[00:00:00] My lovely people, in this episode of the B2B Sales Trends Podcast, we'll explore how sales teams can move beyond selling products and operational efficiencies to connect their solutions to the strategic business outcomes that customers are investing in.
[00:00:17] We'll look at what are those changes, who sellers are engaging with, the questions they have to ask and should ask, and how they build a business case that can compete for executive attention and budget. A fully packed episode today. My guest today is Joseph Gnorski. Joseph is the President Americas at Glory Global Solutions, Inc.
[00:00:46] Joe, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Eric. Glad to be here. Let's dive right into it. For a long time, Joe, many B2B companies have successfully sold around sort of the operational value their solutions create. But increasingly, that alone may not be enough to get an investment prioritized these days.
[00:01:09] What's driving the need for sellers to move beyond operational benefits and connect what they sell to the larger business outcomes? Yeah, I think you're exactly right. For a long time, most B2B sales organizations won on operational value. I know I did for decades, right? That was what we were pitching. It's what companies were interested in. And, you know, when you can come in and say, I've saved labor, I'm creating efficiency, I reduce your downtime, whatever it might be.
[00:01:37] Those were things that mattered at the operational level, right? That's what people were by. But today, I think the reality is that every company has more good opportunities to do things than they do capital, right? And that's where this really starts to elevate the conversation within the organization, right?
[00:02:00] So you have to move from that operational level to the things that matter a step or two above who those people are when those things actually matter, right? So your competition isn't just your biggest competitor or a vendor that you're competing against. The biggest competitor I think most companies have today is every other project that's fighting for funding, right? So a CFO isn't looking at this anymore, or even myself in my current role, right?
[00:02:27] I don't look at things and think, is this going to improve efficiency, right? I'm looking at when somebody wants me to spend money on something, and I'm asking myself, why should I fund this instead of AI, instead of automation, instead of cybersecurity even, right? It isn't always just, you know, new projects that create some cool new thing for the company. Sometimes it's things that protect us. You know, it could be mergers, right?
[00:02:54] It could be risk reduction, all kinds of different things that are being asked up all the time. Those are the things you're really competing with. So even when you have known solutions, you know, you're going back to an existing customer, or they use the competitor today and you're changing it out, people often think, well, they know the value of it. They just have to know why they should buy it from me versus the other guy. The reality is you're not competing with that other guy. You are a little, but they're going to look at that investment, and they're going to compare it to everything else that's there.
[00:03:20] And I think that's where the, because those conversations now are getting higher in the organization, you've got to start changing what you talk about. I think you've just, in your response here, you've included what's for me a really important question that any seller should put next to their desk. And that should be the guiding question. You said, why should I fund this, right?
[00:03:48] And the answer always has to be the outcomes. I'm funding something to gain a better outcome or to avoid a greater risk, right? This is what I take the step for to fund this, to start this project or, you know, whatever it is. So I think this is a super cool nugget for people to hear to say, why should I fund this? Ask yourself that big question.
[00:04:16] And you as a seller need to provide that answer for this. Well, and I think that, Harry, I think that the test of that then becomes, right, if you have your operational benefit and you asked yourself that question as though you were the business executive you're pitching to, do you really think the business executive would say, why should I fund this? Well, because I'm going to save labor. Yeah, right. I mean, there's a big connection between saving labor and the actual business outcome, right? It's not that operational benefit. Nobody would answer the question that way at a senior level within a company.
[00:04:46] And that's a good litmus test for is what I'm selling going to resonate and is it at the right level? Making that shift, though, requires sellers to connect what their solution does to a much bigger picture, should I say, for the customer, right? How do you take something that may deliver a very specific operational benefit and connect it to a strategic priority
[00:05:14] like, I don't know, profitability, working capital growth or risk and so forth? Yeah, no, that's a really good question because it's we make so many assumptions in what we do as sellers, especially in the conversations in our head when we're preparing for those pitches, when we're doing those types of things. I think that the thing that most sellers get and I'll put on my hat and my current role when I'm being sold to right now in my in my role, they stop one level too soon.
[00:05:41] In their process of trying to elevate that, if they are at all trying to elevate the conversation right there, they're usually just not going far enough. So if if your solution saves me labor, I go back to that example. Right. The next question the seller should ask before they ever get in the room as they're preparing for that is, so what? Why does that matter? Right. Why does it matter that you save labor? Because as an executive, I'm going to look at that saving labor and say, OK,
[00:06:11] so let's say you're saving my frontline employees 45 minutes a day. That's terrific. You're going to put a value on that based on what you pay them and what that 45 minutes is worth. But I probably still have to pay them for that 45 minutes. Right. So, yes, you're saving me that. But now I have to translate that 45 minutes into something productive or maybe not pay them at all because they're going to clock out early. So maybe the actual labor savings is the end of their shift and they get to leave early.
