Enhance Your b2b saas sales cycle in Canada with airSlate SignNow

How to create outlook signature

all right we are here welcome everyone to today's webinar i'm your host dave duke co-founder cco at meta cx and we're really excited to bring this discussion to you today uh with our collaboration with with revenue collective today i'm welcomed uh excited to join uh three of my peers here within medics and force management so excited to introduce dan dawson a senior partner and chief sales officer of force management as well as kathleen schindler managing director of customer success at force management and jake siroffman president of of meta cx welcome everyone thanks dave good to be here well today we're going to talk about you know patterns and trends and sales methodologies in b2b sas and recently medics launched a research project on the topic of the state of sales methodologies so we're really excited to to break this down today and thank you all for for being open to it yeah absolutely all right so let's get into it so we're going to talk about it from a few different angles we're going to talk about what does it take to implement a sales methodology we're going to talk about value engineering and we're going to talk about the important alignment between sales and customer success so uh let's let's do that uh dan let's start with you you know it seems like there's a lot of people that conflate sales process with sales methodologies i think it's really important to talk about the key differences between the two so what's your take on that yeah um it's understandable uh dave that they that people would um be challenged a little bit with that because they're actually intertwined uh i would uh to set another way at the process and processes are embedded in and parts of or an attribution of if you will manifestation of a method um methods are a a repeatable step of uh approaching how to accomplish something right a and so i'll try to draw as a distinction by this when when we think of method we think of uh there are various components of a method uh one of the components is process but the first component and maybe the most important one is mindset what is the mindset that you go about approaching doing and accomplishing something uh and that might be a sales process an engagement life cycle it could be simply how do you set up and do a demo right uh the method is that mindset of what are we doing and how are we approaching that what do we need to think about it and the way we perceive of it then inside that is a process or a set of processes when we talk about a value-based conversation it's a method of doing it but the process of having the conversation is a critical aspect of it you can't suddenly start talking about your product and be value-oriented because kind of leaving it up to everybody else to figure out the value rather than understanding and maybe helping someone on the buying side of the equation reconsider their perception of the problem they're solving or that opportunity that they're trying to achieve so there's a process to do that then along with that in a method they're typically tools and a the content associated with that that's might be a script in some cases for certain roles it might be a talk track uh it might be a um another set of processes that are described right so uh that it's a very different thing because method is an overarching way you'd approach this thing processes are the various ways you accomplish certain elements of that uh so that's probably my best way of describing that interesting yeah just so mindset and then the application and the execution piece is critical obviously but it takes the the two coming together the change is hard um what are the key challenges as you can help organizations uh implement methodologies well what we're talking about in terms of that distinction is a good point about that you could have a sales process where you have discrete steps that the seller does discrete steps that an architect or an engineer might do and as part of the team the team members associated with it what you expect a buyer to be doing and so on you can do all those and i've seen sales people do this all too often and that is they go through the process but they actually forget the mindset that they're supposed to be going through and like an old sales manager of mine asked a buddy of mine who was up here does there is there anybody in that buying organization who actually knows that they're going to buy from us you've been doing all this stuff what's what's happening right so what a big piece of this in terms of change is is you have to just boil it down to the individual to begin with and build back up from there it's habits how if a method is going to change from someone presenting their product and allowing the customer to decide whether to buy it or not to understanding a problem and helping the customer solve that problem or get to some outcome that they think they want or they're exploring how to get there that the habit of telling people about the product is hard to overcome you have to change that habit into helping them understand how to do that so that's on an individual level then you have the layer of the organizational change that happens um though teams working together the habits of each of the individuals combining together to be coordinated in actually accomplishing something that's now different in the process the tools that they use and when i say tools i mean things like the crm system that someone might be using it could be the sales process it could be a script it could be a set of proof points that they might use a whole variety of things that can come into play there having those right is one thing but using them is another and as you go from the individual to the team and then you go from the team to the organization different players in those organizations as you get all the way to the top including the ceo and the board for that matter what did they do to continue to maintain and sustain a priority in this area is all too often companies are faced with changing dynamics in their marketplace let's just use covet as an example this year how many companies have been basically sidetracked from whatever initiatives they had going in the first place and had to reinstitute them and reprioritize them uh or were not able to do that right and so being