Bizcast: SaaStories - In Conversation with Moeed Amin, Founder & CEO, Proverbial Door.

Speaker A: This is the world of Salesforce and Dropbox, HubSpot and Evernote, a world unthinkable without cloud software services. Most businesses and consumers use SaaS every day to get work done. Driven by the Internet and ever expanding availability of bandwidth, SaaS has come to dominate our lives in a very short span of time. But developing a defining service, often ahead of its time, getting users to engage, secure funding, protect IP and building a true, truly remarkable and successful SaaS is not an easy task. SAS Stories brings conversations with the dreamers and visionaries who dared to think ahead, how they built their SAS genesis, struggles, trials, tribulations and eventually success. Welcome to SAS Stories. Thank you for your time and for joining us in this session. I have a favor to ask. While you continue to listen to the podcast, please leave a comment or rating at itunes or wherever else you get your podcasts from. I personally look at each comment and will give you a shout out to each of you in our following episodes. It means a lot to hear from you. Just a quick intro to PitchLink Data privacy was built into Pitchlink from ground up. Much to the discomfort of our peers in the buyer seller tech companies. We identified this as a key problem and baked it right inside the product. No consent, no visibility of engagement data. Recently Google announced a sea change in their tracking cookie policy. This is what David Temkin, Google's Director of Product Management for Ads, Privacy and Trust, wrote in their blog. We don't believe these solutions. Those that will continue to track users will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions and therefore aren't a sustainable long term investment. Don't fall for vanity metrics. Time to wean yourself away from ill gotten data. Build trust with your customer. The first step is to respect her data privacy. Want to know more? Sign up for a free one on one session. Let's dive into this episode. Welcome to this exciting new episode of SaaS stories. We speak today with Moid Amin, founder of Proverbial Door, where he helps companies create the best sales infrastructure, culture, skills and purpose that transforms the their commercial success.

Speaker B: Neuroscience is about human to human interaction. Sales is a human to human interaction. Even if you're using tools, if you're using software in order to seek out and acquire customers, even if it's an automated process, you are still engaging with a human and therefore there is a human to human interaction. So very simply this is about behavioral psychology which is rooted within neuroscience because it's based upon the infrastructure of the brain itself and uh, how it's wide and how it's structured. So it's actually very core to everything to do with sales.

Speaker A: For over 20 years, Mohit has been obsessed with how and why people make decisions. His journey started when he graduated in neuroscience, where he learned about the brain structure and the impact this has on the psychology of influence and decision making. Mohid has won various sales awards and led sales teams for small companies and billion dollar brands. He founded Proverbial Door because he was frustrated with the current advice and training on sales and persuasion. He has now created almost 80 million pounds in additional sales value for his clients and has interviewed 419 experts and leaders across 10 industries and seven functional competencies to help sellers understand what's truly important for a buyer. Now this exciting episode with Moid Amin Mohid. Uh, welcome to the show. I am so glad we connected and uh, you are doing some phenomenal work and I'm glad that you are here to tell our founders and our listeners who are Primarily uh, into SaaS but essentially startups about this very important function of sales. Welcome.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, thank you Subanjan. Uh, it's uh, a pleasure to be on the show and really looking forward to our discussion. I think it's going to be a good one.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Before we get into the core of the discussion, tell us a bit about the work you are doing at Proverbial Door and uh, your background so that people can understand uh, the context in which we'll be having this discussion.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll try and give you a quick background in say 90 to 120 seconds. Um, so I've been in sales for almost 20 years. Most um, of which has been within the SaaS industry, um, or subscription based models, uh, but also within other industries like the telecoms and the IT industry where it's much m more complex. Sales, million pounds plus, um, uh, price points. Um, my background is not in. My background is an unusual one because I have a, ah, couple of degrees and a vocational qualification. Um, so my first degree was in neuroscience and uh, there's a lot of that that's being done in the work that I'm doing right now. Uh, the other part is law and then marketing as well. Um, so the work that we're doing in Proverbial Door is really around a couple of main things. So the first thing is we work with founders, leaders of businesses, normally SME businesses where they are trying to reach uh, an incredible objective of growth. So we help those founders firstly understand what sales is, what great sales is, not the bad misconception of sales that's out there right now even amongst the sales professionals themselves. And we help them figure out what that is and what does great look like and how do they bring that into their business in order for them to grow. So that's the first thing we do. So we help those businesses create an incredible sales infrastructure. The other part of our business is that we train salespeople to become, uh, you know, what we call 120% clubbers. So those individuals that consistently achieve over 120% every year. And there's a huge element of the neuroscience that's involved there. Um, but that's the kind of two pillars of the proverbial door business. And uh, we work within any industry, but predominantly those that have a consulting or subscription based model of some kind.

