What’s Next for B2B Sales? with Matt Heinz [Episode 798]

Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing and host of the Sales Pipeline Radio podcast, joins me for a conversation about what’s next for B2B sales. Matt and I talk about what changes he would make to how we structure and execute B2B sales if he were in charge. We’re also checking into a topic he and I first spoke about 4 years ago on this program – the 7 reasons why BDRs/SDRs aren’t making quota. This was from a chapter in his book, Full Funnel Marketing. So in this conversation I asked Matt to provide an update on what progress has been made (if any) on addressing those 7 reasons. And we’ll dig into a topic that’s on the top of a lot of sales leaders minds these days: What type of future should they be planning for?

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Matt Heinz. Welcome back to the show.

Matt Heinz: Oh, my gosh. It’s it’s a pleasure to be here.

Andy Paul: It’s been too long. I mean, you were early in the show, you hit two or three times pretty quickly, and then it’s been a while. So we’ll have to make up for lost time. So where, where are you sheltering in place?

Matt Heinz: We are sheltering in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. So my wife, three kids and I, we live in Kirkland, Washington, which is without traffic, about 20, 25 minutes outside of Seattle. And, you know, we’re, we’re just blessed. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got our health. We’re all safe. We got plenty of toilet paper to last for a little while.

You know, as we were joking earlier, I am a, I am a proud bald man. So, I’ve got razors for days to take care of my, my hair maintenance needs. I’m in good shape.

Andy Paul: So, so that’s the home to Costco, right?

Matt Heinz: It is. It is like the very first Costco is just down the Hill. The one we go to.

Andy Paul: Yeah. So I remember making sales calls on them, getting a product placed to the Costco stores, but, it seems like it should have access to easy access to toilet paper in bulk from Costco.

Matt Heinz: I think we all get our toilet paper from like three mills in Wisconsin is what I’m guessing. And it’s not the easiest thing to do inventory on. So, yeah, we’re not running out of toilet paper anytime soon, as long as those, as long as they can.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I was walking through the, the storage units in the high rise that we live in here in San Diego. And, yeah, they’re just cages sort of and looked in and this one guy, I think one, couple of guy, whatever, maybe 200 rolls of paper stocked up in there. I was like, two of the biggest containers that ever seen. It’s like, Dude. It’s not that hard to get.

Matt Heinz: Well, maybe he lives like way out in the mountains and like coming into town is a really big deal. And so, you know, like he grows his own food. He’s got his own water source, like he’s sustainable except for toilet paper.

Andy Paul: Yeah. He’s a survivalist on everything

Matt Heinz: Except for toilet paper. And if you’re going to buy that much toilet paper, like it’s worth having a Costco subscription for the two times a year, you drive down, to get your toilet paper.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we sort of missed that. We’ve been in New York for had been New York for most of the shutdown and there’s no convenient Costco, but even if there were living in a small New York City apartment, there was no place to store it.  Yeah, so we were making more frequent trips, so there was easy access.

So it wasn’t, wasn’t a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So. You know, in your mind, I love asking this question to people, so what have, what have you learned about yourself during the shutdown?

Matt Heinz: What have I learned? I’ve learned that, I really don’t need to travel as much as I have, that, that I miss seeing people in person. That I’m, that I definitely want to get back to travel back to seeing people in person and shaking people’s hands, hopefully someday, but at least seeing the, seeing the whites of their eyes in person, but I, you know, I I’ve, I’ve got three kids in elementary school and I like spending time with them. And last year I did way too much business travel and you know, we’re now almost halfway through the year. And obviously my business travel is significantly down and, you know, business. Isn’t awesome, but it’s good.

