Succeeding in a Self-Serve World: How to Get Your Prospects to Sell Themselves.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:00:06] It is 11 a.m. in the Bay Area, 2 p.m. in New York City and 9 p.m. in Jimma, Ethiopia, largely believed to be the birthplace of coffee. Wherever you are, turn off your Slack notifications, grab a beverage and let yourself relax just a little bit. It's a Thursday. You're almost through with the week. It's time for a coffee break. I'm Alex Jonathan Brown, a senior copywriter here at Iron Horse. And one of my favorite things about this part of my job is that there are times when I get to like, just be in a room with super smart people and kind of let them talk about their super smart ideas. And that's very much what's happening today. I'm joined basically by the second co-host of our Coffee Breaks Ironhorse Horse's chief Growth Officer, Monica Behncke. Hi, Monica.

Monica Behncke: [00:00:54] Hi, Alex.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:00:56] And a new guest, at least since I've been doing these from TrustRadius, their vice president of marketing, Allyson Havener. Allyson. Hi. How are you?

Allyson Havener: [00:01:08] Hi. Great to be here.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:01:11] Really, really wanted to get your last name right on the first try. And why we have convened today is because both Iron Horse through the Enterprise Growth Alliance and TrusRradius have been doing some research on buyer's journeys. And specifically today we're going to talk about the self-serve buyer's journey. It's a thing that's popped up kind of in both of our researches. Um, Allyson, I know that report is coming very shortly, so this is kind of a preview, I think. But let's talk a little bit about what we've seen. So correct me if I'm wrong, but the research was basically aimed at people who were involved in the decision making process. And one of the things that came out of it was that more people are doing more of their buyer's journey on their own, not having their hands held by salespeople. So I think just to start the conversation, when we talk about a self-serve buyer's journey, what do we really mean when we're saying.

Allyson Havener: [00:02:09] So when we have done our research. So you're spot on. We survey the buyers that come to TrustRadius that are doing their research and ultimately making a technology decision. And so when we talk about self-service, we're essentially talking about their journey being all accessing information that they want about a product up front without having to talk to a sales person, without having to have any kind of gated experience. And so, you know, over 65% of buyers today are millennials and Gen Z, So they're digitally native. They're used to getting information at their fingertips. They're really influenced about around the buying experience and the B2C world. And now they're those are the same expectations that they're bringing when they're buying technology. And so they want all this pricing information. They want product demos, they want security information, customer voice, and they want it from like an unbiased source, something that they can trust. And so that's really what we mean by this kind of self-service journey, is that you're giving all this information to buyers up front, easily accessible and something that they can trust. Because the other thing that we're seeing, especially in this 2003 report, two major things. Well, one, we already know buyers are super skeptical. Like what? Buyer is skeptical of technology. And with so much technology out there and a lot of messages that blend and and sound the same, so buyers become very skeptical. But what we've also seen is with the recent economic conditions that we're all living in as budgets have been cut, is a really, really risk averse. So when you kind of blend those two things together, you have this kind of mindset of the buyer. And so giving them that information up front and giving them that self-service is going to be really important going into this year and next year.

Monica Behncke: [00:04:04] Hey, can I play host and ask a question too?

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:04:08] Please do.

Monica Behncke: [00:04:09] Um, when you talk about risk averse, so I agree with all the definition of self-serve and that the research that we've done mimics exactly that same thing. Buyers are in control. They want to know the depth. They want to know the timing. They want to control the context. Do you remember when you used to do drip nurtures? It's like we're going to give you this piece of information now, this piece of, um, you know, but if you combine that I want to be in control and I'm going to do all of these things with that idea of being risk averse, did you see data that said, we are going to go deeper, spend more time, dwell on things? I'm not just going to take the surface, I'm going to dig. I'm going to click down 2 or 3 times more. I'm going to look for more sources of information. So I'm going to cross reference this source of information, this source of information. Did any of that come out? Because it's me taking control in a particular environment that says if I'm risk averse, I don't want to make a mistake.

