Winning deals with increasing product parity

3 months ago I was approached by one of my portfolio founders to help them buy a sales enablement tool. 

After the entire process of conducting thorough research and consulting with industry experts, I ultimately shortlisted two sales enablement software tools that fit the company's needs. However, now I find myself in a dilemma - both options offer similar features at similar pricing ($20,000 - $30,000), making it difficult to choose one.

I also needed a nod from the Sales Head of the portfolio company as his team will be the ones using this tool. Given the situation, It was difficult to make a wrong decision here. I decided to enter the sales process of both of these products. What happened after this is definitely something worth sharing.

Company X

1. Clicked on the Book Demo button clearly highlighted on their website and filled in all of details
2. I was routed to an SDR 
3. After this I was put on a call where they interrogated me trying to verify all the details I had earlier put in the form (it was more like a prove yourself call)
4. After this I finally got to talk to an AE for around 30 minutes who took me through their entire presentation and ended the call with a short 5 minute product demo.
5. I was then sent an email which was around 7 screens long on my desktop and had a countless number of links attached and pictures of all of their great achievements. I scrolled through the entire thing once and felt like never opening it again (the fear that I had to open so many links)
6. After being silent for around a week I started receiving follow-up mails which were again all about how great their product is and how I am missing out on making revenue.

Company Y

1. Clicked on the Book Demo button clearly highlighted on their website and filled in all of details
2. I was sent a short loom by their AE along with a calendly link for my call time preference.
3. I had a call with the AE where he asked more particular details about me and the organisation followed by a brief product demo.
4. I was sent a follow-up loom along with the full product demo addressing all the issues that I had highlighted on the call.
5. I had a few other questions which were quickly answered by their team. The interesting part is all of this communication and content sharing was happening on a single platform which I could access via a link.

You already know which Company I went on with, but here are a few lessons for sellers that I would like to  highlight which I think influenced my decision more than anything else

You won’t talk to the actual decision makers

I was acting as a gatekeeper for all the information that was shared with me by these 2 companies, by doing this I can ensure that the team is not overwhelmed with sales pitches and can focus on their day-to-day operations.

Company-X sent me an e-mail which I could not directly forward and at the same time it was too much for me to open again.

Company-Y on the other hand shared with me a single link which contained answers to my doubts and was overall very much organised.

Make your follow-ups stand out based on your buyers engagement

Tailoring follow-ups according to your buyer's engagement with the already sent content not only increases the chances of getting a conversion but also saves a lot of your team's time not getting wasted on wrong leads. This also avoids unnecessary bombardment of emails and annoying your clients.

Company-X was just relying on whether I had opened their email or not, they would never know that I spent less than 20 seconds glimpsing that mail and never opened it again.

Company-Y was most-likely running some kind of analytics on that one link that they had sent to me, I found their answers so very satisfactory that they had to know I had seen their ROI doc more than thrice.

B2B buyers now are wanting a more consumer like experience

Despite having the whole sales funnel jotted down in your minds, sales teams need to understand that a B2B buyer has spent around 90% of their buying journey even before clicking on that “Book Demo” button on their websites. So they know pretty much everything your product has to offer and might not be interested in all the steps that you as a seller have planned for them. 

Company-X was trying to follow the traditional methods of selling and made me go through the whole process before they could send me the long list of Hyperlinks in the form of an email.

Company-Y however provided me with a single link with well defined sections. I could also choose the sections that I wanted to know more or less  about. And finally all my queries got answered on the same link, and the additional content I needed was updated on the same platform.

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