Cracking the Code of B2B Sales, with Michael Litt [Episode 1147]

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This week, Alastair sits down with Michael Litt, the co-founder and CEO at Vidyard, to talk about the evolving landscape of buyer engagement, shedding light on the statistics and dynamics that have transformed B2B sales in recent times. They emphasize the importance of personalization and how AI can empower both sellers and buyers to navigate the complexities of the purchasing process, ultimately enhancing the buyer’s journey.

 

Podcast Transcript:

00:00:00:10 – 00:00:24:00

Speaker

And if nobody believes that doesn’t happen, just go ask somebody to listen to the stats we rattled off in the first 2 minutes of this phone call and  go through ten people and see what comes out the other end. That would be a hodgepodge mess. Yes. Welcome back, everybody, to this week’s Sales Strategy and Enablement podcast.

 

00:00:24:00 – 00:00:46:20

Speaker

I’m Alastair Woolcock, CSRO over here at Revenue.io and thrilled to have with me today Michael Litt, the co-founder and CEO of Vidyard. Michael, how are you doing? I’m very well. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Most welcome. Well, Michael, we’d love to start off each episode. We’re leaning in on some data, some recent developments of news and things like that.

 

00:00:46:20 – 00:01:17:07

Speaker

And when I think of Vidyard and I think about, you know, my background gardener days and all of that buyer behavior was always front and center and the engagement and how I changing between sellers and buyers and I love this recent one that came out and this is actually a recent Forbes poll across C-suite executives that indicates there’s 65% of senior execs have actually visited digital assets of a vendor.

 

00:01:17:09 – 00:01:45:20

Speaker

And after watching and engaging with video based content and other things like that, over half, around 53% are more likely to then actually engage through that format. And should. And then in a way, Michael, I don’t know that that’s actually that surprising or that new, but yet still today I kind of think of like so many teams I interface with around the world, they rely upon what I’m going to shoot an email, I’m going to just phone call.

 

00:01:45:20 – 00:02:12:14

Speaker

I mean, just do all the basic things. And yet we’re really living in a different world of engagement than we even 12 months. But what’s your thoughts when you hear those numbers and think about buyer engagement? Yeah, I love I love this topic. And to your point, this is not new. I remember when we started video card, you know, nearly a decade ago and we would go to the serious decisions events and talk to marketing leaders.

 

00:02:12:14 – 00:02:50:04

Speaker

Serious decisions had data back then that suggested that about 64, 65% of the buying process happened external to the interaction between a buyer and seller. That doesn’t mean that you’re not involved in the selling process. It means that the buyer is using all the tools available to them, all the technology, all the research that’s now been augmented with things like artificial intelligence to figure out what the best vendor is, the best solution to a problem they have is before they’re actually talking to a vendor.

 

00:02:50:04 – 00:03:22:02

Speaker

And Gartner released some data recently. I’m just pulling up the pie chart here. Apparently only 17% of a buying group’s time happens and meeting with potential vendors. And I think there’s another bigger component to that stat, which is a buying group, right? It’s no longer necessarily just an individual that’s making a decision. There’s a committee, there’s consensus in in difficult economic environments like we’re in today, and that becomes even more real.

 

00:03:22:02 – 00:04:02:04

Speaker

And so when we think about the technologies we build and we think about the way we go to market as a company, we’re not thinking just about how do we enrich the seller and how do we give them better products and better experiences and better tools to engage buyers. We’re thinking about that buyer experience on the other side of that and the core principle that I really try to distill for my product team and for our go to market teams is the people that are buying our solution or buying products from our customers are the same people that are shopping for sneakers online, that are buying textiles for their home.

 

00:04:02:05 – 00:04:34:05

Speaker

And so why would there be such a vastly different process than that which exists in their own personal lives? And why do we need to be? Brands refuse to really think about that. So how do we think about building technology in that context? Yeah, that’s something I live and breathe every day. What I think you hit on a few really big important points I want the audience to recognize here and Sonoma just discussed before, but it’s worth reiterating the first statistic you pulled off from Gartner, the 17%.

