Customer-facing sales is a critical area of SaaS that drives growth and revenue retention. Pia Heilmann, VP of Sales EMEA at Klaviyo, shares how to master the art of customer-facing sales in an increasingly competitive market.
You need to understand and empathize with your customers, and this applies at all stages of the customer journey. To do that, you must:
- Align internally
- Understand your customer through data
- Maintain agility and adaptability
We’re all consumers and like to be spoken to in a specific way. How do you deliver a differentiated experience that leverages the data available to you to speak to your customers in a language they want to be spoken to at the time they want to be spoken to?
You have to address the challenges that are relevant to them in a way they prefer to consume the solution you’re offering. This doesn’t mean from a product standpoint, but from how they engage with you and your team – from that first interaction on a review site or a search to how they interact during renewals as a customer.
Now, more than ever, every single interaction matters. Sales has changed massively over the last decade. Coupling that with growing consumer expectations, you can’t think about a single channel or stakeholder or even two channels or stakeholders.
You have to account for every interaction, starting at the top of the funnel or pre-funnel, all the way through the entire customer lifecycle and beyond. Even churned customers are a valuable data source.
Let’s look at the three key areas that drive customer-focused sales.
#1: Align Internally
In some organizations, this is called corporate jail, where the C-suite is locked in a room for a couple of days and tries to agree on who the customer is and what value you can provide them. Plenty of companies have a CRO who thinks you should be selling to someone completely different from who the CPO thinks you should be selling to.
This is step one. You have to make sure you align across the entire executive team. Only when you have alignment can you cascade communications downwards. You need to determine who engages with your company at what stage of the funnel and ensure you have a consistent value prop.
Every customer interaction is an opportunity to set yourself apart from the competition. So, get creative with how you differentiate yourself. As you think about alignment and how to differentiate, hone in on your ICP and ask yourself these questions:
- How are you listening to feedback? Are you spending time with the front line to understand how customers respond to your messaging? Workshop that from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
- What topics get people through the door and retain customers?
- If you’ve mapped the customer journey (you should), how do you ensure your sales team is equipped to navigate it?
- How do you do this at scale?
How do you answer those questions? With data.
#2: Understand the Customer Through Data
Your most valuable tool is one centralized and consumable viewpoint on your customer. If all your data resides in one place, you and your analysts can make smarter decisions to engage with people at the right time based on behaviors you can recognize through trends and analysis.
Technology is huge here, but it’s not where it ends. Technology can assist you but don’t live and die solely by the tech available to you. Demographic, behavioral, and market insights are amazing, but you should also interview customers.
Supplement your data with anecdotal data. This rich data enables you to make smarter decisions about which organizations to target, when, and how to strengthen your value proposition and align it to a hard metric like revenue.
Weaving data together from disparate sources allows you to tell a story about the customer so you can position your solution more effectively.
#3: Maintain Agility and the Ability to Adapt
Your GTM strategy isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it thing. It’s a dynamic framework that requires you to revisit what you initially believed, continuously test your hypothesis, and prove or disprove it. You need the ability to adjust based on what you hear from the market and see in the data.
You should identify areas of opportunities and challenges and work with your team to better understand them. To do this, put in place mechanisms to listen and gather feedback from deals you’ve won and lost.
Closed won deals validate something you already know. Closed lost deals allow you to identify things you didn’t know. At Klaviyo, they have weekly closed meetings that include the entire team of leaders to provide understanding and empathy and drive change.
Segment Your GTM Strategy
At Klaviyo, they have an incredibly diverse customer base that requires them to segment their GTM strategy. You want to pair your GTM strategy with remarkable people who can execute those plans. To do that, you leverage something like this sales skills and competency matrix below.
Within each segment you sell into, there are different expectations of team members. For example, for entrepreneurs and SMBs, you evaluate how the product may enable the sale so that the buying journey is frictionless.
If you’re moving upmarket, the expectations are different, so the skill set must be different. How do you best build and respond to an RFP? How do you multi-thread internally or navigate the complexities of security and compliance?
The art of customer-focused sales doesn’t stop at leveraging data from customers. You want to deliver incredible customer experiences and understand where customers derive value. Why do they continue to increase their spend or renew year after year?
You can learn this by:
- Establishing a customer advisory board
- Using customer surveys to gather information from existing customers about what is and isn’t working
- Hosting a QBR with customers as a feedback look, and sharing that information with the sales org so they can become smarter about where customers are getting value out of your product
Focusing on the customer and the value they derive from your product allows you to grow, innovate, and stretch beyond the traditional ICP. You can experiment, adapt, and establish new segments based on continuous feedback loops with customers.
Key Takeaways
- Internal alignment is required across all functions to enable a customer-focused sale.
- Leverage the rich data available to you to create a narrative that resonates with the buyer.
- Agility and adaptability are key. Identify areas where you can invest more and build a GTM strategy that helps you grow quickly.
- Build out frameworks and skill sets in your organizations and hire the right talent against those frameworks and skills.
- Hold your sales team accountable for delivering a differentiated experience based on the segment you’re selling into.
- Personalize your outreach and interactions based on the data you’ve gathered. Your customer should be at the forefront of the sale.
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Amelia Ibarra, Khareem Sudlow