So I, you know, I can do this without being on the road as much. And I, you know, I think that, you know, some people are saying they’re lamenting the fact that we may not go back to life, you know, as our previous normal I’m like, I can’t, I’m glad, I’m really glad that, you know, for many reasons that there was this opportunity, like, I don’t, I’m not happy that people, you know, have lost their lives and that this has been such a painful expereince for a lot  of people, but the downside shift we’ve been forced to do has, I think forced a lot of us to see a different way of doing things and a different set of priorities, that I think will make us better people moving forward.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s true. Yeah, I know it’s interesting. You bring that up about travel. Cause I think we all have to sort of assess our priorities and this is a perfect time to do it, right? Because we feel some anxiety about threats to the health and welfare and safety of your family and yourself. But you know, I started my sales consulting business in order to stop traveling as much. I mean, I was, I was traveling 300,000 to 400,000 miles a year in international  business. And missed a birthday, one of my daughter’s birthdays and just said, yeah, that’s not going to happen again. And yeah, would do willingly for a few years while the kids were still in school, is became the dad that didn’t miss a game, didn’t miss a recital, didn’t miss a show, and may sacrificed have something for a short period of time. But that was okay.

Matt Heinz: Yeah. You know, I, I’ve never missed a birthday, obviously. I’ve never missed sort of a major holiday with the family, but what I miss is just Tuesday, you know, like the random, normal days, when you can make dinner and you can have conversations and things, you know, little things go wrong at school and you can be here for your kids.

And I can be here to be an active member of the family. And, and I realized, look, I mean, like I have a job that’s going to take me out. Of town occasionally, but I can, I’m going to be a lot more choosy about that. I’m going to be a lot more, I’m going to be a lot pickier. There’s going to be a higher bar and it is like you said, it’s one of the benefits of working for myself, that, you know, there’s always a downside to not going to something. Right. But instead of the fear of missing out, I’ve really tried to embrace the joy of missing out. Like if I, if there’s some better reason to stay at home, then I’ve chosen the best option and yes, I might be missing something, but whatever I’m missing based on that choice is not as important as what I’ve chosen to stay home for. So I-

Andy Paul: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Matt Heinz: I think I feel very lucky that I have that opportunity, that I have that choice with what I do. And I feel very lucky that I have kind of come across it at this stage in my life. Cause I know a lot of people that have done it done that later and either have lost their family or almost lost their family and wish they had that time back.

Andy Paul: Yeah, well, I think that, even talking, but it goes to the other extreme too is, you know, talk to some of the peers that we have, that, that are, have their own companies and so on, who are, you know, sort of celebrating the fact that they spend 300 days a year on the road and it’s like more power to them. Not just for me that that was never going to work. I wasn’t. Wasn’t that motivated, I guess, to spend 300 days a year on the road.

So, we’ll sort of continue that theme is okay. So. I don’t think we’re the only ones that are valuing, you know, having more time I’m being off the road. I did travel last week for the first time in 90 days, my wife and I flew back from New York to San Diego.

And I, I was laughing and my wife was sort of looking at me as I sort of paralyzed in the middle of the floor, cause packing use to be second nature, right. Where everything went in my backpack and what I needed to put in the suitcase. I’m sitting there like, I’m sort of lost. Yeah. I don’t know what what to do and the muscle memory was gone.

I think that’s kind of, hopefully I think for a lot of people, we have the opportunity to be more efficient about how we conduct business. I think we’ve learned lessons that perhaps it took us to teach us.

Matt Heinz: Yeah. I think that, you know, we’re learning things that we like and don’t like about this situation, right. I think, you know, I think we were all doing zoom meetings for a long time and I still do a way more than I used to, but more often now I just say, Hey, let’s just talk. Right. Let’s just get on the phone.

I think sometimes people appreciate having the break from having to stare at a webcam for a half an hour. But I, I do more of if I can do that and if I can string those together, I’ll either do that from our front porch or I’ll go for a walk and I’ll, I’ll do business and make phone calls while I’m walking.

And so trying to find those ways to, you know, stay active, to get up from my chair, to stay busy, but focus on the right things and do it. You know, with a little better control of, if not time, at least place. And it matters. And so, you know, I also think a lot of people have had to got to be successful.