[00:06:39] So now I've got to draw that connection. So as a salesperson, I've got to start thinking through how does this actually translate? Is it productivity? Because if it's productivity, then maybe if you were in a retailer or something like that, those employees could go clean up a department or help customers with things, doing things that otherwise. But now your value has gone from saving labor into customer retention. It's gone into revenue generation. It's gone to other business outcomes that isn't just about saving labor because you have to repurpose it.
[00:07:09] But if I did it, let's say it was the end of my shift and those employees get to go home 45 minutes early. Well, now if I start to think through those things, that's a completely different value proposition or business outcome that I'd be connecting it to. Right. So in that case, I could say, oh, great, I'm actually saving the hard dollars. But again, saving hard dollars needs to translate into it could be profitability or you can get creative with how you find those things.
[00:07:34] And you could say things like, you know, you probably have to give inflationary increases. You give pay increases to your customer, hourly rate increases to your frontline employees every year. 3%, 4%. What if I could cut that in half for you? Let me tell you how I can fund the increase to your frontline employees. That's a question that's going to get an executive to go, tell me more. How are you doing that?
[00:07:59] And then you walk them back to, well, if I can automate these tasks at the end of their shift and we can get them out of the store 45 minutes early. Now those dollars can translate into something really meaningful. Right. And so next year when you have to do that, we're literally funding it. And I think that's the really interesting way to try to connect those things. You have to think through what actually matters to them and how the whatever the thing is you're providing operationally is going to ultimately get translated into their business.
[00:08:28] Now, obviously, the outcomes, sort of those broader outcomes that you shared, they often matter to a specific stakeholder. You've just described a certain executive you, in this case, you're engaging with and you customize that outcome track to that specific stakeholder, to that specific executive.
[00:08:52] Now, the problem a lot of the times is that sellers are not necessarily comfortable talking to that kind of level. People, they are more comfortable speaking with the people they like to speak to. That they're comfortable and happy with. So what does it take, in your opinion, for sellers to move beyond the stakeholders they feel familiar or comfortable with and engage with that senior decision makers?
[00:09:22] You know, those people who really own the business outcome. What does that take, do you think? There's two interesting parts to this. One, you said sellers are going to naturally spend time with the people who look like them. So an operational seller is going to want to talk to operational people. A technical person is talking to technical people. It's comfortable. I think that's actually a very human thing, right? We all do that in all aspects of our life. It isn't unique to sellers.
[00:09:46] So from the standpoint that you know this is sort of an inherently human thing, it's something you will need to fight, right? It's something you're going to need to go against the grain in your brain about where you're headed, what feels good there, and push yourself to be a little uncomfortable. So going into it knowing I might be a little uncomfortable here is a really important mindset to have when you're coming into it.
[00:10:07] The other piece that I think has set the stage for us, the reason people think that executives don't want to talk to salespeople is because so many salespeople don't add any value. They just talk about themselves, you know, the old adage about, you know, show up and throw up. Like, I'm going to come to the meeting. I'm going to tell you everything I know about my solution and all of that other stuff. And I think that's part of the sort of the age old problem. So then we as sellers buy into that and we think, oh, they don't want to talk to me.
[00:10:36] I can't go to the CFO and talk to them about this, right? But the reality is CFOs are just like you and me. They're the same people who got promoted in lower level jobs at some point. And they have different, a different perspective because they're being asked and tasked with different outcomes in their role than they were before. But that doesn't mean they're any different. So we've got to go into that knowing I'm going to be uncomfortable, but I should be confident in being able to have that conversation as long as you're not just coming in.
[00:11:05] So the way that you get there then to get more to the heart of your question, right, I think is about earning credibility, right? You can't just walk in and knock on the CFO's door and say, I want a meeting right there. You've got to earn the right to be able to have that conversation. So that takes a little bit of time. It usually does start at other levels within the organization. So you definitely need to know who you're selling to, who they're connected to, where it's all tied together.
[00:11:28] I've seen many deals where you start in an operational area and it turns out the finance department is going to step in and they're going to kind of trump what operations wants because they signed the check. So understanding that broader organization and who you're speaking with and who their bosses might be is a really important part to it. But you earn that credibility, that opportunity to talk to them by demonstrating business acumen, right?