Speaker A: It looks like most businesses are getting there. I um, mean most businesses will be subscription businesses. You know, even plants. I talk to lot of people, people who are buying plants. Uh, well, forget plants. Aircrafts, they are leased, right? Nobody's buying aircraft anymore. So I think a lot of, lot of businesses, uh, or most businesses will be sort of in the ambit of a, ah, subscription business. And that brings in a whole lot of complexity in terms of how you uh, acquire and retain customers. So we'll get into that. Uh, before that I have a question. What is neuroscience doing in sales?

Speaker B: Neuroscience is about human to human interaction. Sales is a human to human interaction. Even if you're using tools, um, if you're using software, um, in order to seek out and acquire customers, even if it's an automated process, you are still engaging with a human and therefore there is a human to human interaction. Very simply, this is about behavioral psychology, which is rooted within neuroscience because it's based upon the infrastructure of the brain itself and how it's wide and how it's structured. So it's actually very core to everything to do with sales. So not just about how you conduct yourself as a salesperson or as a sales function when you are engaging with your customers, but we even have neuroscientific and behavioral psychology elements embedded with even the structure of our training programs. Right. The most the common training programs are awful and then awful, not because they're teaching the wrong content, but because the way in which they're trying to teach that content to people is just completely out of sync with how we as human beings ingest, retain and use new information. Um, so the structure of our training programs is also rooted within the principles of neuroscience and behavioral psychology. So in answer to your question, has everything to do with sales because it's all about behavior and human interaction.

Speaker A: Great. I was hoping that you will say something like this, so I'll come back and uh, reconnect with this thought somewhere down the line. Uh, but I wanted to have this upfront because that's something core to what you do. And I wanted my listeners to be clear that you have a very definite angle to this whole work that you're doing at Proverbial Door. Yeah. Moving on to the discussion today, Mohid, there are a bunch of things that are happening around SaaS, right? So there is this whole thing about product led growth, There is inbound, there is conversational marketing. And SaaS in itself is about subscriptions, which means you have to earn the loyalty of the customer month on month. And all these things are basically fronting the subscription based economy. The product led growth, the conversational marketing inbound, all of these are essentially trying to fuel, uh, sales. Yes, essentially growth is a function of sales. If you don't sell more, you don't grow. Right. What is really happening? What is really fueling all this change, uh, in the landscape?

