Improving Your Metric-Based Conversations

It usually integrates well with other systems. So they're looking for these technical metrics that are really important to us, and the other metrics and this is the area where I see Rachel where there's usually more of a struggle. It's the business metrics. And these metrics usually appeal to the executives or the economic buyer and decision makers who are concerned with the overall impact of the business, such

as return on investment, cost saving, strategic alignment. They help in the understanding of how the solution contributes to a broader business goal. Right, some of the strategic goals that organizations have that we're trying to meet, and if we can tie ourselves to that, then we're associating ourselves our metrics with with what those business metrics need to be, and those are really the two key areas and one differentiator.

I do want to mention you had mentioned in the introduction between medic and command of the message and how metrics ties into both of those, And oftentimes there's confusion around the metrics and medic which is going to be more tied towards that economic buyer, and the metrics and command of the message, which are the metrics that are

going to help us achieve the required capabilities. So there's a slight difference that's there, and I think that creates a little bit of the confusion, But we're here to solve that today and try to get people clear on how to differentiate between the two.

those high level business issues. She talked a little bit about the challenge that reps have, but do you think sometimes getting to those higher level metrics is that they're just not reaching enough, or the business issues are like drive efficiency and they don't know how to measure that specifically, like what are your reasons there?

And I think some of the other things RACHEL that people get caught up on is every REP that we work with and every REP in the globe right they've all got pressure to meet specific goals and specific targets, which can cause stress and cause them to skip steps. And this is one of the ones that get skipped

is understanding what are those metrics beyond technical. I think most of the reps that we work with do a nice job of understanding technically, what are the metrics we need to be able to solve for but from a business perspective, again to your point, the reach in talking to those true economic buyers, understanding the strategic initiatives that

an organization has. And I'll give you an example. I was working with a client last week and it was a client that was based in EMEA, and we were talking about metrics, this exact topic, and in this conversation, I just happened to pull up the company that we were dealing with on their opportunity review. I pulled up their website and listed right there on their website where

seven strategic priorities. And in those seven strategic priorities, two of them were tied to customer satisfaction and enhancement in

the technologies in order to achieve their goals. Now, this company that we were working with, they're kind of in the security space, something we deal with a lot, and associating how their solution was going to help resolve some of those strategic initiatives that they have to ensure that customers were getting the experience that they were looking for, to ensure that they were able to advance the technology platform to a place where they can be more efficient

and more effective if they can associate themselves with that, then we can tie that back to revenue growth, we can tie that back to customer satisfaction statistics, things that Again, if we're not reaching, if we're not doing the research to understand what is happening within these organizations. And this is information, especially for a public and trading company, that's very easy to come by, so they get a little bit more complex. It's not as easy as speeds and feeds,

so they become more complex. And then sometimes there's some misalignment. Sometimes the metrics they are asked to focus on don't align with the economic buyer's personal goals in addition to the company goals. We've got to understand both of those. I think the last thing that I'll say is we get so caught up in selling on value and then we get dumped into negotiating on price, and understanding the value that we're selling on comes through our ability to

achieve those goals. But if we immediately jump back down to price, our metrics tend to get lost in the wash. And so those are some of the things I see as far as frustrations with some of the reps that we work with. Rachel and when it comes to the metrics.

So can you you mentioned questions a little bit ago, can you talk about aligning to the metrics and asking the right questions so you can do so?

truly understanding the client's needs and concerns. And so some of the questions that you can ask, So I'll give you a couple of examples of questions. What benchmarks or industry standards are you comparing your current solution against is one example. How are you measuring that? Now? Again, I'm going to pause there for a second, because oftentimes they'll know what the benchmarks that they're trying to compare themselves to, but their measurements are unclear. They're unsure how to measure.

So we, being the professionals that we are and the services that we provide to our customers, we have to have a perspective. If the customer's unsure, if they're not confident in the way they're measuring that, now we have to share a perspective on here's what we've done that in the past. And this is going to lead right into some of the proof points and how metrics today's metrics are tomorrow's proof points. Another good follow up question, or a question that we can ask is who do

we share these metrics with? Who gets the reports, who gets these insights, who looks at them? If it is at a technical level, we probably need to elevate the game up a little higher to understand how do these technical metrics start to tie into more bigger initiatives or strategic initiatives. And then the last what key performance indicators or KPIs are you using to measure the effectiveness of

your current solution. And again that's the place where they may not feel confident in the way they're currently measuring those things, and we have to have a perspective. We have to be the subject matter experts at this point because we have done this with other customers, which I think Rachel, you're probably going to ask me about current customers and how we lead into that. Oh, either wait until you ask me that question, or I can answer.

what we've accomplished with what we sold them. Initially, we passed it on to somebody else in the organization and that person may or may not be the way you did before you close the deal, or we have just moved on to other things and now we've shown up at the doorstep of our customers saying it's time for renewal.