People have had to got, to get a lot more effective at balancing work and life. Like I’m sitting here in my basement. Basically. I don’t have an office at home. I just have a corner of our basement and so with my family more, I just sort of make up rules where if the doors closed to upstairs, that means I’m on something, unless it’s an emergency, try not to come down.

But then I also like at some point need to shut it off. Even though my workspace is just downstairs. I still need to shut it off so I can spend that time with my family and in some cases, just so I can put my own oxygen mask on first and give myself a break and prioritize my own wellbeing with whatever that means I’m doing.

So I, and I’m hoping that we can all take for those of us that are for those that have developed that level of discipline. We can take it that back into whatever the new normal is and prioritize that balance. However you define what that is for you.

Andy Paul: Well, I think this whole idea of getting on the phone is really a good one. There was, there was a, an article came out a few weeks ago in the New York Times about research, preliminary research that’s been done on sort of the efficacy of video calls versus phone calls. And, you know, the early findings or the findings, those early research is that actually are more effective verbal cues from the period.

Talk to on the phone versus over video. And that there’s a lot of smoothing that goes on through the encryption and, and that you actually miss some of these things, because you’re sort of distracted by looking at yourself, you know, you spend 30% of the time doing at least looking at yourself, in the window on zoom or-

And it was just sort of fascinating to see, Oh gosh, if you start stack ranking effective forms of communication, that actually in-person the best, but phone actually perhaps is more effective than Zoom.

Matt Heinz: I think it can be. I, you know, I think that the, the downside is you run the risk of people multitasking. One of the things I like about zoom is that, you know, you’re, you can tell where someone’s eyes are and you know, sometimes people are like reading something you sent them or checking out a reference that you may have mentioned. But I, and I, so I think that Zoom is the best we can do right now, approximating being in the room and having someone’s attention. I think that we have to treat, because of that, we have to treat it as kind of sacred. We can’t take every meeting and make it an in person meeting cause you wouldn’t do that without Zoom.

I mean, just because you need to talk to someone at the office doesn’t mean it needs to be a Zoom meeting. It could be a phone call at me. It could be an email. So I, I think, you know, now and moving forward, we have to get smarter about what channel we’ll use and why we use it. And it’s part of how we make ourselves more efficient, but also how we respect the other person’s time. Especially if that’s a buyer and you understand, you know, their communication and work habits.

Andy Paul: That’s a really great point. That’s a really great point. I hadn’t really given much thought to that as in terms of varying the channels that you use. Hmm. Interesting. Well, I mean, talk about channel is so in-person is one channel and field sales certainly been impacted by that. The shutdown is w do you think field sales is going back?

I mean, what’s your take on what the mix will be? I mean, my take is that that to the point you to serve made is they have to be more, become more efficient. So we’re going to see more hybrid. sales models where they don’t give up the going in person, but they have to be more selective and judicious about deciding to make that investment and taking some of the customer’s time.

Matt Heinz: I would agree with you. I think that’s started to happen already. And the, you know, a lot of companies where you used to maybe sort of call on a customer, maybe now you will just done it via phone, but via video conference will be, you know, even like a zoom meeting. Right. And I think that it’s not just because many selling organizations are seeing that as a more efficient way of selling, but I think it’s also being precipitated by buyer preference.

You know, buyers don’t necessarily want someone doing a dog and pony in their office all the time, especially if it’s not that big of a deal purchase for them, right? I mean, that’s where I think like both sides are going to look at these really big considered purchases and decide if it’s worth getting together.

And in some cases it very much will be. And in other cases, you may still prioritize it when you have those industry gatherings or user conferences. And I think, you know, the, the big national global events where people have to get on our planes are going to take a look longer to come back. They will come back for sure, but they may take a couple of years to come back.

