Dear B2B revenue teams, you have to blow up your current old-school sales & marketing motions and re-build them with the buyer experience at the core!
You must act as a consumer brand in 2022. Your competitors will, and you’ll be forced to react. Don’t be defensive here, be offensive and transform now.
This is not just about using product-led growth. This is about refining every aspect of your organization to create a delightful buyer experience.
This post was mostly driven by my frustration a few weeks ago trying to book a call with the sales team at a major social publishing software vendor.
The first unpleasant piece of the experience was encountering a deceiving CTA which was Request a Demo. I filled out the form, which forced me to add a telephone number.
Given that we are a 100% remote company here at Reprise, I don’t have a cubicle or office number, and I don’t want to give my personal mobile number. So, I entered a dummy phone number and explained it in the notes.
Shortly after submitting the form, I received a calendar invite that explained that the SDR would be calling me on, yes, the dummy phone number.
I then followed up with the SDR explaining that I was remote and didn’t have an office number and that I’d prefer not to share my personal mobile number. I then suggested Zoom which they agreed to.
The SDR was very nice, however, I didn’t get a demo and basically burned 20 minutes giving the SDR a list of basic features, which were largely listed on their website.
I now have a meeting with an account executive, who A) I’ve not heard anything from, B) will likely just further qualify me and maybe give me a demo.
I’ve burned two weeks with their process. 😢
This poor SDR was a victim of their company’s antiquated sales process, which was all about what boxes they needed to check off, and not what experience would be most relevant to me, the buyer.
So “what the hell do you want from them Jorge!”, you may ask?
Well, I’m glad you asked 🤓!
First off, I don’t want to click on a Request a Demo button and not get a demo. Then have to go through various calls and hoops to get info and pricing. There is nothing custom about what I need. If you were a services business, I would understand – but you’re SaaS.
If your competitor has a more customer-centric motion that allows me to get my hands on the product and pricing faster, you’re going to lose the deal unless their product is drastically worse.
Secondly, allow me to choose between a product experience like a product tour or demo – which is made for me (based on my firmographics at a minimum) – or speaking to sales. Maybe I do need a human’s help, but give me the option to choose.
Trust me, I understand the importance of inbound qualification, however, there are plenty of programmatic ways of doing this that don’t suck. So when I do decide to speak to a salesperson, it’s to the point and strategic.
And if I do fill out a form, maybe send me a link to “experience” your product in the auto-responder email. This can now help me touch and feel the product and talk to a human. This would also give the sales rep valuable product engagement data to utilize before and during the sales call.
You have my answers but do nothing with them.
Again, we’re in 2021, web forms should not suck and if I do decide to fill one out, it better be worth it.
Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash
