Author: Joel Reed



Are You Paying Enough Attention to Talent Retention?

October 9, 2025
Joel Reed

How committed are your sales, marketing and product teams to your organization?

Turnover of U.S. employees as a whole is nearly 20%, and with salespeople it is as high as 27% — well above the U.S. average for other corporate roles. The time could be nigh, too: Many employees decide to leave their positions at year-end or early in the year after new compensation plans or bonuses are settled.

When employees leave, organizations lose deep product, client and market knowledge, and it can take months, if not years, to replace skilled team members who jump ship. There also comes with it the loss of organizational, process and product knowledge that enable decisions to be made and implemented in a timely manner. The most skilled hire still must adopt and adjust to these unique attributes of a new firm, and the exiting employee may create competitive risks through their strong client relationships and significant solution knowledge.

The risk of attrition is substantial in and of itself, but unmotivated employees can impact your bottom line, too:

  • A Gallup study found that companies with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable.
  • The same study found that companies with highly engaged employees were 17% more productive.
  • Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that replacing a salaried employee costs an average of 6-9 months of that person’s salary when you factor in hiring costs, onboarding, lost productivity and time to reach full proficiency. For a $100,000 role, that equates to $50,000–$75,000 per backfill.

Those costs and impacts add up fast with high attrition. Simply put, having motivated and happy employees could translate into big boosts in your company’s revenue performance.

At Mereo, we have determined five essential domains for evaluation to reveal potential strategies for enhancing retention and employee motivation in alignment with your organizational objectives.

How would you rate your organization in these areas?

COMPENSATION

Too often employers make compensation plans difficult to understand. The best plans enable an employee to quickly assess how they can truly impact their outcome by contributing to the organization’s objectives. Moreover, many sales plans also fail to align to corporate, financial or product goals. And most marketing and product team plans lack direct correlations to the actual activities and work output.

Like pricing, compensation plans need to be predictable for you and the employee. Your company should be investing in research or services to validate that your plans are competitive in your market. While you may not put in the research here, you can be certain your employees will.

COACHING

Coaching should not be treated as a “scheduled” activity only but should be a part of nearly every interaction between leadership and employees. Yet a study by Sales Mastery found that a combined 60% of organizations still leave coaching decisions up to the manager (24%) or have a random process (36%).

If you think of coaching as a process, then:

  • A “random” approach means that coaching decisions are left up to each manager.
  • An “informal” coaching process means that there are guidelines, but they are not completely implemented.
  • A “formal” coaching process is one that is defined and implemented, and sales managers are required to use it.
  • A “dynamic” approach goes a step further by connecting the coaching process to the enablement framework and, often, rating managers by their coaching impact.

Employing a dynamic coaching approach in sales has been found to yield a 16.6% improvement in sales win rates versus the average company.

EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

Formal training helps employees develop and maintain sharpness and skills. But in our experience, over 80% of teams we train express they have had no job skills training in more than 5 years.

Formal training aside, take a moment to consider the learning culture in your organization:

  • How does your organization provide employees with new experiences to grow and to create a competitive edge for you?
  • Do you enable and budget for employees to take the time to get relevant job certifications?
  • Do you bring in external experts to provide unique insights, information and education?
  • Have you created opportunities for employees to gain from peer mentoring and coaching that is aligned with organizational and career goals?

Get started by boosting your sales force’s skills in these 10 critical performance areas.

GROWTH

By supporting employee growth, organizations build a positive culture that attracts talent and promotes lasting success. Yet research has found that only one in four employees feel confident about their current role and direction — with 75% browsing new roles at other companies.

According to Culture Monkey, employee growth plays a role in retention by promoting a sense of value and commitment within an organization and may be more inclined to remain with the company. Examples of growth focus areas include:

  • Continuous Learning and Adaptation
  • Defining and Guiding Career Advancement
  • Increasing Job Satisfaction
  • Enhancing Performance and Productivity
  • Tracking and Improving Employee Retention and Loyalty

TEAMWORK

Recently, I coached two talented high-potential employees from well-established firms on their decision and job acquisition process to move to other firms. Both had been mainly driven to leave because of teamwork — or the lack thereof.

Does your organization prioritize teamwork? While this teamwork concept can be hard to measure, our experience working with clients shows that activities and interactions need to:

  • Celebrate milestones such as deal wins, client success, project completions and product releases.
  • Build a sense of team through work and extracurricular activities.
  • Provide training that is group-based to promote peer-to-peer and cross-organizational experience sharing and to help the employee develop and expand useful internal networks.
  • Foster network development and skills learning and practicing in safe environments at events such as meaningful kickoffs and midyear programs.

TAKE A BEAT TO TAKE A PULSE ON YOUR WORKFORCE

What can you do to retain the talent at your organization?

Take a pulse of your employees. Do your high value employees feel highly valued?  Simple activities such as manager checkpoint discussions and skip-level meetings can help you get a sense of the temperature of the employee base.

For expert support in a baseline assessment of your organization, schedule a 30-minute consultation. As the new CEO of Trillium, Phil Galati, put it:

“Mereo immediately helped me baseline our current go-to-market situation, benchmark that against where we needed to be and identify an actionable plan to close the gap.”

To learn how a baseline assessment can support your organization’s talent retention — resulting in increased opportunities, engagements, deals and more — explore Axway’s success story here.



Most B2B Buyers Already Have Their Business Case. Are Your Sellers Ready to Offer More?

September 11, 2025
Joel Reed

When organizations look to optimize pricing for their solutions, the instinct is to start with numbers: What is the market willing to pay? Where does our product fit relative to competitors? What is the value we deliver?

But in recent pricing research we conducted for a cloud-based business spend management (BSM) platform provider, we began not with pricing but with buying process. The results were eye-opening.

Nearly every company we spoke with described an almost identical sequence when making a purchase decision:

  1. Identify a problem.
  2. Quantify the impact of that problem.
  3. Determine whether solving the problem aligns with corporate strategy.
  4. Assess whether the problem can be solved internally or whether a new solution is needed.

This consistency was remarkable. Across industries, buying teams were approaching decisions with the same disciplined business-case-first mindset. And increasingly, those buying decisions were being driven by line-of-business leaders rather than IT departments. That subtle shift was having an outsized impact.

Line-of-business buyers are focused on business outcomes, and they build the case for investment from the very start. They do not come to the table asking, “What is the cost of this software?” They come already armed with, “Here is the cost of doing nothing.”

FOR SELLERS, THIS PRESENTS BOTH A CHALLENGE AND AN OPPORTUNITY

Traditional sales training emphasizes helping buyers understand their problems and quantify the impact. But if buyers are already doing that work themselves, sellers must pivot. In this case the buyers have already decided to do something but may need help deciding to take action now (urgency), and the sales team needs to answer the question of why their solution is the best. They need to align closely to the buyer’s framework, acknowledge the existing business case, and then expand it: Have you considered these additional costs if you do nothing? Have you explored these alternative outcomes? Have you talked with others like yourselves that have solved this problem?

From a pricing standpoint, this changes the conversation as well. Buyers are not just evaluating cost. They are evaluating return, such as how well the solution uniquely resolves a clearly defined and strategically aligned problem. Sellers need to paint the vision of how their solution uniquely addresses the current situation and provide client examples and proof points to create confidence in the buying community. Sellers who price based on value delivered, and who position their offering within the buyer’s existing business case, have a significant advantage.

HELP YOUR SALES FORCE SEE THROUGH YOU BUYERS’ BUSINESS-CASE LENS

These research findings solidify a truth in today’s selling environment: Buyers are more sophisticated than ever before — and your organization needs sellers who can meet them on their level.

The Complete Revenue Accelerators Guide distills proven strategies and practical insights that empower B2B leaders to align their teams, sharpen their go-to-market approach, and unlock sustainable growth through value selling powered by compelling business cases. Do not leave revenue potential untapped. Download the eBook today and start enabling your sales team with these essential skills.