Getting on an airplane for some people is different than getting in a car. So doing regional events might be come back quicker, but if you can create efficiency for the buyers to get, to spend time with each other, that means you’ve also created efficiency for sellers to engage multiple buyers at once. And they will certainly prioritize getting out of their seats out of their office, out of their home office and going and doing that.

But I think just like our communication channels we talked about before, I think we will see a greater efficiency, a greater two way efficiency, of selling channel that will accelerate the move towards virtual sort of distance, phone-based selling that we saw even before the pandemic.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And you just have to use that in-person, use it wisely, use it judiciously. I mean, I I’ve had this conversation with, with VPs of sales and CEOs and I, yeah, hearkened back to not to date myself on the ceremony, but to days when I was selling a lot of international business and spending a lot of time in the road overseas before email, before a lot of these communication channels existed, is we just couldn’t afford to go that often.

Right. It’s it’s you just couldn’t go for every touch. You had to really reserve it for the ones that we’re going to make a difference.

Matt Heinz: Right.

Andy Paul: you and the buyer, but then it was indispensable. You had to do it and you’d be foolish if you didn’t do it. And I think that’s funny as I think a lot of companies and sales teams, it’s like, they resist at all costs doing the in person when really what they should say is, yeah, we don’t need to do it all the time, but there are times when it really should do it.

And they don’t. And then the other side, you’ve got field teams that are out too often where they could really reserve it for the times that really matters.

Matt Heinz: You just gotta do the math, you know, I mean, like I would prefer look, if it’s really up to me, I would prefer to have every prospect buy through an eCommerce tool. Just here’s my content. Here’s my proposal. Just you just buy and then I’ll deliver it once it’s done. Right. If I really want, if I, the seller want to drive the most efficient channel, I should just do that.

That’s ridiculous. Why is that ridiculous? Cause people need oftentimes more conversation then that, they need more managed a managed process where it’s the benefit to the buyer and us as a seller to do that. Okay. You’re willing to do that over the phone versus someone doing e-commerce because it’s worth it for you to pay someone on the phone to have that conversation, to get that deal across the line.

Same math applies to whether you’re willing to get in an airplane. And that’s why I’m saying like, you know, there’s, you know, I think in too often in companies, like we focus so much on getting the logo and I’m a field sales guy, so I got to get out there and it’s important to get in front of someone.

Well, what’s that deal worth to you? And is it worth going that far? Right. And so I think it’s going to be, I think, you know, it’s even in good markets when companies are doing well. They can get more efficient, more inefficient at what they do and which channels they use. I think we’re going to see companies as we rebound from this pandemic, as we get back to market show the way to a better segmented selling strategy based on the ROI of channel and customer lifetime value.

Andy Paul: So the point extending a point, I think you’re making is just also being practical, right? I mean, so I started consulting with the startup a long time ago and they had a product that could be sold anywhere and they were laying out this process of, you know, how are they going to address these various segments. And, and I said, well, have you ever thought just about just selling to the companies that are located within 25 miles of your office, to start with. And they hadn’t really thought about that. They, the had grand brand plans to go spread out across the country and try to sell. And it’s like, yeah, there were enough prospects initially for what they needed within, you know, half a day’s drive that they turned their focus to that.

And it was the perfect stepping stone for them to get the experience they needed the sales chops, if you will develop for their product. And then they expanded beyond that. It was very practical.

Matt Heinz: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there’s, there’s practical. And then there’s, I guess what you might call speculative. And I think it depends a little bit, you know, what stage of the business you’re in. Like if you’re, if you’re a venture back company and you’re looking for your next round of funding and you’re kind of in that, trying to confirm the product market fit, the amount you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer may go up.

Right. So you made you get the logos to prove the concept, to prove that people will buy this. You might be willing to put more time in which means you’ll go see more customers, but once you get that validation, once you move from being a venture backed company, to, you know, for instance, a private equity backed company, the goal of acquisition is no longer logos.