[00:11:55] You have to be able to have that conversation with them about the things that matter to them. So it isn't about your pitch. It isn't about having all of those answers. It is much more geared toward, you know, can I have a conversation about margin expansion? Can I speak to that executive about capital allocation? You know, if I hear somebody talking about that, I'm going to view that person differently than I am somebody who's going to come in and talk to me about their solution. Right. And I think that helps to get you there when you start having those kinds of conversations.
[00:12:25] It's also for a salesperson, a really good test of am I at the right level? Because every company has different sort of decision rights, different delegated authorities who can spend certain amounts of money, who has the right to buy something. So you sometimes don't know if you're at the right level and you might be if it's a really big organization. It isn't always going right to the C level, right? Right. So to the extent that I'm having that business conversation, I'm talking about how they allocate capital or what you know, what's holding back growth, those kinds of things.
[00:12:55] If the people you're talking to are puzzled, confused, don't understand it, then there may be more executors, operational people. They're not there yet. And then, you know, I probably need to get to this person's boss to understand that or to get a level or two above it. So continuing to have those conversations in that business fluency, I think, really helps to drive your credibility in an organization.
[00:13:17] And the people you're talking to will be a lot less nervous about bringing you in or introducing you to a senior level person when they know that you have that capacity, that capability. Is it also about asking the right types of questions? Oh, 100%. 100%. I mean, that's been around in business, I think, for a really long time, right? And over the years, whether it's discovery, I mean, the challenger sale, all of these things that have come out over time.
[00:13:45] You know, questioning is probably the greatest form of salesmanship. Right. Your ability to ask good questions. And you've got to define that, right? You can't just, you know, what's a good question? I think that it's the biggest misconception within sales that you have to have all the answers. And I think oftentimes it's what shoots out a salesperson's mindset. They believe, I don't know enough to talk to these people yet. You know, I take a new job. I need to be trained up. I need to understand all of this.
[00:14:13] Some of the best salespeople I know don't know anything about the product. They just know how to ask good questions, how to elicit things out of their customers. And that really is a skill in and of itself that you have to practice, right? You have to think those things through. It requires knowledge and knowing who you're talking to, what the organization is, what might matter to them, not making a lot of assumptions there. And then also figuring out how to ask thoughtful questions, something that's going to make an executive go, oh, I didn't think about it that way, right?
[00:14:43] It's going to make me think a little bit differently about something because of a question you asked. So I'm going to end up as the executive discovering the answer in talking with you, right? And the answer might actually be the thing, you know, your solution. It might lead you down a completely different path, right? Like I mentioned before about I thought this was all about saving labor and cost savings. It turns out it's about revenue generation because we're going to turn those people into somebody who can take that time and sell instead of saving it as hard dollars.
[00:15:12] So I think that's the really important part. So good questions will tie those business outcomes into the conversation, right? You're going to ask things like what's putting pressure on growth right now, right? Right. That's that's a business question that every executive is wrestling with. We all need to grow our companies. So wanting to know what's putting pressure on it, where where he or she thinks the the gaps are in their organization around trying to grow.
[00:15:39] If you've got something that you think is going to help them drive revenue and growth, don't just start with revenue and growth. Talk about the problems and ask those questions and try to to get that information out of them relative to that business conversation. And that's where you start to demonstrate that acumen by asking those questions with the right terminology and understanding how all of those dots get connected. I think you made a number of really good points. I think.
[00:16:03] What are the one of the critical elements and in the day and age of AI, people are not just informed. They were informed before with all the information on the on the net and so forth. But nowadays, they have already an opinion before they talk to you as a seller. So by you going and asking 20 questions, you know, that ain't good enough anymore, because
[00:16:29] essentially the prospect or the buyer is is confirming your assumptions that that doesn't provide any value to them. And I think that idea of how do we provoke new needs in a way? How do we generate new thinking of something that's unconsidered, something that they haven't appreciated before can add value to their business and elegantly put that into the questioning process?
[00:16:59] That's what a money is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you made a really interesting connection there. And I think it's important to point out that salespeople often, you know, they might go in and do nothing but ask questions. But if every one of those questions is self-serving and you said to validate the assumptions you had about the business, they're going to see right through that. Like, great, you asked me 20 questions and that didn't add any value to me. The question needs to provoke that in in the person who you're who you're talking to. It's helping them see it differently.
[00:17:27] And and that is the skill, right? It's not just having a list of questions and being able to ask them that in and of itself might as well be a presentation. I fully agree. And the and for me, it starts a lot with preparation for this, right? It's not, oh, let's meet with this prospect tomorrow. We're going to ask him or her about these five things. That's that's just not good enough anymore. If you want to think in outcomes, how do I help them achieve their outcomes?
