Impatience Kills 80% of Go-To-Market Strategies

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Speaker B: so good, so good, so good.

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Speaker D: Hey everyone. Welcome to the CEO Sales Strategies podcast. I got a great guest for you today, Mr. Mike Brunick. B R U N N I C K. Uh, company's called Valor Advisors. Valor Advisors spelled V a l r advisors.com and uh, we're going to talk about one of the things that every CEO wants more of. Revenue. Constantly. This is the number one thing we'll hear over and over and over. I need new revenue. I need new revenue. But here's the thing. Many CEOs don't really have a good go to market strategy or they're lacking in their go to market strategy. So Mike, welcome to the CEO Sales Strategies podcast.

Speaker B: Doug, I am delighted to be here. Thank you for that, uh, that introduction and thanks for inviting me to be on the podcast.

Speaker D: Um, I'm so grateful you're here. Uh, I think if anyone can really add more value, you with your background, uh, can definitely add more value on how to grow revenue through say a go to market strategy. Um, for some of these people are thinking, well, what do they mean by go to market strategies? Uh, you want to kind of fill them all in please.

Speaker B: Sure. So at Valor Advisors, you know, we help small, uh, to mid sized businesses grow their revenue and achieve their goals. Um, just a pretty simple mission statement. Uh, my team and I are all, uh, former operators. Uh, I was a three time chief revenue officer and a chief customer officer. All the guys on my team are uh, guys that represent the major disciplines of what we consider to be the go to market function. So product, uh, management and product marketing, pure, uh, marketing and all of its subdisciplines, sales and customer success and revenue operations. So that pile of sort of things together, the customer facing Side of the business. Business. Uh, we've got a great deal of experience in and we, um, we meet customers and, and figure out what it is they.

Speaker D: They need.

Speaker B: A lot of them are, are launching new products. Some of them are just stuck. Some of them have transparency, visibility or operational problems. Uh, some of them are, uh, just starting out. Seed. Seed Round customers that are trying to hire their first professional sales team or move away from CEO led sales. So we kind of meet customers where they are, Doug, and, and help them achieve those particular revenue goals. Again, something new or getting unstuck? Um, yeah.

Speaker D: And what are some of the common mistakes that you see people when they go to market, You m. Know, or they're trying to go to market with a particular thing. What was some of the mistakes you see? Maybe even leadership teams are making? Those people from the top?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the classic. With my customers that are startup, uh, seed round, um, you know, quite small and really getting started. The classic mistake they start with is they've got some really cool tech and they love their tech and they go to market as a technical company. So rather than talking to companies about the problems they can solve for them, they immediately start with this technical discussion about their capabilities, their products. Um, and uh, it really slows down the adoption because people can't imagine, no matter how cool the thing is, you're describing how it might help them.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that sounds like basic sales 101, really, Mike, when it comes down to me. So am I missing something here?

Speaker B: You're not missing anything, Doug. You know, there was a book, I don't know, it's probably 30 years ago, a, uh, bestseller called Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned in Kindergarten. Do you remember that book?

Speaker D: Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker E: But.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, I feel like that's, uh, that's true of a lot of companies, whether it's leadership, uh, whether it's operations. I'm sure the finance guys you had, uh, Eric, on just recently, you know, these great, These great finance guys, uh, you know, they probably look at companies and think, oh my God, are we. We're still doing C Spot Run here. We're still doing primers. Um, um, but it's, it's, uh. It. It never ceases to amaze me how many folks will, uh, violate that first rule of sales, which is to talk about themselves and not the customer.

Speaker D: So that's interesting. And by the way, those of you like, who see Spot Run, I'm going to fill you in on this because back when Mike and I were Were growing up, there was a, uh, children's books basically, and Spot was the dog. And when we were learning to read, it's basic. See Spot run. Spot runs fast. Right. And we were, we were reading those books. And I see that mistake over and over. Just as you were saying, Mike, where people are constantly focused on them, them, them, them themselves versus like what are the needs of the market. And I see it translate into what I call the economic right fit buyer. So a lot of companies don't know who the actual economic right fit buyer. They assume. Then they come in and they start talking about exactly what you just said. Hey, let me tell you about how why I'm great, why my company's great, why the product's great and why you should have it versus asking what are you looking for? Why do you want it and what time frame are you looking for? What happens if it doesn't happen this way? And all these discovery questions. I'm super curious because you've been in multiple companies as CRO. I mean, you served in the Marine Corps.

Speaker B: I did.