Allyson Havener: [00:05:10] Exactly. So one of the data points that we saw, which was really surprising, but, you know, it just really essentially anchors on this idea of buyers being really, really risk averse, is that prior experience is one of the top resources buyers rely on when making a technology decision. So this report that we came out with, it's called the B2B buying disconnect. And essentially we evaluate the way buyers make decisions and the way teams go to market and the differences between the two. And so we always like to look at the resources that buyers use, what's influential to them in their buying experience. And then we look at like the tactics that marketing teams kind of deploy. And so when we look at the resources, prior experience has never really even been in the top five. It was definitely something that people considered and it was part of their evaluation process. But this year it was number three, so it jumped over 20% in buyers saying that that was one of their top resources. And so to your point where it's like people want under the hood, right? They want to know the in-depth nature and hands-on experience of a product before buying because they can't make a mistake. Right? They don't have the budget to make a mistake. They don't have the you know, and if you're thinking about just the tech industry at large, you know, people are thinking about consolidation.

Allyson Havener: [00:06:33] Their roles have either they they're having maybe to do more with less, which I like hate that term because as a marketer, nobody wants to do more with less. But that's just kind of the reality that we're living in. So to your point, Monica, like they can't make a mistake, so they're really relying on their prior experience and they have to get buy-in across a bigger buying committee. Don't think you could see a buyer trends report out there that doesn't say the buying committee is growing, but that's mostly because you have to get a lot of buy in from people and get them on board. So you can like decrease that time that to get value. And then what we're also seeing is that the C-suite is more involved, especially the CFO in the purchase decision. So in years prior, we actually saw a democratization of decisions where, you know, mostly like practitioner, director level, they could make decisions because their team is the one that's going to be using the tool. However, this year we actually saw that trend almost reverse. And CFO, you have to make a claim. You have to make essentially that the claim the business case to the CFO now. And so that's something that's kind of switched given the current economic climate that we're all in.

Monica Behncke: [00:07:43] Yeah. Yeah, it was. I remember a few years ago where we had that shift when line of business was allowed to make a lot of decisions more independently. And then it came in and went, wait a minute, infosec connectivity mean we need to be a part of these decisions. And we saw this huge upswing in terms of members of the IT community being part of these line of business decisions. Um, did it go down? It's like I thought it was fascinating and we did have a pre conversation about this that the CFO and the financial community makes so much sense with the risk aversion. Is it still there and CFO is layering on top or was there a teeter totter, in your opinion?

Allyson Havener: [00:08:28] Yes, definitely, because one of the things that buyers are looking at when they're looking at technology, as they're looking at the compatibility with the rest of the tech stack. So it has to be involved in that decision making process because your systems need to be talking to each other. The way that data is, is being transferred from system to system. There's a security element to that. So they are definitely very, very involved in that decision because people, again, going back to consolidation, they want to know, hey, is this going to be something that I'm just kind of tacking on to a tech stack? Does something I already have done something I already buy already solve that use? Case. And so what people are looking at right now is they're like, okay, here's our current tech stack and especially across the enterprise, because what you see what happens is there's a lot of duplicity across technology, especially to your point where business to business solutions and technology decisions where maybe at the business unit level. So one, you know, one person could be using this and another person using this, but it solves the same use case. And so what people are doing in it is really involved is they're looking at their tech stack, thinking about the consolidation, making sure that, okay, here are the use cases that we're trying to solve for and can we do that across the current technology that we have? I will caveat all of that with people are still spending on technology. It just is what they're buying and what they're looking at might be just different. Right. And they and then and the way that they're evaluating technology has changed.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:09:59] So I think I mean, that's a bunch of changes that it feels like are happening sort of all in the same time. Monica I know that the data that Ironhorse got together for the report was a few months older than the TrustRadius data, and we've seen a shift even in that short period of time, especially for some of those things that we just talked about. Um, always love to hear that companies are making better use of the technology that they have. I'm glad you added that they're still willing to spend money on technology because many of our jobs rely on selling them technology. So as this shift is happening and we're looking at selling into those companies and marketing to those companies, like as as a person who does copy, like the fact that the CEO is getting more involved makes me incredibly nervous because I know it's so much harder to get my message in front of that person versus when it was, Hey, I just need to talk to the person who's going to use the software and like they'll make it happen. So as that changes is happening, like as marketers, what, like, what's the approach? How do we adapt what we're doing to sell better into this changing, this changing environment?

Allyson Havener: [00:11:18] So think of it, oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Monica Behncke: [00:11:21] You go. You're you're the guest.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:11:24] Yes.

Allyson Havener: [00:11:26] Well, I'm sure that you could totally layer on this and have a lot more like insights as well. So I would say it's kind of like a couple things. So, one, when you're looking at the CFO CEO, right, they're looking at the time to value. And so what we saw is that people are really looking at ROI. Like you can't really you know, a lot of marketers have shifted their messaging. They're like, oh, you know, this is how much will impact revenue, etcetera. But what we actually saw in the data is like, how do people how do buyers define ROI? What are like what are the key pieces of it? Because ROI is so broad, right? Um, and really buyers are looking at cost and value, so they're like, okay, if, if I'm getting, um, how much will this like essentially save me from a time perspective? And I think that goes to a lot of us have lost a lot of headcount or we've lost budget we and so time becomes more valuable, right? And, and so when you're talking about ROI, a lot of buyers, it resonates with them when it's like, okay, how much time is this going to save me? Automation. You're seeing all this trend with AI, right? Like people are really interested because they're like, Wait, this can save me X amount of hours in my day because now I have 15 other things to do.

Allyson Havener: [00:12:45] So when you're thinking about ROI, a lot of buyers are thinking that like, okay, cost to like the value and then they're thinking about time savings. Um, vendors though, what you'll see is that a lot of vendors are talking about revenue impact, which is good, but it's, it's easier to have a conversation because time, time savings is much more tangible and, and it's quicker, right? You can you realize that a lot faster than maybe revenue. So think about your messaging and like really what how you're communicating communicating ROI up front. Right. Because people want that as part of the buying process. One of the things that we saw in the buying process is that we already talked about self-service and having that information up front. But they want to be able like if they have to make a case to the CEO, they have to communicate ROI and make that business case. So help your champion within the company do that. Um, so that's kind of that bucket. The second bucket I would say is customer voice. Obviously address radius is, is something that we are always advocating for, always working with our customers for is the last way you can truly differentiate, especially in the technology space is your customer's voice.

Allyson Havener: [00:13:55] Your competitor can make the same product. You can more or less, right? They can tack on the same features They can, right? And stuff really starts to come commoditized. The thing that can't is your customer's advocating for you and telling them how great your product is and how it's saved them time, how it's impacted their revenue. And so I think to really penetrate, I think the kind of through all of this oversaturated market is your customer's voice. And so, you know, and I think that's kind of a you see a lot of like people that are actually like consolidating their customer marketing or maybe not really focusing on the customer voice and think that's like the opposite of what people should be doing. They should actually really be leading with their customers and letting them do the talking because that's really what other people are going to resonate with and they're going to want to talk to somebody that is using the product. Again, going back to that hands-on product experience. So I would say like those two ways are really important and and and and really make a strategy around that and kind of rally the team and the company around that.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:15:05] Monica, I want to give you a chance to get in there, too, because.

Monica Behncke: [00:15:11] I was I was actually, you know, the things that I was thinking about when you think about all of these different shifts is the first it's really pragmatic, basic thing. Go back and do your homework again because you can't. I can't tell you how many people go, Yeah, yeah, we did that. We did that like two years ago. And then we've been just kind of same old, same old doing the same thing for the last two years, three years and everything. It's like, dang, things have changed a lot in the last 2 to 3 years. And you think about the buying group just as a very specific thing, the expansion of it, who's involved in it, those things may have changed. So have you done your homework recently? Do you really understand who is part of the buying group? Have you thought about the impact of that to the things that you're going to do? You do you have messaging? That is financial messaging When in the buyer's journey, are you bringing that into it? Are you making it? We had this in another conversation in our Enterprise Growth Alliance. Are you making that transparent to people? And there was a we had a really interesting conversation about pricing on the website about. Do people want to know that? Do they want to know up front? It's kind of like, hey, I, I, you know, this is affordable for me or not, or here's my minimal cost, my maximum cost, something like that. And one of our guests was talking about the experiment that they did where they said get a quote, or they had a pricing configurator and they had way more uptake on people doing self service pricing.

Monica Behncke: [00:16:41] So back to the self service into the financial data, you know, and configuration. And that was, you know, a much a much better way for them to go. It's transparent, it's self-serve. It brings that financial and ROI information in. I think the one thing that you said that was really interesting was to think about time as a resource. So people think about money as a resource and they sometimes think about individual humans, like I need another headcount as a resource. But thinking about time as a resource is really interesting as well and sort of an orthogonal to the earlier conversation. Now I'm going to bring more people into the buying group who are going to do more diligence during the buying journey to click into more things. Those are all kind of individual units of time that we just stacked up all of these individual units of time to potentially make that, you know, even longer. So when people get to the point of making decisions in a I find a lot of people are at the point of going, okay, like now we're already like two months behind because we took two months longer to make this decision. So it's it's a really sage advice to think about, you know, time to value as, as one of the places to not just message but have the whole company ready to execute to say, what's our 30 day milestone? What piece of value can this client get in the first 30 days? It's not all the value they're going to get, but in the first 30 days, what are we going to deliver? And really think about that and really like hold yourself accountable to it.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:18:17] Yeah, I think there's also there's also a way where that the time is a resource thing ties into the self-serve buyer's journey, right where you were just talking about about if I click if I have the option between a self-serve configurator and a click to quote, when I click to schedule my quote, whatever, whatever, like my process is done there until we can schedule a time to like figure it out and when we don't set up. Like we don't set up situations to let people do that work on their own. They're going to find somebody who does because they know have a meeting about this tomorrow. And I should have thought about it earlier, but here we are or whatever. And just making sure that like as we're doing this marketing, we also consider time as a resource and make sure that we're respecting the time of the people that we want to, like write us checks eventually. Yeah. Um, Allyson, did you have anything else before we hopped in with my little.

Allyson Havener: [00:19:10] Well, I kind of wanted to deep in the pricing thing. Just wanted to deep dive into because I feel like we year over year pricing is very, very important. And so we get a lot of questions from our customers because we started to we built a pricing page on TrustRadius. So now you can add your pricing to your, um, product profile on TrustRadius. And a lot of people are like, okay, but like there's a lot like pricing is complicated or maybe you don't have a complicated pricing and you live in the most, you're at the most amazing company. But a lot of our pricing structures can, especially in SaaS, can be a little complicated and buyers just want a range. Like it's really simple. Um, they just want to see like, is this in my price range? And it's really interesting because we do a lot of buyer interviews to understand essentially build our product roadmap. Like we really want to make sure that TrustRadius is a is a one stop shop for buyers. And so we do a lot of interviews with them to hear what they want. Pricing was always top of mind and they really help us kind of like structure our page for pricing to be displayed. And again, it's really simple. They're like, we just want a range to kind of see where this would fit into our budget. Um, and what we're seeing is with all of our customers that are doing that, it's actually accelerates the sales cycle. So if you're, if you're enabling self-service, your these buyers are already putting you on your short list. So all you have to do is then, you know, the, the sales team can be more consultative. They don't have to do the cold calling. They don't have to do that cold outreach.

