127 – A Repeatable Sales Process – And Why You Don’t Have One

The goal is a repeatable sales process, but…

One of the goals of a relatively early stage company is to establish some sales and marketing traction. This is often called “a repeatable sales model.” Which means that a trained sales person – trained on how to market and sell your product – can successfully sell the product to qualified prospects.

Sounds simple. But… lots of companies struggle. Why?

In my experience, there are five main reasons. (My experience is mostly from enterprise software, so the reasons your company may have challenges with a repeatable sales model might be different.)

Five reasons:

* Marketing doesn’t select for the ideal customer, and reject non-ideal customers.

* Sales does poor discovery and qualification.

* Bad objection handling.

* Demos are focused on feature/function instead of the prospect’s problems.

* Overall poor use of customer stories.

In this episode I share a concept I use and talk about a lot.

The Minimum Viable Product Knowledge (MVPK)

(I’m sorry for the clumsy name. Maybe I’ll come up with a better one.)

There are six components to the MVPK:

* The value proposition

* The targeted segment, the segment of the people who have the problem, you solve with your product

* Some information about discovery, and qualifying questions

* Objection handling information.

* Customer success stories to support all these items.

* And I often talk about a bonus item – the demo.

MVPK template

I don’t actually have the template ready. But if you go to this link you can get on the mailing list for the template when it’s ready in early 2023.

Related podcast episodes and articles

* The Product Management – Product Marketing Interface episode.

* Sales Not Making Quota? It’s Probably Your Fault episode.

New! The Secrets of Product Management Community

I’ve started up a new community where we can come together to talk more about all things product. Go to secretsofpm.com/community to check it out!

I’m building this community, with help from Deedee Olsen at Clever.fm (who’s a product manager herself) to give you and me and the rest of the listeners a place to connect and talk and learn about the key ingredients that make for a successful and fulfilling product management career.

And that means all the kinds of things I cover on the podcast:

* How to create great products and take them to market

* How to manage your own career

* Working with others in your organization

* Getting through and over creative blocks… and so much more.

The community will feature forums, workshops, documents and training guides, live events, and opportunities to give back to our communities.

And you can participate in the podcast itself by leaving me questions and comments via the voice memo tool. Your message might even be featured in the podcast!

As the community grows we’ll be adding more and more ways to engage. Right now a great place to start is the icebreaker discussion thread. If you check it out you can see my answer to the question as the first entry. I’d love to hear from you.

The goal is a repeatable sales process, but…