/relevance in b2b_

Nobody wants to talk to anyone that is going to take their money. Is that fair? Is that a fair idea? I think that is true. Right? Nobody wants to be talked to by someone asking for money. And yet, when companies employ an outbound marketing or sales strategy it’s just way too tempting to not go for the kill right then and there.

You’ve got to have patience. You’ve got to understand the motives of other people. When you know their motives and you can find a way for their motives to benefit you, that is when a deal happens. Because it becomes so mutually beneficial for you to work together that you can’t imagine success happening any other way.

That’s what makes you relevant. But what are the key components of being relevant?

1. Make Other People Money

We’ve got to start by flipping this whole sales thing on its head. Don’t figure out how to get people to depart with their money, figure out how to put money in their hands!

Every discovery call I’m on the prospect always wants to rush to the price. They want to know the bottom line. But you have to understand that that doesn’t actually serve them well if you immediately oblige. Because the cost of your offer has to be priced high for you to make money and they aren’t going to like that it’s priced high unless there is context.

Context helps people understand value. So before I answer, and you have to be very disciplined in this, I always ask first what is the value of their offer. How much money do they make on a typical sale? What this does, is it reveals the whole pie. If you’re selling something it’s going to be an expense to them which means it’s going to take away a piece of the pie. The both of you need context for how much of the pie your offer takes from their pie.

If it takes up too much then you need to be honest and let them know it’s just not going to work. Then you pivot the conversation to a referral based relationship and each of you share what your ideal client looks like.

But let’s say this is going to work. You see what their pie looks like by the unit and you determine that your slice is going to be justifiable.

Then you figure out how much of an increase in sales on their end would make it worth it to investa little more into the machine to make it run faster.

You can ask the question, “What would your world look like if you increased sales (insert: production, leads, quota, etc.) by X%?”

Now they are in a place to understand that this isn’t about adding expenses its about adding revenue. That is the position you want to be in when you start talking about price.

2. Help Other People Save Money

If you can’t earn them money then you steer the conversation around saving money. But not in terms of having a lower priced offer on your end. I’m talking about efficiencies or creative ways to finance.

I had a friend who was in the lighting business tell me a story. He said, “Torlando, I want you to imagine I come up to you and tell you I’ve got a brand new sports car with your name on it. The lease is $400/month BUT every month like clockwork, you open the glovebox and there are four crisp $100 bills right there for you that you can take and do whatever you want with; at the very least pay off the lease. Would you take that deal?” I said, “You bet I would.”

Then he said, when you upgrade to LED lighting the energy company gives you enough rebates to subsidize the cost of install and the energy savings year over year cancel out the cost of what you’re spending on lighting today. It makes these top of the line lights cost nothing to you.

I took that same idea to the paint contracting company I was running at the time. I began offering no money down 18-month interest free financing and encouraged my clients who were selling their home to finance the work. Why? Painting provided a 72% return on investment. You take the cost of the painting increase it by 72% and add that to the price of the home. Get the home on the market after it’s been painted and in a sellers market it goes quick, then pay off the loan with the sale of the house. It doesn’t get cheaper than free, in fact, I put money in your pocket.

When you have that conversation with prospects, how can you tailor your offer to actually help them save money in the long run? Does your offer help them save on personal bandwidth? Is it cheaper than hiring in-house? Is it more cost effective than building something from scratch? Or having something custom? What can you do to save them money without devaluing your product?

3. Reduce Their Risk

The third thing is reducing risk. People want to protect their assets. Don’t read that last sentence too fast! I said, “ASSETS.” The business is an asset and anything you can do to make things more steady, reliable, safe, or protected is going to make you seem like a resource guardian not a resource taker.

You can very easily express this in terms of investment. Why is your offer a better investment than doing it some other way? I’m in white label SaaS sales & marketing. When I talk to people I let them know that by using our software to build their booking system they are reducing risk in launching a new venture because they won’t have invested a ton of money and time into getting an MVP to market because ours is ready to go barring minor customizations and style tweaks. If the venture doesn’t work they end their contract. But they don’t have to fire developers and explain to investors why they couldn’t get an MVP off the ground. It’s just a much lower risk to license the program rather than build your own from scratch.

So there it is. You want to be relevant when you’re talking to a business prospect? Show them how you can make them money, save them money, or reduce their risk. Otherwise all you’re doing is take take take.

If you don’t know much about me yet on the professional side. I work with companies who are trying to automate their marketing funnels and drive more business. My design and tech team and I do this through helping companies design and build a booking site that puts appointments right on their calendar using WP and the Periodic platform. I’m very happy to make new business friends and have whiteboard sessions. Let’s collaborate! Hop on my calendar anytime.

Torlando Hakes | Author | Speaker | Podcaster

Director of Business Development at Periodic