 

00:04:34:07 – 00:04:59:19

Speaker

You said it, but people often miss the S as 17% is for vendors, not vendor. Yes. So if you assume on average in B2B sales, you’re usually competing against three other companies. The four of you see you’re effectively getting under around 4% per vendor is the amount of time you get the customer like that. That’s natural in presence, in meeting all of those things, that’s very limited.

 

00:04:59:21 – 00:05:21:11

Speaker

And I always you say B when people doubted because I was part of that with Hank Barnes and a few others, dairy and others back in my Gardner days did a bunch of research, even if somebody doubted result. And that’s a very sound number. Let’s say you’re twice as good as that. You’re somehow twice as good as the rest of the world at engaging buyers is still only maybe at 8%.

 

00:05:21:11 – 00:05:44:09

Speaker

Like it’s it’s a staggeringly low number, which means once you come to engage, you better be really darn good. Yeah, but the second part is equally as important there. And again, I just want to double down on this. Buying groups have got bigger coming out of the pandemic. They actually shrunk during COVID, and the reason they shrunk was because everybody wanted to act so quickly and try to figure out what they need to do.

 

00:05:44:09 – 00:06:02:07

Speaker

They removed first size. They actually just shrunk it down to going. We had to act nimbly. We need to be fast. And so it didn’t matter if you were IBM, General Electric, all the way down to Fred start up. People were moving very quickly because it’s just that the dynamic nature and the sheer shift that was very big coming out of that market.

 

00:06:02:13 – 00:06:27:00

Speaker

We’ve gone into a decent, agile growth market but much more risk averse in it. When companies are risk adverse, they’re going to go to more stakeholders to engage. They’re going to make sure it isn’t just the CEO or the chief revenue officer or this, this or this. There’s going to sign off those people are now engaged or they’re recruiting nine and 13 different people in their company.

 

00:06:27:00 – 00:06:47:07

Speaker

And Michael, I just I’d love your how would you advise a company even when you’re in B2B sales and you had to go engage with 9 to 13 people? I actually don’t have an easy answer for anybody on how you would take these and do it. What I actually think is you don’t try to solve the problem by trying to meet all of those people.

 

00:06:47:12 – 00:07:16:00

Speaker

This is where we now use artificial intelligence, where we use technology to control the story and help that buyer by not just the seller. So, yes, nailed it. I think there’s a lot in this topic, and I think it’s going to become an emerging component of debate among players in the sales tech stack, because, again, you hear so little of them talk about that buyer experience.

 

00:07:16:02 – 00:07:38:17

Speaker

And the reality is outside of that 17%, right. The other components are so 27% is researching independently online, 22% is meeting with the buying group. So they’re spending more time with the buying group than they are with their vendors. And there is this category of other. And so basically the majority of the time that’s spent is researching independently online.

 

00:07:38:17 – 00:07:59:06

Speaker

So the advisory that I give to companies that were part and aware another had as a startup investor fund for capital, we did 150 investments and they always come to me and ask if we’re going to market support. Advice is how are you going to show up where your customers are? How are you going to show up in their inbox?

 

00:07:59:07 – 00:08:27:23

Speaker

How are you going to show up in their YouTube feeds? How are you going to show up on Twitter, on LinkedIn, at events that they go to in reviews sites, in analyst reports, so on and so forth. And so that’s the way kind of we have to start thinking about a go to market motion that’s buyer centric. And so from a technology landscape in a way, you know, we’ve thought about solving this problem is what the first thing somebody is going to do.

 

00:08:28:01 – 00:08:45:04

Speaker

You look at a vendor and they hear about a vendor because it’s on a review site, etc. We as as we just can’t necessarily control that. That’s up to the vendor to put that information out there. Have a really great marketing program where they show up to their website or they go to their YouTube channel. The first thing they’re going to do is probably watch a customer testimonial video.

