This is why your sales team always arrives too late

Thank you. It's I'm looking forward to the conversation. Appreciate the invite.

Wow, great question. So for years I've been I've had the f the the the fortunate career of being an executive sales leader with some fairly large name name brand companies here in the US. And following a couple of exits, my one of my last ones was private equity, had the opportunity of going and working for these legacy kind of training and development companies. That help executive leaders improve their team. So had an opportunity of working both with the Miller Hyman group as well as all the team over at Corporate Visions. And so really what it gave me was just great perspective and great new at access to research that that drives a lot of the changes in the market. So thorough, thoroughly appreciative of of both the teams at at those two legacy companies. Thanks for asking.

well, so let's not talk about an elevator pitch because I think that'll feel a little canned. But here's the problem that we that we we focus on. a lot has changed in the way commercial or what we call business to business. Some people know them as B2B, B2B buyers and B2B sellers engage. And a lot of the changes happened over about the last eight years. The problem that we helped solve is that gap. Between the way that buyers and sellers were operating only five to eight years ago, it's gotten really wide because buyers are so good at what they do today. They have the head starts on commercial sales organizations or commercial marketing organizations. And one of the things that we learned through our data and research was there's actually a need to change the operating system inside of a sales organization to keep pace with the way the buying organizations operate. So At Lucrum Partners, what we've created is and we've trademarked, we call the signal led go to market. It takes a different approach to the way organizations are built and designed from sales product and marketing. And it changes the way they engage with and interact with this forever changing marketplace known as B2B buyers. And that's what we created.

Awesome. So you'll keep me honest so that I that I won't use any any any any any terms right out of school. So many years ago, marketing teams were responsible for creating leads that they would give to sales teams. And all of that worked out really nicely when buyers would fill out forms or come to a website and look for more information because they really needed sellers to go and explain it to them. Make sense? Okay. Well, all of that's been thrown out the window because buyers, because they do their own research today, they get way out ahead of sellers. So what signal-led go-to-market is, is instead of starting with a buyer or a buying organization raising their hand saying, Can you help me? We use technology and and intentional system design to find the earliest of signals. When companies are starting to move in a direction to solve really complex problems. So the advantage of, and this, by the way, this technology wasn't available several years ago. You know, we talk about AI and sales, this technology wasn't available. So today, for a sales organization to see when a company is beginning to make a move in a direction and have both the technology and the operating system aligned to say, now's the right time. To go engage with this organization is step one. And so that that creates kind of the technology and the operating system as a step one with signal led go to market. And then the second part of it is what do we say and who do we say it to? So years ago, sellers used to knock on the door of maybe somebody in the buying department or procurement or, you know, one of the lower level functions within within their buyer's organization. What we say is if you follow the pattern that Bain and Google and LinkedIn laid out in their day one research, the real on-ramp today for winning organizations is to get to what's called the day one list. And that day one list is being able to see when organizations are starting to move in a direction. And that can be new executive hires, that can be a shift in the way they invest in the market. It can be a real estate purchase. It can be the way they've reacted to recent regulation, et cetera. so what at the end of the day, what we do with signal led go to market is we enable commercial sales teams to have that earlier conversation rather than waiting for a buyer to raise their hand. So did I use did I use any s any sales terms I shouldn't have used in that explanation?

Yeah, that that's an awesome that's an awesome question. So the first step is we're often brought in when organizations are having a sales performance problem. And they our clients usually say, Can you come in and help with training? Or can you come in and help with coaching? Or can and in reality it really isn't training and it really isn't coaching when we start the conversation, because we get started by looking at There's a thing called a sales pipeline that most people are familiar with. And that's your CRM system where all the stuff is sitting in. It's really noisy in most companies. And it's really noisy because there's there are a number of opportunities or a number of deals that their sales team is working on. And you see them getting stuck. It's like a clogged pipe. And when we do an inspection of that pipe or the of that pipeline, What we quickly identify in most organizations is why are all these deals getting stuck? And there tends to be a lack of structure and governance at the front end about what gets into the pipeline. There tends to be a lack of structure and governance as to how things get managed through the pipeline. And there tends to be a lack of standard bearing as to when we say, nope, that doesn't belong here anymore, throw it out. so the whole qualitative and quantitative approach to pipeline management. So the way that we get started first is let's just understand how you're doing it today. And allowing teams to say, look, here's what our playbook looks like, this is what our operating system looks like, and then this is what our business results look like. So we don't show up with the with the big fancy charts yet. What we start off with is let's let's examine the work that you have today. Let's use your your work product, your processes, and we'll identify where the challenge sits within your current operating system. So that's our how do you get started? How do we get them up quickly is we can get clients to qualified at bat conversations with buyers in inside of 45 days. So let's figure out what your problem is and then we'll show you within yeah, within sh relatively short period of time. Here's where you should be having the conversations. Yeah.