How B2B Leaders Can Avoid Costly Product Development Mistakes

March 20, 2025
Joel Reed

This season, I have had the privilege of working with a Penn State Material Sciences and Engineering professor to help deliver part of the curriculum for a class focused on building a research and development (R&D) strategy and execution plan. This course covers defining the needs of buyers, identifying the best solution approach through whole product definition, defining potential risk scenarios, and crafting compelling proposals to secure funding.

This structured approach to innovation is something many businesses and solution management teams overlook. Instead of following a disciplined process like this, companies often take shortcuts that introduce unnecessary risks, ultimately compromising their return on investment. Too often, decisions are made in isolation without leveraging the market intelligence available from sales and marketing professionals or, more critically, from buyers. The result? Solutions developed without a full understanding of the target user and buyer — an approach that is almost guaranteed to lead to failure.

If this sounds familiar, your organization may need a strategic reset. At Mereo, we specialize in helping teams revamp their solution management processes to ensure their innovations are grounded in market needs and positioned for success. 

THE COST OF POOR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES

Past Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen noted that approximately 30,000 new products are launched annually, yet fewer than 5% succeed — and less than 1% thrive beyond three years. What leads to such dismal statistics? Let us explore two real-world (not) “best practices” we have witnessed over the past few years.

Company 1: No Business Case, No Success Metrics

This company had no requirement for a business case to justify its R&D investments. Even more concerning, they lacked clear metrics to define success once solutions hit the market. Despite allocating 13–14% of their annual revenue to R&D, they only achieved 1–2% annual growth. Meanwhile, competitors in the same market space, with more disciplined go-to-market strategies, were achieving double-digit growth rates. Without a business case and key performance indicators, this company had no way to measure whether their R&D investments were paying off — an issue that plagued their long-term success.

Company 2: Keeping Sales and Marketing in the Dark

At this company, the product team refused to share their development roadmap with sales and marketing, fearing that shifting delivery dates and feature changes might cause misalignment. As a result, launch planning did not begin until after solutions were available. The outcome? A 4- to 6-month delay in marketing and selling new solutions. This approach cost them valuable momentum in the market, allowing competitors to gain an edge while their products sat idle, waiting for go-to-market strategies to catch up.

AVOIDING THESE PITFALLS: A SMARTER APPROACH

To avoid these costly mistakes, B2B leaders should embrace a structured process that includes:

  1. Market-Driven Development: Engage sales and marketing teams early to capture buyer and user insights that guide product development.
  2. A Clear Business Case: Justify R&D investments with clear success metrics to track performance post-launch.
  3. Cross-functional Collaboration: Break down silos between product, sales and marketing to ensure alignment from development through launch.
  4. Early Go-to-Market Planning: Begin launch preparations well before a product’s availability to maximize market impact.

The bottom line? Innovation without strategy is a risky game. By implementing disciplined, market-driven processes, businesses can improve their chances of success, reduce wasted investment, and drive sustainable growth.

We have written the eBook on solution management leading practices, and you can download it for free here to elevate your solution management engine for unstoppable revenue performance.

DOWNLOAD NOW



Is Your Sales Team Ready for the AI Question?

February 13, 2025
Joel Reed

AI is a hot topic in the market today. If your sales team is talking about AI-enabled solutions, you can bet that your buyers will have questions — especially about data security, residency and compliance. Are you preparing your team to handle these objections effectively?

It might seem like a simple thing, but in our recent research, approximately one in three sales conversations that mention AI will bring the prospect’s cybersecurity team into the discussion. Why? Because AI capabilities rely on accessing significant amounts of data — your prospect’s data most likely — to help them improve decision making. Providing this data access will naturally drive a security discussion and possibly a privacy and data residency discussion as well. If your sales professionals are not equipped to address security concerns confidently, deals can stall — or worse, disappear entirely.

ARMING YOUR TEAM FOR OBJECTION-REFRAME

Objection reframing has always been a critical skill in sales. Your team should be prepared to navigate concerns across various domains: market conditions, implementation challenges, pricing and now AI security.

Here is the key: Have you thought through and practiced these conversations? Are your salespeople armed with the best refrains and responses? When a prospect asks about AI-related security risks, will they stumble, or will they confidently guide the discussion?