Speaker B: Yes, let's start with the first thing here, which is, um, my view here, which is, um, growth is not essentially the product of sales. Growth is everyone's job in the business. Let's get that very clear here. The problem isn't that some companies may not realize that. The problem is that all those functions, product marketing, sales, partnerships, they are moving in the wrong direction. They move within the context that is actually incorrect. So what do I mean by that? We're fascinated and obsessed with creating an amazing product with minute details of marketing such as click through rates and website, um, friendly websites, um, content marketing, etc. These are tactical things. If the strategic element, the context in which they fit in is incorrect, then none of those things matter. In fact, most of those things, like click through rates, are vanity metrics. They're useless in some ways. They're just indicator metrics. So let me be clear. The best companies through, and I've been conducting research for almost 15 years now, and we can go into some of that later on. But the best companies, this is about where you become obsessed. Customer obsession trumps product business model obsession any day. The problem is people are trying to create amazing products without the customers in mind. Now what do I mean by that? Because most people, if they hear this or watch this, they might argue and say, well, not, of course, we're doing with our customers in mind. You know, we do, um, you know, MVPs you know, we've created all these things. Here's the problem. If you ask more than 90% of founders out there, describe to me your customers, they will usually have the very kind of very basic, uh, descriptions about their customers. They are these types of companies. They were within this type of industries, as this size of company. These are slightly the challenges that they have. Very few, firstly, talk about the human being that they're selling to because the company is not a faceless entity, it's the people in those companies trying to do the job. Secondly, very few of them are able to describe in detail what that customer goes through on a day by day basis, month by month, quarter by quarter, etc. Customer obsession is about being able to understand the customer so deeply that if someone asks you to describe a day in the life of a customer, your answer is so detailed that the person who asked you that question would be forgiven for thinking that you've done that job before. So why is that important? Because the more we understand about our customers, the more we're able to help them see around corners. That's where trust is so massive and we can come on to that later on. It helps you create products that not only support them now, but will support them for the future, because you can see things in advance, sometimes in advance of even the customers themselves. In sales, it's exactly the same. What message are we sending out to those customers? Are we hiring people based upon the behavioral dynamics that we want them to conduct in connection to the types of customers that we engage with is marketing? Are they sending out messages through the right channels in a medium that actually really resonates with the customers in a way that customers enjoy absorbing information? Are we placing ourselves in our brand at the areas and points of influence in that buyer's journey based upon the fact that we understand our customers extremely well, so we know where they're being educated, we know who they rely on and trust for that education. We know where they're going to do their own research. So are we present in those areas and are we saying things that actually is of value for them? So Leonardo da Vinci said it, and he's one of the smartest people that we know to ever have lived. So who are we to argue with him? Simplicity is the great form of sophistication. And whenever I work with any client, we try to make it extremely simple so that we understand what are the two or three major things that produce 80% of the results for us. So customer obsession is one of the first things that we Always, always look, uh, at with any company that we observe, any company that we do business with, start from the customer in mind and understanding their world, and you will find that the rest of all those things, like product, business model, sales, marketing, will actually flow in a much easier way because you've got that customer in mind and you understand the world so well.

