by the way, what if we're not providing the value? I want to know that because that way we can put our heads together and say, “Listen, what were the assumptions we made when we went into the relationship? What's different?
How do we recalibrate to make sure we get you those business objectives that we said we're going to provide? A couple of other just tactical things here, one of which has really served our clients well over the years. When there's churn, I love the idea. Keep in mind, senior executives have a tough time when they step into a new role. It's hard on them. It's hard on the teams they report to, but one of the things they're really trying to do is get up to speed, and they do not want to appear too vulnerable. There's only so much.
They can leverage their internal teams for constant education in terms of what's going on. In our client base, when somebody new comes on board, we'd like to reach out and just say, “Listen, I just wanted to make myself available to you. We're pretty deep in the industry. We're pretty deep in this business. To the extent we can provide a little bit of context and background for the relationship, I'd be happy to meet with you and just share what we know.” Sometimes they're very happy to have an outside party that they can continually go to, maybe get some help and knowledge about even how to navigate their own organization.
The Go-Giver Strategy: Leveraging Departing Executives
That's not always crystal clear. Having somebody who might be helpful on the outside. It's a great time to reach out to them before you have any expectation of getting anything back. It's the old Bob Berg, the go-giver. Just try and help them because it's tough when you're new on board. The last tactic I'll throw out, Don, and it's such a good question. Dave, please jump in. People never speak to the person who left. Let's say Pete Townshend was a senior executive in the government and he leaves, and the new senior executive, Roger Daltrey, comes in, and everybody's focused on getting time with Daltrey.
This is such a good one.
What I like doing every once in a while is just reaching out to Townsend and saying, “Pete, listen, I understand you're moving on to a new adventure. Congratulations. If you've got one, fantastic. If not, I want to make myself available in the event my network can help in any way. By the way, either way, I'd love to take you to lunch and just say a proper thank you for all the work we did together.”
Strategic Selling: Setting up a health check cadence allows us to assess how we're doing at a very high level, and then align on the future focus. That's strategic, not just tactical.
Now Pete knows I'm doing this, even though he's no longer associated with the organization. It's just a sincere thank you, and some gratitude, and that's the intent, really, to say thank you for the work, because Pete's going to land somewhere else. He'll remember we did this before. There was this expectation that he could give something back. The other thing I've found, just in terms of human nature, Dave.
I know where this is going. I love this.
You go ahead.
You get an opportunity for pizza like, how do you think we were doing? What do I need to be aware of? What are the internal dynamics? What are the opportunities? You’re concerned. This is fantastic. This right here is worth the cost of tuning in. It's all free, but it's worth your time here. This is a fantastic one. For me, this is great.
They will tell you everything. Sometimes there's that veneer where they've got to say, “I've got to be careful. I cannot be too transparent.” Sometimes after the fact, there's going to be a lot of data that they're going to share. I just think it's just, “All of the data. It's not that we do not always care about politics or those things.” What we really care about is, how do I continue to just relentlessly learn everything I can about a particular client or buyer group so we can help them? It's all with sincere intent.
Maybe Pete tells you, “Joe up the ladder there, he's really not keen on this project. His main goal is this.” You tweak your approach internally. That's massive. I love it.
One of the key points, never forget, and many of you tuning in, you're going to go through it. You will lose a job at some point in time in your career where you do not have a job to go to. The higher up the chain you go, a little bit scary because now, “Now I'm manager of a sales team, a VP of sales, I'm chief revenue officer. The market for those jobs keeps dwindling.”
If you're a chief revenue officer and you leave a job. It's hard to get another job as chief revenue officer because keep in mind every other company out there. There are ten managers who all want to be the internal chief revenue officer. It's got to be an organization where they do not have somebody internally. You like the company, they like you, and they've got a spot. It's tough. If you're one of those people, when you've got anybody in your LinkedIn network who's looking for an opportunity, show grace and support, and just reach out and help them.
First of all, it's just the right thing to do. Secondly, when you know good people, you could help your clients by connecting them with your clients. They'll never forget that you helped somebody when there was no immediate return for you. You took some time, and there was no immediate return for you. Given the timing of this show, Dave, and some unique macroeconomic factors, trade, and so forth taking place, there's going to be churn. For those of you out there, just always remember, it's amazing how much wind you can put in.
If somebody's in the middle of a search campaign, they're looking for a job. What they want to do is just have networking touchpoints. We get this a ton, by the way. A ton of people reach out to us because they know we've got a database. We've been training for thirteen years. We've got a lot of contacts. We try to take those calls all the time. We try to book at least 30 minutes with somebody. Even the networking touchpoint itself can be a real win for somebody like that, just puts wind in their sails and helps everybody out. It's just a great thing to do.