HOW TO PREPARE YOUR SALES TEAM

  1. Anticipate the AI Security Questions: Train your sales team to expect questions about data security, compliance and residency.
  2. Collaborate with Your Security Experts: Align with your internal security team to ensure your messaging is accurate, relevant and up to date.
  3. Position AI as a Value-Add, Not a Risk: Help your team frame AI as an advantage while addressing security concerns proactively.
  4. Practice, Practice, Practice: Role-play common objections so your salespeople can respond naturally and with confidence when they engage buyers.

This is not just about AI — it is about being prepared for any sales objection. The best sales teams are always ready to address concerns, no matter the topic. If you are not preparing your salespeople now, you are leaving deals on the table.

WE CAN HELP

At Mereo LLC we specialize in equipping sales teams with the strategies and tools they need to win more deals. Whether it is AI security, market shifts or competitive positioning, we help your sales force navigate objections with confidence.

Are you ready to arm your sales team for the AI conversation? Let’s talk.



Do Not Become your Buyers’ Doormat

December 5, 2024
Joel Reed

Being the “doormat” of the buyer during the sales cycle is a crude way of describing a situation where the seller has little to no control over the relationship. As a result, you are at the mercy of the buyer’s demands, often to their detriment.

These normal and capricious demands may lead to deadlocks and challenging situations — now and in the longer-term relationship as they transition to a client.

HOW TO AVOID BEING THE BUYER’S DOORMAT WITH SEEK TO SERVE™

Why does this matter to the buyer?

When you always say yes to the buyer, especially when they voice unrealistic demands, it can be crippling for them. Why? It may result in a solution that, while perceived as affordable or aligned to their best need, is not sustainable.

In the longer term, that leads to unexpected costs for the buyer, and they may cut ties with the seller. Worse case, the seller becomes financially crippled due to over-demanding commitments. Sellers bowing to these pressures often find they end-up creating multiple customized paths that are unscalable and / or unstable, reducing investment in future solution releases and putting the client behind their competitors in terms of capability and productivity. So, beware of a short-term gain creating a negative longer-term impact.

Why does this matter to you, the seller?

If you let the buyer dominate the relationship completely, it can lead to a loss of respect for you, your organization and the expertise provided. Buyers may value your solution less if they feel you have no backbone. Accepting unique buyer terms, solution designs, delivery approaches or pricing can create internal inefficiencies that add cost, reduce product competitiveness and create chaos when or if significant service issues arise.

Research consistently reveals buyers seek out and want to engage with sellers who bring relevant market insights and new perspectives on how to solve problems. Furthermore, when a seller is constantly bending over backward for unreasonable buyer demands, that can lead to reduced profitability, because it necessitates spending a disproportionate amount of time and resources dealing with them or offering too many discounts. In that case, it is not uncommon for the buyer to dominate the relationship, and you lose the price negotiation battle. Lastly, being overly submissive in the buyer-seller relationship can lead to increased stress and burnout for you and the sales team.

How does it improve your chance of winning?

A seller may win the “battle” with the buyer by caving to the buyer’s demands but ultimately lose the “war.” Why? The real victory is sustainable revenue performance — a win-win for both sides because it is based on mutual value and forging a true, long-standing partnership.

LEARN THE 6 KEY PRINCIPLES FOR LEADING BUYER RELATIONSHIPS

 A healthy buyer-seller relationship is important to all involved parties over the long run. At Mereo, we have developed six key principles for respectfully and expertly leading win-win buyer relationships.

Get our revenue performance accelerator how-to cheat-sheet for not becoming the buyer’s doormat today and share these leading practices with your sales force.

Leading buyer relationships effectively is just part of the greater whole. Your sales force needs the right skills and behaviors for each of the 10 critical steps in the sales process to lead your buyers to a deal.

EARLY STAGE

  1. Prospecting Power Moves
  2. Resisting the Itch to Pitch
  3. Driving Effective Meetings
  4. Performing the Quest of Discovery

MID-STAGE

  1. Becoming a Trusted Advisor
  2. Maintaining Control of the Buying Journey
  3. Avoiding Being Single-Threaded

LATE STAGE

  1. Reframing Objections
  2. Managing Radio Silence
  3. Not Being the Buyer’s “Doormat”

Download the complete Revenue Accelerator guide here.