able to do that and sustain that change so that the participants in the change itself recognize and can see that everyone in this organization is is working to stay aligned to get to those outcomes and the tools that we're using that environment within which we're working as individuals and team members is is fitted in such a way that that future state is now the current state if that doesn't happen what what invariably the forgetting curve which was discovered i say discovered described over 100 years ago occurs people forget we all forget people will forget about this thing that's happening today right here on the screen but they may be reminded about that when they read your research paper for example right right uh and they may be reminded of this in various other ways that they experience but overcoming the forgetting curve is what changes behaviors and that's a sustained effort it's not something that happens one thing at a time and we often see it too if you think about going back to your first question about the methods or the process those frontline leaders whether they're in marketing in sales secs those frontline leaders are coaching their teams on the specific areas of the process that they're responsible for and weaving the method methodology in there at the right time and changing those habits because if you don't have the frontline leaders buy-in whatever part of the organization they're in it's gonna fall down at some point and i think that's really like the crux of the change management piece too it's like obviously top down we're gonna this is a priority but who actually does it it's the frontline leaders with their teams yeah absolutely that's why coaching that's why coaching is so important right oh absolutely yeah and it really is its own selling exercise when you think about it but definitely aligns to coaching and how how important that is jake um talk about the the benefits of implementing the sales methodology you know there's a there's a spectrum um that exists and some have taken it all the way some are gonna just dabbling or some don't don't have one at all um what are your thoughts there and what are the the risks of not putting one in yeah great question i think the primary motivation and dan and kathleen feel the weight feel free to weigh in in this is as well but i think the primary motivation is generally lifting sales performance across your organization where performance is measured by quote attainment and acv and win rate and really looking at um all of these things through the lens of establishing a strong business case identifying problems and pains attaching to those problems and pains and using it as a basis for a getting the deal done but also doing it in a way that allows you to command a premium price point in my experience in the adoption of these methodologies is i've typically seen that it makes the the underperforming reps sort of average in the average reps high performing so you're taking what high performing reps typically do naturally sort of by reflex and default because it's just they're wired that way and you're codifying it and making it part of the standard behavior of average reps in your organization and that you know ultimately lifts the the performance of your of your revenue team there's a key point um that i think a lot of companies forget and this was revealed in our research is that post sales is equally important if not more importance and when you start looking at the dynamics in the market today around acquisition funnels becoming much more challenging and more of an emphasis on renewal and expansion value selling is about you know the promises you keep it's not just about the promises you make so the ability to shine light on value attainment in order to drive renewal and unlock the expansion motion needs to be part of how you think about sales methodology as well excellent all right we had one point on that we we see um i'll we'll talk about a little bit later but we see a lot of dramatic changes uh in fact but the reason we take a a typically multifunctional approach to getting alignment around the methodology and implementing it is that it's so critical across the life cycle of the relationship right more and more those relationships are expected to be permanent so how do we live up to that um you know there's some difficulty in in attributing well how much benefit might someone get in a methodology but the fact is it's embedded in so many different functions and the division of labor across a company if you will into different organizations that uh you know i dare say i dare say nobody actually implements a method or anything else to drive down the productivity of the organization right right so how do you collectively do that and what we see as a method actually lifts up different particular parts and different things that are in initiatives that are already ongoing or may come yeah dan and kathleen um ship gears a little bit here to talk about value engineering and really you get your thoughts on on the topic it's it's an emerging discipline it's it's growing in popularity with good reason because of the value that it brings to an organization ultimately to a sales uh sales process and then the customer base as a whole so how would you define value engineering let's start there and i want to kind of also talk about when is the appropriate time to implement that type of discipline and function yeah i can start on this one um i actually thought this is a really interesting part of the report because i think as you're growing and scaling your organization this becomes probably a lot more critical um but fundamentally really it's just hey what is the business case for you know bringing in a solution or service to solve a problem right and it's aligned to the customer value like we've talked about that mindset around the customer you know what do they care about and it's i think a lot of folks um you know do a great job around quantifying like the costs um soft or hard costs maybe there's a revenue aspect in there um sometimes quantifying risk is a little bit tougher but i think a lot of folks at the you know fundamentally value engineering is like what's what's the business case maybe there's some modeling that goes on in their analysis but hey we're going to go from our current state to some future state with some great outcomes and you know what