Welcome to our continuing series on Data-Driven Sales, where we break down how you can transition your team, process, and sales motion to close prospects faster and expand customers bigger using data you already have in your enterprise. In this post, we break down an enterprise opportunity motion and how you can complement your existing process with customer data using Variance.

Why do you want to implement this process? 

We want to take your qualification process and make it bullet-proof. Combining customer data with an excellent seller and traditional sales motion will tighten up your forecasting model, allow you to disqualify jokers faster, and fast-track ideal customers. For more information on how to get at this critical customer data, here are a few primer posts on the subject: 

Let’s go through your opportunity inspection questions and think about the ways we can answer them with data generated by your customers. If you read this and are like, “Damn, I wish we could do this!” Reach out, we can help.

Augmenting your qualification with customer data

Validate lead 

Traditional:

  1. What information has been provided to determine we are a good business fit?
  2. What information has been provided to indicate that we are technically viable?
  3. What are the prospect’s top business drivers and technology strategies? 
  4. How will a decision be made?
  5. Describe how the customer is managing customer data today. Why should they change?

Additional customer data:

  1. Does the lead check all the firmographic data for your ICP in Variance (I won’t say Variance each time but assume all this data can be tracked and measured for each question against customer data moving forward)? 
  2. Does the lead have the validated tech stack to use your solution? 
  3. Are the buying personas or their proxies willing/able to use the product in order to realize value? Do you have the behavioral/usage data laid out for each persona to complete? 

Discovery

Traditional:

  1. Have the business and technical pains been qualified by the stakeholders?
  2. What Metrics are compelling to them?
  3. Do you know why they would buy now and what a compelling event might be?
  4. What is their process to evaluate and procure software? (Decision Process)
  5. What are the technical and business success criteria? (Decision Criteria)

Additional customer data:

  1. Do you know how to prove out Metrics in a POC in our product and are tracking the relevant milestones? 
  2. Have you built out milestones around their Decision Process and Decision Criteria to track as you go through the evaluation? 
  3. Are you getting alerts and have you set up cadences for when specific buyers take action in and around our product around key events? 

Scoping

Traditional:

  1. Has the decision process and decision criteria been validated by the Technical Buyer and Champion?
  2. Have you tested your Champion? What’s the evidence that they are a Champion?
  3. What is the favorable decision criteria for your solution? What is it for the competitor?
  4. Have we completed an internal deal strategy review? 

Additional customer data:

  1. Have your milestones been validated and all buyers have seen the value in our product? 
  2. Has a milestone been built out around the paperwork process with Docusign that can be tracked against other signals like docs and pricing page visits? 

Validate solution

Traditional:

  1. Have the key stakeholders seen the results of our technical validation?
  2. Has the technical buyer confirmed we meet technical needs and is sponsoring us as the vendor of choice?
  3. Have you vetted preliminary proposals with the Champion and Technical Buyer?
  4. Have we positioned our MSA and agreed on a contractual path forward?

Additional customer data:

  1. Have the key buyers been in the product of their proxies have been clearly identified through contact milestones? 
  2. Have the important buyer personas hit the proposal link? 
  3. Has there been any visits from the customer on the MSA or other important pages? 

Solution proposal

Traditional:

  1. Has the Champion/Economic Buyer confirmed our proposal meets business needs and recommends as the solution?
  2. Have they signed off on the implementation plan? 
  3. Are there any risks to the deal? Why would they not move forward with us?
  4. What are we prepared to give/get in negotiation?

Additional customer data:

  1. Have they spent time with your proposal (eg. Docsend) on our pricing page and/or around other closing docs? 
  2. Have you noticed a drop-off in product usage and/or new people signing up for the product or visiting the website? 

Negotiate and close

Traditional:

  1. Does the buyer have all the necessary documents to execute the contract?
  2. Do you know who will ultimately sign the contract?
  3. Have you walked through the negotiation plan, deal structure, and potential contractual obstacles?
  4. Have we scheduled a customer kickoff call?
  5. What are the legal or contractual obstacles?

Additional customer data:

  1. Have you noticed anything unusual about product usage as you have gotten closer to the closing timeline? 
  2. Has there been an increase in visits to docs pages and/or other pages that have to do with your implementation? 

Ideally, this becomes one process in your org where you don’t treat customer data as a second-class citizen to your traditional process. With the ability to map your ideal customer journey you can also look at your process and ask yourself where you can continue to edit it down and simplify it. As with any form of mastery, as you get stronger, your process should get tightened and easier to execute. 

Try the Variance customer growth platform

Join some of the world's top software companies that use Variance to power data-driven sales.
Get Started 🎉

Subscribe to Variance News

An inside look at building a company delivered in (roughly) bi-monthly installments

Thanks for signing up.
Look out for our newsletter!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Get to know Variance

We believe the best way to learn about a product is to read the documentation. Have a look around.

Explore our Docs