 

00:08:45:06 – 00:09:07:17

Speaker

And so that’s where the dirt hosting comes into play. We sit on the website, somebody comes in, they watch it, they watch an amazing video. We understand how much of the video that customer watched. And we know exactly which customer watched that video. That’s such important information for the seller. We are marketing team did an amazing job of making that video available.

 

00:09:07:19 – 00:09:37:19

Speaker

The follow up should be from a sales rep going out to that customer saying, Hey, I noticed you watch this video, you might like this other one as well. That inference of knowledge and that communication can be entirely driven. And that’s why we’ve built this product called Prospector. So they’ve showed up on your website. Now you show up in their inbox in a timely fashion with content that will help them further their exploration of you as a vendor in your brand.

 

00:09:37:21 – 00:10:04:01

Speaker

At this point, you’re flagging an account executive inside the organization and saying, Hey, the customer is watching this video. They responded to this email, Why don’t you introduce yourself? Hey, I’m Mike. You’re in their inbox now. You’re a human being. So you had an autonomous sales agent, which is a video explained to them the value they’re bringing. And now you’ve had an autonomous sales agent said an email, recommending other things that they can learn about the product.

 

00:10:04:01 – 00:10:31:01

Speaker

And now you have a human being saying, Hey, I’m the person who’s going to help you make these decisions. I’m a human, you’re a human. Let’s build a relationship. Meanwhile, all that content, the subsequent Zoom calls, pricing proposals, other videos, all that gets injected into what we call the digital salesroom. So when that buyer has to bring in their buying committee, all that contents available in one place, it’s not sitting in their inbox in a million different disparate areas.

 

00:10:31:01 – 00:10:59:14

Speaker

And so it’s an organized destination. So get Google Drive. It’s beautifully designed. They can bring people in. And of course, we’re informing the seller every time somebody new gets added to that, every time they’re looking at content or helping the seller understand what other calls that that buyer might ultimately need. Yeah. And so by using artificial intelligence, we can contextualize and find associated pieces of content and do it faster than a human ever could.

 

00:10:59:16 – 00:11:28:06

Speaker

And what that allows the humans to do is build the relationship. And that’s where you’re optimizing that 4% of the time you have with the vendor, because they’re already equipped with everything they need to know. And, and in the end of the day, buying and selling is like it’s all about this asymmetry of knowledge, right? The buyer knows what their problem is, the seller knows what their technology can do, if you can even out that asymmetry of knowledge as quickly as possible, you’re probably the best vendor.

 

00:11:28:06 – 00:11:49:22

Speaker

And so you have to do that asynchronously outside of that 4%. And that’s that’s the moment for A.I. does each. I’ll be very excited about this, but we think about it a lot. I love this idea, the asymmetry of knowledge. Michael How you frame that, because it is, is I said in terms of helping a buyer by seller salary, but buyers don’t buy it, right?

 

00:11:49:22 – 00:12:16:12

Speaker

They gain to your point. They know their problem for sure. But do they know how to advocate internally to they know how to communicate the value, what they’re trying to get done? And they often maybe even if you with the primary buyer that buyer may now have to go convince several other people just because it’s part of corporate process or for politics that exists and that is solving, you know, the old kids need to be world flash back to our use here, Michael.

 

00:12:16:12 – 00:12:31:09

Speaker

But if we were like the game of telephone as a kid, as sitting in a circle with ten friends and you whisper something in my ear and then I tell it to the next person, the next person, next person, by the time he gets around number ten of he lives. Because what’s said is completely different from where it started, right?

 

00:12:31:11 – 00:12:55:18

Speaker

And if nobody believes that doesn’t happen, just go ask somebody. Listen to the stats we rattled off in the first 2 minutes on this phone call and I said to go through ten people and see what comes out the other end. It’s going to be a hodgepodge mess is what it’s going to be. Yes. So, you know, this idea of really you’re the buyer rooms and buyer enablement and assets, this support stages of the journey are really important to me.