are we expecting to return and building that with the customer during the sales process so thereby i mean they're articulating the value that they expect and you're just putting their baselines into the model and then handing it off really and on the um you know to the professional services or cs and they're really driving the execution and hoping um helping the customer realize those benefits throughout the rest of the life cycle so that's how i look at value engineering i think some some people might be a little turned off by the term oh it sounds too complex but it's really fundamentally when you're aligning to what the customer is looking to get out of service or solution i think that's really um just bringing it down to the the brass tacks excellent i think there's a fundamental um dependency that occurs with what is the engine the engineering portion of it it depends on the complexity and the proximity of the solution set in other words you're selling a product let's say let's say you're selling a product that's uh a set uh it's it's inside of a data center right and you have a set of software and hardware or some combination in there or maybe services that are that are in there well how do you how do you connect that with business value right how far of a leap has to take place uh to be able how many hops have to take place to be able to actually get to and be acknowledged by the stakeholders you know one of one of the stakeholders that we see that have emerged not just in in the covet era but certainly more so now as cfos and they're a stakeholder in this and they may or may not agree we have a saying called uh that we that we say is uh uh the customer needs to participate in their own rescue right well part of that actually has to do with how are we tracking success how are we going to actually make sure we're measuring it however complicated that might be or simple that it might be yeah they talk about the impact of of implementing sales methodologies some of them it's very simple we had one customer that said look now here's the metric from the first call that we have with a prospect to close what's our percentage what's our win rate that's pretty overarching and actually reasonably well uh easily measured uh there are a lot of things that are down inside that about what do you actually do to make that happen but that's the engineering portion of it is okay uh with with our customers and helping the customer take control of that and frankly uh keep their attention on an initiative keep the priority on the initiative uh when when you're trying to make that change uh especially when it's changes of behaviors for people is how do you make sure that that's that's actually going on in the process i think the uh measurement of it um if if the custom you know i bet you with a i don't know how many people we have on right now but i bet you as many people as we have on right now representing their companies there's probably that many or more different value engineering types of roi spreadsheets or or presentations etc and the complexity of those can can vary widely uh but the in the end the buyers and the customer over time has to determine that success and we're in the job our jobs are to help them do that and one of the things that we see in talking to our customers is that you know value engineering is only as useful as your ability to prove value realization so to the extent that you've made it a steel thread effort where the the things that you've prescribed as potential outcomes are the things that are measured and you're holding each other accountable against and as you said creating this you know this sort of alignment between you and your customer in with shared accountability around what it takes to achieve those outcomes and not using it just as the basis for getting the deal done but the accountability metrics that you that you use to bind that relationship i think that's really important that requires sort of operationalizing these value selling frameworks downstream um not just using them to get the deal done yeah i'm excited to press into that more here a little bit later especially with kathleen's perspective on customer success but before we do that dan what are the value engineering team look like you know what what are the reporting lines there for those that are either thinking about it or are just new to the concept um well first of all it's an agreed-upon set of with a buyer and by the way i would go so far as to extend that with the buyer all too often in organizations there's the buyer maybe an executive in the organization um then there's the whole body of the people in the organization who didn't have the pleasure of making the buy they got the pleasure of changing their daily life right and the activities that they perform and they may uh consciously or subconsciously be subverting that so how do you get their buy-in in addition may not be may not happen uh before the the sale takes place but this is back to jake's point about why it's so important to really look beyond focus beyond the sale to the outcomes that are that are being expected and in many cases help under first of all understand that there's a change management effort that's required small or large some things are completely invisible the the all they know all we know is hey things are working faster right so which is great but uh but on the other hand most things require changes in behavior right in some form by somebody in the organization and working together to really make the subsequent sales if you will come to subsequent agreements with those users and the managers of those users and so on to agree upon what are we really trying to accomplish and in your terms what do you how would you describe success or progress toward that success and so that so that we can measure sufficiently the leading indicators and the lagging indicators that are evident the leading are critically important because how do you manage through those things that are challenges to getting to that successful outcome or those outcomes and then of course those those lagging ones are after the fact all too often people forget that and that that value engineering is about helping to make sure that that happens whether it's very complex and has all technology embedded in the thing that actually results in some sort of a trigonometry that yields an