The role of acquisition is to maintain a certain, yeah, profit margin as you do it. So now all of a sudden you have to play that efficiency card and really dial it in. So, you know, I guess, you know, some of this is sort of being just efficiency. Some of this is also being really clear and knowing what stage you’re at in your business.

So to know what you know, which of them you’re like, you’re likely to follow. You may, you may explicitly not want to follow the most efficient plan if you need to get X number of logos on board by Y date. So you can close the C round and keep yourself going.

Andy Paul: Yeah. So sort of following up on that is if you were CRO or VP of Sales for a company right now, and I mean, what, what future would you be planning for? Right. I mean, I think this is a question I get asked a lot is, is, yeah. What’s the target we’re aiming for?. I’m interested in your opinion on that. What’s the environment

Matt Heinz: look like?

hate to say it depends, but I guess it depends on the nature of the market that you’re in. I think we’re already seeing evidence of a pretty quick rebound for a lot of B2B markets, you know? Know, a cloud computing software as a service. a lot of B2B industries that are, that are, you know, software and cloud based.

There wasn’t really a slow down as much as there was just a cautious pumping the brakes from a cash perspective. And so now that we’re seeing the market come back now that we’re seeing markets reopened, now that we’re seeing that there might be a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Many of those companies are slowly getting back to business as usual, slowly meaning in the next weeks and months versus quarters and years now.

You know, if you’re B2B in the transportation logistics space, in the entertainment space, in, you know, trade shows, it might be a bit longer before things start to look like they did at the beginning of Q1. But here’s what I do know. I think that as you look at your industry is you look at your marketplace, it’s important that you are not the last to accelerate. You know, if you’re, if you know, over the last several years, if you’re thinking about this as a car race, like we’ve been in a straightaway when you’re in a straightaway, you just, you just hit the gas, right? You just go, go, go. We pretty quickly, a couple months ago, hit a curve. And if you’re a race car driver, you know that like a curve is when you got to slow down, you got to watch your instruments. You got to watch where you are on the track. You just, you have to be a lot more careful about how you drive. But race car drivers also know that races are won in that curve there one by knowing how and when accelerate before the curve is over. So you are the first and fastest to hit the straightaway. And there’s a level of risk involved in figuring out what that when that time is. And there’s a level of experience that goes along with knowing when that time is, but this, when you’re at the, towards the end of a curve, that is, this is a time that creates separation for companies that are doing the math and the calculus to figure out how and when to do that.

And so, again, different for different businesses in different industries, but I think it’s really, really important for companies to look at that. And if you’re a marketing leader, if you’re you’re, if you’re a CRO or VP of Sales, figure out what that plan is now, because you don’t know.

I mean, it could be tomorrow. It could be next month. It could be next week when your CFO says. Now is the time let’s accelerate through the curve. That is not the time to build your plan, have the plan now so that when they give you the green light, it is go time.

Andy Paul: And so for a VP of sales, what would that plan look like?

Matt Heinz: Well, I think it’s, you know, we were just talking about it, right. It was knowing, okay. Like here’s how we went to market before. Here’s how we separated our field market, our field sales team, our inside sales team. Here’s how we manage the different stages of the buying process. Here’s the type of customers we were willing to go meet with in person versus now we’re doing through zoom.

What is that going to look like now? And some of that might include just thinking about what’s efficient for you thinking about what you, your team is willing to do, what you have learned about how well they can sell over the next couple of months, but also understanding what your customers are willing to do.

You may be willing to get on a plane and go see someone, but your customer may not be ready to do that yet. So I think there’s a little bit of asking and understanding the buyer side to develop that plan and look basically plans don’t survive no as contact with the battlefield anyway. So whatever you do now, you’re going to make adjustments with, as you execute.