[00:17:56] You need to be able to think about in your preparation, what is the need that I'm generating or I want to generate in the mind of that buyer, should I say? What's the need that I want to generate? What is something that they haven't considered before or underappreciated before? And what do I want them to think about and then create the questioning that leads me to that need? I think salespeople always turn it the other way around. I don't know what question will we ask them.
[00:18:26] Well, that's really not on the money anymore. Exactly. And it requires patience, I think, Harry, because salespeople are always looking for the fastest path to the sale, right? And the least resistant path to the sale. But you're right. You're helping that customer through a journey of realization, right? And the questions should progress along there. But it does sometimes take some time for them to get to that realization without you just pointing it out.
[00:18:54] Because if you just show up and tell them you've got a better way for them to run their business, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to resist. They're going to push back and be like, who is this guy? Right? So it's about getting them to realize that ultimately the idea is theirs. And you're probably going to learn a lot along the way. And that needs to inform your next question, your next decision. You know, what's that old adage about, you know, be interested, not interesting, right? I am interested in your business. I want to understand it.
[00:19:24] I'm not asking a question and then thinking about what's the next thing I'm going to say. What's the next question? I am listening to what you're saying. And my second question is a follow on to something in your answer, right? Because I'm locked in on you. I'm hearing what you're saying. Tell me more about what you just said here. Let's dig a little deeper on that. Those are the things that then get a really interesting conversation. And the executive thinks this guy really knows what he's talking about. So let's say we've uncovered an important outcome. And of course, that's one thing and an important part of it.
[00:19:52] Getting the customer to actually invest in changing something is really a different thing in another story, particularly when that money could go elsewhere into any other project. How do you turn the outcomes you've uncovered now into a compelling business case that can compete against other priorities for budget, for example? How do you do that?
[00:20:21] The ever-important business case, right? This is so critical in B2B selling. And I'm starting to believe, you know, I've used it throughout my whole career. All the companies I've worked with, we've always had very detailed analysis, right? Selling something that has, you know, it's capital, so it's discounted cash flows and all these other things. I think what's shifting in the world today in terms of buying, business cases miss because
[00:20:51] they focus too much on the benefit, right? They don't describe consequences. Everything has a benefit. I can, like, you're going, anything you're proposing to a customer is going to change what they're doing today, right? So there's going to be a current state and a future state. And when it only focuses on the benefit and doesn't focus on the consequences, then you're having a conversation that kind of levels the playing field with, like we said earlier, every other thing I could invest in because they've all got some kind of benefit.
[00:21:21] I think customers don't often buy because something's better. Like I said, everything, everything could potentially be better, right? With enough time and money, you could, you know, accomplish just about anything. So I encourage our sellers to think about three things. You have to quantify the current state. You've got to understand where they really are today. And that's part of that discovery. It's part of asking those interesting questions and understanding what the business outcome is, right? What's the value of the future state?
[00:21:50] How realistic are you being about that? What does this look like in the future? And why do we believe that that's real, right? You've got to be able to show that you have a depth of knowledge there. It's not that you're going to come in and use every part of my, you know, solution that I have, and you're going to get the maximum value from every part of it. Human change doesn't work that way. Change management doesn't work that way. We know that, right? So what is the realistic value of that future state? And then the third part, which is what we miss, is what is the risk of waiting?
[00:22:20] And that's the piece. As an executive now, I think about that all the time. The pressure that I feel on a regular basis is about, are we not going fast enough? Balanced against, do I go too fast and take a risk and end up tripping and falling as an organization, right? So you've got to find a way to use that ROI, I shouldn't say ROI, but the business case, right? To transition the conversation from, should we do this?
[00:22:47] To something more along the lines of, I can't afford. Can I afford to wait? And hopefully they realize, I can't afford to wait. Like, this is worth moving forward. Every decision is a risk, right? I'm going to spend this money. We're going to go through the change. My employees might not embrace it. I've got all kinds of risks with saying yes to something, no matter how good the numbers look. And I think that's where, if you're thinking about how you have this business case and you want to get to the business outcome, right?
[00:23:16] Looking at, can I afford to, is really about tying it to that outcome. Right? At the end of the day. And we often talk about ROI all the time, right? That is the benefit part of this. I think people need to start translating that into capital allocation. And given what we said at the top of the podcast, right? That this is, you're really competing with all of these other priorities that I have. And not even priorities, but just options and projects, right? All these important things that you read about every day in the newsletters that show
[00:23:45] up in your inbox about AI and about cybersecurity, about all these other things, right? It's really about why you should allocate this capital here. It's not just that there's a positive return. That's just the numbers on the spreadsheet. And that why I should do that capital on this now, getting to that answer of should, or rather, can I afford to wait? Really comes down to that. It comes down to, am I going to spend the capital here? So the business case really needs to take you into that kind of a conversation in order to get there.