outcome uh versus hey that's pretty simple thing let's measure these things these two three things and make progress on them and when we're not let's let's find out what's going on to hold us back we use we use a maturity model at meta cx to measure value realization and the first level of value realization is really like adopt the product and use it in the right ways right that's the most basic precondition of value realization is you use the thing when yeah actually use it just and then as we said there's leading indicators things that point in the direction of the promised outcome and those are very powerful and where possible where you can close the loop on actual roi by by capturing your customers lagging indicator data that becomes really really powerful but it it's sort of a graduated spectrum like you need all three of those things working together yeah jake back to the research i know you you were really keen to to get a better understanding of how the practice of value engineering is evolving what is the data showing yeah so interestingly we found that and i think kathleen was saying in the green room before we started here that value engineering is sometimes informal you know there's always some degree of value engineering in most companies and often it's uh financee who just has like an inclination toward it or as a skill and they become the designated de facto value engineer and then over time it becomes formalized um and and scaled in some organizations and we found that uh over 50 of b2b sas organizations now have a formalized value engineering function and when you look at the perspective of an enterprise selling motion with a higher acv longer sales cycle more complex deals um it's more like two-thirds so it is coming of age we're seeing it become more of a mainstream thing within b2b sas companies and when when you apply that to the perceived effectiveness of that of value selling and value methodology in selling methodologies it has a pretty significant impact on that so in the pre in the when there is a value engineering organization in place it means that you'll be more successful with your selling methodologies that's powerful you know and it's uh it's exciting to see because it just speaks to this uh recognition that we we just need to focus more on on what matters most to the customer and in order to do that though and scale uh in in a really efficient way we've really got to embrace a discipline like this and then like you're saying align to the methodology in meaningful ways that's great i'm going to pause quickly and just to the group if anybody has questions feel free to drop a note into the the chat happy to throw a couple of questions out to the group here and we'll do a little bit of q a at the end if anybody has questions so feel free um the next section we're going to talk about sales and customer success alignment relative to the methodologies and some of the things we've been talking about um already today kathleen go back to to you in your experience what kind of impact can a methodology have on on the customer success team as we as we move more downstream oh i think it's it's absolutely huge i mean we've obviously it's near and dear to my heart too so just i've got a little bit of bias but um i think when we we're working with customers we see different um different cs teams some that are more focused on customer sat you know keeping the customer happy we have see some that actually have renewal targets they're very focused on you know retaining that customer and then we have folks that are also doing all all of the above plus you know looking at expansion so i think there's different degrees of the cs organization but no matter what i feel like the alignment of uh the methodology between the upstream sales process and marketing process and not to the downstream cs team is huge because we're all speaking the same language it's not a mystery of what got sold and then thrown over the fence to see us and it's it's really wonderful when we're all you know in these cubic we um i often see it um with customer facing qbr's right when you've got the account team on with the customer champions economic buyers technical buyers that are on that line and it's a really efficient tight process that they've got and delivering a really effective qbr for their customer because everybody's so aligned around the language and they know what required requirements were discussed and sold in the sale process they know what outcomes and they know the metrics that we're looking the leading and lagging ones so i see it's a huge gain and it just drives a lot of great conversations with existing customers around the value they're getting out of the existing solution and service plus identifying new new opportunities too really key takeaway there is you know it really the methodology can be a catalyst for for that internal alignment that we're all looking for but we don't all know how to get there so powerful what what happens um to a customer base if a methodology isn't used what's the impact to the experience that we're delivering i think it i mean you can just start like from the initial touch from you know the demand gen team to the handoff to the ae i mean every every step in that buying and selling process i think there's just value that's leaked out if there isn't a consistent methodology that folks are using um i think it's it's worse at different points of the customer life life cycle but i think um i think really when it's really powerful too when you're having that transition meeting between this the ae that you know just closed the deal is on a high because they close this big six-figure deal they're handing it off to their cs counterpart with a few people from the customer and if they're not aligned if they're not speaking the same language it it it just sets the onboarding process off from like on the wrong foot right from the get-go so i feel like that alignment the ti and oftentimes too we see especially on these bigger deals you know with larger enterprises or global accounts cs is involved a little bit earlier um in toward the end of the sales process they're bringing them in saying hey this is the team that you're working with you know the what we heard through all throughout the sales process is common knowledge um so i think that's just really strong um and great leveraging of the