But I think by taking what you knew before this taking what you have learned in terms of how your team is selling over the last couple months and combine those into a hypothesis of what the selling plan should look like. Moving forward, you at least have something that you can operationalize pretty quickly.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I think it’s such a critical point you make, that you can’t, you can’t wait, right? I mean, it’s, for instance, if you got hiring plans and you think your plan has some element of hiring, you know, increase the staff be on it is you should be building your pool of potential candidates now. Not waiting until the, the CFO says, Hey, let’s go because by then it’ll be too late. So are you seeing, go ahead. I’m sorry.

Matt Heinz: Well, no, I was just, I was gonna, I was going to say you’re right. And I, and I think that that is, it’s always easier to see that in hindsight, like, I mean, six to eight months from now, we’re looking to look back and we’re going to have case studies of companies that did it well, in case something’s a couple companies that didn’t, it could very well be that the companies that did it particularly well were those that were the most aggressive and took the most risk and they just happened to be right.

Andy Paul: I was gonna say, I think it’s also those companies that maintained a level of readiness throughout the whole thing. And I think the company has thought they could, and you really need to heavily cut in order to maintain themselves. You know, they’re gonna have a harder time coming back, but the companies that said, look, you know, we’re all gonna pitch in, Hey, we’re all going to take 20% pay cuts.

We’re gonna maintain all of our sales staff and our customer success staff and our sales engineers or whatever. They’re better prepared to come out of this. I mean, I think there’s also a cultural issue there as well. I mean, this is a sort of big point with me when I see companies that, that, cause again, been through this many, many times, companies that are able to preserve as much as their capabilities, even though things are tough, they’re taking a risk, but they also are saying, look, we’re being looking forward. And this is part of our plan is we’re going to be ready to respond when the moment’s right.

Matt Heinz: Yeah. Well, I think that these aren’t companies that are necessarily sitting on the sidelines either. You know, I mean, there are some industries that are a bit at a stand still, but even those industries, there are buyers that see that, you know, even if it’s a couple of years down the road, they have to be ready as well.

So your buyers are doing the same calculus. So the buyers as well, when do we need to accelerate through the curve? And so. It’s just like, you know, six months ago when the market was humming along, you know, Gartner says 3-4% of your addressable market is actively buying right now. And 46% of your market is poised. Meaning, they have a need, they should be doing something, but other priorities are in their way right now. So how do you find that 3-4%? Let’s assume that like in a pandemic it’s 2-3%. Let’s assume it’s materially lower. That still means that there’s a percent of your customers that are buying, they haven a need. Like, what are you doing to identify them? What are you doing to identify them proactively based on attributes and characteristics of those type of companies that you see in the wild see in the market, what are you doing with your sales reps to ask questions, to build value, to get the attention of your prospects, to listen for those buying signals that you hear from the prospects and members of the buying committee? We have not, we don’t need to reinvent selling. We don’t need to reinvent buying journeys. Now that we’re coming out of a pandemic. I do think the companies that are the most disciplined at managing those are likely going to be those that are more precisely and more predictably finding deals earlier in their rebound.

Andy Paul: Well, I think the ones that train the sellers and enable the sellers to have with the questions that asked to say, what are the, what are the real pain points that need to be solved, right? That are strategically urgent, you know, aligned with our strategic initiatives, tactically, urgent that yeah, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna do a transformation project, but we aren’t going to solve this smaller problem right now because we absolutely need to.

And it’s those required greater nuance on the way they go do the discovery to ask the extra question about, yeah what, what really needs to happen right now?

Matt Heinz: Yeah. And I think that, and this is, I mean, I know we’re, we’re, we’re talking mostly on the sales side here. This is an opportunity for your marketing counterparts also to step up and have this level of discipline. Right. I mean, marketing doesn’t need to be the glorified arts and crafts department and send over crap anymore.

Crappy quote, unquote marketing, qualified leads, you know, identifying customers that are in market identified, prospects that have a need and have those characteristics and attributes marketing plays just as strong a role tightening up that discipline and being as smart about the economics of what you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer based on their potential value for you.