For sure. That's a good one, Mark. This is a huge topic. I actually personally, I'm having some flashbacks of some of our first sales meetings when you were running them at RCT, and you'd come in, and we'd go, “We got this contact, and he's going to get this over the finish line.” You're like, “You have one contact. Are you kidding me?” You showed up with the most entertaining book, but super valuable for this large enterprise sales, The New Strategic Selling, which is fantastic for this. Just gives you the whole lay of the land in terms of how you strategize these big deals, which is a whole other ball of wax.
It’s such a great call date. That book for everybody out there, Miller Hyman, Strategic Selling. To this day, I think it was like 1988. To this day, it's still relevant. Relevant, so fundamental. They've sold that company twice. I think it got sold twice. It's now part of Korn Ferry. Of course, Miller and Heiman, God bless, are gone. It's Alice Heiman who's been on our show a couple of times. The daughter's been on our show a couple of times. I loved that methodology, blue sheets, green sheets, all that kind of stuff. Still resonates today.
Bypassing The Procurement Roadblock: Early Alignment & ROI
For sure. What do we get next? Next we have Rhett. Rhett says, “I'm constantly having issues when my deals hit procurement. They're always trying to renegotiate terms that I've already hammered out with the business people. How can I stop hitting this roadblock or at least keep the disruption to a minimum? It’s similar lines to these big ones, whether it's the government or whether it's large corporations. Sounds like Rhett's in that same game.
Why don't you take that, Dave, first? What would you suggest to Rhett? You've got deep experience here.
To start, I think part of this is figuring out that this is part of the process as early as humanly possible. When you're sitting down with your business champion or your business team that you're working with on the deal, ask the question. How does this actually get through to completion? If they outline that procurement is going to be part of this, I think you're doing yourself a favor by looping them into the process as soon as possible. I'm not saying they're always going to tell you that's part of the process.
That's the whole fun. When they go, “Here's procurement before.” Asking the question, 90% of the time, they're definitely going to tell you, “Yes, this has to go to procurement.” Bring them in, get them at the table, make sure they're aware of all the decisions being made and all of the deal points that are being agreed on so that they're not going to come in with a fresh set of eyes and go, “Now we got to start from the bottom here.”
Great suggestion. Try, and I love that idea. Bring them into the tent as soon as possible. We cannot put them in the corner and hope we're never going to have to be, and then they come in, and they're wondering why.
We can't put procurement in the corner and hope we're never going to have to deal with them. That's when they come in the most aggressive—when you just ignored them until the last stage.
That's when they come in the most aggressive when you just ignore them until the last stage.
That's right. You got some mean person in the corner saying, “Now I'm going to get you.” Knowing they have a job to do as well. Excuse me. In some cases, it's making sure there's continuity and consistency in terms of the way they do agreements with suppliers. In other cases, they might be trying to show some value. You've got to respect that everybody's got a job to play, a role to play, and that they're not paid to roll over.
One of the things I definitely do like doing is understanding, with my buyer group, how they have interacted with procurement in the past. Ask them, “What's the role? How do you interact? Do they play an active role in trying to determine the ROI, or that the tail ends what's happened in past transactions like this? If we've got some champions in there, any guidance they can provide you is helpful. Really, the thing you always hang your hat on is the return on investment.
If I have a business case and a return on investment, as I should for anything I do, if I've got those created in conjunction with my business owners on the buying group, and we have alignment and agreement in terms of what the impact is to the customer, that it does take away some of the negotiation leverage from procurement because they're going to come and say, “I want a fifteen percent discount. You're going to go, “I'm giving you a 30X return on investment.” That doesn't mean they're not going to keep asking.
It is helpful to have some response or some negotiation leverage as well. The second thing I always think about with negotiation is just preparation. When somebody comes back and says, “How did you come up with this cost per person for the training In The Funnel? I do like to have some reference points of market-based data for doing the same thing outside of saying, “This is how we always do it.” I might come back and say, “Listen, we know for companies our size and scale, with our experience and capability, outside of the return on investment, we know the market value of the services provided.”
In that case, you're helping them do their job because that's part of it to look at and say, “Is this roughly what it should be? Is it the ballpark?” It's a great point.
Exactly. You can come back with that. Again, doesn't stop them from asking, but it does help you think about how you respond when they ask. You've got to think about what your bandwidth is in terms of how far you would go. Same thing with terms and conditions in your contract. Are they market terms and conditions, or are they things that your owner asked for because they're being unreasonable, or your legal team's in a bad mood that day?
They change some parameters that aren't market competitive. Having those market and data reference points, like selling your house, you always have market and data reference points. Understanding and anticipating some of the things procurement might be asking for and then being able to develop your response to it. Finally, understanding the interplay between procurement and everybody else on your buying team.
