One of the biggest opportunities for growth for a business comes when a new product or solution launches. Often, ramp time to revenue takes longer than what is initially projected. One of the primary causes for the elongated ramp time is usually because the sales team has been “enabled” with a great overview…. of the market, target personas, and primarily product features and benefits. However, they end up missing some key ingredients…
These sellers then head out to have engaging conversations with target buyers — many of whom are new titles and personas the sellers are not familiar with — about what this new product is, what it does, and why it’s great. Unfortunately, because the sellers are often mildly armed with problems specific to that targeted persona’s goals and objectives, this approach leaves it up to the prospect to determine what problems the product might actually solve for them. Therefore, if the prospect doesn’t connect the benefits the seller is bestowing to problems it solve, the conversation quickly ends.
How to enable teams to solidify a targeted value proposition for key personas
What if we could prepare our sales team to have meaningful conversations with buyers? What if our sellers were prepared with a meaningful credibility introduction and the key questions for an impactful dialog to help our prospects discover for themselves the problems our new solutions uniquely solve? We can enable our teams with well-polished battlecards. Battlecards are documents geared towards a certain persona or title. They include all the elements necessary to establish credibility, engage in provocative and meaningful questions, and run a successful talk track with a specific targeted buyer. These battlecards are targeted, simple, and efficient to ensure utilization by the sellers.
With some research, we can easily identify the most popular Business Issues or primary objectives the title is typically tasked with, as well as the biggest problems our solution can help solve. Preparing our salesforce with this knowledge and key questions allows them to have more relevant and meaningful conversations with targeted prospects.
Creating your battlecard
If you’ve been through training with Visualize, you can download our battlecard building tool here to get started. It will walk you through the major components of building an effective battlecard.
A well-polished battlecard should include the following components:
- A targeted and specific persona/title
- A credibility introduction containing a 60 second story on where you have helped a similar title with a key objective, challenges, and have created value
- The typical Business Issues/major priorities of this role
- The problems this persona is likely experiencing getting in the way of accomplishing the major objective
- How your solution can solve those problems
- The value other clients (or preliminary research) have seen from utilizing the solution
- The other titles in the company likely to be involved in the decision
- The steps this persona will need to see from us to feel confident we can deliver
- Key questions sellers can ask to encourage the prospect to see the connection between problems and the solution for themselves. Remember, people are much more likely to believe in something they discover for themselves, rather than something they are told. Questions are the most important element we can arm sellers with as they prepare for the new conversations.
- Your largest competitors and a high-level overview of their positioning strategy
- The biggest objections a salesperson is likely to hear in this given market
- Targeted messaging following the Anxiety, Influence, Motivation (AIM) process to obtain and keep the prospect’s interest
Practice ahead of time
When the sales team is provided with this content, it allows them to internally practice the conversation they will be having with a buyer. They are more prepared heading into their sales calls. This results in a team that can confidently establish credibility, and discuss the new solution in the context of the prospect’s biggest goals and objectives, the problems standing in the way, how the solution solves those problems, as well as provide an example of value prospects can expect to see. They’ll also be ready to handle common objections and gain the interest of targeted personas. This strategy, when absorbed and practiced, can dramatically decrease the ramp to revenue time of a new solution.
A simple test
Review your last product launch and ask yourself, does the team have the content, and more importantly the questions required to engage in a meaningful conversation about the objectives (Business Issues) and challenges (problems) the target persona faces? Or is it weighted towards the capabilities and benefits? If it is the latter, let’s focus on providing the credibility introductions and key questions to help the teams drive to the problems this solution solves for these key target buyers.
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