This is not, you know, we’re no longer operating in a world where especially for complex selling, marketing owns the top of the funnel and sales owns the bottom. The funnel is no longer split horizontally. It is split vertically with a diagonal bent where marketing owns the majority of the work at the top of the funnel sales the majority of the actions at the bottom, but make no mistake at every stage, there is a role for both teams and if they can drive that level of process and integration together, you will have better predictable pipelines and you will have. More velocity with your prospects because they’re seeing the right message at the right time and they understand what you want from them. And what you’re trying to say.

Andy Paul: So a question for you is, is this is more philosophical, but is you know, we’re developing a lot of new tools to help us with you know intent data and predictive analytics and so on is, is, are sellers engaging at the right time?

Matt Heinz: yes. And yes, but they’re usually not engaging with the right content. Right. So I think, you know, there’s a lot of data out there that indicates that the typical buyer isn’t reaching out to a seller until what, like 55, 58% of the buying process is completed, but they need information starting. I think it was CEB and Barrett originally had this data, the stat that said of the buying process, like 55 or 58% of the, of the buying process was completed before the buyer proactively reached out to sellers to learn about solutions. And so some people interpret that as okay. The time I should start selling is at 58% into the buying process.

And if you want to be a commodity, if you want to let the buyer define what’s important and you want to be considered just like a commodity with everyone else where it ultimately just comes down to price, then by all means, wait until 58%. But if you engage with a prospect earlier in the process, When they don’t even know what solutions exist, they may not even understand which problem it needs to be solved, but they’re experiencing pain.

They’re experiencing some problems. Like your job as a seller is to be an expert, not in your product at that point, but an expert in those problems. So I see. Many many sellers engaging prospects at the early stages of the buying process, but they’re talking to them as if they’re at the middle to the end.

And if you’re talking to a prospect about products before you’ve understood their problems before they have committed to change. You are speaking to an audience that doesn’t care what you’re saying. You’re speaking to an audience that you may actually end up pushing away because you come across as aggressive.

So knowing what to say, when based on where your prospect is in that journey is extremely important for both marketing and sales to do well.

Andy Paul: Well, I think there’s this wide variance in the definition of what constitutes in market. And so, yeah, I was talking to someone yesterday and it was, you know, their definition was like somewhere between the decision and purchase stage. I’m like what that’s what’s yeah, isn’t that a little late? Cause to your point is where the buyers are you going to be the have the most impact initially is helping the buyers identify the problem they’re trying to solve. And, you know, this is the first job on Gartner’s chart as if the four that needed to be solved by buyers are accomplished by buyers. It’s like your influence is much bigger if you’re engaging at that point, then later to your point where you’re just a commodity and you’re competing on price.

Matt Heinz: Well, and if we go back to the economics of how we sold beforehand, you know, you, you, the way you do that might change like that, that educational process for a smaller buyer may have to be. Virtual one to many formats. It might have to be blog posts. It might have to be webinars for those higher value prospects.

You may be willing to go in and then do a working session or a workshop or bring in your subject matter expert to do you know, to do a, sort of a research presentation or to do an executive. Briefing or something that is about the issues so that they can customize a conversation about those issues in the town, around the table, so that they’re telling you the problems they have.

So they’re basically giving you a roadmap of how to sell. You wouldn’t do that for a customer that you can really only afford to sell to you through e-commerce, but understanding that economics, it doesn’t change the nature of the message. It just changes the channel in which you’re willing to use to get that message across.

Andy Paul: Absolutely. All right. Fantastic stuff, Matt. Unfortunately running short of time, but tell people how they can connect with you and learn more about what you do,

Matt Heinz: I’m just at heinzmarketing.com. I got 12 years worth of content up there about sales, marketing strategy. I’ll be to be all for free. So help yourself. I’m on Twitter at Heinz Marketing. We’re posting sales and marketing stuff up there all the time, including from some guy that I knew, Andy Paul, who can then use the publish good stuff and has been for years. And, also, if you want to just reach me directly, I’m just Matt@heinzmarketing.com.