SmoothAdvice

VP Sales and Marketing

How do you displace legacy practices? aka: nobody gets fired for what they have always done

New technology displacing old, environmentally unsound practices, but industry STILL wants old ways. We have a technology that is 85% effective, smaller impact, environmentally better, saves time and money. Competing against legacy products/services that are 50% effective, but easy and cheap !! We are proven (over 1000 jobs) we do not have to compete on price.

Legacy or "easy" ways of doing business have been displaced before.

How do you overcome legacy or "easy" ways of doing business??

🛢 Energy & Industrials

🧠 Advice

🏅 Competition

9 comments

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CCP

Opinionated

VP, Business Development

The pain of change has to be greater than the pain of the same. Find the pain.

SmoothAdvice

Executive

VP Sales and Marketing

Easy statement to make. We have identified and provided results. STILL the potential partner goes with "what they know". Frustrating to say the least.

CCP

Opinionated

VP, Business Development

I hear ya. For sure easier said than done especially with an incumbent.

buckets1

Politicker

More sales are lost to “no decision” than an actual competitor for precisely the reason you highlighted in your title. Identifying ambitious champions/executives looking to “make their mark” definitely can help. Curious to see others advice — I struggle with this as well.

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

Show them what happened to the people that picked the competitor.

Do.it.for.the.checks

Politicker

Account Executive

The ol IBM moto. "Noone gets fired for choosing IBM"

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I used to compete against SAP which was similar but they had some MAJOR fuck-ups including Target Canada and I then had examples of people getting fired for choosing SAP.

Do.it.for.the.checks

Politicker

Account Executive

This is incredibly hard, but if you can master the skill set. You can tackle the largest organizations.

I've posted similar things, but if you are working velocity sales. It's about hard DQs. Don't waste time on those that will choose cheap. Learn to chase new leads over maybes.

If you are working longer strategic sales, The Challenger Sale and the Challenger Customer have a lot useful info. Personally I start by putting out a ton of thought leadership stuff, videos, blogs, whatever you are comfortable with. It helps create a credible source for change management

Then devote time to segmenting personas. You need to understand that land and expand and top-down are both needed.

Automate email campaigns to Below the Line based on their role and hyper personalize outbound to Above the Line (key decision makers).

Then the key is to sell individually to the group. A CFO has different wants than a COO than a CTO then a VP then a director then a manager. The best thing you can do post demo is to call each person and talk to them as if they are the sole decision maker. A lot will push back and say the decision isn't their's. Best response I've found is "OK so if CEO unilaterally decided to buy tomorrow, besides the poor management style, what concerns would you have?"

Once you can identify each individual's (who was important enough to be part of the meetings) pain. You now can push forward.

In my experience, choosing cheap is about fear. Big deals (6 or 7 figures) are asking someone to put their career on the line. Unless you have a hyper aggressive climber, you need to find a way to divide the risk among the group, but individualize the reward.

Hope that helps. Its both too long and too short of a post

FeedTheKids

Politicker

Solutions Consultant

Tough to teach an old dog new tricks... I recommend bringing a treat.

Aka - gotta give incentives to help push people into the change they know they need.

Incentives don't need to be related to $$$$.... Not familiar with your product/industry. But sometimes you gotta get creative to get in the door.

Then once your in word of mouth will help.

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SmoothAdvice

How do you displace legacy practices? aka: nobody gets fired for what they have always done

9 comments

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