methodology when you've got um sales marketing cs even professional services all aligned behind it that's great and jake we go back to the data it's actually there's a lot of room for improvement here yeah as a whole um because cs teams are actually least likely to adopt the sales methodology so what do you think that says about the general alignment between the between the functions nothing good it was probably the mercenary finding honestly uh i was expecting there'd be much more alignment there let me just paint a picture of what the anti-pattern looks like and we see this this is kind of like visceral we've all sort of experienced this kathleen's alluding to the the the fumbled handoff like once the deal is closed it's like all the good will and momentum in the sales cycle is lost as we move into you know handing it off to the delivery team and the customer notices like the customer feels excitement and confidence and then that's sort of dashed so you're starting the relationship on your back foot and it just sets the tone and then when you're we're approaching qbrs and renewal events very much like what kathleen was describing it becomes kind of a retroactive scramble to back solve um and and paint the picture of a value realized and try to understand what you promised in the first place it's not a good look your customer picks up on it very quickly puts customer success in a really really difficult position of having to exercise heroics in order to kick save deals um if if you have that alignment from front to back um then you're sort of your engineering outcomes to a degree like the thing you promise is the thing you deliver is the thing you prove and uh it just it creates a whole lot more confidence in that relationship so coming back to the finding yes when we looked when we asked about other customer facing revenue generating functions outside of the traditional selling organization customer success was the least aligned to the methodology less than marketing less so than professional professional services it's interesting too sometimes i i've seen this too with with our customers using sales methodology sometimes with cs is just the wrong thing to do because they're they're on this journey um they're on the journey right a lot of rcs customers are transitioning to be more accountable for renewals or expansion so they're they're on a journey it's a change management effort and sometimes when we hear when they hear sales methodology they just shut down and so sometimes it's changing it's like the customer engagement methodology the go to market methodology whatever it is um into alignment with sales so sometimes the word sales is a bad word yeah you lost you failed yeah yeah as a as a chief sales officer and a um some kind of a criminal who's been in this business for a year uh i i i've formulated a theory about this and i've actually had some customer success folks tell me a straight up sales sales is a huckster job right you are manipulating someone into doing something by and large um that is a that is an entirely inaccurate description of what sales is and the best sales people the best sales organizations fix on something else completely and they actually are the anti of doing that regulation they are focused on helping people get to an outcome they can't get to on their own period the the if if you stray from that that's what i call true north if you stray from that you begin to think about yourself and what you're trying to accomplish and that's just general bad behavior from anybody's point of view it doesn't matter what role you're in um if the cfo were to decide to do that to stop keeping track of what's important about the company and managing profitability and growth and so on and start to do the wrong things we would we would look very much askance at that and we do in terms of sales methodology uh the i've i've actually had cs people say look i got into cs specifically to not be in sales well that's great and that's uh that's understandable but guess what you're doing the same thing oh yeah sales people uh in a slightly different part of the overall process but and that engagement of a life cycle engagement with a customer but your role is is to help them get that outcome that was signed up for whether you completely agreed with it or not or you think it's achievable or not that's just sometimes there's monumental challenges right the you know that's part of the reason to answer one of the questions that popped up that's part of the reason why we do encourage bringing cs and professional services people the delivery types of the organization into the buying process prior to the completion of the buy you notice i didn't say the selling process prior to the sale it is and if done well it's the same thing but the helping the the buying organization not just that that single decision maker uh but those people who have to live with this understand how do they get a great outcome and and likewise the selling entity the delivering side of the organization understand how are they going to do that all too often if you don't have a method and you don't have an approach to doing this which is overarching across these organizations that's intently focused on getting a great experience for the buying entity if you don't do that well guess what sales people do ncs people and all the rest of us here we make it up yeah that's this becomes obvious in those handouts it becomes obvious in those meetings right and that's why they're so critical yeah and i get uniformity and actually consistent great outcomes right what's your point things just break down and i i uh that really resonates with me been in customer success for for many years now and we're always selling you know you're always selling the the value that's being positioned and and delivered i don't care what what your title is uh because of the the dynamics of the relationship you know especially the subscription-based economy where you know you're basically the clock is is always counting down so you should always be keeping that in mind but understanding the importance of every single interaction which often requires uh the positioning of of the work that you're doing you know what else we could be doing and the value of what's being been delivered thus far so i think that's a really good point and um you you highlight it but thank you to joe for