Speaker A: See, customer obsession is fine. That's conceptual, right? But what you explained of having a deep knowledge about the customer, how does one really go about doing that, according to you? What is the formula of being really entrenched in the customer's role in the customer's world? So that, as you said, that if you explain it to some third party, they would think that you yourself was the customer at some point.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let's start with a kind of almost Socratic level, which is, firstly, you need to be able to ask the right questions. And when I say ask the right questions, I don't mean ask the right questions of the customer. I mean ask the right questions amongst yourselves, right? So you've got, you know, the quality of your, the quality of the outcomes in your life are rooted in the quality of the questions that you ask yourself, right? So you need to, as a group, as a business, ask yourself questions that you need to understand about the customers. So that's very, that's the first thing. That's a big topic. We won't go into that. But ask yourselves the right questions. What do we need to know about the customers? What don't we know about our customers? And that leads to the other question, which is, how do we seek out a lot of that information? So that's the Socratic kind of philosophical side of things. The practical side is one of the most direct way is to simply ask them, right? Just simply bloody ask them. Pick up the phone, send out an email, um, schedule time because you want to understand their world right? Now be clear on this. Don't just ask your best customers. You need to ask those customers that may have been customers of yours before and they left you, uh, they may be customers that hate you the most. Right? There's often a lot of value in understanding information and gathering information from those types of customers, more so than those that love you. But we go to the ones that love us because it's easier. It feeds our ego, right? It's less of a tense conversation. But let me tell you something, that those ones that dislike you, they're going to give you some of the best information you can possibly get. So the most direct way is just simply Ask them. The other way is ask your vendors or suppliers, uh, or strategic partners who also do business with your customers. Uh, but I mean customers, I don't just mean the company, I mean the individuals as well that you sell to. Ask them what do they know about your customers. So ask your partners, ask your suppliers, ask directly. The other way is to set up your business in a way that market sensing or customer sensing is a big part of that person's responsibility. Whoever has some form of touchpoint or engagement with the customer within their MBOs or management by objectives, there should be an element and the proportion can be decided by you, but there must be an element that they take seriously where they are tasked and responsible for gathering in not only gathering the insights from those customers, but capturing it and making sure that that is shared amongst your business. So you as a leader have got to be able to facilitate that because your company is having touch points uh, in various ways with the customer and buying community. And you need to be able to gather that intelligence and be able to assimilate that and share that amongst the business. Um, the other way is to obviously do your research through third parties and that might be research companies that you hire to do so it might be um, going to events where you um, the kind of buyer based events, right, things that they go to learn from and hearing what they're saying. Um, social media is just so easy now. You can actually go to your buyers LinkedIn page and look at what they're saying. You can actually filter and see what are some of the posts that they are, uh, either posting themselves or posts or articles that they're responding to. That's incredibly valuable because now you can actually see and understand what their thoughts are. So there are so many ways to do so. The problem isn't being able to gather the information. The problem is the will and the desire to do so. Because unfortunately with investors and certain founders and their view of how business should conduct itself, we're all about growth, growth, growth. And they think value is hiring SDRs, hiring new salespeople, giving them a lot of commission for new business and just dial, dial, dial, sell, sell, sell. But listening to the customer takes time. And in that time you're probably not selling at the same velocity as if you hired salespeople and got them on the phone. But it's just like anything in life in terms of pipeline. Whether it's innovation, whether it's sales, whether it's product development, the more good quality work you do up, uh, front, the faster your time to results will be and the less cost it will be as well. It's just that, uh, that early part, it feels like not much work is being done, but actually that's probably the most valuable work that you could be doing. So that's in a nutshell, like at a high level. My answer to your question. I hope that makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So obviously people. The problem of people not pursuing this, or even if it is a stated objective, not really pursuing it to its maximum effectivity is because there is the quarterly quota to be attained. Our ability to predict revenue or our need to effectively predict revenue clouds a lot of our judgments and actions. What are you seeing when you have worked with subscription companies or you have worked with. You can take the range, uh, whether early stage startups in SaaS or like you mentioned, telecom companies, where your single deal is a million pounds, uh, what do you see is going on there?