That's great. This is never an easy one. All these are really great tactics and strategies to at least help minimize the pressure you're going to get them in as early as you can, help them make their case, and that should help.
Thanks, Dave.
The Social Selling Shift: Humanizing Your LinkedIn Cold Outreach
Good stuff. We got one more here, Mark. This is from Steve, a little bit of a different one. Steve says, “I've been trying to do more multi-channel outreach because I feel like email is starting to become less effective as everyone gets inundated. I often do not have my prospects' phone numbers. That's a tough one too lately. I've been doubling down on LinkedIn. What tactics and approaches do you recommend? I fear that LinkedIn is becoming a bit crowded nowadays as well. Please help.”
Man, what a great question. Yes, LinkedIn. Let's talk about both those things. We destroyed email to a certain extent with marketing automation technology starting back in 2012, where we did generic outreach, just blasted the heck out of everybody. We were happy to get single-digit response rates in some cases. We could track who opened what. The result was that a variety of different countries enacted anti-spam legislation because we kept killing everybody's inbox. I do not know what happened to that anti-spam legislation, by the way, Dave, but because I'm still listed as the CEO of this place, I still get spammed all the time.
I'm still getting killed with nobody adhering to that anti-spam legislation. First of all, I get away from that and get back into a couple of things. Add value to your clients. Stop spamming, just saying, “Who needs this? Who needs this?” Blind outreach, all that kind of stuff. AI is going to help the outreach get much more personal. We can do personalization and scale.
I still know I can tell an AI email that came my way and you know nothing about me. If your target is, “I'd love to generate 5 or 10 live conversations a day, get more specific about personalized outreach, do your investigation, leverage AI to learn more about the company, leverage AI to teach AI about your company so you understand their company, you learn about your company, come up with a point of view as to where you can help. Just add value, insight, and knowledge, and stop pitching digitally, because you just pollute a channel.
AI is going to help outreach get much more personal. Come up with a point of view as to where you can help. Just add value, insight, and knowledge, and stop pitching digitally.
First of all, that's a big problem. By the way, we polluted that channel because we were all afraid of picking up the phone and calling somebody. The second thing with LinkedIn. We're doing the same thing now with LinkedIn. We're spamming everybody on LinkedIn. It's connected and pitch. I cannot tell you how many wealth managers really need to look at my portfolio to give me a great assessment. They've never looked at me. All they know is there's a president title beside what I do. No idea about anything, no research, just time wasting.
As soon as I accept those connections and they pitch me, I remove those connections. I do not want to deal with those people anymore. The second thing you're noticing on LinkedIn is how many fantastic infographics we're getting on how to leverage AI. By the way, it's a fantastic infographic because AI created the infographic. Now you cannot find anything of value. We're just posting AI garbage, and then we're just thinking about volume.
One of the things, again, just get specific. LinkedIn is an amazing tool. There's more than a billion people on LinkedIn today. For people out there today, think of it in three parameters. Think of what your profile looks like, think of how you get connections, and then think of what you post. One of our favorite books, by the way, is called Social Selling and Influence: Using Social Media for Cold Outreach and New Business Sales.
Timothy Hughes and Adam Gray, friends of ours, have been on the show a couple of times. I love that book. It's small, simple, but pretty clear. What you're trying to do is just humanize the outreach, but add value, insight, and knowledge. When you think of your profile on LinkedIn, first of all, it's not a resume. I do not have your LinkedIn profile saying, “I crush quota. I do not care what clients need. I'm going to 10X my quota. We'll jam it in. I'm the end-of-the-quarter close guy.”
How many times does it say, when you talk about what you did in a particular role, all it says is this percentage achievement is 120% of quota, 130% of quota. I punched the customer in the stomach and still did a deal. Are you crazy? Your client's going to look at that profile. Your LinkedIn profile is for your buyer. Change it to your buyer. You can still say I was an account executive within the funnel, but my main focus was helping clients achieve double-digit revenue growth, leveraging a structured process, and I loved working with growth-oriented sales leaders.
Your LinkedIn profile is for your buyer. Change it to your buyer. Speak to it so that when the buyer comes to your profile, it looks engaging and humanizes you.
Speak to it so that when the buyer comes to your profile, it looks engaging for them. It humanizes you. You build a bit of a digital presence. The things you post either humanize you, which is helpful, or just add value. On the connection front, I think it is a great sales tool or networking tool. I cannot tell you how many people come to us, or when we reach out to them, they literally say they've been following us for years, which is amazing. They have some sort of sense of who we are and what we do, or they might reference something I've done personally.
Every once in a while, though I was never comfortable at the beginning, I do post some personal things on LinkedIn to try and humanize what we do. I had to get my head around that originally, 5, or 6 years ago. The truth of it is, those tend to be the types of posts that get the most engagement and likes and all those good things. When you're reaching out, do not connect and pitch. Identify your ideal client profiles.