throwing in a question there and uh daphne thanks for chiming in as well so we uh a few more minutes here and jake you know as we get into the research one more time you know there are a set of recommendations that that surfaced that i think would be great to share just as we reflect on uh the importance of of implementing methodology and the importance of really considering the the impact that a value engineering team can hand and then now we're talking about alignment so could you share some of those recommendations with with the group sure so there were five uh in the report and feel free to download the report to see the detail of them but i think we're hitting on a lot of these the first is you know looking beyond sales to ensure that there's alignment and adoption outside of the sales organization all from the perspective of the customer experience you're you're creating and creating continuity between the promises you make and the promises that you're able to keep and prove and specifically the gap between sales and marketing we talked a lot about the handoff between sales sales and customer success the handoff between those functions and then importantly ensuring that there's a that you've tied off the the outcomes that you've positioned uh to get the deal done with some way of measuring that they've been delivered value engineering so in my experience and in this research it makes a huge difference in terms of the effectiveness of your sales performance and your effectiveness of these methodologies in general particularly as you move up market one of the things that i've seen uh be interested in hearing your perspectives on is that you know it's a very high cost function these are not cheap resources and the utilization of the resource is often uh not where it should be they you find a few select sellers who know how to make best use of the value engineering team and they do that with pleasure and then others who are really not able to realize the same value so you end up seeing a lot of the value of value engineering sort of siloed entrapped and unlocking and operationalizing that value i think is another area to look um we'll leave it there there's a few other recommendations that map to some of the findings that we didn't talk about in this conversation but those would be the three that i'd call out excellent dan i think any thoughts on on what jake's elaborating on yeah uh in particular the value engineering thing i think all too often what happens you think of engineering and you think it's we're going to engineer a value and some sort of an assessment or keeping track of it and so on and again like i mentioned earlier you can it can be complex sometimes it can be a series of hops to get to what is relevant for the various stakeholders and so that it derives into different uh attributes i guess of that of that value uh that stakeholders variously care about so um the what can happen and we it needs to be guarded against and part of what drives the siloing of it and the the lack of utilization is that it's over engineered and so i think one of the concepts we have with approaching uh the the instilling of methods inside of an organization is to make it consumable for the constituents it has to be as comprehensive as possible on the one hand but it also has which is a bit of a dichotomy it has to be consumable and so and by and large there are some scripts that that are necessary for some roles that are very uh maybe brand new into their role that they're doing and so they need to be guided more specifically uh but by and large people need to have that mindset and understand that that is the orientation that we're working toward is an outcome how do we how do we consider that value and the attributes of it who cares about it and what do we need to do to assist them and what do they need to do to assist us to have a whole view of it because one party or the other can become quite blind to what's going on uh inadvertently and so uh that's where i think many many people find their challenges because they they have difficulties in reporting or can't quite pull themselves together in terms of that engineering of the value engineering approach and what they're doing to measure and score and so on uh and while others don't see when they look at the whole thing they say well that's not relevant well there may only be one portion of it that's relevant to a particular constituent group so that's understandable right that's what they care about uh and what they can have an an impact on they can actually have some uh monicum of control over it uh so i think there's a variety of things to take into consideration when implementing that sort of a thing one of the most important of which is to keep it consumable and and usable um on a wide scale and continue to enable people to do it but we're back to the habits we're back to the to the old way of things the forgetting and so on people need reminders and coaching and assistants to become familiar with it yeah yeah yeah well sometimes the value engineers can geek out right just like this i love their products right you geek out on your product you get on the business case you're building so it's like hey how do you keep it like stands at the balance between comprehensive and and consumable totally one of our yeah you know one of our customers actually did this they uh when we came in we were implementing one of our methods called command of the message and uh he was a product and engineering uh organize organization and he was a bit skeptical during the uh approach but when we got into early stages of our ultimately uh of the project itself and the initiative we go through a discover what we call a discovery process and then some workshops to work on it when we as soon as he got into that within within minutes of understanding what this was he whips out his value engineering thing and this is exactly completely aligned to what we're trying to do he says but but what we have in our value engineering uh capabilities here isn't something sales people they they're not going to do it they can't do it they're not equipped they shouldn't be expected to do that part there are other parts of the organization the systems engineering organization for example in the product organization who are fully capable of doing that so engaging them in that uh approach and using this our