Allyson Havener: [00:20:36] They can just be more consultative in the sales cycle and really give them, hey, like these are what our most successful customers are doing. And and then the second piece of that is actually it gets more traffic. So when we when our customers or whoever's on TrustRadius actually we just looked at our pricing pages at an aggregate in the first like I think it was the first 90 days traffic went to the like increased in those pages like 200%. So you know that buyers are looking for this information. So I think when you're thinking about like self-service and pricing and I know it's very controversial, we display our pricing and it took me, you know, had to have a lot of alignment with our sales team. But it's worth it because at the end of the day, if you can give buyers all that information up front and you're willing to be transparent, Monica, to your point, you're building that brand trust. You're building that, that that preference. And if they're not looking at your pricing, they're going to go to your competitors and look at their pricing, right? They're going to find it one way or another or get some kind of idea. Um, and so one of the things that we also researched was buyers like 50%, 56% of buyers said that they've already came to like a decision or they were evaluating at least two products before they even reached out to the vendor to schedule a demo. So over half of buyers are already making a decision before they even talk to you. And so I think that that's why self-service is so important, is because you're not you're just not going to make that short list.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:22:06] So with the idea that buyers have often either made a decision or almost made a decision before they have a conversation. Going back, Monica, to your time as a resource thing, right? In so many ways, like my instinct is that's really good news for the company because like you said, it saves your sales team time. Like it's easier to get a configurator up that's going to talk to a thousand people than it is to have your salespeople talk to 1000 people. With that and kind of all the shifts in mind like. Is it easier or harder to do this marketing thing than it was a year ago? And what's your instinct for where it will be a year from now? Like, are we moving more? Like, does self-serve continue? And we can just start getting back to like a real funnel pipeline vibe where it just all happens and then somebody picks up the phone to close?

Monica Behncke: [00:23:03] Yeah.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:23:03] Or where we had it.

Monica Behncke: [00:23:07] I think it's both harder and easier at the same time. I think that there are things that are easier because technology has come in and automated things that used to be manual. They have created light where there used to be darkness, you know, insights where there were no insights before or it was really, really hard to get those insights. And that created trial and error and experimentation. And those we can, we can be much more efficient. At the same time, it's harder because as you start to have these bigger buying groups and, you know, you realize how fluid and complex the journey is, how do you serve that in a way that delivers excellent customer experience? So it's kind of like it maybe stayed the same because some things got easier and some things got harder and now it's balanced out in general.

Allyson Havener: [00:24:09] Well, I think maybe to say it a different way is that it's just different, right? It's a different playbook. And I think that is where people are having a hard time because they have to essentially throw out their old playbook like, oh, like they that goes to my sales team, blah, blah. You know, the whole like playbook that we've been running for the last ten years, it doesn't work anymore. Right? And you see it across your channels and they're, you know, most marketers are looking at, you know, like the attribution and looking at their channels and you're starting to see the effectiveness go down. And that's just because the old playbooks aren't working anymore with the new buyer that we have. And so I think that it's not necessarily hard or easier or whatever it may be. I think that marketers just have to change their mindset. They have to get sales involved. It's a really it's a go to market motion and you have to build your new playbook and be willing and open to try new things. You have to set expectations internally with your executive and the board to make sure you're like, Hey, like this is the way the mindset is of the new buyer.

Allyson Havener: [00:25:13] This is this playbook that we're kind of reinventing, right, and deploying it. And there's going to be some trial and error. And it's really difficult conversation. And I've even had it with my board, my CEO, right. It's it's it's right now we're in this transition period. And the people, especially in a down economy that we're in right now, the people that are going to succeed in the future that are the ones that get that like five inches ahead, that one foot ahead. Right. Because that is going to be exponential once budget starts opening up. Because the second thing besides headcount that buyers want to spend on is technology Once budgets start to expand again. So you need to be ready. You need to start this foundation now and start the building blocks now, start the self-service, giving buyers what they want, getting that customer voice up in front and center, getting that ROI message and that business case. Easy for your champions to convey internally. Start doing all of these things. Now that's going to give you that leg ahead of your competitors when budget starts opening up.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:26:17] Well, we are coming up on time, but we're not quite there yet. And, Alison, you set me up perfectly. Um, so if there was one thing like we talked about all the situations, how everything shifting, if there's one thing that you would like marketers to go do to be better prepared for when budgets hopefully open up a little bit, hopefully tomorrow, but who knows? Um, is there like one thing that you would say, here's where you should start or if you've already started, here's the most impactful thing you can do. That's the both of you.