Speaker D: You know, I know from being in the military, wasn't, uh, in the Marine Corps, was in the Army. But I know they're clear on who their ideal right fit profile is, who they want to promote, and those people who rise up to that get promoted in the military. That's been my experience in. So what happened along the way that human beings don't take the same understanding of their business when it goes to go to market strategies. Where is it broken down or where is the. The stalled point there? Because it seems very logical when we talk about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, it, um, uh, I, I think it breaks down in a number of places. I mean, the first is, uh, as I said before, tech companies that fall in love with their tech, um, it's a, it's a forgivable error, but it's so common as to be kind of prosaic. Um, the other place it falls down is the assumption that if somebody's good at doing a thing, they'd, uh, be good at managing people doing that thing. Uh, it's, uh, the implication that, you know, Michael Jordan, the best basketball player that ever lived, would be the greatest basketball coach that ever lived. Um, and just wasn't right. He wasn't even a very good owner. And so there's this fallacy that comes. Comes uh, there as well. Doug, you mentioned promotions in the military, and that's why my, my brain went there. Right. Um, you know, the guy who's um, the best machine gunner is not Necessarily going to be the guy who's greatest at running a machine gun platoon. M. But companies make that error all the time. And so I think it breaks down in a lot of places. Um, Doug. Um, and a lot of places that we can fix pretty quickly.

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Speaker D: So then if that's the case, how do we know or how do we discern whether the company has a, let's say a sales problem, a marketing problem, a strategy problem, or a people problem? Like, where do they start on that process?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think they start with the assumption that it's not a people problem. Uh, and I say that because the tendency is to immediately assume that it is. Sometimes it's a people problem, but if you work from the assumption that it's not a people problem, um, that it's a systems problem, that it's a product market fit problem, it's, you know, 5 or 10 degrees to the port or starboard on, on messaging, um, if we assume that, uh, we're doing everything right operationally and it must be a people problem, uh, then it becomes a, you know, pull the trap door, get rid of the sales guys, get rid of the CRO, uh, try again. You're basically rolling the dice or spinning the roulette wheel to say, let's see if a different person has a different outcome. So, you know, I tend to tell customers to just assume at first it's not a people problem until we can sort of clear the obvious stuff.

Speaker D: So if it's not a people problem, then it translates into some other issue within the company. How do people like you? You've been brought into multiple companies as CRO.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: So when you look at revenue growth and it's stalled and, or it's growing but not growing fast enough, where is the first place that you recommend that people look that you would have looked?

Speaker B: Yeah, we hear a lot. And Doug, thank you for pointing out that I've been a CRO a couple of times. I've been doing this independent work now for about three years. Uh, and so I had worked at about a dozen technology companies before starting my own consulting company, uh, and have Worked for a couple of dozen since then at, uh, interim fractional advisory capacity. So I get to see across board, lots of sort of commonalities. Um, and where we usually start, people say, hey, look, we just don't know what's happening with the revenue. Um, we have a transparency problem. Looks like we've got all this great top of funnel activity, and none of it seems to turn the corner and turn into revenue. You know, uh, prosperity is just around the corner, they used to say during the Great Depression, and companies feel like they never turn that corner. So they say, you know, is the pipeline a fantasy? Is the sales team just incapable of closing? Uh, and what they're lacking really is a bright spotlight on what's happening inside the sales process. So that's typically where we start.

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Speaker D: so when we're talking about a bright spotlight within the sales process, are we looking from like A to Z, the customer journey through the sales process, and then kind of looking at each segment that's going along and measure that and figure out, you know, hey, oops, this one doesn't look so right, or this one's optimized or whatever. Is that. That a great place for people to start?

Speaker B: Yeah, we start with the, you know, the sales process as they have it outlined. Outlined. Um, you know, you had an episode. An episode a couple of, uh, maybe a month ago. Uh, Jason, um, was talking about broken CRM M systems. You know, we often will start in the CRM. How is the sales process instantiated? How have you decided to show the stages in the sales process or in the buying journey? Uh, and how do you have those defined? And quite often we find people just don't have them defined. Uh, both as a CRO and later as an advisor. I talk to sales guys all the time, and I say, hey, I saw that you promoted that deal from stage three to stage four. What was it that caused you to do that? And he says, well, we were making progress. So I turned the dialogue, uh, there's no definition of what a three was or a four was. And so it got warmer. And so I'm turning the rheostat here to reflect that they're trying to be accurate, it's because the company hasn't says, look, you can't move to stage four until you've, uh, identified the contracting process and that the budget funds exist. You can't move to stage five until they've accepted the proposal and given you feedback on it. Whatever your stages are, you have to tell people what's supposed to happen at each stage and what's the gating criteria to move to the next one. And until you have that, you can't accurately say, hey, we're getting stuck here versus getting stuck there. It's just this sort of black box. Uh, and people accuse sales of being not, uh, transparent, uh, and often it's because we haven't given them the tools to be transparent.

Speaker D: Correct me if I'm hearing incorrectly here, but what I'm hearing is the go to market strategies. The reason the go to market strategies break down, uh, or the, the actual go to market is it's not really well defined up front and well planned through all the way through A to

Speaker B: Z. Yeah, I think that's, that's mostly true, Doug. What I would say is that without a clearly defined process, I can't see where it's breaking down. It's like, uh, it's like, uh, an airplane, uh, that's supposed to have, you know, 50 knobs and dials on the dashboard, and it doesn't have any, uh, and people say, well, the airplane's not running. Um, and I say, okay, well, what's happening? We don't know. So we have to first start with, okay, just let's try to get some definition. Let's reclassify the deals, let's reclassify the pipeline, put them in the right stages. How long have they been there, and are they working on the right things? And that then bright light allows us to say, okay, here's where we're stuck. Uh, this is a pricing problem. This is a messaging problem. We got great internal, uh, you know, interest at the, at the start of the funnel, lots of opens and clicks and responses, and then we're not getting a second and third meeting. So now I know where to go in and fix.