Reach out to our experts to learn how we can help boost your sales team’s skills and accelerate your revenue performance.

 

GET STARTED



A Proven Approach to Driving Revenue Growth with Strategic Alignment

November 14, 2024
Joel Reed

While doing some file maintenance this week, I stumbled upon an interesting past performance review from the first year managing a newly consolidated software portfolio. This portfolio had recently expanded into new geographic markets, making for a unique set of challenges and opportunities. I would like to, humbly, share a bit of that review below:

The product portfolio Joel was responsible for saw a 39% year-over-year transactional growth. This was accomplished through his extreme collaboration efforts and by building strong working relationships across the company that enabled him to manage through a set of complex challenges and drive an extraordinarily successful year of revenue performance.

These growth numbers were significant. This portfolio started with a baseline of $850 million in revenue, growing by $335 million to reach $1.185 billion that year (it achieved nearly the same result the following year).

As I reflect on this achievement, it is clear that the success was not solely a result of hard work or happenstance but rather due to the practices we champion here at Mereo — namely the close coordination and strong alignment of sales, product management and marketing teams.

ARE YOUR REVENUE-FOCUSED TEAMS ALIGNED?

The reality is that in many organizations, these key revenue-focused teams operate in silos, missing critical opportunities for growth and efficiency.

Ask yourself:

  • Is the product team creating a published strategy and roadmap in close collaboration with input from sales and marketing? This effort should include a commitment to delivering that roadmap on time and with quality.
  • Are there shared, transparent metrics for measuring success? Ideally, these should cover revenue, customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction.
  • Does marketing have visibility into the roadmap to effectively position the solutions with analysts, customers and prospects? Without this alignment, marketing’s efforts may fall short of driving brand credibility and excitement.
  • Are the value propositions that differentiate your solutions clearly communicated and validated by the voice of your customer? Differentiation without validation is simply conjecture.
  • Is sales well-prepared with ideal client profiles, trained to engage meaningfully with each buyer role, and equipped to articulate how your solutions uniquely address the buyers’ challenges? Sales teams that lack this depth of understanding risk being outpaced by the competition.

TUNING REVENUE ENGINES FOR THE YEAR AHEAD

With the year-end fast approaching, it is the perfect time to assess whether your investments in sales, product and marketing are truly aligned. Together, these functions likely represent over half of your operational investments. Are you taking steps to tune these individual engines and align their collective performance?

Alignment is not easy, but the results are worth it. A fully integrated approach to revenue performance can yield high returns and lasting customer loyalty. If any of these areas resonate as challenges or opportunities for your organization, consider conducting a deep-dive assessment.

 Strategic organizational alignment has transformed our clients’ business too. For Axway, an API management and application integration software-as-a-service (SaaS) leader, we assembled cross-functional teams and helped them build commercial momentum of their subscription business, with 7.5% growth the first year, and 4.4% year-over-year growth. Learn more about Axway’s success with alignment here.

LET’S TALK

I would love to hear your perspectives on this topic: What is preventing alignment in your critical revenue performance teams? What strategies have you implemented that are working well, and how has that benefited your organization?

At Mereo, we do not just advocate for alignment — we live it. If you would like an independent assessment of your revenue performance or are interested in sharing best practices, let’s connect. The best learning often comes from shared experiences. Together, we can drive sustainable revenue growth in the year ahead.

 

BOOK A 30-MINUTE ASSESSMENT

 

As your leadership is planning for your 2025 revenue kickoff (RKO), infuse your program with opportunities to powerfully align your revenue teams for the year ahead. We have a guidebook that can help.

GET THE RKO PLAYBOOK

 



Effectively Manage Buyer Radio Silence

November 7, 2024
Joel Reed

Buyer radio silence is when a buyer who has shown initial interest suddenly stops responding to your calls, emails or other forms of contact. It is the absence of communication after a promising start to the sales motion. The term “ghosting” has spawned as a popular term for this silence.

