
Breaking BizDev
What does "business development" mean, anyways?
On Breaking BizDev, John Tyreman and Mark Wainwright break down, beat up, and redefine that nebulous term 'business development' for the modern professional services firm.
Subscribe to this podcast to get sales and marketing advice that you can actually put into practice right away. Whether you're an expert doer-seller, firm owner, or a dedicated sales/marketing pro, each episode will help you understand your buyers and win new business.
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Breaking BizDev
The 3 Buyer Archetypes: How to Engage With Each Role on the 'Buying Committee'
What kind of buyer did you talk to on your last sales call?
When it comes to buying professional services, there is usually more than one buyer. Some refer to this as a 'buying committee.' So what different roles do each of these buyers play? How should you engage them? What should you watch out for? These are the kind of questions that John Tyreman and Mark Wainwright will answer in this episode of Breaking BizDev.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
03:00 The Buying Committee
04:32 The Three Different Buyer Roles
05:17 The Visionary
08:28 The Operator
13:32 The Risk Mitigator
16:54 Stories and Examples
28:24 How to Take Action
34:08 Summary
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/
www.breakingbizdev.com
In a high stakes deal, who actually says yes? Is it the CEO? Is it the managing partner? Maybe there's a director of operations. Is it legal? The truth is, it's all of them in different ways. It's talk about it on the podcast today. Welcome everyone to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm Mark. He's John. We are here today to talk about the buyer. John, what are your thoughts on that? I.
John:the buyer or the buyers?
Mark:Oh, good one. Good, good, good. Edit there. Yeah. Right. It's, uh, I think a lot of people maybe I talk to, um, deal with the buyer as sort of this single thing, right? This amalgamated sort of entity is like, yeah, we're a, you know, we're the seller, they're the buyer. But as it turns out, uh uh, the buyer can be a multi-headed beast,
John:Oh gosh. It's like the hydra, right? From like Hercules.
Mark:There you go. Yeah. And uh, you know, when you look at more contemporary sort of sales content out there, there's an increasing sort of focus on. The buyers, you know, multiple buyers because, you know, again and again, we kind of run into the fact that we're selling to multiple people. even you and I, John, in our little, our little practices, each on our own, we run into multiple people through the course of selling our services. So, yeah, I think this is a good episode and it's relevant.
John:This was a fun thought exercise to go through, like these different buyer roles and then like thinking through my client accounts, like who is in what position, and kind of mind mapping that all. So that was really, that was a really fun, fun exercise. I'm really excited to break it down today. So today we're gonna break down those different buyer roles. we're gonna talk about, you know, why selling professional services isn't simple. And, there's really three primary roles that we identified. so we'll walk through each one of those, give a few examples, and then we're gonna choreograph a complex sale at the end.
Mark:Hmm. I like that one. Yeah, that's a, that's a good one. So, yeah, and you had a, you had a little reminder here. I'm terrible at this, John. I will remind everyone, feel free to subscribe to our podcast. Leave a rating. Leave a review, all that stuff. I know that, you know, you'd love to hit on that, so I'll just go ahead and throw that out there. So yeah, if you've joined us, thank you for joining us. Thank you for continuing to support and listen to Breaking Biz Dev and. Here we go. Let's, uh, let's talk about the buyers.
John:Yeah, let's talk about the buyers, but let's set the table first a little bit. You know, selling professional services isn't simple. We're not selling a$500 product, right? We're selling a complex. Multifaceted service offering. There's phases, there's timelines, there's human resources and capital. a lot of times there's intangible outcomes that are associated with these projects. and so selling a professional services is really built on trust and it's built on relationships. And as a buyer. You're going into an engagement, thinking through it from different lenses. There's multiple people that come together and they evaluate different vendors. So this isn't a transaction, you know, one-to-one. There are multiple voices involved in this sale. Mm-hmm.