So what you just mentioned is actually a more it's a more common problem than I I think one would think is you're absolutely right. Companies can't serve everybody with everything. And so understanding and and part of our discovery is yeah, we look at the pipeline, all the things I just mentioned, but we also start with the go to market strategy. Where who do we serve? Right? Who does the client intend to serve? Where and how are they serving them, both geographically, the way that the the clients' companies are organized? How does the product strategy align to it? How does all of this fit into a really cohesive sort of industry or a sector strategy? Because they again, what you just mentioned is spot on. You can't solve everybody's problems everywhere, but is there a deliberate approach to the way the go-to-market leadership team has designed their growth, their growth strategy? And so something as simple as let's should walk me through it or walk us through it. And then we ask some pressure testing questions to really understand kind of what went into some of these decisions. And so even in that short exercise, what we can figure out is are they selling too wide or are they focusing too wide? And is there clarity and alignment within the go-to-market leadership teams, which are the product leaders and the sales leaders and the marketing leaders around? who they serve and why they think they can serve them with their their their offerings. So that's a great, great observation. that comes up probably more times, more times than not, there's there's some noise even in the alignment between the sales marketing and product leaders about where they want to go.

Hm. Yeah, well, thank you for the call out about Lemonade. Yeah, Lemonade Global. I started with a couple of co-founders where we found the whole experience for executives to be able to network today has just become so hard. And so, yes, any of your listeners, please go check us out at lemonadeglobal.com. We actually bring AI matching to executive profiling to make it more relevant and precise for leaders. When we look at AI in a commercial organization, the first question is, what's the thing we're trying to solve? Because what's what's really what's what becomes really eye-opening is asking a company about their AI strategy. And you'll hear a lot of words, and you'll hear a lot of catchphrases, and you'll hear a lot of buzz terms. And we sort of let that go because the follow-on to that is, and then how does that help you in driving growth? And then the room kind of goes a little awkwardly silent. So I think what most organizations are struggling with today, commercial organizations with AI, is what is it, what is it we need to be done? And how are we thinking about that deliberately with AI? Because today when you talk to when you talk to sales teams and you ask them about AI, here's what they're doing. They're making decks for for clients. you know, they're doing searches for, you know. Emails of buying teams, right? It's just very academic, sort of task level stuff. That's not AI strategy, right? That's not an AI, that's not an AI growth strategy. So really gaining an understanding from the client's perspective of how are they looking at it and what is the what's the North Star that the executive leadership team and the investors have put forward to say, here's what we want to see in an AI strategy.

So there's not a lot of clarity in many of the answers, but where we help them, where we help them is, is really breaking apart what are the what are the jobs that you can off, you know, kind of offboard to AI to help you become faster, more precise, cleaner, right, et cetera, in execution. And then where do you need to ensure that that gives you greater bandwidth so that the human in the loop when working with buyers is as precise and skilled as they can be. So we're not, we don't advocate computers replace sellers. because executive leadership teams, they don't want to talk to they don't want to talk to agents. They want to talk to people that understand their business, their industry, the challenges that they're facing, and bring a unique perspective. But certainly AI can help both sides of the equation begin to guardrail or at least put some some some frame framings around. What exactly is that problem?