Speaker B: Okay, so that's a very big question. Um, so let's start with one point that it's adjacent to what you just mentioned there. Um, knowing the customer is rooted. There's a huge element of behavioral psychology and neuroscience in there. At the very simplest level, we resonate with those that we see as, like, to us, they're similar to us. This is based on evolution. Where we lived in tribes, in tribes that were. Everyone was contributing to each other. It was, it was almost. It was actually, it wasn't almost. It was high likelihood of death if you had someone who wasn't congruent with the values of your tribe. So anyone that you don't see as having a very good connection with don't seem to understand you. Our brain is telling us, hang on, this person could be a danger. So understanding your customer and they feel that you know them and they will think, do you know what? I like this person because this person understands me. Right? So there's that element of that in terms of revenue forecast and predictability. Here was the problem with that. It is completely incongruent and misaligned with how buyers buy. You got the sales process and you've got the buyer's journey. And we're trying to force our sales process onto the buyer's journey. The problem is that's not how buyers buy. So quarterly quotas are not how buyers buy. Now, uh, I'm not in agreement with quarterly quotas, but actually there are some instances where it can work well, but only if you understand the buyer's journey and you're doing all the right activities and the mix of activities based upon how you engage with people according to where they are in that buying process, are they in the education phase, et cetera. As you build that pipeline and build that way of working, it could translate into very nice, ah, quarterly revenue. The problem, and the problem with that is that it meets human nature and more importantly, it meets the greed side of human nature, which is fueled by money. What will happen with quarterly results? Almost every time that I've seen this, actually every time I don't think I've seen an instance where this hasn't happened is we're now chasing the money rather than chasing doing great work with the right customers and giving them incredible value which will lead to money. So things like discounting, things like, uh, putting pressure on the buyer in order for you to hit your quarterly objective, you're not putting pressure, not putting smart pressure on the buyer, because actually this is really going to help them and you're doing it for their benefit, you're doing it for your own benefit. And the Average buyer has 10 to 15 years more experience buying than the average seller has selling. They know the game better than you, so they know what you're doing. They know it's not in their interest. So they will either push you away or they will really milk you. And they will find a way. If you're going to give them a discount, they will find a way to get even, uh, bigger discount. Only though, if they've decided that you're worth working with. Sellers and sales leaders seem to have this weird. They seem to live in this warped reality where they think that those techniques actually forces the buyer to buy something from them. But actually they don't. Um, if the buyer is not ready to buy from you and doesn't trust you and want to buy from you, then all those techniques won't work. Right? But we seem to live in this warped reality where leaders are saying, do whatever you can to get the sale because we've got to hit this number by then. Give them a discount that will get them over the edge. No, the discount is actually going to harm you, and it's going to get them over the edge only if they've decided that they want to buy from you. If they've done that due diligence and feel that you have, uh, a product or a service that can help them, then they will do so. But if they're not there, it is highly unlikely that a discount will get them there. That's why I say start with the buyers in mind. Because when companies ask me, can you help us create a sales function? We Start with the buyer in mind, because the way that they buy is based upon your product and more importantly, the impact that your product or service has in their business. How big is that impact? How many people does this affect within their company, plus their customers, et cetera, et cetera? Um, then you can think about, well, what are the types of behaviors that I need to hire and train? What am I rewarding? What behaviors do I want to reward in alignment with how our buyers buy? Um, what are the types of people that we need to bring in in terms of the roles that they have? What are the behaviors that we want them to conduct, not just with the buyer, but internally. Right. Because we might need to really heavily collaborate with other parts of our business to make sure that we create that solution for the buyer. And you will probably find that quarterly rewards, um, or quarterly targets are not the right thing to go. That does not mean that you don't observe and encourage quarterly pacing. That's very different. But you'll probably find that quarterly targets, ah, are not in alignment with how your buyers like to buy and engage with you. So why do that? You can very easily mitigate risk, but also see growth by taking a different structure, for example, an annual target structure, but based upon payouts on a quarterly basis according to how you're pacing towards that annual target. Right. It reduces the risk of some of those harmful behaviors, but at the same time maintaining balance. In terms of making sure that the business is pacing in the right way, you are rewarding for those that are able to achieve those targets faster. Right. But you're also rewarding them for conducting the right activities, such as targeting ideal client profiles, making sure that we, um, incentivize heavily more towards retaining clients and growing spend with clients, as opposed to just acquiring more clients and more of the wrong clients. Um, that's what I mean by starting with the client in mind and looking for the behaviors that you want to encourage, because that will inform every aspect of your sales and marketing.

Speaker A: It's time for a short break. Stay with us.

Speaker B: After the break, make sure that you are, uh, sustainably growing your retention rates and more importantly, growing your dollar or pound retention rate. Right. So if you've got a client, the average client that's spending, you know, £50,000 with you this year, are they spending 55, 60, £65,000 with you, or is their spend declining? And you want to incentivize your business towards that? Because maintaining clients who are really happy with you and making them heroes actually has what I call forwarding value in the form of testimonials, in the form of referrals, in the form of when they move to another business, they're going to want to buy you. And then by default, you brought in a new logo.

Speaker A: You are listening to a business podcast network. Original podcasting is the fastest growing content marketing opportunity which is untapped. We can help you craft your audio strategy and help leverage the wide reach and easy streaming capability that the smartphone penetration provides. It is easy. It is powerful and personal. Talk to us to find out how podcasting can help you build your brand and reach out to your targets like never before. Write to us at bpn@bizcast.in that is bpn@biz cast.in Business Podcast Network podcasts end to end. Welcome back. I'm Subhan Jan Sarkar, your host for SaaS stories and founder of PitchLink, the buyer seller engagement platform. Let's dive right back into this episode from where we left it. What would be a framework that one should be looking at to get to sustainable and profitable growth?