Mark:good point. And, and the, the, first kind of. Bullet point. You touched on there, the long sales cycle. yeah, that's a, reality. Some of these things take a long time to develop and then ultimately come together and contract, and you could be touching on many different people throughout that. Whole sort of buying, selling journey. and just the fact that these sales cycles are really long, not just talking about our stuff, but we're talking about professional services, right. In general is that, you know, you can transition your way from, you know, a champion inside to, uh, someone else, to someone else, to someone else. And, you know, maybe you stumble across legal at some point. So yeah, you're selling to multiple people. and we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that.
John:Cool. So let's take a look at the three different buyer roles and, we're gonna talk about each one of'em, you know, who they are, what they care about, how to earn their trust, different tips for dealing with these three different buyers. And as we were walking through this mark, This was a concept that was kind of first introduced to me when I was going through some sales training, probably like five or six years ago. And, I thought, well, it would be good to kind of map these to have you, are you familiar with the entrepreneurial operating system? EOS?
Mark:Absolutely. Yeah, I have, I have clients who use it.
John:The, uh, there's this. There's terms that they use, and I think that that might be helpful to kind of navigate the conversation because that's pretty popular. There's the visionary.
Mark:Yeah.
John:Who is the CEO. This is the president, the managing partner. This is usually one person within the organization. You know, there may be multiple people who wear visionary hats, different partners at different times, but typically this is one person.
Mark:Yeah.
John:And this, this visionary, they're really focused on the firm as a whole. What's best for the firm, what's best for the organization. they're driven by, again, a vision for what they want the firm to become, what outcomes they want to achieve. And they're looking for alignment internally around what those strategic goals and objectives are. So that's how they're working internally with their, their cohorts.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. makes sense. I can picture buyers that I've come across and people I know that, have this role. Absolutely. So yeah. The visionary. Yeah. And how do we win over the visionary? that's the big question.
John:That is the big question. You wanna tackle that one, mark?
Mark:Well, yeah, it's, uh, we have to stay focused on outcomes like the ultimate client results, what they really want to achieve. We can't get tripped up in the details. Uh, the nitty gritty, the deliverables, all that stuff, right? We need to make sure that we are looking at what they're looking at, which are these ultimate, you know, big, hairy, audacious. Goals.
John:BHAGs.
Mark:Yeah. BHAs or you, you know, just, you know, here's the, here's what we're trying to accomplish in the next three months or six months, or, or whatever else it is in certain initiatives or, you know, things that they're particularly focused on. So the visionary is someone that you need to appreciate their long-term vision and help kind of support that, you know, and, and align with it. So, yeah, that's, that's I think how we, uh. Align with that and, and I think it's worth saying before we get too, too far down the road on this is that I think there's a lot of people out there either that I've, that I've worked with, that listen to this podcast, whatever else that are working in professional services who really don't, I can't even get their head wrapped around the fact that there's actually multiple buyers of multiple, multiple personalities and all that stuff. And there absolutely are, you know, whether or not the client organization is, bringing that to you. Internally, there are different buyers inside of your client's organizations. It could be public sector, it could be private sector, it could be anything. So, I think this, this, this whole thing broadly applies and, the visionary is, is a big one because, that's a critical person to, you know, bring over to your, your side of things. Super important.
John:Yeah, they're the ones that are steering the ship. They're not necessarily the ones that are inspecting the engine room.
Mark:Oh, there you
John:So we got that little analogy there.
Mark:Nice, nice, nice. Good. I like that one.
John:So let's, let's move on to some of these other buying roles. And then I think what we can do, mark, is we can kind of open it up to a conversation about how each of these roles kind of like interplays with each other.'cause that's an important part of
Mark:Yeah. Makes sense. All right, we got, we got visionary first. The second one you have here, John, is the operator.
John:The operator. Yes, another EOS term. but these are the folks that are in tune with the details. These are the folks that are, that are going to take the service that you're offering and interface with the organization. These are the VPs, the department heads managers. One quick note about this buying role. This can be multiple people. there's not necessarily one operator that you may be dealing with. There may be multiple department, department heads that you're coordinating with.
Mark:Yeah, agreed.
John:So it's important to understand who those folks are within the organization. You're, you're selling into
Mark:Right.