[00:24:13] That's a tough conversation to oversell us because it raises some tension and brings it back to what you said earlier. You got to be a bit uncomfortable and got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable to have that conversation because we know that people make decisions one out of two reasons, either to gain an outcome or to avoid a risk. And to your point, that ROI conversation versus the COI, the cost of inaction conversation,
[00:24:41] you know, that has quite a lot of weight and creates a lot more urgency to act to progress these opportunities. Fabulous. Absolutely. We had a sales manager here who had a great term I loved for that. He called it the unrecoverable cost of delineate because it focuses the buyer on the fact that if you wait three more months to talk to that committee, this is what it's going to cost you
[00:25:09] in your current state for another three months and you never get that money back. You're going to keep spending it in the current state. I could have saved it in those three months, but you want to wait. This is what it's costing you to wait for that period of time, whatever it is. And you break that down and they start to add that up and go, wow, I'm going to lose half a million dollars here by waiting for this. That might not be a good idea. It gets you back to that business outcome. What are the top three skills, in your opinion, that every B2B salesperson needs to succeed today?
[00:25:36] What are those top three and rank them in order one second and third for me? That's a great question. It's a great question. And I think to your point, these change all the time, right? The world we're selling and changes all the time. So I would say given what we've talked about, the first one, because it's so foundational to every other thing we said is that business acumen. Right? Really good sellers today need to think like CEOs. They should be reading annual reports, not product names.
[00:26:03] They should be thinking about the how a business works, what matters to them, what the shareholders think if it's public, et cetera. There's so much information available to us on the people we're selling to today, on the companies and what they're trying to do. That having that acumen and understanding it, there's so many ways to learn it too, right? People think, well, I'm not a business guy. I don't have an MBA. You know, this is where we get nervous about talking to CFOs. It's not that hard to be able to understand and gather what you need to be able to speak that language.
[00:26:31] So I would say that skill, understanding how companies make money, how they allocate capital, how they manage risk. Those are the things that you need to be an expert in. And it's what the best salespeople I've worked with are good at. Um, the second one is probably the, I would say the discovery, the question piece, maybe not so much discovery, but that questioning part, because it changes the feeling of a sale to the buyer. It makes them feel like they're working with an advisor, right?
[00:27:00] Somebody who's, who's adding value and helping them see the value is not that I've got a better solution than the other guy. The value is you provoke my thought and developing that skill to uncover problems and uncover consequences with thoughtful questions, I think is, is probably number two. Um, you know, lastly, we, we talked about the business case in the ROI part. Um, you know, there's, there's a lot that goes into understanding what priorities are, how
[00:27:28] they're personal to your buyers, all of that other stuff. But you've got to be able to translate any of this information that you gather in those questions. Um, any of the, of the outcomes you think that matter to that customer, you've got to be able to translate that into value somehow, right? So the ability to connect your product and service, uh, your solution, whatever it is into a measurable outcome that matters to a senior leader. Uh, really it, it doesn't just happen. It's not a thing where you say, well, this, this one's going to be this for this sale.
[00:27:57] It's the ability to have that evolve as you learn more. So every single conversation, every single sales call you have with that potential customer, you're hearing what they're saying and you're challenging yourself and asking yourself, is that change the value that I'm having? Right. Sort of back to that revenue versus cost savings thing that we talked about earlier. You're hearing those things and you're not going back and having another conversation about cost savings. You're now talking about whether or not revenue generation is important to them, but we often
[00:28:24] get so stuck in our own value proposition and our own assumptions that we can't translate what we've discovered into value. And I think that would be the third one. Joe, you've been an amazing guest. Thank you for your insight. I know the community of listeners will deeply appreciate your thought leadership on the topic. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Yeah, really. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. My lovely people selling on outcomes means moving the conversation beyond what your solution
[00:28:52] does and connecting it to what the business is actually trying to achieve. As Joe shared today with us, that requires sellers to engage the right decision makers, use thoughtful discovery to uncover and generate new needs, needs that matter, and build a business case that can compete for investment while protecting, of course, their solution from becoming just another commodity.
[00:29:20] If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show, share it with your team and subscribe to it on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Download our latest white paper and learn more about our book that we're going to release soon, The Outcome Effect, How to Sell Outcomes, Impact and Economic Value. Until the next time, my lovely people, take care of yourself, your loved ones, and of course, your B2B customers. Bye-bye.