HOW TO APPROACH BUYER SILENCE WITH SEEK TO SERVE™

Why does this matter to the buyer? Buyer radio silence does not always mean you have lost the sales pursuit, but it is important that you as a seller understand the driver(s) behind the communication change. For the buyer, time not communicating with you may allow them to:

  • Evaluate options: Space to consider other routes and make an informed decision without feeling pressured.
  • Assess needs: Re-evaluate their requirements and / or how well your solution aligns with their needs, pains and desires.
  • Seek internal approval: With purchases of this nature, the buyer may need to seek internal approvals or budgets, which takes time.
  • Reframe objections: Helps them address internal objections or concerns, making them more prepared for the next interaction.

Why does this matter to you, the seller? Effective management and understanding of the reasons behind buyer radio silence is vital for the sales team. Doing so ensures the following:

  • Maintaining momentum: Helps keep the buying journey advancing to outcomes by supporting internal buying processes with insights and information.
  • Avoiding assumptions: Without communication, assumptions can lead to missed opportunities or misjudgments.
  • Nurturing relationships: Provides the opportunity to build rapport and trust, which are essential for successful win-wins for buyers and sellers.
  • Winning pursuits: Addressing concerns or questions during radio silence increases the chances of winning the pursuit.

How does it improve your chance of winning? When buyers go silent, the risk of the buyer not making a decision at all rises exponentially. According to research from Outreach.io, only 14% of buyers complete a purchase after two weeks of going quiet. There is a difference in allowing a buyer space (a normal course in every buying journey) and a buyer ”ghosting” a seller. When radio silence arises, sellers who respond with engagement across multiple channels using value-oriented messages that reinforce the buyer’s pains while conveying appropriate empathy elevate winning outcomes. This is a time when not being single-threaded can mater most.

LEARN THE 9 KEY PRINCIPLES FOR MANAGING BUYER SILENCE

Your salespeople must respond effectively to buyer silence — or risk losing the sale altogether. At Mereo, we have developed nine key principles for managing buyer radio silence.

Get our revenue performance accelerator how-to cheat-sheet for managing buyer radio silence today and share these leading practices with your sales force.

Managing buyer silence is just part of the greater whole. Your sales force needs the right skills and behaviors for each of the 10 critical steps in the sales process to lead your buyers to a deal.

EARLY STAGE

  1. Prospecting Power Moves
  2. Resisting the Itch to Pitch
  3. Driving Effective Meetings
  4. Performing the Quest of Discovery

MID-STAGE

  1. Becoming a Trusted Advisor
  2. Maintaining Control of the Buying Journey
  3. Avoiding Being Single-Threaded

LATE STAGE

  1. Reframing Objections
  2. Managing Radio Silence
  3. Not Being the Buyer’s “Doormat”

Download the complete Revenue Accelerator guide here. Or reach out to our experts to learn how we can help boost your sales team’s skills and accelerate your revenue performance.

 

GET STARTED

 



The Mereo Revenue Performance Accelerators Series: A Sales Professional’s Guide to Reframing Objections

October 3, 2024
Joel Reed

Buyers do not buy as often as we suspect. Rather buyers often make large acquisition decisions only a few times during their career, and each time can be career-altering. With that in mind, you need to understand that buyers are likely to have numerous questions — often called objections. But in reality, they come from common sources, including:

  • Misunderstandings
  • Mistakes
  • Misperceptions
  • Missteps

REFRAMING OBJECTIONS TO OPPORTUNITIES TO SEEK TO SERVE™

Why does this matter to the buyer? The very nature of buying assumes some degree of risk. Therefore, buyers want to feel comfortable with the seller and their chosen solution. Buyers are inundated with numerous “voices” — some informative, others hostile — as they seek to satisfy all stakeholders. They often believe they are alone among businesses facing the challenges they raise. Getting useful answers, understanding how you deliver differentiated value to their unique situation, and being equipped to relay stories about clients similar to themselves builds confidence in you and your solutions.

Why does this matter to you, the seller? As a seller, you want buyers to engage in open dialogue throughout their buying journey. You want objections at every stage, because they help the buyer gain confidence — while your answers build trust and credibility. Buyers engaging in constructive dialogue are showing their interest and are less likely to go “radio silent” on you. Top-quality responses differentiate you in terms of how you sell and the value of your solution.

