#057: ELRIG Workshop Summary

Read time: 5 minutes

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We had a great time at ELRIG Drug Discovery this week hosting 2 events. The workshop and panel discussion and the networking drinks in partnership with SAMPS. Check out some of the images below!

As a final reminder, there are 2 days left to join the Prospecting Mastery Accelerator. We have 18 other sales reps registered. If you need to build more pipeline, join us!

This week at ELRIG we hosted a workshop about the “5 Skills Needed to Sell in Today’s Environment”. Here is a quick overview of what we shared and at the end you’ll find 5 tactics you can focus on right now.

If you want the slides from the presentation, just reply to this email and I’ll send them over.

Current challenges

Based on our work with over 30 companies in the last 6 months and from numerous other conversations, the 2 biggest challenges for sales reps remain finding new opportunities and driving urgency in opportunities to get them to close.

The market we’re in today is way harder to sell in than it was even last year. I’m sure you’ve felt the pain of some of these different external factors.

• Vendor consolidation - companies want to consolidate spending

• Less funding for exploratory research - only critical path projects are getting budget

• Purchases require more scrutiny - CFOs or other high-level decision-makers need to be involved in decisions

• Larger buying committees - more than 7 people are involved in most purchasing decisions

• If it aint broke don't fix it mentality - don’t have the budget to prioritize every problem that might come up

• Solution overload - there are so many different solution providers out there

• Everyone has great data - Your data can’t speak for itself

• Lots of noise for prospects - Automation and AI make it easy to load up the spam cannon

More → Better

Most people react to these challenges by doing MORE.

The problem with more is that you’re scaling things that aren’t working. You're probably increasing your list of potential prospects to less ideal targets. Thus, making your reply rate even lower. You need to make every opportunity matter so you waste your time chasing unqualified opportunities. You get happy ears when someone is interested and forget the basics of multi-threading and micro-commitments.

Instead of trying to cram more into your funnel, focus on getting better at everything you’re doing.

The 5 Skills to Focus on

Relentless Prospecting: 80% of opportunities come after 6 touchpoints. This means that if you’re not following up with prospects by adding value across multiple channels, you’re missing out on 80% of the potential opportunities you could create.

Use sequences. Write relevant, personalized messages. Leave voicemails (2x increase in EMAIL response rate). Prospect every single day.

You have to break through the noise and be relentless.

*want help with this? There are 2 days left to join the Prospecting Mastery Accelerator

Delivering Expert Insights: You need to reframe a prospect’s biases and assumptions to point them toward your solution. Trying to solve a prospects explicit need puts you in direct competition with every other vendor they are going to. Your goal should be to reframe the conversation around their “unconsidered needs” and how they can only be resolved through your “differentiated capabilities”.

Aligning Solutions to High Priority Initiatives: 80% of people buy something to avoid pain. You can’t simply show better data or outcomes and expect someone to change. In addition to that, budget can be reallocated to solve high priority and urgent problems.

Ask questions and leverage your expert insight to find out what programs or projects are most important to the company. Then align the outcome your solution provides to those initiatives. You won’t get this information by asking surface level questions. Follow the technical sales discovery framework and use the 60 Technical Sales Discovery Questions.

Demonstrating Differentiated Value: You need to show how you are different from every other possible solution the prospect could use to solve their problem.

Reps often make the mistake of thinking these are differentiators.

• High quality: this is subjective and no other company will say they are bad quality

• Scientific expertise: Everyone has PhDs on staff that can provide scientific expertise.

• “Accelerate your research”: There are 28 million pages on Google that use this phase. It means nothing when everyone else says it. Never say this again…

• Save you time: Pretty much every value prop out there has a time savings component. It isn’t enough to truly differentiate your solution. It’s also subjective.

• Easy to use: Another subjective term. Easy compared to what? Most solutions aren’t going to make something harder. Find another way to differentiate.

Building Decision Consensus: The average purchase decision has 7 people involved in the buying committee. But 78% of deals only have one point of contact. There’s clearly a problem there. On average there are 6 other people influencing a decision that you haven’t spoken to.

Multi-thread by developing 1:1 relationships with multiple people involved in the buying committee. Find a champion that has power, influence, access to the economic buyer, and is willing to sell on your behalf when you can’t be in the room.

When you’ve found a true champion, arm them with a business case so they can sell on your behalf. Teach them how to sell internally because you can’t always be in every meeting with them.

Conclusion

If you focus on improving these 5 skills, I guarantee you will find and close more opportunities. Here are a few quick ideas you can implement.

1. Block off 30 min every day for prospecting and commit to doing it well. No shortcuts.

2. Think back to all your customer conversations and craft an insight you can share with customers that reframes how they need to solve their problems.

3. In your initial conversations, get to the root cause and impact of the problem by asking better discovery questions.

4. When discussing your solution, focus on your differentiated capabilities, not all the “check the box” decision criteria your competitors likely have as well.

5. Look at every deal in your pipeline. For any deal where you have only 1 point of contact, find 2-3 more people to get in touch with. This might be the highest leverage activity you could do right now to make a difference before the end of the year.

***If you want the slides from the presentation, just reply to this email and I’ll send them over.

Apple Podcast | Spotify | YouTube

Episode 47: [Leadership] Underutilized marketing & sales strategies to break through the noise w/ Jason Amsbaugh

• Get experience doing both sales and marketing

• How to create a content and distribution strategy

• Focus your messaging on problems vs products

• Focus your early marketing efforts on your one killer application

1. Lead Generation: We’ll build target lists, write scientifically relevant messaging, and send messages on your behalf to book qualified sales meetings with biotech and pharma companies.

2. Succession for Reps: A skill development platform for life science sales reps who want to improve their sales skills, exceed their quota, and take the next step in their career.

3. Succession for Teams: If you want to upskill your team around prospecting, driving to close, key account management, AI, or any other topic, we can put together a training plan specific to your organization’s needs.

4. Strategy Call: Need more than training? Want help implementing and executing your sales strategy? In a 30-minute call, we will assess your company’s current situation and identify growth opportunities.

Special Offer: If you’ve made it this far, you can use the coupon code NEWSLETTER to get 20% off an individual Succession membership.

Recommended Products & Tools: We’ve used every one of these products and can highly recommend them to you. Everything from CRMs to AI tools.

Join SAMPS: A free community of sales and marketing professionals of the sciences. They run in-person events and put on regular webinars packed with great content.