Hi Reader,

Excited to share what’s actually working in B2B sales after my conversation on LinkedIn Live with two people I deeply respect, Andy Cunningham, one of the best positioning strategists in the business, and Adam Miller, CEO of ELEVATE.

Here are some things you need to know.

1. If you don't know who you are, neither does your market.

Who is your company, and why should your market care? Andy's question is deceptively simple.

If you can't answer that clearly, everything downstream, your messaging, your outreach, every sales conversation, is harder than it has to be.

Andy calls it your POSMO: your position of maximum opportunity. You know you've found it when sales start to feel natural. When the right people lean in. When customers come to you.

According to Andy, you know you're positioned correctly when it feels right.

Take Action: Ask your team why customers buy from you. If the answers are all different, you don't have a POSMO yet. That's where to start.

When I asked Andy, “how do you assess your market position?” I loved her answer. “It is not just data. It is a feeling. You know you are positioned correctly when, sales feels natural, customers resonate, conversations flow.”

2. Stop talking about your product. Start solving their pain.

Adam says, “When you are talking about your product you think you are differentiating but you’re not.”

Most companies are still leading with their product and service instead of addressing what the customer actually cares about.

Andy's fix, “Start every conversation by asking what's going right and what's going wrong in the customer's world. Let them tell you. Then attach your solution to what they just said.”

Take Action: Listen to your last five sales calls. How many minutes were spent talking about your product versus asking about the customer's situation? The ratio will tell you everything.

3. Narrow your focus. Target the right audience.

Andy told the story of the original Macintosh launch. One of the most famous product launches in history, and it flopped. Because Steve Jobs targeted the wrong customer. He thought enterprise business people in suits would buy it. They didn't. The creatives did.

When Jobs came back to Apple, he knew exactly who his tribe was. Think Different was born. The rest is history.

Even the best product in the world fails if it's aimed at the wrong people.

Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and your personas are two different things. Your ICP defines which companies are most likely to need your solution. Your personas define the people inside those companies who will make the decision. You need to know both.

Take Action: Pull your last 10 closed deals. What do the easiest ones have in common? That's your ideal customer telling you something. Listen.

4. Marketing, and sales have to work together. They say they do. Most don't.

My friend Adam operates in what he calls "the messy middle", the space between marketing and sales that most organizations manage poorly. It's where deals are won or lost before a salesperson ever even gets a chance.

We all want our salespeople to have more conversations with people who can buy.

But, buyers don't want to talk to salespeople until they're ready. So, you have to prime the market before your salespeople ever reach out. Create brand recognition. Create affinity. Sales enters when the groundwork is already laid.

If you have SDR/BDRs who take inbound or make outbound to a primed market, things can go very well. If you don’t . . .

In alignment sellers have more calls with people who can buy.

Take Action: Map the handoff between your marketing and sales teams right now. Where does the baton get dropped? That's your messy middle and it's costing you deals.

5. Closed dates come from customers. Not quotas.

I said this twice because I meant it. Closed dates come from customers, not quotas.

Your quota doesn't determine when a customer is ready to buy. Their journey does.

And speaking of customer journeys, they don’t end when the deal closes. Retention, expansion, and referrals all start the moment the deal closes. That is part of the journey. Create an exceptional experience at every touch point.

Take Action: Align your pipeline stages to your customers’ journey, not your internal forecast. Look at every touch point and determine how you could improve it.

You can watch the full replay of the webinar 🎥👉 here

Keep an eye out for registration for Episode 2 on May 27th.

If any of this is hitting close to home for your team, just reply to this email. I'd love to talk about it.

To your sales success,

Alice

P.S. The biggest takeaway from Episode 1? It all starts with who you are and who you serve. Everything else, the messaging, the pipeline, the close, follows from that. Don't skip that work.