How does it improve your chance of winning? A knowledgeable and confident buyer will move forward in a buying journey. Moreover, they typically do not go silent on you, and if treated with respect and properly informed, they trust you and your solution.

Using objections as opportunities to provide industry insights and solution knowledge emphasizes how your solution uniquely brings them to the future state and the proven value of your solution as demonstrated by client value stories.

LEARN THE 3-STEP TECHNIQUE FOR REFRAMING OBJECTIONS 

While buyer objections offer your salespeople more chances to deepen their value selling approach, there is a right way and a wrong way to respond to buyer pushback and questions.

Get our revenue performance accelerator how-to cheat-sheet for objection reframes today and share these leading practices with your sales force.

Reframing objections is just part of the greater whole. Your sales force needs the right skills and behaviors for each of the 10 critical steps in the sales process to lead your buyers to a deal.

EARLY STAGE

  1. Prospecting Power Moves
  2. Resisting the Itch to Pitch
  3. Driving Effective Meetings
  4. Performing the Quest of Discovery

MID-STAGE

  1. Becoming a Trusted Advisor
  2. Maintaining Control of the Buying Journey
  3. Avoiding Being Single-Threaded

LATE STAGE

  1. Reframing Objections
  2. Managing Radio Silence
  3. Not Being the Buyer’s “Doormat”

Download the complete Revenue Accelerator guide here. Or reach out to our experts to learn how we can help boost your sales team’s skills and accelerate your revenue performance.

GET STARTED



The Mereo Revenue Performance Accelerators Series: DO NOT RELY ON ONE DECISION-MAKER IN THE B2B BUYING COMMITTEE

September 5, 2024
Joel Reed

A recent study by Sales Mastery found the average buying committee has 6.4 participants. Following this research over time, the size has grown — most likely the result of more IT projects driven from lines of business (LOBs). Members of the buying committee often have different motivations, as the impact of the problems that need to be solved and / or the outcome of the solution can differ from one buyer to another.

Not engaging most — if not all — of these members creates risk for you and the buyer, so avoid being “single-threaded” with a lone decision-maker in the buying journey.

BUILD A BROAD BASE OF SUPPORT WITH YOUR B2B BUYING COMMITTEE

Why does this matter to the buyer? Gone are the days of IT-only-led software acquisition projects. With cloud-based solutions, the LOB is often funding the solution through expense budgets. This means more players are involved in the buying journey, from LOB, IT and procurement to risk management, compliance and finance.

A recent study by Challenger found 58% of initiatives stall due to misalignment, reinforcing the perils of not engaging all buyers on the buying committee. For a successful program, it is critical that all players within the buyer’s organization — individuals and teams — are aligned on the impact of the initiative. They all need to engage to obtain the future envisioned state.

Why does this matter to you, the seller? That same Challenger study found “no decision” is the endpoint in 38% of buying journeys. When two out of five projects end in no deal and nearly 60% of those are down to stakeholder misalignment, that means nearly 25% of all projects end because of stakeholder misalignment.

In addition, how many losses can you count related to not understanding all the viewpoints of the decision-makers or the authority matrix within the organization, or putting your effort behind the wrong champion? To improve your chances and reduce your risks, you need to engage with most of (if not all) the key players — in depth — including stakeholders who have a “silent voice.”

How does it improve your chance of winning? Buyers need their concerns heard and their visions and challenges addressed. They also need to see how their investment of time and effort will further serve the goals of the company, their organization and themselves. Businesses are often struggling to navigate competing priorities, bringing together numerous stakeholders and the functions they represent can often elevate one project over another. Building a broad base of support and alignment allows you to better manage the buying process and avoid risks due to misalignment or turnover across the too-often competing voices and motivations of the buying committee.

ENABLE YOUR SALESFORCE TO SEEK TO SERVE™ YOUR BUYERS

Your salespeople cannot be single-threaded with buying committees. Otherwise, they threaten an all-around frustrating no-decision deal plaguing many organizations.