John:a little bit, like where they're coming from is they're career driven, right? they want to make sure that this. Purchase decision reflects well on them, and they're going to be judged on the outcome of this engagement by the visionary.
Mark:right. This is, uh, that's an important differentiation where we, when we spoke of the visionary previously, kind of looking at sort of organizational results. Organizational performance, this big idea that they're kind of chasing after there's a shift here and the operator starts looking at themselves and their role in organizational success or failure.
John:And so that's, it's something that's really important to keep in mind, not only during the sale, but also throughout the engagement is are we supporting this operator within their organization? Are we helping them look good to that visionary?
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. and I think the operator can be, an advocate or a supporter of yours in the organization. You come alongside and, you know, they're really excited about this whole thing, or they can be a detractor. They can be someone who's like, all right, I need you to prove this. You know, my neck's on the line here, pal. So let's, um, let's see what you got. So, absolutely. So we've got some, some ideas, some tactics on how to win them
John:Yeah. How are we gonna win these folks over, mark?
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. So they are process and detail oriented. So yeah, they want to see sort of behind the curtain, right? They want to see, you know, your A, B, C 1, 2, 3. They wanna see the flow charts and, and all of that stuff. They wanna see the outlines and the content. they wanna know how they can take you, particularly if it's a supporter or an advocate. They wanna know how they can take you, your stuff, your ideas in. Sell within the organization, sell upwards, sell sideways. You know, building supports, get people on board. So they need those tools, they need that information, to help you sell into the organization because obviously they've seen you. You're a professional services provider. You're gonna help them achieve what they want to achieve. You're gonna help this person look really good. They want to advance your ideas in the organization.
John:I'm reminded of a concept that we talked about earlier and it was like those like five steps to mastery and it's, it's like you need to educate these operators within your target organization to the point where they can start to teach others within the organization.
Mark:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, good, good. So, yeah, you know, you, uh, the tactics there are pretty straightforward. You have to, you know, keep that person in the spotlight. You have to make sure that you're at, you're, tending to their needs throughout the whole buying and selling process. And you need to make them look good. You need to make'em know, like they know what's going on here.
John:And I suppose that it, for folks that are in a do or seller seat, that that. Would be kind of inherent throughout the process because they were involved in bringing in that new business. But I can see how that would be a challenge if there's a firm with an organization that's more sales led and has like primary, like business development people. So that transfer of knowledge is important between sales and you know, the delivery team. And then understanding what makes these operators tick and how that. How that delivery team can kind of like look for those signals in the engagement.
Mark:Yeah, this is, um, if you are the consultant selling into an organization, you're right, there needs to be a lot of coordination, particularly if there's multiple people involved on your side. If there's a, there's a sales or a business development team, and then there's a delivery team. We talk a lot about the doer seller who does both, but in an organization of any size, they might have different people. So. Orchestrating and choreographing the complex sale is really important, and that involves, you know, on your side, making sure that everybody is aligned and up to speed and who's who. what operators are supporters, what operators are detractors, which people you need to leverage to advance. You and your cause inside the buying organization. So yeah, that's, uh, the operator is good. The operator can be a, a number of different things, but definitely focus on the details. That visionary that we talked about first, the big idea, they're focused on big results. So we've got, one more here, John, and you have it as the risk mitigator, but I prefer the term You have your wet blanket.
John:Wet blanket. Yeah.
Mark:wet blanket. Yeah.
John:All right. So this is, this is when we start to get into the folks who push numbers around and get into the contract. So this is CFOs, these are accounting folks, controllers, legal teams, There's usually one person who's brought in. It could be multiple people in these deals, depending on how large the organization is. think about these folks as like a gatekeeper. They can't necessarily say yes to a deal, but they can absolutely say, no, we don't have the funds. You know, this puts us in an adverse legal scenario. It puts us at risk. So like that's really kind of the mindset to think of with these folks. Like, like we said, in the risk mitigator, they want to manage risk. They want to mitigate that as much as possible. That's their job.
Mark:john, we love these folks. Come on. Really? I mean, you know, we're like, the wet blanket is a, is a derogatory term. We love these folks. You've dealt with accountant, you know, people in the accounting industry for years, legal, whatever else, and they're good people, right? Let's, let's, but sometimes the role that they play in this whole buying, selling process can be a little tricky. So we've got some ideas on how to, how to win this, win this group. Over. And you know, when you and I talk this through, I think first and foremost, the way to win these folks over is just have conversations, right? A lot of times you'll find that these individuals, these buyers are trying to hide behind the spreadsheets and the contracts, and the documents. And there's emails going back and forth, and no one's. Getting on a live synchronous call to kind of talk things through. I mean, I've had contracts, agreements that I've sent over and, I get them back and it doesn't look like any document that I ever created because legal, legal had their way. Right. Um, so, that first one, and there's others, but the first one. His head and shoulders above kind of all the rest of'em is just gotta, gotta talk.
John:Well, it's, you know, they're people too, right? You know, they, they deal with like, you know, accounting spreadsheets and you know, legal terms and contracts. But at the end of the day, they just want to be heard, right? They wanna feel seen. They wanna just, they just wanna make their presence known in the buying process that they have a role to play. And so like you said, just talking to'em, having synchronous conversations, acknowledging that they're there and that you are thinking about them, that goes a long way.
Mark Wainwright:You're listening to breaking biz dev
John Tyreman:the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,
Mark Wainwright:And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.
John Tyreman:If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts
Mark Wainwright:and now back to the show.
Mark:It does. And you know, in, in, in my history of, you know, and to go back what you said initially is that, you know, they, they're not the ones that are gonna convince the organization to hire you as a consulting firm. but they are definitely ones who can. you know, blackball you, um, and, you know, close the, close the door. And I have had that experience both working with, kind of in the consulting world and also kind of on my own, on both sides of it. I've had, you know, run into legal and it was like a buzz saw and it was crazy and, It killed reasonably good sized deal and a firm I was working with. On my end of things, I have had sort of some little tug of war going on even. You know, in, in legal. And lo and behold, having conversations helps resolve a whole bunch of that. So, a couple of the other tactics we kind of listed here on how to navigate the, the risk mitigators, um, being upfront, honest, transparent with, you know, stuff that's in your, in your contracts and in your agreements. Uh, meaning. Take, take the opportunity to walk it through, you know, walk through the different boring legalese clauses, you know, particularly the ones that can be sort of, you know, tricky ones, walk through, the dollars and cents and the timing and, and sort of all that stuff, bring up potential. Issues or just areas of concern or areas of just conversation. Bring that up, you know, proactively bring that up ahead of time. So, nobody feels like you're trying to slip something past them, right? there's no small print. and, do everything you can to make their lives and their job easier, right? Lower the friction. we don't want this to stall, you know, you are here talking to their legal team and these last few steps or the, you know, whoever it is, they're, they're inside or outside counsel, whoever they are, you know, started this whole thing talking to their big visionary wants to achieve this big goal. And the two of you, by working together and working through whatever details you need to, suss out, is gonna help that visionary achieve what they want to achieve. So, um.
John:Look at you tying an outcome to an internal conversation.
Mark:I have truth be told, I mean, you know, maybe this starts, starts us wandering into the stories, but I've been faced with that situation where it was kind of like I was continuing to get, you know, pushback on legal and, you know, I had to kind of, push the visionary button. I had to say, okay. All right. We need to bring the CEO back into this conversation, you know, and that was not, fun. You, you know, it's, it's tricky. But we needed to, we needed to. We needed, and, and, and lo and behold, everything worked out fine. but yeah, at some point you kind of have to
John:Do you have any other examples
Mark:Well, yeah, I mean, I got a lot. I got a lot of these, um, Yes, I have, I have engaged with, I don't know, how do you wanna, how do you wanna, before I start wandering off aimlessly here, let's, let's, um, let's,
John:Yeah, let's, let's wrap this section up. So we talked about three different, buying roles. There's the, the visionary that CEO, they're thinking about the firm, the operator. They're thinking about the details. They're thinking about their own career. There's the risk mitigator or the wet blankets. They're thinking about the dollars and the cents and de-risking the engagement. So those are the three different buying roles. There can be multiple operators. that's typically the one where there is multiple roles. The other two, there's really only one. So that's kind of like we're putting the pieces on the board and yeah. Let's, let's share some stories about how maybe you and I have kind of like in like run into different challenges with those folks or in a successfully navigated some, some of those scenarios.
Mark:Yeah, yeah. the, the ones that are top of mind for me, uh, and maybe for a good number of, organizations out there. and specifically, I'm talking to a lot of the small businesses out there in the world because as we know, John, the vast majority of all professional services firms are small businesses, and that, and that's. Defined a little bit differently from industry to industry, but, you know, like you said, 80, 80 some percent, 90% of, you know, consulting firms out there in any industry are small. So I work with a lot of small firms, so that has meant a lot of times that I am very early on, if not immediately talking to the visionary. I'm talking to the person that was scratching their head. They have a problem. They have a need. They go looking, or maybe they've caught wind of the work that I do in some way. Maybe they've heard of me from someone. So fortunately I have found that most of the time I am talking to that person early on, other consulting firms and professional services firms cannot say the same thing. But a lot of times I've had that experience and it is selling and, and, and having that sort of buying, selling relationship with the visionary is good because, and. That, that's kinda like shockingly obvious, right? It's good because that tends to move a little bit faster, right? There's a little more urgency. There's a, there's a greater desire, to get started, you know, because if we start now, that means that we will be able to achieve the results we want to achieve sooner. Yeah. so that's the, um, that's the good thing. The, One of the tricky things I would say with that situation, and, and you know this is, I could probably apply this to some personal situations, is that because of the slightly faster sales process and because the visionary typically comes into the conversation with a pretty, with a, at least a somewhat defined picture of the future, this picture of success, whatever, you have to be really certain that you are or at least can be aligned. To that picture of the future quickly'cause that the visionaries coming into the conversation, they have certain expectations and the sale is moving along quickly and you don't actually get to the point where those expectations are completely aligned then. Fast forward, you can find yourself in a little bit of a, of a problem because you know, you're trying to look at the results you achieve and it's like, oh, this isn't what I pictured. And it's like, well, we actually really didn't successfully flesh out everything you wanted to achieve, and you didn't share with me quite completely that vision, that picture of success you had in your head. So I will say that, you know, from personal experience, I think there's. If
John:That's such an important point and I didn't even think about that and coming into this. I'm glad you brought that up, mark, because I've had my own experiences where I've done that as well.'cause I, I sell to a lot of small businesses as well. And that's, that's, so there, there is like this notion of like pausing and like. Aligning yourself with that vision and I, I think that is an important exercise to go through, especially when you're dealing with smaller firms.
Mark:Yeah, yeah, no doubt. No doubt. And and I, and, and I have a, you know, I have good examples and we don't wanna, you know, these are real examples as we're not trying to be hypothetical here. This is, I have very real examples when, a champion has, has successfully, or has not successfully brought me into an organization, a lot of times the champion will bring you in. They are well regarded, well respected. They very quickly understand that this whole buying selling thing has to happen with other people, that they need to build support. You provide them the information and the content they need to build support. They successfully build support, and then you're kind of off and running the other champion, which at the outset looks identical, right? They look the same. But they are a champion who wants to do this thing on their own, right? They found this little gem out there. That's you. You're the consultant, you're the consultant firm, whatever else, and you know, whether you're an architect or an accountant or whatever else, whatever you are out there, there's someone in the middle of the organization who latched a hold of you and thinks, oh my gosh, they would be fantastic to work with. But they don't realize sort of the decision making. Politics and complexity inside their own organization. So they start dealing with you in this little sort of secret one-on-one fashion. So. that's hard because that person isn't trying to advance the idea internally in their organization as much as they are trying to advance themselves. So what you end up doing is you end up working with that person through the beginning of a buying selling process, and you're basically just consulting to them. I mean, I've had that happen to me in the past, and you've probably had that too. People, people who love the idea of you. Don't understand what's needed in order to actually get you into the organization, so they just start pumping you for information.
John:Mm-hmm.
Mark:I have experienced that.
John:Yep. Yep. I've experienced that too. And just a, a caveat, something I was just point out, so this, I'm assuming this is a, someone in, in that operator seat that is a champion and needs to bring in a visionary. Maybe they need to bring in some other operators and that risk mitigator into the conversation, but they're not doing that
Mark:there's two things. They, they, they probably don't see the complexity that's required in this sale. They, they don't want to bring in other people. and that they're, wanna be the hero,
John:Yeah. Survival mindset.
Mark:Yeah. And, and, and I will say, right, it's, it's, it's worth kind of a pause on that thing is that this is where having an organized clear. Selling process where you are qualifying the prospective client. This is where this is so critical because part of qualification, again and again, I talk to people, I say qualification is one of the very, the very first thing that you do when you're trying to determine fit. Right. And when we are qualifying organizations, we're qualifying the people.
John:Yes.
Mark:We're qualifying the work to be done, right? So both of those things, both those things have to be, you know, thumbs up, right? We can't just be, A lot of times I talk to firms and they're just qualifying the work. They're saying, oh yeah, yeah, our expertise is great. We can do that work, no problem. But they fail to qualify the people. So you will look past someone like this. You will look past a buyer who is an operator who wants you to be their, you know, little friend that sits on their shoulder or they have you in their back pocket and they're just using you as sort of reference material rather than actually creating an opportunity for you to engage with their organization at scale.
John:Yeah. Well, I think we're starting to kind of wander into how, how our listeners can apply this to their own sales process. So you're absolutely right, mark. It's important to first have a process in place and structure in place. I suppose that part of that is just first identifying who sits in those seats, right? Mapping the org chart.
Mark:yeah, yeah. And, and, and understanding. The specific situation that you are in. Are we, at the beginning of this whole thing? Is this, are these some of the initial conversations? And like I said, the initial conversations we're trying to suss out whether we're not, whether you know, whether there's a fit there, whether there's, whether we're gonna qualify these folks. So it's that situational awareness, not just who these folks are, but also where you are in this whole buying process. So that's critical, that term of situational awareness in the buying selling process. Is critical. We need to know that we're at, at the, the beginning, we're in the middle. We're towards the end. Towards the end, we're dealing with different people possibly. So we're understanding and recognizing where we are situationally. Yeah.
John:What are some of the signals that you look for to identify that?
Mark:you, you know, the, the, the, how easily they are. and this goes back to some qualification stuff, is that, you know, how sharing and forthcoming they are with information. I have actually found that visionaries tend to be very forthcoming in sharing with information. So you're asking good initial qualification questions and you're getting excellent responses. Not just because they're willing to give you those responses, but also they have, that information, you know, they've got, yeah, I've got my strategic plan, one pager sitting right in front of me, I'll send it to you. Right? Like that kind of a thing. As opposed to the, and, and this is, you know, as we walk towards the other extreme, right, the operator is probably a little bit less, less forthcoming with information. And then when we move to sort of the, you know, the wet blanket end of things, forget it. If you, they're not, their cards are held very close to their chest. They are not gonna share anything. So I would say situationally, that's, one indicator of, frankly, who you're talking to, is that I think these visionaries tend to be very forthcoming with, information and they immediately, you know, start talking about. The big picture, you know, this is fundamentally what's going on in the organization, and this is really where we want to be in a year or two, or whatever that is. So All right. Some other things that we need to be a aware of is, you know, like you said, mapping the organization. You said, we kind of need to know who's there and we need to sort of, on our end of things, understand when we're gonna be engaging with those people. Like you said, start building trust. Start having, Conversations, either synchronous or asynchronous communications and conversations with those folks, and then obviously when it becomes time for you to be dealing with them more intensely, IE legal towards the end of this whole thing is that you have a relationship. You're willing to be conversational about it. You're both human beings, all that other stuff. So being aware of the organization and then understanding, they're just one of those people that's gonna come to play is like, oh, I wonder why the, you know, the manager that you were talking to, or the CEO or the managing