Speaker B: So the first thing on sustainable and profitable growth is focusing on retention and dollar retention rate, or pound retention rate. Commonly in sales, we over reward new business acquisition and we pay awful amounts of commission to account managers. In fact, account managers are almost seen as the stupid cousin of the sales family. Sometimes in a lot of companies it's considered account management are for farmers rather than new hunters, which is ridiculous because the skills required to grow a client, um, a huge amount of that is what you would require for a new business. Um, it sends a message that, uh, we devalue, um, making our clients successful, um, and you seem to devalue growth from existing business as if it's easy to do and therefore it's almost a given, which is totally preposterous in a, uh, radically transparent and radically competitive world that we live in right now. The first thing that I'll do for, and you use the term there, sustainable growth, is make sure that you are, uh, sustainably growing your retention rates and more importantly, growing your dollar or pound retention rate. Right? So if you've got a client, the average client that's spending £50,000 with you this year, are they spending 55, 60, £65,000 with you or is their spend declining? Right. So sustainable growth is about firstly doing those two things and you want to incentivize your business towards that because maintaining clients who are really happy with you and making them heroes actually has what I call forwarding value in the form of testimonials in the form of referrals in the form of when they move to another business, they're going to want to buy you and then by default you've brought in a new logo. There is so much value forwarding value from just looking after your clients and growing spend with them, um, that actually, it's actually going to help your new business. So that's the first thing. Um, the second part is of course new business. But here's the point. Make sure you are absolutely clear to as much of the nth degree as possible on who your ideal customer profile is, because that will impact your sustainable growth, which is the retaining of clients and growing those client spend. I would rather, and I always advise this, you should be looking for less deals coming into your pipeline, but the health of your pipeline or the value of your pipeline is higher because a greater proportion of those new deals or new opportunities coming in. Convert, uh, into healthy business where the customer stays with you for three, five, ten years. Right? So get radically clear on who your ideal customer profile is and get radically clear on how you're going to engage with them and how you're going to reach out to them. Right. Um, and then the other part is making sure that your people are consistently sensing what's going on in the buying community to understand them, to then bring that into the business. So those are the kind of the three pillars, um, that I would, uh, start with for sustainable growth. There's a lot more, but those are the three things I would start with.

Speaker A: One of the issues that I talk to sales leaders often is the need to be part of the early journey of the buyer. That's obviously easier said than done because the buyer is not exposing himself till very late into his journey. So if you look at the data sets, Yes, I mean 70% of the journey is over before they are actually when talking to a vendor and so on. Because you need to embed yourself in the customer's journey from what you are saying, right? I mean, unless you are there and you are actually participating and absorbing, you cannot come in at the point where he has already done his research and tried to teach him something new. That's not going to happen. Right. But that's what we continuously do. We are looking at intent data, which is out there, which is actually the lowest hanging fruits, which means they have really finished 80, 90% of their journey and you are now trying to go and attaching yourself to them. And obviously the failure rates are very, very high. So my question to you is, how do you get into these journeys early when he's in this process of looking out for a telecom software or a ERP or airplane or whatever.