Search those buyers on LinkedIn, reach out, and get as many as you can on a weekly basis, and just say, “LinkedIn suggested we connect. I took a look at your profile and would love to. I'm also in the payment processing industry. I'm not buying or selling anything at the moment, but I just love to connect.” When they connect with you, do not reply and say, “By the way, can we do this and this? Who is this?” Just say, “Dave, thanks for connecting. Have a great week.” You might say, “Thanks for connecting. Here's an interesting article.”
Now once you're connected on LinkedIn, you're going to be in their feed. They're going to be in your feed. You can comment on whatever it is they post. Give it a little bit of time first for a while. Build a bit of a relationship. One of the things Tim and Adam bring up in the book, which I love so much, is that they say, treat LinkedIn as the world's biggest cocktail party of people you want to meet.
If you met them at a cocktail party, like a trade show, by the way, you do not immediately come up, shake somebody's hand, give them your card, and go, “Can I sell you some printing?” You meet them and go, “How's the show going? Where are you from?” Try and build a little bit of that relationship. Down the road, they start to develop almost a digital impression of who you are. If and when there's a time to reach out, it's a little more human. Now they know you. It's not just a blind email. Does any of that stuff resonate?
Standing Out In An AI World: Using Video And Reciprocation
Everybody always asks, how is sales going to change in this whole AI-centric world? We talked about this a couple of episodes ago. It's just being more human. One thing I would say to Steve is the approach that you took there, but also this concept of doing a little short video. “Mark, Dave here just wanted to connect. Awesome.” They see your face. They kind of get a little read on your personality, and they know that it's not AI.
Maybe at some point they'll be able to do that, but they'll think at least for now it's not AI creating that video and doing it personally. It shows you actually spent the time. You did not just have some bots coming up with this. You spent the time, and there's always that, it's like, “I want to reach out, share this article. Maybe you'd find this useful.” It's like the whole principle of reciprocation. Now that you've done something for them down the road, they're like, “He was really helpful, shared that.” They are much more likely to kind of scratch your back if you scratch theirs.
Bang on, just love it. The reciprocation, huge video. I love video because, as you say, it humanizes. Again, the teams that we train and coach, they have so much value to offer. They're capable salespeople, client-first-focused salespeople with business acumen. Many of those things come across, actually, even in a 60-second video, 80, 90 second video. It's so much different than just blind email outreach, where you're just hoping, because nobody's responding to blind emails these days. Now, and again, even through LinkedIn, by the way, I'll add a caveat.
Once in a while, I may have to get to the CEO. Let's pick one of them. I'll just throw ADP. There's somebody I should get to in this particular region of Chicago, and I should get to this person. I will absolutely leave a voicemail, send an email, and do a LinkedIn reach-out and ask for that. Maybe I can attach a video to two of those things. I can put a video through LinkedIn, and I can add a video to the email.
I call that a hack, but the content of all three of those things is going to be totally about them. What do I know about them? Why specifically am I reaching out? Do I have social proof that's very relevant to them? What's my ask? Do I have this reasonable ask in terms of what the call to action is? It's one-to-one. It's not going to be generic. Some of the people listening will know we do send generic emails out from In The Funnel.
Nine times out of ten, it's just providing some value. We learned this about the Q3 kickoff, or why now is a great time for creating your plan toward the end of the year, or here are three things we picked up from this book we read on this. If I'm going to do a generic thing and just spray the whole world, value. We're going to hit value so that when somebody reads it, there's no call to action. Do not call me. It's just helping the people who have authorized, opted in to some of our communications.
Good stuff. Steve's obviously in an outreach role. Never easy. That should be super helpful.
By the way, Steve, Don, and the middle person, Rhett. First of all, Rhett, cool parents. What a cool name, but thank you, all three of you. Thanks for your questions. Team, thanks so much for tuning in to these. We were so thrilled the other day when we cracked the top twenty on Apple's marketing podcasts for the US. Thank you for tuning in. Please share, share with your friends, subscribe, all those great things. Dave, anything else we need to cover off at this point in time?
No, I was going to say, Mark, and if anyone's listening to this and they haven't tuned in to the episode you recently did with Andy Paul, it's a fantastic one. Andy's always a great listen. Go back and take a look at that one if you haven't already.
The greatest podcaster of all time. Andy Paul, it's indisputable. He's done more shows with more people on more topics. It's always a super interesting conversation. He was on fire in that conversation.
I found myself even going, “Man, that's a pretty interesting concept, Andy. It's good.”
It was great. I always learn a ton when I'm talking to these people. Dave, thanks so much.
Thanks, Mark.