Monica Behncke: [00:26:50] I'll start because it kind of echoes what you just said. I think that what marketers need to do. I do believe that we are in an inflection point where the roles of sales and marketing are shifting within the go to market. Marketing has to engage in the conversation with the sales leadership and and they have to become aligned because marketing is saying, hey, it's shifting, we're going to do something differently and go off on their own without the involvement of sales is just destined to fail because sales is going to shift as well. It's an entire ecosystem that's shifting. And so if you are not deeply engaged with your your your sales counterparts as a marketer, you know, go buy lunch or send them lunch on on Uber eats or whatever it is you have to do, schedule the meeting with them, have the open conversation, listen to what they have to say, what their what their desires are, what their fears are. You know, are they afraid that marketing is going to take over their job? No, that's not going to happen. You know, help them understand how this is good for them, but engage, you know, in that conversation on the journey about the journey and how you have to respond to the client's journey jointly with sales. So, you know, go talk to sales.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:28:02] Always good advice. Just go talk to sales. Allyson, what about you?

Allyson Havener: [00:28:07] Yeah. Think that's a really good call. Monica is aligning with your sales team. Um, they. They are part of the go to market motion. Your customer success team and making sure that you guys are all on the same page of how you're going to essentially because retainment is really important too. We've talked mostly we've been talking about acquisition, but retainment is really, really important of your base, especially in a down economy. A lot of our customers, they see their customers researching competitors. And so customer loyalty is kind of out of like an all time low, too, right? And so, um, you really need to be partnering with your customer success as well. The other thing that I'll just say, like if you haven't already done it, it's customers. Is the other one right? Your customer, your customer success team, your, your customer marketing team, like really start to elevate them and insert them into your whole go to market. I think that there's a lot of lip service when it comes around that and there's very few organizations that actually really insert the customer into everything they do. But we see our most successful customers, like they take the reviews, they synthesize them, they get that to their product team.

Allyson Havener: [00:29:20] Hey, look, these are the features that are not working for them. We have really low scores here. Then they take that, Hey, here's how our our customers are talking about marketing, build messaging and positioning off of the way our customers are talking about us. And so, hey, here's how what our here's a use case showcase of all of our customers. Let's get that into our demand gen channels, right? Like there's very few companies that actually do this and do it kind of widespread across the organization. And it sounds like a lot, but like start talking to your customers, start getting people bought into that and you'll see that there's a lot of success to be had. And if you go back to the stat that we were talking about earlier, like prior experience, if you start building advocates within your organization and they go to another organization, guess who they're going to? If they're an advocate and they love your technology and they love your team and whatever else, like those are the people that are going to buy from you again. So think like start talking to your customers and start like inserting them across the entire organization.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:30:24] I think those are two fantastic places for people to start. Talk to marketing or talk to sales. Your marketing, talk to sales. Talk to your customers and start to really make those conversations happen and build from there. Um, Monica Allyson, thank you both so much for joining today. Um, Allyson, as we said before, you're the VP of Marketing at TrustRadius. If people want to learn more about you and what you do, where should they go?

Allyson Havener: [00:30:51] Just reached out to me on LinkedIn. I'm and we're really excited. We'll be sharing our report on the 13th of June. So our new 2023 B2B buying disconnect will be available then. So really excited to share all these insights and go more in depth there too.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:31:08] And Monica, I know, I know your website, um, but also reach out to Monica on LinkedIn, but we are at Iron Horses at Iron horse.io. We have a marketing maturity assessment that is out and people are finding super useful. I think if the technology works you might be able to see a link to it right now, who knows? Um, but also thank you, the audience, so much for joining us. It's been I stole two minutes of your time extra. I hope you don't mind. Um, but until next time, uh, coffee break's over. Let's get back to work. Thanks, everybody.