Speaker B: Figure out where they go to learn who they're influenced by. Right. Because they trust them. Trust is a huge part of the sales journey. In fact, it's one of the core fundamentals of any sales process. Excellent sales process, right? So figure out who the sources of trusted education trusted information for them because you need to know where you're going to place yourself at the end of the day. The second thing is, um, I describe when someone says to me, how would you describe a salesperson in one, in one sentence? Here's what salespeople are. Salespeople are decision making agents. I'll repeat that again. Salespeople are, uh, decision making agents. Not sellers or purveyors of products. Right? Not hawkers of your products and services. You are supposed to help buyers make the right decisions. Now whether that leads to your product or not, that's a different matter. That's a whole other story. Right. And we don't have time to go into that. That's a big topic on itself because I advocate that you should direct them to a competitor if genuinely you can't help them, believe me, that will create incredible trust which will become forwarding value. And I've seen countless examples of this where someone else has done this and I've done this myself. But anyway, um, and that's part of the buyer's journey because the buyer's journey isn't. They don't just suddenly wake up and think, I need to buy this software, uh, I'm going to buy a software that's not what they think. They think I'm going to solve this problem by buying the software. And decision makers, they are hired, uh, or they are in that role because they're able to do something that others in the business can't, which is make the right decisions. So let's give an example of sales growth. Right? There are so many things that can improve sales growth. Could be sales training, could be we need a CRM, could be we need to hire more salespeople. It could be that we need to change the sales infrastructure. It could be that they're not working with marketing and we need to have more marketing content. There are a whole host of things. The problem is this leader is now going to decide which lever, uh, do I use that's going to have a disproportionate positive impact on the goals that I'm trying to achieve, which is to grow the business by X amount. So What I tell sellers is understand what decisions your buyers are trying to make based upon the problems or the outcome that they're trying to solve or get to. And what you need to now do is work with either your marketing function or do it yourself, whatever it might be, to give them information that is, uh, applicable and valuable based upon where they are in that buyer's journey. Sometimes it's a blog, sometimes it's an article, sometimes it's a webinar. Uh, sometimes it's just a little post here. Sometimes it's working with the influencers that they trust to co host and co create something. The channel or the actual material in which you send that information isn't important. It's what you. As long as it's aligned to the buyer's journey, it's what you say in that information. So what decision or information are they trying to understand based on where they are in the journey in order to get to that, in order for them to move to the next stage of their buyer's journey? That's the important thing here. And sometimes that's going to be misaligned to a quarterly. Quarterly goal. Unfortunately, right at the earliest stage, they're educating themselves, but they don't want to engage with a buyer, sorry, a seller. Apologies. They don't want to engage with the seller. Right. What they want to engage with is an authoritative and trusted source of information. If you're a seller, you can still do that. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. It's not that they don't want to engage with a seller. They don't want to engage with an annoying seller that's going to try and close them when they're not ready to get down that journey because you have no idea what they're trying to do at that stage. Right now they're probably gathering information because someone in their business has told them to do so. And then there's a whole host of process of communicating it internally that still has to happen. So you forcing them down that stage before they can do that, they can't do that. Otherwise someone's going to call them up on that in their business and they're going to get reprimanded for it. So it requires patience. And so that's how you get involved with buyers early, is figuring out whether you should be doing that or whether marketing should be doing that. You're making sure that you are placing yourselves at the points of that trusted, authoritative, um, venues, let's call them venues where they're learning and you're saying things that are helping inform them so that they can lead to making the right decision. So uh, at those stages you shouldn't be talking about you at all as a business or your products. Right. Maybe you mention it right at the end, but what you're saying to them is here is your world, here are the challenges, here are the problems, here's the future of your world, here are the decisions that you should be making because of that future scenario. Oh, and by the way, we could help you with that if you're ready to talk to us about this. They're going to see more value in you helping them make a decision than in the fact that you sell this particular product. What you've asked is a very big topic and I'm trying to distill all this information I have in as quickly as possible, but that's probably. Look, unfortunately uh, that doesn't align with how salespeople are motivated and encouraged to perform. Do you work with your marketing people or do you change your job and change the people you work with? Right. And find someone that really does understand the value of such processes and is willing to give you the time and the space and support to do so?

Speaker A: Mohid, uh, you know, we could actually literally talk for hours on this and it has been a, it has been a great, uh, shall I say, opening session that we could have done. And I uh, know we didn't really speak about SaaS so much. We were more focused on what's happening in the world of sales and that's.

Speaker B: This is more relevant to SaaS.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: This is very relevant.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. So my point is that I think we should look at uh, doing a couple of more sessions where we dig into some of these areas where we said that they're too wide to address in a 30, 40 minute session. But uh, I would love to sort of come back and dig into some of these ideas, uh, and potentially uh, present it to our listeners. SaaS Stories is brought to you by PitchLink, the buyer seller engagement platform. PitchLink enables high quality interactions between buyers and sellers through presentation and discussion modules. Sellers create personalized sales presentations and reach out to prospects through a non intrusive buyer qualified engagement. Pitchlink requires no installation or download and holds the entire repository of sales collaterals and buyer seller conversation. Talk to us to know more about how you can engage with customers without intrusion. Call us on 990-216-3132. That is 990-216-3132.

Speaker B: So firstly, I'm more than happy to come back and Discuss those areas. There's a ton of research and data that I have that I can share about what some of the best practices should be and the bad practices to avoid. The one thing that I would leave is, um, I've conducted research, uh, with almost 400 B2B buyers across 10 different industries, varying seniority levels. Ah, and involvement, um, in every one of those 400, um, every one of them mentioned two words or either one of these two words when it came to the decision of who they wanted to business with. And that's trust and honesty. So for 15 years I've been looking at the science and psychology behind trust. We didn't get to talk about that. But everything in terms of sales and doing business in any way leads ultimately towards trust. So if you are not seen as trustworthy and everything we've talked about, about content is about trust. Right. You've helped me and informed me about decisions to make. Therefore, I trust you. And I will want to speak to you a bit more to find out more. Everything goes down to trust. So if your viewers and listeners would like to learn more about how they can become more trustworthy as a business, as founders and sellers, uh, especially if you want to exit your business and get someone to buy you out, if that's really what you want to do, then, um, we can talk about that in a previous one. Uh, or you can access some of the materials that I have on LinkedIn and my website about trust. Um, but yeah, that's an important, that's a crucial part of, of sales growth.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So if you share the links, I would ensure that we put that in the show notes so that people can actually link through and go. And because this is not. See, this is the thing, I mean, the problem that I see and this is not something new, right. Everybody says, oh, get your buyer to trust you. But the behavior that we sort of demonstrate is quite to the contrary. For example, we use technology to surreptitiously track our buyer's behavior. We don't tell them, I'm tracking you. You want to know what he is doing without his knowledge. So that you can go and say, hey, Mohit, you looked at that document, but sort of you didn't finish looking at it, or did you, did you sort of need some clarification, so on and so forth. Anyway, I'll not go in there. But the problem I guess is we are all trying to figure out how can we get instant trust. And, uh, that's as mythical as a unicorn.

Speaker B: Well, actually the research is you can gain instant trust based upon circumstance, certain situations. The problem is, as you exactly said, that, uh, our activities are actually breaking down trust. LinkedIn, uh, did a research 20, 20, 40% of buyers find the sales, uh, profession untrustworthy. 25% of them say that the sales profession is morally and ethically challenged. Those are the exact words. Right. So we have a big, big problem. Right. So, absolutely. And by the way, it's not just the activity of the salespeople. It's as we talked about the incentives, expectations and how we manage those salespeople. That comes all the way from the top, from the investors down to the salespeople. Every element of that system is, is unintentionally resulting, um, in a break of trust with our buyers and with our customers. So, um, absolutely. It's a big topic that we can certainly discuss. Sorry, but yeah, I agree with you. We do things that actually break down trust and their bad behaviors.

Speaker A: Mohi, thank you so much for joining me today and um, I will ensure that we come back and talk some more.

Speaker B: It's been an absolute pleasure and I loved your questions, so thank you for them.

Speaker A: This episode brings us to the end of this season of SaaS Stories. We heard insightful discussions on how to grow your SaaS with a stellar lineup of experts from all over the world. For a complete list of conversations, check the show notes for this episode. We will take a break after this show to come back with renewed vigor with sought after guests and deeper insights. In the meanwhile, do sign up for our new invite only community for buyers, sellers, marketers and subject matter experts. Moxo. To get an invite, write to Moxoitch. Ah, Link. That is Moxoitch Link. I wish each and every one of you a happy, healthy and super successful new year in 2022. Thank you for listening. Until we meet again, stay well and know your SaaS buyer better. Thank you for being with us today and listening to this episode of SaaS Stories. This is where I speak with the dreamers and visionaries who dared to think ahead and build world class SaaS products. We hope this conversation helped you with the insights that you can go and apply right now to your own SaaS journey. We hope to have you here with us again in the next episode of SaaS Stories. SaaS Stories is brought to you by PitchLink, the buyer seller engagement platform and is a bizcast, uh, original production.