 

00:12:55:18 – 00:13:23:08

Speaker

So when I think of an enterprise today and the first thing you need to do before you actually even buy a technology is do you know the tasks your buyers have to complete in order to buy your services or products? Not the marketing buyer journey. The buyer tasks? Yes. If you know the tasks, you then can say, Well, how do I support the buyer and support their buying committee through those tasks?

 

00:13:23:10 – 00:13:45:05

Speaker

And I give you like a really tactical example of that. We we know that in most B2B purchases in mid to late stage buying 67% of the time security is overlooked. Nobody listening is like, Oh, hold on, hold on. We do a really good job. We send over our stock certificates, GDPR compliance, the all of that stuff early on.

 

00:13:45:05 – 00:14:04:20

Speaker

And that’s good, right? I ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, buyer ignores it. And also what doesn’t happen is they’re they’re not thinking of security in the right way is is securities to say the CIO where the CIOs like it may be the most secure thing in the world, but that’s got a ripple effect on everything else I have inside this company.

 

00:14:04:21 – 00:14:29:19

Speaker

And you’re not going past go on there. And what does that simple thing do? It adds on average, anywhere between 12 and 20% to the sales cycle. One task one and everybody. I know what you hear, Michael, but I hear relentlessly right now pretty much saying, hey, my everything is taking longer than it used to. Yeah. And so if you start to map these tasks and think of then, well, what do I automate?

 

00:14:29:21 – 00:14:58:20

Speaker

What do I add? Intelligence to with AI and what do I need my rep to do versus what can I actually have a system orchestrate or that I believe, goes a long way to solving the asymmetry that you so eloquently said between, Hey, the buyer has a problem, the seller has a solution. We haven’t figured out how to put those together because unsurprisingly, nobody has the pre-built Lego book that tells everybody how to do everything.

 

00:14:58:22 – 00:15:26:01

Speaker

Yeah, I think that’s such an interesting point because there are some things that every buyer or every enterprise buyer will go through security, legal and budget approvals make it, and every single time I’m interacting with a customer or a partner or whatever, they talk about how their reps are always inadequately projecting the amount of time that those things take.

 

00:15:26:03 – 00:15:49:18

Speaker

The reps should know that those are always issues. So. So why not tell your buyer, Hey, let’s go talk to your security team and clear this hurdle ASAP. Hey, let’s make sure you have budget, which is a bigger topic. Now than it’s been before. The CFO is, I think, scrutinizing vendor service and software purchases more explicitly than they were prior in a growth market.

 

00:15:49:18 – 00:16:14:22

Speaker

And same thing goes for legal. Those are the mechanics and the mechanisms that exist in every single large organization because they’re looking to mitigate downside, they’re looking to cover their cover. There are, so to speak, on any bad decisions that are ultimately made. But then there’s that other component I talked about, which is that buyer has a problem, that buyer has a personality, that buyer wants to be educated, that buyer wants to be entertained.

 

00:16:14:22 – 00:16:37:01

Speaker

That individual person, that champion, which starts the process is a human being and they’re interested in things outside of their enterprise. They might not be as incredibly passionate about doing the thing they do at work as they do about running. How do you associate those things and those personalized moments? That’s, I think, where I can play a really big role.

 

00:16:37:04 – 00:17:18:10

Speaker

I obviously can automatically insert the infosec checklist and respond to the can. It could automatically, you know, push the A to go and ask for budget approvals and scrutiny on the buyer side. But how does it personalize the journey for that buyer in a way that meets their needs, that answers their questions, that understands the implication of the role and just, you know, case in point here, you know, the big sales motion in B2B tech is hire a new grad out of college, put them through like a week and a half of training and then go and try to get them to sell to CEOs and VP of marketing that individual, no offense, they could

 

00:17:18:10 – 00:17:55:16

Speaker

be the smartest, you know, new grad in the world, but they have never lived the reality of a VP market, a CMO, a VP sales, you know, a CTO. They just will not know the complexity of that role. They can imagine it, but they’re probably going to be wrong. A.I. holds the collective wisdom of all of humanity and can probably do a better job of understanding the pain of an organization, knowing what problem that solves, and the individual inside of that organization understanding their role and the things they’re thinking about in the context of this global spectrum of human knowledge.