Get our revenue performance accelerator how-to cheat-sheet for not being reliant on one decision-maker today and share these leading practices with your sales force.

Not being single-threaded and reliant on one decision-maker is just part of the greater whole. Your sales force needs the right skills and behaviors for each of the 10 critical steps in the sales process to lead your buyers to a deal.

EARLY STAGE

  1. Prospecting Power Moves
  2. Resisting the Itch to Pitch
  3. Driving Effective Meetings
  4. Performing the Quest of Discovery

MID-STAGE

  1. Becoming a Trusted Advisor
  2. Maintaining Control of the Buying Journey
  3. Avoiding Being Single-Threaded

LATE STAGE

  1. Reframing Objections
  2. Managing Radio Silence
  3. Not Being the Buyer’s “Doormat”

Download the complete Revenue Accelerator guide here. Or reach out to our experts to learn how we can help boost your sales team’s skills and accelerate your revenue performance.

GET STARTED



The Mereo Revenue Performance Accelerators Series: Maintain Control of the Buying Journey

August 1, 2024
Joel Reed

Building credibility and trust with your buyers early in order to guide and shape the buying journey can increase the likelihood of being chosen as the best provider. Maintaining control of the buying journey in a B2B sales pursuit presents unique challenges due to the formal and competitive nature of these processes. Contributing to this situation is the dynamic that buyers report seeing less and less value delivered by sellers and, thus, are engaging sellers less and later in their journey. In fact, according to a recent Sales Mastery study, 77% of buyers do NOT see sellers as a resource!

DELIVER MAXIMUM VALUE BY CONTROLLING THE BUYING JOURNEY

Why does this matter to the buyer? Buyers do not engage in large solution purchases often in their careers. Even so, they do not turn to sellers as a resource, looking elsewhere instead — online, industry and software analyst firms; consulting companies; and peers. This has created a situation where buyers do not engage a seller until they believe they understand their needs — true in more than 70% of cases, according to Sales Mastery. And in over half the cases, the buyer does not engage until after they have identified the solution they believe they want. However, according to a Challenger study 54% of buyers want to buy from a salesperson that offers a unique and valuable perspective and helps them navigate between alternatives.

Why does this matter to you, the seller? As a seller, your goal is to provide value to the buyer, not just with compelling solutions but credible insights that help the buyer better understand the opportunities to solve issues, while painting a picture for an ideal outcome. With information more readily available at a buyer’s fingertips, your task is even more difficult than before. The good news? In recent studies, more than 75% of B2B buyers stated their willingness to engage earlier in their journey when the discussion revolves around the following, which happen to be fully in the seller’s control:

  • New to the buyer
  • Perceived as risky to the buyer or their organization
  • Viewed as complex — particularly where it impacts multiple departments

How does it improve your chance of winning? Your solutions likely address these situations. You have the experience and have seen it before. Given many capabilities, trends and regulations may be new to the buyer, your solutions are proven on areas of significant importance and generally cut across functions.

PUT IN THE WORK TO BEST SERVE YOUR BUYERS

Maintaining control of the buying journey is about thorough preparation, adherence to the prospects’ needs, effective communication of value, a clear forward path at every interaction, stakeholder engagement, setting appropriate expectations and effective negotiation. It is important to be proactive and responsive throughout the process, while demonstrating commitment to meeting the buyer’s needs and delivering exceptional value.

Get our revenue performance accelerator how-to cheat-sheet for controlling the buying journey today and share the leading practices for navigating the turbulent waters of the buyer journey to deliver the utmost value to your buyers.

Maintaining control of the buying journey is just one part of the greater whole. Your sales force needs the right skills and behaviors for each of the 10 critical steps in the sales process to lead your buyers to a deal.

EARLY STAGE

  1. Prospecting power moves
  2. Resisting the itch to pitch
  3. Driving effective meetings
  4. Performing the quest of discovery

MID-STAGE

  1. Becoming a trusted advisor
  2. Maintaining control of the buying journey
  3. Avoiding being single-threaded with buyers

LATE STAGE

  1. Reframing objections
  2. Managing radio silence
  3. Not being the buyer’s “doormat”

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