Deliver Business Value to Your Customers w/ Tim Braman [Episode 642]

Tim Braman, VP of Global Accounts and Strategy at Revegy, joins me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Tim says the biggest single challenge facing sales reps today is to deliver value in the customer’s eyes. The best reps seek first to understand, then propose how they can help the customer to succeed. People want value quickly.
• If you try to talk to executives about products, they will delegate you down to the person who talks with vendors about products. Be relevant based on the business outcome they want to achieve. Provide market insight.
• Tim discusses how to gather insights from the internet and from the team. Tim’s team does a strategy session twice a week around real prospects and their business problems.
• Open sharing involves being vulnerable in front of peers. You may receive “a scar” in a strategy session. A strategy session is for understanding. Marketing and Executives may attend to listen, not lead. It is not a deal review.
• Andy asks what all top performers have in common — they all break the rules. Tim agrees — you have to leverage what you do very well in selling. Tim reveals how he moved into sales.
• CEO John Imlay once stated to his employees, “You’ve got a decision to make, every single day you walk in the door — that you either sell your company or you unsell your company.” Sell the value of your company in all you do.
• Aggressive extroverts are not what customers want for the reps that call on them. Customers want empathetic problem solvers. How do we hire for that? Hire for a natural curiosity and a life-long desire to learn.
• Question what’s going on in the industry and help companies think about problems they don’t know they have. Create demand. Understand what the prospect wants to accomplish.
• You have to be willing to tell the customer you don’t think they will be successful on the path they’re following and coach them to understand the reason why. Be aware of customers that will not be successful customers for you.
• Your sales process is a promise to deliver business value to the customer. Tim tells a customer story about the close. It’s not the end of a sale — it’s the beginning of a journey of nurturing business value for the customer.
• Tim shares a tactic for after the close. Call to thank them, and ask them why they bought from you. Andy says to make sure you know why you won the deal, so you can apply it in the next sale.
• Tim gives the Revegy 60-second pitch. It’s a technology solution that facilitates team-based collaboration and execution for companies that do strategic selling and strategic account planning in complex sales.