partner, whoever else, who's this, who's this new person they copied in? It's like, oh, oh, that's legal. Yeah. Oh, there's legal. Yeah. High legal. And then there's, you know, accounting and it's like, you know, eventually you're gonna, as a, outside consultant, eventually you're gonna need to develop a relationship with accounting because they have to figure out the whole invoicing thing, right? Send them a bill, they should pay you within a certain amount of time and make sure that all works. And, you know, I've had very good, healthy conversations with those accounting folks. That says, look, we have specific terms in our contract as far as how, you know, invoicing and getting paid and all that other stuff. I want to make sure that what I'm doing fits in really well with what you're doing in your accounting team. Right? If you are the vendors consultants that you work with, if you pay'em once a month, great. If you pay'em multiple times a month, great. Whatever. I tend to be fairly aggressive on my terms initially, and then some firms just say, look. We need to pay you when we pay people,'cause we pay a lot of different people and you need to fit into that. And I said, great. Okay, let's make it work. So that's a huge win, so yeah, so situational awareness, understanding that you're eventually gonna be dealing with multiple people across the organization, building trust all the way, being very open and honest. These are all things that fit in under that sort of choreography thing of how, how we can help, lead a really good sales.
John:Yeah. I think another way that. This might be more of like on the, for end of our marketing and sales continuum, that is sales led, but marketing supported is equipping those operators, those internal champions with the information. With the tools that they need to have those conversations internally. And this could be like, you know, hey you, you know what, Bob, the consultant gave us this case study and here's a case study case example. Or, you know, he actually hosts a podcast and here's that conversation if you wanted to listen to it. And here's, you know, he talks about that specific topic. And so arming those champions, arming those tactical buyers with that information is really important.
Mark:Yeah. And these are, this is where those, client success stories, come in, you know, where you can, relay on a 62nd story of success. Of one of the clients that you've worked with, and they can take that story, your champion can take that story and go tell it to others, right? We've talked about story, the importance of storytelling in the past. This is a fantastic moment bring that up because stories are memorable and they're repeatable, and the people that you're talking to can take that story and run with it.'cause some people aren't gonna wanna listen to, you know, a 30 minute podcast or aren't gonna want to look at a three page case study. They're gonna want a quick little thing. And this is a, that's a fantastic tool to use. So,
John:Same you saying the same message and conveying the same stories, but in various lengths and formats.
Mark:Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I think we're just about there. Let's, let's, let's tie this up in a nice little bow.
John:Yeah. So I think like to like bring it all the way back, those three different buying roles, the visionary, the operator, and the risk mitigators. that's really the one, big takeaway that I think our listeners can take away from this is who within the accounts that you're dealing with, your client accounts, your prospective clients, map those individuals and how do, how do they roll up and what seats do they play and what roles do they play? I think you'll find that it's, you'll, you'll uncover new things you haven't thought about when you go through that exercise.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Excellent, excellent point. You have written here the the three sort of, you know. I look at these and I'm thinking this is ideally what we want these different buyers to be thinking and feeling and may maybe even saying is that the, you know, the strategic visionary buyer is the person that's saying, okay, this aligns with where we're going, right? This is gonna help us achieve what we want to achieve. So big picture results focused the operator, the more tactical buyer says. worst case, this isn't gonna get me fired, but best case this is gonna get me promoted. Right? It's, you know, that, that kind of a thing. So they are thinking about the organization, but you know, you gotta know that this person still has some, upward movement in the organization and something like this could really help. So I think they recognize that. And then the sort of, you know, wet blanket, um, folks that we just love in the organization is, you know, this is safe. It's not risky, it's not breaking any rules and you know, there's tons of upside to this. And really no, no sort of liability or legal downside or financial downside or anything else. So it's, it's, well, well worth it so we get them to kind of sign off on it. Yeah.
John:Awesome. Well, mark, I think this has been a, a great topic of conversation. I think we've broken this down effectively, different buying roles.
Mark:Alright, John, until next time.
John:until next time.