 

00:17:55:18 – 00:18:18:14

Speaker

So it can personalize the outbound message, say, to that individual to get a much higher response rate. That’s much better for the buyer because that PR has all the best intentions and they might have the solution that really and truly solves that buyer’s problem, but they cannot communicate it in a way that will resonate with that buyer. And so that opportunity is lost.

 

00:18:18:16 – 00:18:40:21

Speaker

Yeah, So these are the areas where I think I can do such a compelling job. And yeah, I’ve been I’ve been playing with this tool called Prospector and my response rate is like five X what we’ve been able to get from our BTR team. And you know, I think there’s a couple of advantages. One, I’m the CEO, but two, the quality of communication is just much more relevant.

 

00:18:41:02 – 00:19:07:18

Speaker

I think it really it is changing massive in terms of the quality of engagement. So I’ll give you a grievance. I have Michael Hitz here, very four years in personalization. The mantra in sales is being especially top of the funnel. We’re talking here this, this, this analogy where you got to look up and understand that both Michael. ANNOUNCER Love cars and send them something about cars and then lead into your product.

 

00:19:07:20 – 00:19:33:17

Speaker

Okay? And for the audience, we both, we are both car guys, but we’ll save the petrol talk and all of that for another day and racing. But just know imagine if you do that. The fact is they’d gone and called social media or something and, and seen something. Right. The issue with that especially in the case of a senior buyer, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you do something personal about me, but I actually don’t have a ton of time to talk about my personal life and randomness with a bunch of people.

 

00:19:33:23 – 00:19:53:07

Speaker

Right? Yes. I have enough on decisions on my plate today. I just need to know that you knew something about my sector, my business. And how are you going to help me beat my peer group? If you’ve actually understood that and you’re coming to me in that way? It’s not that I may respond, but I’m definitely in a probably give my somebody my org to respond.

 

00:19:53:10 – 00:20:22:03

Speaker

And that’s part of what you’re trying to do. And I believe personalization has been overly access to the personal and not the personalization of the business. And I think if you’re going to go target, in particular senior buyers, this idea that you are going to enable that buyer to enable their buying group is really important to me. And it’s the personalization in their segment, in their business, all of those things that are going on.

 

00:20:22:04 – 00:20:43:14

Speaker

And these days, you know, most days as you’re already doing this, I might give you on actually going a reading, particularly publicly traded companies, their financials and understanding summaries through like chatbots and stuff, and you’re missing out like that. That is instant insight you can bring to bear and ask it to be contextualized to your your buyers, their segments.

 

00:20:43:15 – 00:21:02:17

Speaker

Look at different companies like I remember sorry I’m on my soapbox here Michael I remember back years ago a managing consulting like more than a decade ago, we would go hire out of the school business analysts just to put all that stuff together. Yeah. And now in minutes you can have the same insight and then apply the insight to support that buyer.

 

00:21:02:19 – 00:21:23:15

Speaker

That to me is personalization. Yes. Not trying to cutesy me out with something that’s in my personal life. Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, I, I hear that. I understand that in the context there is help you do better in your job so that you can be more or make more money and spend less time. So you can go enjoy your hobbies.

 

00:21:23:17 – 00:21:46:18

Speaker

Right? That’s kind of the connection. I think it’s interesting in the in the product led growth context where you’re selling a prior to an individual, a user, this maybe and I see you probably want to have a little like from what I’ve seen, you want to have a little bit more of that like personalization, that personal connection through to who they are and what matters to them in that particular way.

