Recently a family member engaged me over the merits of the sales function in today’s ever-increasing SaaS and AI automated world. I took the position that the sales executive will always be needed. People buy from people. Relationships matter. I wasn’t convincing them. However, the question did get me thinking about that single core objective of the sales executive and the sales cycle. Closing the deal is not the objective, it's the result. What are we actually trying to achieve with the customer?
Let’s set aside all the sales approaches for a moment and peel back the objective of selling. We all have revenue, new customer acquisition, and countless other weekly, quarterly, and annual targets. No, I’m getting more granular here, down to that single sale. What’s the core objective? Motivate the customer to act.
Throughout the sales cycle you are attacking the three WHYs. You are creating constructive tension and building value all in the goal of convincing your prospect to purchase your solution/product and become your customer. But there is still something missing.
Motivating a customer to act requires both perceived value and a clear adoption plan.
VALUE · What this solution will do for us. · The benefits it will deliver. · The objectives we can accomplish. · 3-Whys: Something, Now, “You” | ADOPTION PLAN · How we will use the new solution. · Who will manage the solution. · The processes we will need to create. · The people and training required. |
We’re all very familiar with the need to build value. We are provided sales plays and plenty of marketing content that articulate what our solution does, feature and function, and what customers have been able to achieve with our solution. We’ve already talked about how your Metric and Identified Pain should align with and reinforce that value. And, of course, your Economic Buyer and Champion both understand and believe in that value.
Unfortunately, we often miss the fact that the customer will have to deploy your solution to realize that value. They must learn to use your solution effectively, and ultimately adopt it to their organization and processes. We sometimes tell ourselves that adoption is a post-sale problem or defer it to a deployment partner. We sometimes tell ourselves that’s a post-sale problem or defer to a deployment partner. This perspective fails to respect how much an adoption plan plays into the decision to buy. Don't forget that customers can simply choose to do nothing. Not choosing is still a choice. This perspective leaves it to customers to figure this out for themselves. Most technology decisions are based on the known path, not necessarily the best path. We leave a lot to chance when taking this perspective.
Leveraging MEDDIC to ensure adoption plan is included in your sales cycle.
DECISION CRITERIA Ensure your Decision Criteria includes critical elements of an adoption plan. Highlight your user community, training platform, support SLAs, and available services. If the customer fails to articulate these efforts, add your own suggested efforts. Hold a discussion with your champion and key stakeholders to surface what’s most critical to them. Tell customer success stories in the context of how they adopted your solution and the path they took to deliver success. That comprehensive support experience provided by your company will enhance the value of your solution.
CHAMPION Leverage your Champion to help understand how the organization will put your solution into place. Find out if it has even been discussed internally. This will give you a sense of their familiarity with your solution. Don’t leave your Champion to figure this out for the whole organization. Create an adoption plan together that can be communicated internally.
ECONOMIC BUYER If you think your Economic Buyer won’t care about an adoption plan, you’re wrong. Sure, your Economic Buyer may not need to see an adoption plan. But, you can bet the discussion is happening internally between all the stakeholders. Your Economic Buyer will want to know there is consensus and confidence around an adoption plan. This is classic change management. Plus, keep in mind that deployment can sometimes be 6x the cost of your solution. The ERP sellers out there know this very well.
When you ignore your customer’s adoption plan you undermine your solution’s value. You make realizing value potentially elusive and unachievable. The moment I know how to achieve an objective of significant value, every day I delay is a delay in achieving success. The decision to act becomes very easy.
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