I'm here, and again, this is a huge opportunity. And I think those that can master this, that can understand how they're accomplishing what they said they were going to accomplish those business pains that they had and accomplishing the strategic goals that our customers have by aligning the metrics and having visibility on that on a consistent basis with our customers when renewal time shows up. Now I've got a proof point that is right inside the four walls

of the customer. I'm trying to renew versus starting all over again with the sales process, trying to figure out who's the economic body, who's my champion? How are we going to position on an opportunity as best we can? And I see this all the time. It is a very consistent challenge that I see is that aes aren't taking a look at where have we seen success in what we've already implemented within these customers, And so we've got to share that.

But I know that there's some pep falls that reps will fall into as they progress through the buying selling process when it comes to those metrics. So talk about what you see once those things are established and now we're moving forward. What are the pitfalls that you see reps fall into as it relates to them.

and we're misaligned with what is important to them. And oftentimes there's so many thoughts that I have around this is that we look at procurement as an organization or a group of people that we want to try to avoid versus trying to understand what's important to them. We have to remember that their customer is our customer too, that their buyer is our buyer. We're working with the

same buyer in this situation. And more often than not in my experience and working with procurement teams, is they don't know what the outcomes that the buyer is looking for. They're just told to go negotiate. Price is important to them.

But if we take the time to educate and understand what's important from a procurement standpoint and understanding what else are they measured on, how can we ensure that they hit their metrics not only from a cost savings perspective, if that's even an alternative of something we can work with,

but understanding other metrics that are important to them. And then talk to them about what they understand about the product or services or tool that their organization is purchasing that's going to help achieve the outcomes that they're looking for. And that's just an example, but oftentimes we're misaligned that are we talking technical metrics to somebody on the finance team? Are we talking business metrics to somebody on the technical team.

We've got to make sure to your point around the collect If yes, what are all the metrics are important? How do we prioritize those? How do we stock rank them to make sure that they're important and seen across multiple audiences?

metrics story as well. Yeah, you know you mentioned using

metrics with customers. Obviously something to show your proof of success within an account, right if you're doing that right, But also it seems to be you know, I mentioned them being kind of the teeth of the deal, and as we move through a sales process or even in the renewal like that whole ca from engagement process, you as the quarterback of the deal or the salesperson, need to typically remind everybody about what you heard, what we're

trying to drive, Here are the requirements for success, and those metrics can also be kind of something to ground your buyer on, like, hey, let's all remember what we're trying to do here with or without us, You guys need to improve these metrics or something like.

to different people, the things we've talked about already. But I think the other thing is, and again this is the common problem that I see is that once we close the deal, we move on to other things and ensharing that you have consistent visibility with your customer on we said we were going to accomplish these things, this

is how we're performing. Do that in a quarterly business review And again, very rarely do I see a consistency with the customers that we've worked with over the years, Rachel, where there's a quarterly business review with the customer that is talking about not just the speeds and feeds and technical metrics, but the business metrics and how we're accomplishing some of these strategic initiatives that we said we're going to be able to solve for with the solution we

brought to the table. And so these qbrs are the time and the place to talk about here's how we're accomplishing those goals, and to find out what's changed, what's different, what is moving, How did the needle move from today to tomorrow? Because there's challenges when aligning metrics with their strategic goals. There's data quality issues, right, I mean, there's a list of things that I can go through, from having inaccurate data, having data in silos, where how do

we pull all this together? And so the visibility becomes poor and there's resistance to change. We're not a company it looks at data points like that, and there's a lack of buy in from certain levels of the organization. We could help drive these things by having the right visibility.

There's again the complexity and the overload. There's too many metrics right, Try to keep it simple, right and if you have I always like to say, let's get three or four metrics that we can really hone in on versus having twelve to fourteen and most of them go missing because nobody's paying attention to twelve to fourteen different metrics.

Market conditions right, there's changing market dynamics that are happening every day right now, and we've got to be well aware of how these changes can make it difficult to teap metrics relevant and current with the business conditions. So we've got to be agile. We've got to make sure we understand how to adapt and change as time is

moving on. And if we're not staying in front of that and we're not talking to our customers about that on a consistent basis, as I said at a quarterly business review, when it comes time to renewal, you will be starting all over again. Versus speeding up your sales process, staying in front of it, working with your customer success team,

working with your account management team. However, you're structured to ensure that there's consistent communication with how you're performing against what you said you.

It involves having stakeholder engagement and continuous review and adjustment of metrics to ensure that they remain aligned with your customer's goals. And if you can do that again, you'll start to separate yourself from how you sell versus what you sell.