 

00:21:46:20 – 00:22:13:15

Speaker

When you’re at a senior level inside of an organization, you’re just is not to your point time for that. You live and breathe your public company and you’re a VP, you live and breathe and succeed based on those earnings calls. Yep. And those priorities that are being communicated, those earnings calls are guaranteed. The priorities that are being pressed upon you and already have been for weeks and months prior to that announcement being made.

 

00:22:13:15 – 00:22:44:03

Speaker

Yeah. So that pain is very real. And to your point, A.I. will be able to synthesize and communicate that that pain point from the earnings call in a context of your role far better than than you grabbed Kit in in an absolute instant. So this is a huge moment and opportunity here. It also plays to when you show up for that 4% of the time, like your pre read should be generated.

 

00:22:44:04 – 00:23:04:11

Speaker

And if you’re not using an existing technology like use chat, CBT, look up the company, insert their earnings report, ask for the summary in the context of that person’s role. Yeah. And speak to them in their language and show that you’re interested. Like I think that to your point is such a game changer in the technologies. It’s available, it’s free.

 

00:23:04:11 – 00:23:22:12

Speaker

Like it’s not, it’s not really that much of a leap, but I think so few people have failed to connect the opportunity to the reality today. And the reps that do are the ones that are going to, you know, blow their peers out of the water and have these trade secrets in the way they go to market. Without question.

 

00:23:22:15 – 00:23:44:20

Speaker

Michael Unfortunately, yes. I actually have to call the ball there on this discussion here, but we would love to have you back and dive in more into the value differentiation and the application of AI to this reps, these buying committees, because clearly it’s where it’s headed, right? Like it really it live in a world where only 70% engagement site for all vendors is face to face.

 

00:23:44:20 – 00:24:02:20

Speaker

And you think of all the other buying committee time that you eloquently showed out today. You know is this this idea of personalization and helping buyers buy is front and center now we love to also finish up with a little bit of trivia at the end of every app. Wonderful. So I’m going to throw a question at you here.

 

00:24:02:21 – 00:24:21:15

Speaker

Oh, my gosh. By like testing society is flaring up. That’s right. Exactly. So so I’m going to give you three, three answers to the question, though. You just got to pick the right one. So so so we this will be pretty straightforward meet. All right. So you ready? Feeling? Feeling good? I’m feeling good. All right. The question is this.

 

00:24:21:15 – 00:24:59:09

Speaker

In the context of B2B sales, what factor significantly impacts the likelihood of a buyer making a purchase decision? Number one, A the color scheme of a sales presentation with Blue being the most persuasive color be a day of the week. The sales pitch is made with Mondays being the most effective. So but see the number of decision makers involved with sales cycles increasing by 22% when just one additional decision maker is part of the process.

 

00:24:59:11 – 00:25:21:07

Speaker

Wow. You know, it’s funny, I obviously don’t wanna get this wrong because it will invalidate everything I said, but A and B were things that in the early days of Vidyard we talked at length about and it’s amazing how startups spend time on the things that ultimately do not matter in, you know, kind of the, the gaps in the narrative and experience.

 

00:25:21:07 – 00:25:46:13

Speaker

But I’m going to go with. C You are absolutely right, understanding and adding in the additional buyers into the decision making process is massively going to shift us forwards in terms of helping drive decision support. So your point of personalize in the buying group, Michael, is bang on and we’ll debate days of the week and colors maybe on a future episode for PowerPoints.

 

00:25:46:16 – 00:26:09:13

Speaker

It’s Michael it has been a pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much. Final word is yours, then I’ll bring us home. Thanks for having me. Incredibly passionate about this topic. If you’re listening and you want to engage, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn, where you’ll probably find me most active. We are looking to solve these problems as organizations, something I think about every day.

 

00:26:09:13 – 00:26:26:05

Speaker

So happy to chat anytime. Well, my colleague, co-founder and CEO of Vidyard, it has been fantastic having you with us. For those listening in, please do like and subscribe and send in your questions and we will do our best to address them on a future episode. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great day.