Speaker D: So let's say somebody's new, uh, wants to go to market with some new product, some new service. They're just right out of the gate, and we're like, hey, we want to release this. But they haven't thought through clearly defining the process of that. Where do they begin?

Speaker B: Uh, you know, we often just start with a generic process. There are some good ones out There we've got our own, uh, just sort of, you know, learned from years, but having folks just understand this is what's supposed to happen in four or five or six classic steps. Um, first is always discovery. Um, so before you can talk about what you do, before you can demonstrate, before you can say anything, you've got to ask them what they're trying to do. You've got to, you've got to figure out what their problems are, what their pain points are. So we, we first start with what are they trying to do. We then move to solutions. So let me show you a little bit about what we do. And then the third is for bringing up stage three would be to bring those, those two things together. Uh, we've, we've got them to des the size and shape of their puzzle piece and the size and shape of our puzzle piece. And we're trying to see if these two things go together, do I have a solution to the problem that they've outlined? Uh, and then we can start moving into proposals and budgets and contracts and all those things. But without those first two steps or really that really strong first step of discovery, then you really don't have a sales process.

Speaker D: So I guess we could say no pain, no gain. The old statement.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, yeah. You know, I, I've been doing this a long time, Doug. I spent 25 years in the technology industry. Um, uh, and I'm not sure I ever met a sales rep that said, man, I took too long at the beginning of the sales cycle. I shouldn't have wasted all that time asking questions. Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard that. And, and you know, tens of thousands of deals and billions of dollars in revenue. Um, but, um, but, but almost every time they say I went too fast, I went too fast at the beginning. I didn't ask good questions. Uh, and so we got to the middle of sales cycle, and I didn't have a clear idea of how they were going to measure success or who cared or who was funding this or what the impact would be if they didn't solve it or if they did solve it. Um, so, um, we always start with. Just spend more time at the beginning, ask better questions.

Speaker D: So impatience kills your go to market strategy, really? When it comes down to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean we, um, you know, we talk a lot about starting fast. And at Valor Advisors, we have this little tagline, start fast and stay focused. And the reason we talk about starting fast is because some of these things, Enterprise sales is a great example. Take A long time. If done right, they take a long time. If you've got a six or nine or 12 or 18 month sales cycle, um, you know, it's like the two best times to plant a tree are 20 years ago and today. Um, and you know, the two best times to start an enterprise sales cycle are, you know, four quarters ago and today. Um, but I see a lot of startups that have uh, you know, they talk about operational tempo, they talk about going fast and then they have these, well, in six months we're going to do this and at nine months we're going to do that. And I think, okay, you're starting planting seeds in nine months that don't germinate for two seasons. So uh, I hope your successor, uh, uh, enjoys the um, trees that you planted, um, because you've just taken too long to get started.

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Speaker D: Makes sense. Mike, how do people get a hold of you or get a hold of your company if they want to hear more about you and your company?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, Valor Advisors V A L R um, and I spelled advisors a couple of different ways and just in case my uh, my overseas customers or non spelling customers, uh, have messed that up. But valoradvisors.com um, there's uh, all the contact information's on there and then they can get a hold of me directly. Uh, I'm uh, just Mike. Valoradvisors.com Excellent.

Speaker D: Mike. Thanks for being so much, uh, you know, bringing the, bringing the heat here. And thank you so much for being on the CEO Sales Strategies podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Doug. This is fun.

Speaker D: All right, so when you go on a market, remember impatience can kill your go to market strategy. Don't be in such a rush to get it out there without actually understanding. Just like Mike said, you know, you're the pain of your audience. What your audience wants, needs, thinks, feels. I know this sounds like. Well Doug, that's really basic. Everybody should know this. But do you know that Harvard University did a study that shows as well as Wharton School of Business. Same, same type of study, uh, and some other notable companies. And they all concluded that 97% of people selling or going to market, in part or in full, do not know their ideal right fit economic buyer. Think about this for a second. If you're so impatient and you're going to market, sometimes it works. Most times you don't hit the mark and that costs you time, money, energy, maybe market share, uh, all these things. And never mind the stress, right, of having something where you just put out a ton of money, ton of energy, ton of effort, and it's not working for you. So take heed of what Mike said, understand the problems, understand everything that your customer is looking for, and then develop your go to market strategy. And don't be impatient about it. So if you like this episode, please give it a five star review. Be forever grateful. If you're looking to grow your operational profit in your company, if you're looking to grow your revenue, you're looking to fix the process in the company. Scale your business up. Maybe you're thinking about exiting a couple years down the line. Maybe you're not thinking about exiting, but you want more money now or more money later, Reach out to me at doug eosales, uh, strategies.com. um, let me know what you're looking for. Uh, or call the company phone number. 603-595-0303. Until next time, this is Doug C. Brown with the CEO Sales Strategies podcast saying to your success.

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