method because the command of the message method actually dovetails completely together with this and we can and so he says i can fully support this i'm all over this and he has been ever since he's been he's quite the guy uh in terms of really jumping in to help with the sales people on the one hand but to help the sales people help them in the systems engineering to help the customer actually get to the level of depth that they need i love that yeah i love that david's having audio issues looks like dave's going to start doing his sign language right uh you know one comment i'll make on on just value engineering in general and and what you're talking about here dave uh dan it's almost like democratizing this skill set you know which i think requires uh standardized in a way that makes it more consumable as you said um but also tying it to a framework like these the the sales methodologies that we're talking about today so it doesn't feel like the specialized thing it's it's nothing more than a manifestation of our approach to how we sell and position absolutely uh what we see is um because of the the necessary division of labor within organizations you you have to be aware of certain other things that doesn't mean you have to be an expert in it and so the sellers don't necessarily need to be an expert of it they just need to know how to how do you set this up totally what are the right kinds of questions you need to be asking and the right the right set of stakeholders you need to be bringing into the conversation so that the the value engineering portion of this the more technical aspects in many cases that we've referred to can actually uh do their part and do it with a level of depth and credibility that it's really hugely valuable and sustainable over time dave how totally you doing over there we've made we've made this webinar real this is just yeah so look what good any other final thoughts dan kathleen well i think there was one other question that was going to be asked around the impact of these of methods and so yeah and they vary based upon how uh um based upon the method right based upon what is actually being uh instilled into the organization medic's a good example medic is not a overarching sales methodology it is a qualification methodology that's largely intended for an internal conversation how are we doing if i have a 10 opportunities as a sales rep how am i doing in those 10 opportunities and oh by the way is there one or more of them in this set that i shouldn't be working on right now i should be saving my time because i'm paying an opportunity cost for pursuing it and with that and in some cases all too often what i'd call a turning it into a car chase with a buyer that has no end they're not buying right now they're just not they're incapable of buying or they don't have they don't understand and so next thing you know there's the movie bullet and they're driving around in the in the city the buyer trying to get away and the seller's like no freaking way i'm going to take you out so that's bad selling behavior right that's a great amount the method is intended to overcome that but it's just that it is not necessarily going to help someone have a value-oriented conversation with a buyer and understand how to do that uh so those uh the outcomes there for for medic for example is velocity uh win rates there's great outcomes we've seen we've seen companies double their win rate they actually when they initially went through the thing they went through the medic and they they learned it said okay let's have a look at our pipeline now through the lens of medic well guess what happens it shrinks yeah very often it shrinks and that's it's scary but it's not an altogether bad thing that also then then begins to point to well what else do we need to do we need to get more in the top of the funnel if there's not enough exactly and we also need to continue to work on those gaps that we do have on the in the pipeline that is real right what are those things we need to be paying attention to and a very common one in medic is getting a champion for example anyway those the outcomes related to all of that are enormous outcomes uh with command of the message we see literally we've had uh organizations have a 50 increase in their asp not everybody your mileage may vary on any of these and i'm not advertising for force management methodologies i'm advertising for methods yeah and and uh in doing that i think we're the best by the way but that's just on the side that the uh develop being able a value-based conversation for example whatever that is you do that pays dividends within families within communities if you if you espouse that approach to understanding what people are trying to achieve the outcomes that you're trying to get to you can start to get consensus you may not achieve it 100 all the time but at least you're oriented around trying to do that rather than reporting a certain thing to do right out of the shoot but average sale prices the overall revenue the valuation of companies we've had companies come back and tell us we got three times what we thought we would get for this company and we attribute it to the to the change that we made and i attribute it to them they sometimes they come back and say well thanks to fm blah blah i say no we're like yoda you know we can we can advertise we can help you understand that you're the hero in this you're the luke skywalkers in this you have the customers that implement this are the heroes and that's what methodologies can do for companies and well that's enormous and it's widespread i love it there's both sales performance advice and relationship advice in there thank you dan yeah it's fantastic well i i think i think we're nearing time here um and dave is not coming back sadly um so these things happen in live webinars right i hope it was a useful conversation one thing i would recommend uh everyone to do is please download the research we've been talking about you can get it at metacx.com um and we'll also follow up with an email with the link to the research so you can go ahead and take a look we appreciate dan and kathleen you joining us today and dave if you can hear it thank you um and and looking forward to continuing this conversation thanks so much for uh spending some time with us today you bet thank you thanks everybody go sell something okay