February 8, 2023

How to Craft a Point of View

ESN #001

Jamal Reimer

I am stoked to deliver the inaugural edition of the Enterprise Sellers newsletter – a bimonthly newsletter to help you make enterprise sales your vehicle to the life you want.

We’ll start with actionable tips and build to interviews with mega dealers, events, t-shirt campaigns and all kinds of goodness for enterprise sellers. If you are an enterprise seller, you have found your tribe. Your peeps. Welcome to the family.

Today’s issue takes about 4 minutes to read.

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The point of view is the heart and soul of your value story for your customers.

It is your statement defining how your customer’s world works and what they need to do to win.

As one of my best coachees (Dustin Brown, the #1 rep at Outreach) said:

“The point of view is your opener and the opener is the new close.”

If you nail the point of view, you are more than halfway to the conceptual sale, especially for an executive audience who will probably only pay attention for the first five minutes anyway…

Unfortunately, most sellers aren’t taught masterful presentation skills and thus totally miss this key element of a presentation.

Other reasons reps don’t use the point of view concept:

Their company standard decks start presos with slide after slide about their company, logo lists, products. Bleh.
They don’t think they have anything insightful to add at such a strategic level.
They don’t even know the point of view concept exists.
They are stuck in transactional selling mode.

But fortunately, a point of view is doable for every offering, even if you are challenged with all the reasons above.

Step 1: Identify the capability your offering enables.

For our purposes, a capability is “the ability to get something done or achieved” which sets of features and functions enable.

For example:

Excel spreadsheet functionality enables accounting departments to close quarterly books in x days, not weeks.

Seismic – enable sellers to grow without the growing pains.

Vidyard – video tools for virtual sales – the key to making remote selling easy.

If you are wondering where to get started creating your Point of View, here are some questions to ask yourself:

What is the outcome your solution enables? (the measurable result)
What capability does it enable? (the ability to perform a business function – mobile payments, integrate two specific systems, etc.)
Why is that capability important?
In what business environment is that capability a key differentiator?
How can you describe today’s business environment where that capability creates winners?

**Step 2: Articulate why this capability (not product) is critical for your customer to win**

Find goals that are trending among your customers – digital transformation, doing more with less, positive cash flow operations, etc.

Pick a goal which can be met through the critical capability your offering enables.

Step 3: State that relationship as a world view.

Set the goal posts in your audience’s thinking with a strong “this is how the world works” statement.

This is super critical for the point of view to land with impact. There must be a clear relationship between how the customer’s business world works today and the capabilities your offer delivers better than any alternative.

Zuora did this perfectly in the opening slide of what has been called, “The greatest sales deck I’ve ever seen,” by startup marketing guru, Andy Raskin.

Zuora anchored their point of view in seven words:

“We now live in a subscription economy.”

Like it or not, that is the reality of the world and as such all companies need to deal with its implications.

“There will be winners and losers”

Creates opportunity and risk.

“Customers now expect the subscription experience.”

Another strong factual statement which the audience cannot deny.

“Subscription Identity”

Step 4: Create a win or lose image about the capability

Create a sense of do-or-die by highlighting the fate of companies who developed the critical capability which your product enables (winners) and those who didn’t (losers).

WINNER

LOSER

Step 5: Reveal the Insight and Path to the Promised Land

Pull back the curtain on the common thread that makes or breaks success, which of course leads to your offering.

Zuora details the new expectations of customers, which are all enabled by functionality in their product.

The journey to the Promised Land should be depicted as aspirational but hard to accomplish if the customer tries it on their own. They need your help and your help alone. One way to hammer home that your solution is the only path that will achieve the desired outcome is to paint your way as the “New Way” and everyone else’s as the “Old Way.”

Step 6: Prove It

Give hard-hitting examples of how your product has moved the needle for other customers.

Step 7: Call To Action

Show the customer the action steps or milestones to achieve the goal and invite them to enter into a serious evaluation of your claims.

Takeaways

The Point of View is a massively powerful tool, especially with executives, when you and your team invest the time to do it right.

Its impact is in highlighting the needed capability. The mention of your product comes in only after the criticality of the capability is established.

Make sure your insight reveals something new, not the same themes the customer has heard from other vendors or consultants like, “the top four trends in xyz industry.” That will fall flat.