Yeah, so great question. So our go-to-market strategy, we're very deliberate about the clients that we work with. We work primarily with lower mid market and mer and mid-market growth firms, primarily professional services. Industries are agnostic, even though we often hear from clients, you don't understand our industry. Yeah, yeah, we do. We we we we have we have a good understanding. so what we do in the marketplace, yes, we do workshops. I was recent I'm looking at the gosh, we're already in September. Goodness. several months ago, I was invited to do a TED talk specifically around signal led really signals and how signals can lead go to marketing commercial organizations. And so I was part of the the TEDx bokeh Ratone Florida group, which was fabulous. yes, I I'm I'm invited to do panels and a lot and many podcasts. we we re issued our new ebook going into planning for 2027 specifically for both boards and executive leadership teams on how do you get your arms around moving to a signal-led go-to-market approach. So what we really are are are doing at the end of the day is we're educating. We're educating our marketplace on here's why it's so hard to sell. Here's why it's so hard to be competitive in the market. Here's why it's so hard For that infamous sales pipeline to have more velocity in it. and it has to do with the changes that have happened that most organizations haven't paid attention to, but we don't just point to the problem. We actually show them how to how to solve it. And as I mentioned earlier, within 45 days, we can have your team with qualified at bats in your marketplace.

that's I love that question. Thank you. so when we launched the firm, I guess we're approaching our fourth or fifth anniversary. I gotta check the date now. It feels like we've been doing this forever. what we what we were launching with was probably early as it relates to signal led go to market, because we understood all the shifts and changes that were happening. our our programs that we created for clients reflected that. what we didn't have was the technology. And so if I could go back, if I could go in my in my Wayback Machine back five years ago, maybe I would have invented the technology, the AI technology that would have helped accelerate some of that early work that we did with clients. But just from a from a a an execution and system design standard. we were always confident we were over the target.

So we're seeing a couple of things in the market today with go to market. you mentioned earlier when we we were talking about AI. there's no magic pill, there's no silver bullet. this is about aligning to the way buyers are shifting and moving, right? And having the the right timing in the right context, right? Having the right personnel with the right conversation and ensuring that those personnel that you put in the middle of that conversation, understand the customers, you know, sort of financial financial drivers as well as some of the industry headwinds. So that being said, what we're seeing today is we're starting to see some of the magic pill stuff pop up again, which is this AI will do all of these things. I think it can help, but it doesn't solve for. And so The idea that AI replaces sellers, I'll say no. The fact that AI replaces, you know, marketers, chief executive marketers, I would say no. It changes the work for both. but it doesn't eliminate the roles, right? It's just it's an evolution. The the the thing that's also coming up over and over again is for most of the Most of the value statements, and I'm using I'm I'm use I'm using my words cautiously here, that these AI products are are stating is at the end of the day, they're picking up on signals in the market with buyers, which is true, but the timing of them still is suspect late. So even if you shifted from what you're doing today to some of these sort of new bias today, we'll fix all your problem stuff. we're convinced that the majority of those solutions have not changed the timing to any to any dramatic impact for organizations. It's just more stuff. More stuff later later in later in the buying cycle.

Yeah, so we will continue to build out our signal led go to market practice. we we start with kind of the operating system and model. one of the things that we've learned pretty quickly is in which for organizations to embrace and operationalize what we bring in is it changes their talent profiles, it changes their org design, it changes some of the design of the people that we put on the field. so our practice will continue to widen to help organizations make that full shift, which is it's not just the system, but it really changes like what do your marketers do, what do your sellers do, what do your account managers do, et cetera. And then what does technology do to enable to enable each of those? So from that, from that point of view, we will kind of widen our continue to widen our our support of clients. I think the the the Timing for 2027. If 2026 showed us something as commercial leaders, it's this. I said it earlier, AI isn't a magic pill. Your timing and contacts with the conversations with buyers. And if we go back and re-reaccess the the Bain Google and also LinkedIn research that talks about the day one list, read it and understand it because when you look at all of your investments through that research, I think most commercial leaders will say, gosh, I'm not sure that if we spend time or money buying this tech or bu hiring these these these certain functions in our company that we'll get any better at having that conversation at the right point in time. So that's where our practice is kind of doubling down and that's that's where our practice will continue to grow. I really appreciate the the question.

Wonderful. So if you go to our website, which is lucrumpartners dot count.co, access to the TED talk is there as well as all of our research and thought leadership is there and some other assets. And if you can't find something there, reach out to me, Brian at lucrempartners.co. Happy happy to connect.

Thank you so much. It was a great conversation and you're doing great work.